I really don't know about you, but I try to make my dungeons and their traps at least half-way believable, but the gas trap and the huge block on top of it is not a very practical or believable trap. I am looking for some way to rationalize it to my players. There is no hidden cut off switch or way around it. That just makes no sense in an area that was supposedly a high-traffic area when the cairn was being built. Any suggestions?
I must admit that I found myself wondering how Nadroc went to bed at night (short of making the DC 25 Escape Artist check to climb over it). I suppose he could have activated the trap only upon the cairn's completion, when he left.
The way I imagined this area was that while being used, Nadroc simply didn't step on the trigger for the giant stone block. Without the "primary" trap being triggered that "secondary" (gas) trap was not active. That trigger was tripped a long time ago by tomb raiders and they set off the first part. For whatever reason, nobody moved the block to finish the 1-2 punch the designer had in mind. Personally, I moved one of the seeker corpses to this area and let the party find him under the block, after they set off the gas trap of course.
I just assumed they lowered the block and armed the gas trap when the tomb was completed. I am sure the architect didn't want any stupid tomb robbers messing with his stuff and after the job was done nobody needed to get back into that area of the tomb anyway.
hey, I agree completely. I thought that trap was the single worst part of what is otherwise a really cool module. I simply removed it all together. to compensate for the EL loss, you can either add a different trap somewhere else, add in an extra encounter, or bolster an existing encounter. actually, I did none of these because I think the module is a bit hard for a 1st level party to begin with (see other message in boards: "Whispering Cairn Overpowered), so leaving out a trap here and there doesn't hurt the overall balance.
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I assume that traps are set once the building is complete, and everyone leaves.
The thing that disappoints me about most traps in D&D, is that, in order to ensure that even low-level types get to experience the fun of them, they have to be depowered to make the adventure 'fair'.
The whole point of a trap is that it's supposed to be unfair. It's supposed to be lethal, or crippling, or trap the intruders so they starve. There's absolutely no reason to build a trap that mildly inconveniences a typical person. You should be imagining the spirit of the interred owner looking down and going 'GOTCHA!', before metaphorically dancing on your stupid corpse.
I saw this trap as being a timer based trap, that sealed the explorers in the area past it after they had moved a few steps in. Thus, if they could push it down to escape, they trigger the gas trap. If they cant, they may have to rest, which might bring them into the clutches of the fatigue+animated object trap.
It all made sense to me...