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I had to share this one. The rogue in my party went alone to check out the screaming face tunnel in WC. She rolled great and spotted the pressure plate, so she marked it. That didn't really satisfy her curiosity, though, so she decided to intentionally trigger it to see what it did.
She called down to the rest of the party and had them place a bunch of rubble into a sack, and dragged it up to the tunnel. She then placed the sack between the face and the pressure plate, strung the rope down the hall, and pulled the rope over the plate to trip the trap while standing at the end of the hall, near the drop down to the blue alcove. Knowing how the trap worked, it took a supreme act of willpower not to laugh at the plan and tip off the player that she was screwing up.
The result: The light dazed her as the winds picked up. She came to just in time to make a reflex save and grab the chain as she flew off the edge of the ledge, but was then knocked off the chain by the big sack of rocks that were eventually also blown off the ledge.
Everyone but the rogue laughed long and hard. Nice trap, Erik.
Interestingly enough the walking order of my party had three halflings walk right over the pressure plate before the elf set it off. They now joke about her weight.
The look on the players face when the trap went off must have been priceless. I've heard of curiosity killing the cat, but I've never heard of it killing the PC before. At least, not in such a hilarious way.
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can't wait to see what my group does this saturday when they get to this part. The rogue who will be there for this game is pretty smart I just wonder if he will try anything close to this stupid just for shits and grins. I wouldn't put it past my group to do something stupid though...they have a tendency to do a lot of stupid things and now that I think about it corwardly things as well.
The look on the players face when the trap went off must have been priceless. I've heard of curiosity killing the cat, but I've never heard of it killing the PC before. At least, not in such a hilarious way.
Like the PC in Erik's playtest that forced the goth shick's hand onto the egg of Earth elemental summoning... The Sphere of Aniliation in the origional Tomb of Horors once ate an entire party I was DMing. They just kept leaping into it like it was some sort of portal.
ASEO out
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The look on the players face when the trap went off must have been priceless. I've heard of curiosity killing the cat, but I've never heard of it killing the PC before. At least, not in such a hilarious way.Like the PC in Erik's playtest that forced the goth shick's hand onto the egg of Earth elemental summoning... The Sphere of Aniliation in the origional Tomb of Horors once ate an entire party I was DMing. They just kept leaping into it like it was some sort of portal.
ASEO out
ROFL!!!!! Thats something my group would do ASEO. How could you contain yourself and not die of laughter. The unfortunate problem I have when something bad happens is that I laugh. I don't have much of a poker face when it comes to DMing. My group tends to cringle all at once when during combat I am rolling attacks for the monster/villans and I suddenly burst out in laghter....I do this too when a trap or something goes off and the whole party gets nailed and fails their saves....then again I do it when any evil thing happens to the party :)
ROFL!!!!! Thats something my group would do ASEO. How could you contain yourself and not die of laughter. The unfortunate problem I have when something bad happens is that I laugh. I don't have much of a poker face when it comes to DMing. My group tends to cringle all at once when during combat I am rolling attacks for the monster/villans and I suddenly burst out in laghter....I do this too when a trap or something goes off and the whole party gets nailed and fails their saves....then again I do it when any evil thing happens to the party :)
Well this group were the children of the first group of characters that all died in the Tomb of Horrors. When the first party all died, the players immediately rolled up new characters who they claimed were the ofspring of the ones who had just died. Their goal from level one was to gain enough levels to go to the Tomb of Horrors and claim their parent's lost gear. So, after mayn years of adventuring, they finally made their way to the Tomb of Horrors to reclaim what their parents had lost. Fortunately the Sphere stopped grand children characters from being rolled up because there was nothing left to claim.
Come to think of it. Every time I've run Tomb of Horrors it has ended in a TPK...and yet the players still come back for more...and get TPKed in the next room...and then in the next room...and again the room after that ;-)
ASEO out
My group found and lit all the lanterns before finding the tunnel with the face.
The rogue in my group's party was too cowardly to go up the chain, so the ranger and fighter went up there. The ranger noticed the pressure plate, and successfully identified the grooves in the floor as the result of something resisting being pushed towards the opening. As a result they started to carefully move along the hall, roped together, using the fighter's piton's in the wall to secure themselves. They were nearing the face when the rogue, downstairs, got bored and interrupted the action by investigating the area around the sarcophagus, where I told him he saw a few beetles scurrying, figuring they were left over from the earlier swarm. He decided that the light was making the few (5 or 6) beetles angry, so he started putting out the lanterns, activating the trap.
For some reason I will never be able to fathom my PC's have difficulty with playing Rogues & Clerics. They get by this problem by sending in the Barbarian who has ridiculus hit points (30 @ 2nd LVL)- I use a point buy system for ability scores and the barbarian maxed out his constitution (18) - and spending all thier money on Cure Potions. You can imagine the results:
- Barbarian climbs up to corridor.
- Barbarian sets off trap becomes dazed and gets blown out to the floor below.
- Barbarian survives, relates an account of the happenings and drinks a bunch of potions.
- PC's try something they think will bypass the trap and send the Barbarian up again.
- and so on....
Not always the brightest crayons in the box but it's in line what I would expect from a party of Wizards & Warriors (or the academics and the expendable as I like to call them).
Ciao,
C.
IMC, I do falling damage the old-school way, to account for increased speed, the farther one falls:
10'=1d6
20'=3d6
30'=6d6
40'=10d6
50'=15d6
60'+=20d6
My players haven't gotten far enough to find the trap yet, but they'd best hope they make their search checks.
Yeah, the face trap knocked two members of my party unconscious, yet only one triggered the trap.
The dwarven fighter triggered the trap, got dazed and blown back and was rendered unconscious from the fall.
The other casualty came from the gnome cleric who decided to stand directly underneath the chain and wait to see what happened.
Falling dwarf in armor + squishy gnome = 2 victims.
The gnome now stays far, far away from the dwarf at all times.
Yeah, the face trap knocked two members of my party unconscious, yet only one triggered the trap.
The dwarven fighter triggered the trap, got dazed and blown back and was rendered unconscious from the fall.
The other casualty came from the gnome cleric who decided to stand directly underneath the chain and wait to see what happened.
Falling dwarf in armor + squishy gnome = 2 victims.
The gnome now stays far, far away from the dwarf at all times.
Ha! Now THAT'S funny!!
Wow, these are some great stories. Hopefully, despite my lack of DMing experience, I can pull off the Whispering Cairn, and I'll be sure to let you all know how it went. My main wish is to have some laughs - especially with in-party interactions. A wily, mischevious rogue and a law-enforcing paladin? Oh, what fun will [hopefully] be had!
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the face nearly took all of my humans out of the group. I'm using action points in my game and I had a player spend one to try and grapple check a pc that was falling to her doom. He rolled a natural 20. It was a fun moment in the game and now the group jokes that the halfling is the strongest member of the group
My brilliant group of adventured hardened players tripped the trap three times in the same session. They found all the clues right at the start (claw marks crushed body) and decided they could take it. Only one of them had any sense, the person who has only been playing for a year. So he satyed on the ground while the other two went up and nearly got killed. Then they turned the arrow/coffin to it and tried again after going back to their broken house and resting for two days. The chubby dwarf wizard managed to grab the chain but failed his climb check and fell on his chubby behind. All that was to get the dagger stuck in the ground, which I ruled as rusted and worth a copper. The third time they thought they could outwit the trap by only having one person go up, and having a rope attached to that person attached to the chain. Then he jumped over the pressure plate with a three on his jump check. For comedy's sake i just ruled he jumped three feet onto the middle of the plate, and swung like a pendulum in the shaft taking damge from slamming into walls. They were going to do it again but i sighed so they walked into the crushing elevator trap instead (also a humorous story involveing a small chipmunk).
The look on the players face when the trap went off must have been priceless. I've heard of curiosity killing the cat, but I've never heard of it killing the PC before. At least, not in such a hilarious way.Like the PC in Erik's playtest that forced the goth shick's hand onto the egg of Earth elemental summoning... The Sphere of Aniliation in the origional Tomb of Horors once ate an entire party I was DMing. They just kept leaping into it like it was some sort of portal.
ASEO out
I had something very close to this happen to me as well except for the last character who decided to test everything first by trying to put a 10 foot pole in and then taking it out.
That said I expect its a pretty common event - my experience with players is that its often group policy that if some one sets off the teleport trap everyone else follows that person immediatly. Usually it helps out whoever set the trap off by having the whole party back them up. On the other hand another time I had a whole party end up on the Elemental Plane of Water at way to low a level when they kept trying to figure out where 'all this damn water is coming from' in a Dungeon at one point.
I wish my players had triggered the trap. The odds were good for me. There's no rogue in the party and only an artificer who hasn't put much into disable devices.
Yet, instead they accidentally disarmed it by all missing their spot check on the first pass in that tunnel. So they recovered the red lantern, lit it and then got stuck. They searched around and eventually noticed the passage to the NE. They hit the pressure plate, saw the face thing and just shrugged.
At least, the sarcophage trap blew up in their face hitting 3 of them but I wish they had experienced that face/wind trap better.
It was a fun moment in the game and now the group jokes that the halfling is the strongest member of the group
Sounds familiar. Here's how my group dealt with the trap last week.
For references, the group has an elven ranger (Talon), a human cleric of Heironeous (John), a dwarven wizard (Grim), and a half-elf bard (Alaric). Note that the dwarf weighs nearly 400 pounds; this is important later.
They had found the passage shortly after entering the cairn, but held off on examining it at first. After exploring the Laborers' section (up to the submerged area), and cleaning out the Architect's area, they decided to check out the passage. Talon ties a rag to an arrow, soaks it in oil, lights it, and fires it down the passage to see what's at the end. Suspicious of the face there, he orders the others to stay down at the bottom of the passage.
Grim ignores him, and climbs up the chain. Talon tells the dwarf to stay on the chain, but to climb down a little just in case things go badly. (The ranger really suspects a trap here.) Talon then goes down the passage, and sets off the trap. At this point the only lit lantern is the green one.
Flashing lights go off, and Talon blows his will save. Grim is too far away to be affected, and the others barely see anything happeninng. On round 2, the winds pick up enough to start whipping things around the bottom of the shaft; Talon blows his will save again, but keeps his feet. Grim barely hangs on to the chain.
This pattern continues for two more rounds, long enough for hurricane-force winds to be blowing. Alaric and John are plastered against the floor, Grim is barely hanging on the chain, and somehow Talon stays hypnotized but isn't blown away. When Talon finally snaps out of the hypnosis, he turns to run down the passage.
As you can imagine, he gets plenty of help. He slams into the chain, taking a fair amount of nonlethal damage and grabbing it. Grim begins climbing down, and Talon tries the same -- and totally bombs his Climb check. So the ranger goes tumbling down, only managing to catch the chain about 10 feet up from the floor. (More nonlethal damage.) Grim continues his climb, but fails and starts to plummet.
At this point, Talon's player asks if he can catch the dwarf. I ask for a Reflex save, followed by a pair of Strength checks, and all three rolls end up VERY high. So this 100-some-odd-pound elf, hanging onto a chain with one hand, in gale-force winds, manages to catch a 400-pound falling dwarf, at least hanging on long enough to change his fall into an embarrassing 5-foot drop.
Next week they plan on sending this super-heavy dwarf into the passage to set it off again, and try to figure out what the pattern of lights was. (They guessed there was a pattern to it, but couldn't recall what it was.)