How... ruined... are the ruins? If they're really crumbling, consider "non-trap traps". What I mean is this: premeditated traps set by an intelligent being are going to be inttentionally deadly. But trap-like situations created by the decay of the structure -- crubling wooden floors, unstable rubble piles, etc. can be adjusted in terms of how dangerous they are by the DM to fit the party.
A glowing mayan skull that saps 1 str if a will save (starting at DC 10) isn't met (that goes up by +1 DC each round) as the miasma thickens in a sealed room. Oh, did I mention crazy miasma is flowing off of it when they enter the room? I should mention that, it's pretty important. Meanwhile, the skull also generates 1 new bloody skeleton each round until a puzzle from a puzzle book is solved (something that can be worked through solving pieces, likea zelda puzzle). Bwahahaha... they'll love you of hate you, depending on the puzzle book puzzle... 3:)
Go read here, there are lots of good ones.
OK i used this one back in a game a ran, there is a corridor that leads to a room now the corridor is about less than 3 feet wide and the walls have razor sharp blades from floor to ceiling, the way it works is that a person trying to walk through have to go at about 5 feet per round as to not cut them selves by the blades which i might add are all poisoned.
now in the room at the end of the corridor is the big surprise, you put in an obviously over powered monster you know something that the players will run from but the only way they can go is back through the corridor.
now if they try moving down the corridor faster than 5 feet per round they automatically take damage and are poisoned but if they don't run they will be killed by the monster.
i like this trap a lot.
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What MCC said above!
Old temples may be shifted around by roots growing between the stones, so that brushing aside some of the dangling roots from the ceiling may loosen stones and cause them to fall down upon the heads of those beneath.
Floors could give way to lower chambers (1d6 falling damage for a 10 ft. drop, plus some extra damage for falling rubble, perhaps another d6).
Metal fixtures could be corroded to the point of functioning as a weak venom, with jagged edges on what was once ornate decorative work, cutting the hands of someone attempting to pull a lever or work a catch, infecting them with something like tetanus.
Actual traps might be partially collapsed, and become obstacles, such as a section of flooring that gave way over a pit, revealing the rubble-strewn spear-festooned pit that must be crossed over, but sparing the PCs from discovering the pit the hard way and falling 20 ft. down onto a bunch of rusty spears!
A fallen stone, designed ages ago to slam down on people who attempt to open a door to a false treasury, might block the corridor, and require the characters to squeeze throught the narrow opening left at the top of the stone, but with the risk of additional ceiling rubble pressing down on the squirming character and pinning them in place, to suffocate as they can no longer draw breath due to the pressure, if their allies can't push the rubble up or yank the character free. This gives the PCs Con x2 rounds to yank the person free before they die, instead of possibly instantly killing a couple of PCs the way the 10 ft. x 10 ft. x 10 ft. block of stone would have if it fell upon them as intended all those centuries ago. (Perhaps some fragments of bone or corroded armor might protrude from under the stone, indicating that it didn't just collapse due to age, but actually fulfilled it's intended purpose and mashed some long-ago would-be tomb robbers to paste!)
Local water tables may have changed, with stagnant water pooling against one side of the ruined temple, so that some sections are wholly or partially underwater, requiring moving through stagnant disease-bearing water to get to important areas, and running the risk of running into poisonous snakes in the water. Both the diseases and the possibility of being bitten by a swimming viper would be the 'traps' here, as well as having to make Swim checks from one area to another, underwater in the dark, as a short corridor is entirely underwater!
Spear traps could have miraculously survived decay in the sealed inner area (cut off from the wetter areas), with any venom originally on the spears, darts, bolts, etc. having long since degraded into grimy decayed paste that confers only Filth Fever, at worst. They would still do damage as spears, darts, etc. but any deadly venoms would be long expired.
These sorts of traps could exist in the front of the dungeon as well, but the weapons in the decayed water-logged area have the broken condition, and do reduced damage, if you don't want to risk too many big hits for a lower-level party, until the very last chamber, which was sealed almost hermetically, and managed to avoid the decayed conditions of the rest of the temple.
That last chamber might have a puzzle room leading to it, where each 5 ft. square tile has a specific character on it, and the PCs have to make balance checks or dex checks to move from specific tile to specific tile. Wrong tiles break if weight is put upon them and drop into a 1 ft. deep 'pit' with a foot-piercing bear-trap like thing in it (effect as caltrops, but 1d4 damage and the metal device must be broken before the character can free his foot from that square) or result in darts shooting down from the ceiling at the tile (and the surrounding tiles, making the wrong stepper a danger to those around him, even if they stepped on the right tiles!). Stepping on the right tiles results in an ominous click sound, and if enough of them are triggered, the stone door that leads to the main temple shudders, but does not open (too old, needs some Str checks to get it to open fully, which might be penalized by characters only being able to stand on specific tiles near the door...).
Weaker versions of magical traps are also an option. Perhaps the last room was designed with the help of a low-level Rune Domain Cleric, and he created special runes on some of the 'wrong' tiles that inflict 1d6 fire, frost, acid or electricity damage to the person who steps on them, and, unlike the foot-piercing-pit trap or the spears / darts traps, these are permanant and affect anyone who steps in those squares! (Note that a rune-inscribed 5 ft. by 5 ft. by 1 ft. block of stone will likely prove difficult to remove, if the PCs think of trying to take these items from the temple. Weight should be around 168 lbs per cubic feet, and this 'tile' would be 25 cubic feet! If they can fit them into a portable hole and take them to decorate their own castle, someday, good on them!)
Is anyone else getting images of the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark from this discussion?
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Is anyone else getting images of the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark from this discussion?
Indeed, although I'm picturing the ruined temples as looking more like the ones from the first Lara Croft movie.
What you need to decide is what the traps need to do.
1. Scare the PCs. "Whew, that was close. That 20-ton boulder just missed killing us all!"
2. Injure the PCs. "Ouch! Will someone pull this spear out of my thigh please!"
3. Deplete resources. "Cleric! That swarm of rats that fell on us chewed us up real good and now we all need healing!" or "Dangit! that blast shattered all my potion bottles!" (hint: Shatter spell)
4. Weaken the PCs. "Yeee-uck! That nasty mold made me feel soooo weak. Can someone carry my backpack please?"
5. Kill the PCs' allies. "Poor Phred. He forgot that only the penitent man may enter. I guess we need to hire a new porter when we get back to town."
6. Teach them a lesson. "You know, Bob, every time we go left something bad happens. Maybe we should go right at the next intersection." (this is fun when combined with #1 - when they finally get the hint, the next "lesson" is the super-deadly trap they cleverly avoided).
7. Separation. "Dangit, now Dave and Bob are caught on the other side of the collapsed bridge. Hey, is that a group of orcs running toward them?"
There are tons of internet rwesources for all those kinds of traps, and I've only covered a few categories. There are some others. I deliberatly left off "Kill the PCs" since they're only level 3 with no rogue to save them - such a category may be overkill in this group.
Somewhere out there is the Great Netbook of Traps, it might still be google-able. And never forget good ol' Grimtooth. Lots of deathtraps, but also lots of simpler stuff.
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So I was thinking of this thread at the gym (what else are ya gonna do on a treadmill, when the dude next to you has the TV set to 'Deadliest Catch?').
For the tile room I mentioned upthread, I'd make it a 25 ft. by 25 ft. room, about eight to ten feet high, which would create five 'rows' of five tiles each, each 5 ft. by 5 ft. in size.
Each row would have;
a tile that has two wavy grooves carved into the stone filled with crushed lapis lazuli chips glued into place (or perhaps a fish shaped symbol, filled with dark green jade chips?),
a tile that is plain brownish grey stone (which may or may not have an amber / copal / resin filled groove that resembles a couple of stalks of grain),
a tile of grey stone with a grooved outline of a humanish face, stylized to have solar-like spikes around it, with the grooves filled with golden metal,
a solid black marble tile,
a tile with two stylized human figures, holding hands, one taller and holding a spear, and one shorter and holding what appears to be a baby.
On the wall to the left, a bas-relief would show a humanish figure with a fancy headdress and a kilt of shiny brass raising his arms, around him is what seems to be water (although it's not clear if he's standing in it, or floating over it, or on a boat or something, as his legs and feet aren't visible), and to either side of him, coming up from the water, are pyramids of stone (representing mountains) with pillars of fire rising from their crowns (volcanos, not mountains!).
On the wall to the right, a bas-relief of a woman, with a similar fancy headdress, but otherwise dressed only in a skirt made from flecks of green jade, stands on a canoe on a watery surface. The water fades to darkness away from her immediate presence, and in her upraised hand, she's holding a globe of golden metal. Ash has been rubbed all over the water farthest away from her and the sky farther away from her, so that the only area lit appears to center on the globe of golden metal floating just above her palm.
Not immediately noticeable when entering the room, two more panels on either side of the entrance show a humanish figure (fancy headdress included) leaning down next to a river and doing something with his hands to a half-assembled humanish shape (Int check or Knowledge (religion) to recognize that he's fashioning a person out of river clay) and on the other side showing a pair of humans, identical to those on the tile (male with spear, female with child, neither with fancy headdresses or kilts of brass / jade, just plain old folk).
The correct sequence of tiles is based on the creation story of these people;
First there was darkness (black tile), over the waters (lapis wavy lines and / or jade fish), then the god(s) created light (the golden sun-face), then the earth (the plain stone tile), and finally mankind (the human family).
The only tile that is detectable by a non-trapfinder as being different is the golden sun-face, as the priests cheaped out on the four trapped tiles (which send a 1d6+1 fire jet up into the 5 ft. square above the face, pouring from the mouth of the figure) and used shiny brass instead of gold. The 'safe' sun-god-face is made with real gold (50 gp worth, if pried up).
Not every 'safe' tile will be adjacent to another safe tile (although none will require more than a 5 ft. jump, and there shouldn't be more than one such jump required), and when the fifth stone is stepped on, the door on the opposite wall shudders and begins to open, but gets stuck, and there is only room for two people to stand in the two 5 ft. squares on the far side of the 'chessboard' to force it open, while their companions either stand on other 'safe' squares, on trapped squares that discharged their traps and are no longer dangerous (only the sun-god-face squares are magically trapped and reset, and even they only discharge when someone steps on them, so that once they've blasted someone, that same person can stand there for the rest of the day, so long as they don't leave and come back...), or way back in the entry hallway.
Note that some traps affect not only the person on the triggering tile, but might send darts, arrows or javelins launching from the walls to affect everyone in that row, even if they happen to be standing on the 'safe' tile! Thankfully, whatever toxins once coated these missiles is about 150 years past it's freshness date...
Another 'might affect someone else' trap could be a heavy square stone block that falls from the mirror-like mica ceiling, doing damage to anyone in the triggering square, and then falling to an adjacent square (possibly triggering whatever trap it holds, or requiring a Reflex save to avoid damage from anyone standing in that square!).
Int check to notice that the torches / lanterns are flaring up, and if the party waits 10 minutes, the natural gas build up behind the door will leak out and burn off.
If the door is prised open before then, there is a rush of fire and wind, as natural gas that has built up behind the door reacts with their lanterns / torches (ignore this, merely an awful stench from the oil below if they are using continual flame or light spells or darkvision), which Bull Rushes those nearest the door and does 1d6 fire damage. Those Bull Rushed might well fall back onto trapped squares, for even more whacky fun!
Once this occurs, looking beyond the doors shows a wall 5 ft. behind the door, and only a 10 ft. wide shaft leading up and down. Down once led to a bunch of traps, involving oil and fire and much burning, but that area flooded, and the 5 ft. below the floor of this room, oil floats atop water, appearing as a pit of oil (even if it's only a few inches deep, being water for another 10 ft. below that). Even if someone goes down there, it's collapsed, and it was just a trapped place with an underworld motif anyway, but hey, the water doesn't confer the risk of disease like the stagnant muck outside, because nothing living could survive the skin of oil atop the water! (If a torch falls into the oil, anyone in the shaft is going to be barbecued if they don't get clear tout suite! It takes 1d3 minutes to burn off, which could be a problem if someone decided to 'get clear' by ducking underwater and holding their breath, waiting for it to burn off...
Carved in the stone walls are divots into which someone can put their hands and feet to climb up (or down). Above the puzzle room is the true treasury / tomb / sacred reliquary and whatever the heck the PCs have come to this place to find, guarded by the seven handmaidens of the deceased ruler (now skeletons, frozen in positions of servitude around him, sitting in an ornate stone throne, all mummified. They attack with ceremonial weapons (that seem to work just fine, thank you very much) and are clad in well-preserved lacquered armor .
The ruler himself isn't animated, or a mummy, or any of that, 'cause that would be all disrespectful and stuff...
I totally want to draw this out now...