There are 2 I used that my players still talk about. 1) a pit filled with acid. The rogue missed disarming it and managed to fall in. There were few options for the rest to get him out, and he had a close call. Didnt suffer too much damage really, but it is remembered.
2)a small room had a trap in the ceiling. It contained a huge sized gelatinous cube. When it dropped only one maged to not get out of the way. The rest had to hack their way through it to free him. He put it on his top 5 list of things he never wants to see in DnD again. hehe
One I remember as a player: during a Ravenloft adventure(Strahd castle maybe?) we went through a corridor where ghostly arms came out of the ground and tried to grab at our magic items. If we failed a save they stole something. At that point most of the items we had were magic weapons, and most of us missed the save. So there we were in Strahd's castle with no more than one or two magic weapons in the whole group. Scary fun.
Where do half-dragons come from????
From dragons. You cut them in half.
Where do half-dragons come from????From dragons. You cut them in half.
You accidentally step on the secret pressure plate, the loud clicking of a winch fills the room, the two dragon halves noticed by the party earlier slam back together above your head!
Random trap that kind of just expanded while I was writing until you get this:
Previous Clue:
"In the forest of stone lies the dark of your doom. To seek safety fear not to shed blood and walk the narrow path."
Scene:
You open the door and see a dimly lit room with evenly spaced pillars. A fog hugs the floor creating a creepy atmosphere.
Opposite this entrance is another doorway leading out of this room.
Spot check 10: The pillars in the middle of the room appear to be some sort of marble, guessing from the dark and light patterns on them.
Spot check 15: Areas of the floor appears to be gravel. On closer inspection you see the pieces of bone fragments. You then realize that the patterns on the pillars is actually old dried blood that has been splattered on to them.
Spot check 20: You notice the faint pattern of an unknown mystical symbol in the center of the room. It appears that the blood spray on the columns originated there.
Implied info:
The symbol appears to be the source of the danger and is in the direct travel route between the two doors of the room.
Blood symbol:
In actuality the path across the symbol is the safest (Fort save DC 15; success: 7 points of damage as a small amount of blood forces its way out of your body and sprays the pillars around you, Failure: 14 points of damage as a small amount of blood forces its way out of your body and sprays the pillars around you).
The rest of the room:
The fog in the room is actually hiding multiples of shadows (or greater shadows) which can only attack creatures which leave the path between the two doors. Once a character loses the protection of the path they do not regain it unless the travel across the blood symbol (they can lose the protect of the path multiple times if so inclined).
|
Oh, that's cool!
It reminds me of an Everquest location, where the smallish room has a pool of blood in the center, and a path on either side of it to the door on the other side. Either path leads to a pit trap (in which a beastie lurks), the only safe way across is to splash through the shallow pool of blood...
|
So I was reading the "Bad Trap Syndrome" that jl 629 suggested we read. It reminded me of my favorite trap I sprung on PCs. A simple 10' square pit trap.
The party was just entering the dungeon, it was gloomy inside and the stairs descended steeply into the darkness. The stairs we slick with rain water and muck (requiring Acrobatics checks to keep from falling). IMMEDIATELY at the bottom of the stairs was an open 10' square pit trap. It wasn't covered, or hidden by any means. The first PC took a torch and looked down. Yep, spikes.
The players discussed the situation for a bit. The Ranger went out into the forest and found a fallen tree just long enough to span the distance and small enough he could drag it to the dungeon. The party manages to get the tree across the pit, and even brace it with rocks so it won't rotate on them (I hadn't thought of that- darn it would have been super cool!).
Fantastic! Now the party just has to make Acrobatic (balance) checks at a LOW DC. Yep, one fails and falls off the log anyway. Climbs up the rope a friendly PC drops and... yep falls back onto the spikes again.
A friendly PC decides to climb down and help the poor wounded comrade to safety. The wounded PC is hoisted/pushed to safety. The friendly PC climbs up the rope to safety... and falls back into the pit. Finally he climbs free.
Two PCs remain to cross the pit. The first decides the balance on the tree option is too dangerous so decides to jump. And falls into the pit. Manages to climb out without additional damage.
The last to cross decides to lower a rope into the pit and climb down. He walks across the pit and climbs up the rope on the other side. He was the only player whose character did not take any damage from the plainly visible spiked pit trap.
What I thought would be a passing nuisance turned out to be a half hour mega damage encounter. More time was spent (and damage dealt) by the plainly visible spiked pit than the final battle with the dungeon's Boss.
I think this is a format I will adopt for MOST of my traps for now on. Sure I'll keep some zap traps just to remind the PCs of the quick and painful nature some traps pose. But I think the fact that their "fear" of the trap makes the trap worse than it actually is, is more fun.
|
the various Challenge of the Champion adventures were great resources for this kind of stuff.
Obstacles include obvious pits with critters in them, platforms to balance on or jump from, and plenty of climb/acrobatics checks to roll. They really rewarded lateral thinking and good communication.
A personal favorite trap of mine was actually created by a player of mine. In game. Against a Succubus. (details are in the Savage Tide Glories thread somewhere...).
Step 1: Cast Energy Transformation Field somewhere people would want to use magic. Bottoms of hills, churches, and the BBEG's lair are all good choices.
Step 2: Have the Critters that get summoned immediately Smite Evil or Smite Good. As a SU ability, it generates HD in spell levels, usually more than enough to re-cast the summon monster spell. This cycle lasts for as long as the summons keep coming, and if taken to extremes, can populate a small country with Fiendish Monstrous Centipedes.
Step 3: Laugh, a lot.
seriously though, just as a "annoyance field", having E.T.Fields kicking around a particularly irritating vault/tomb. This works great if the occupants/boss are non-magic users like fighters, monks, or rogues.
Also, a combo spell trap:
Trigger: Remote - usually a whole room with a particular trap area.
1st effect is a Wall of Water (spell compendium, can drown you)
2nd effect is a Freezing Sphere, sealing the 10'x10'x10' cube of water with 6-8" of ice. You get a reflex save, if you're not in the dead center of the cube (have to be on a square bordering a non-wall space), you're holding your breath in a giant ice cube in the middle of the room.
Potentially deadly, highly unusual, and capable of being removed/defeated by multiple means - including just bashing it down. I really like this trap.
-t
Low Budget Bottomless Pit
The LBBP was part of a low-ish level encounter in a campaign designed around breaking players of their metagaming conventions. Every monster and every magic item was custom made.
Anyway, the bottomless pit trap was a 20-foot deep pit with continual darkness (under 3.x+ I supposed it'd be deeper darkness made permanent) and with continual silence cast on it as well.. no attempt was made to cover the pit, though the room itself was dark. There were two swivelling half-columns in the shape of an eye held in a hand (forearm up from the ground) which would turn toward the players and use telekenesis to attempt to push them into the pit.
The gnome illusionist (who had, through the miracle of metagaming, managed to get himself into dire situation after dire situation) was the first one to be swept up and tossed into the pit. The swashbuckler, in true swashbuckler form, quick-tied an end of his 100' of rope and dived, head first, into the pit to try to save the gnome.
While the gnome was injured and the swashbuckler (whom, I might add, specifically said "head first") was unconscious and heavily injured, the rope was their saving grace, as the party did try to pull them up when they finished dealing with the telekinetic statues.
You'll probably find that the party leaves their relatively uninjured party members behind, normally, having written them off as gone. It's especially good if they try ressurection or true ressurection fairly soon after, before the poor guys have started to death at the bottom of a dark, quiet pit.
The PC's have a quest to rescue a kidnapped princess, they find her in a room, wrapped to a chair with leather strips coated with sovereign glue. She has a ring of sustenance so she can stay like this indefinitely and not die. If they try to unwrap her she cries and shakes her head and cries silently, even tries to back away from the PC's. Her gag has a fire trap on it, as the spell, if they remove it her head blows up.
edit: there are vials of universal solvent in the room so they can remove the tape.
I've always been a fan of simple traps that can claim lives.
A simple curve in a cavernous dungeon hides a 60ft fall into a deep (20+ ft) pool of stagnant water. The sides are slick from trickling water making it difficult to climb out. The ground on both sides of the pit will crumble down with the weight of an adventurer (reflex saves them from falling in.
Unless two or more members are carrying rope, most anyone who falls in simply drowns. If you're really mean, you can let those who have rope trying to pull fallen character out make a strength check to see if they snap the rope in their efforts.
This kind of trap that I don't particularly like. It just encourages characters to slow down to a crawl, poking ahead every two feet, etc. Different strokes for different folks!