A spell that just makes characters make will saves, but does nothing if they fail, is a possibility. Illusion school and trickster domain.
An unassuming doorway that is a gate to limbo. The nearby town has been plagued by human shaped creatures eating or sucking the juices out of the crops. The invaders are were bunnies and vegetable vampires trackable to the dungeon. When they go through the doorway they might find the mad tea party or other Wonderland encounters. As they cannot get home the same way, they will return through a mirror, a rabbit hole, or simply wake up in their beds.
An open bottle of wine in an otherwise empty elevator.
A fountain full of soap suds.
Giant polyester polygonal shapes with giant numbers on them, but don't lay dice out until they figure it out. Be vague until they ask for specifics.
Random numbers in all the rooms. There is a unique one on the floor of every room, but they mean absolutely nothing.
A chaos symbol from warhammer (eight-pointed star) in the mosaic of a Lawfully aligned deity's sanctuary.
A random cow in every dungeon, mooing may be heard until they find it. I figure that after the third dungeon, they may start to freak out through the entire campaign every time they see a cow.
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A rustmonster troop, or a swarm of Rustmonster babies.
A rustmonster troop, or a swarm of Rustmonster babies.
You sir, are diabolical... (heh)
I like it.
A door of an overfilled closet. When opened, pots, pans, cymbals, and a thunderstone fall out causing a horrible din.
A spell book with all the fire damage replaced with sonic damage. All the cold damage is replaced with electrical damage. All the acid damage is replaced with fire.
Scatter scrolls, wands, and wondrous items similarly switched up throughout the area.
I've put a treasure pile of gold coins in a dragons lair containing a swarm of hoard scarabs from d&d 3rd edition era Draconomicon once before.
A situation made worse when one of the players jumped into the pile to roll around in it.
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Some years ago, I was running a 2nd edition game with a guy with a very loose grasp of player v character knowlege. And he read every book he could get his hands on.
One time, the group got into it with a small army of bandits. After several easy kills, a Dispel outs the leader as an ogre magi. When he went down, the rest ran off and there was much rejoicing (and looting).
About a month later they get ambushed. Same ogre mage and friends. This time, my guy runs the corpse through a few times to make sure he wasn't "faking" and glares at me.
The third time, when he finds the ogre mage looting his tavern, he really gets mad. Serious overkill, and he hauled the body out of town for burial. At the time, it didn't occur to me to ask why. But I wasn't about to give up my new favorite toy. With all his game knowledge, this was the first thing he just couldn't seem to wrap his head around.
That ogre mage was a recurring nuisance for a year and a half. My sister's character finally sank the body with Rock to Mud, then dispelled it. I never really got why he was so angry about this. Quite some time later he asked me what was going on with that critter.
It took a while for me to sort out what he was really asking. 2nd edition ogre magi regenerate. But his copy of the Monstrous Manual had a typo, and didn't list that. He could never find any magic items on the body to explain it, and thought some powerful enemy was running around bringing it back to life just to plague him. He just couldn't grasp that what he "knew" could be wrong. I had to show him my copy.
The Fiend Fantastic wrote:
A rustmonster troop, or a swarm of Rustmonster babies.
You sir, are diabolical... (heh)
I like it.
You know, i should stat that out, if i get the opportunity.
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Rust monster babies-troop
Neutral S aberration CR 4
Init +5, Senses darkvision +60 ft, scent metals 90 ft, Perception +17
Defense
AC 18, touch 15, flat-footed 13 (5 dex, 3 natural)
HP: 45 (10d8)
Fort +2, Ref +8, Will +8
Defensive Abilities troop traits
Str 6, Dex 21, Con 10 (9+1), Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 8
Offense
Speed 25ft, climb 10 ft
Melee (2d6-2), or Rust.
Space 15 feet, Reach 5ft
Distraction (DC 15)
Feats: Ability Focus (rust), Skill Focus (Perception), Weapon Finesse
Skills: Climb +9, Perception +17
BaB +7, CMB +11, CMD 16
Based upon young template rust monster stats, i might have some wrongs in it, but meh ^^
Here you go folks.
Just rename everything. Call swarms troops, Rust monsters Ferovores, and gold noble metal.
An NPC with a glowing exclamation mark hovering over their head.
An NPC that repeats the same dialogue every time it is addressed.
I'mm not sure anybody has mentioned a gazebo
I'mm not sure anybody has mentioned a gazebo
The OP mentioned it in the 5th post in this thread.
In fact, go to the 2nd and 3rd pages of this thread and you'll find many people mentioning it.
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A few years ago playing Pathfinder we were skulking through an ancient ruin looking for information about the resurrection of a dead god. The GM described room after room filled with the remains of the ancient civilization. Enemies, traps and other objects in the rooms of the dungeon were all described in exquisite detail. Then we come across, THE ROOM. We open the door to a 20' x 30 ' room with a dusty floor. That's it. We search the room and find nothing. Use find traps, detect secret doors, take 20 searching every 10 feet, invisibility purge. All showed nothing. Surely in the middle of this dungeon with every room practically filled to the brim with all kinds of stuff the seemingly complete emptiness of the room felt significant. There must be something extremely important in that room for it to be hidden or disguised so well!
Turns out he used a random dungeon map generator and just erased rooms that he felt didn't fit or weren't needed and he had missed one. When he looked down at his notes for the room's contents and realized that room wasn't supposed to be there he just described a completely empty room. To this day we still laugh about the fact that the scariest thing we ever encountered in the entire campaign was a simple empty room.
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Stones that when you step on them make a loud audible click but then no traps go off.
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Mannequins.
Dolls.
A discarded teddy bear, that summons some terrible monster if picked up.
Because...adventurers pick up so many things, and teddy bears are normally *AWW*
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An intelligent weapon that starts complaining out loud, whenever people try to approach stealthy.
.....The hell man!? Sneaking is a coward's way, a REAL man faces the opponent head-on!"
Hah! I love it!
Have you ever read Paul Kidd's "Greyhawk" novels? One character in them, Polk, was hired to haul the loot and equipment, and do jobs like that. And he constantly made complaints much like that one. In the second book of that series, the hero got an intelligent sword. Yet the idea of combining the two had never occurred to me before.
Imagine a rogue getting stuck with a weapon like that!
What about a pit of infinite falling in an infinite loop. This reminds me of watching my brother play portal more that I think about it.
Put a lich pylactrophy inside a gourd leshy's head. This gives it nondetection on it but has a low save dc but the gourd leshy has constant pass without trace and the element of surprise.
Have you ever read Paul Kidd's "Greyhawk" novels?
No, i haven't.
-------------------------While chasing the party, getting out of the dungeon requires kissing back.
Funny. When I first clicked on your link and saw "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" I expected the Singing Sword scene at first, before the video had a chance to load.
We already had intelligent items covered. ;)
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My college roommate put me through this in first edition:
Deep underground, You come around a corner, the tunnel you are in continues another 10 feet and stops at a 5' wide chasm that drops 80 feet or more . Across the chasm the tunnel continues for another 15' and turns right.
Perception check (DC 10) to notice a shadowy humanoid figure peak its head around the corner and start to run as soon as it sees you. roll initiative.
The far tunnel and the shadowy figure are illusions. and all that is across the chasm is a solid rock face.
For some reason, the shadowy figure running away makes players throw all caution to the wind and jump into far wall.
The NPC they rescued, turns out to be a special ooze wrapped in human skin.
Or 'wearing', if you like, the skin of its latest victim.
The skinwalker from Haven. Actually any unique nasty from a show your friends never watched.
Have a god appear out of nowhere, drop a plot device at the feet of one of their worshippers, say "Deal with it!", and vanish as they came.
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Make up a nonsense word. Now create a monster, spell, weapon, tool, poison, disease, or something behind it.
"He's got the spluges. He's got a fever and keeps yelling Spluge. Don't let his spittle infect you."
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An indestructible door that can only be opened by a nuanced emotion such as exhilaration or melancholy.
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I always use figures for statues and dead people. I put them on early so when the characters close on the room they're all edgy.
Troops of small undead in white suits saying it's de brain de brain
A cute kobold Sorceror wandering around the dungeon turning off auras on traps. He's very friendly, cursed by arcane sight and all the auras make his little head hurt. Waaaaaaa kobold tears - your stuff is too bright, I'm having a migrane.
Someone pulled this in the book topic. Fill the dungeon with monsters loosely based on the muppets. A grippli bard, a female orc who acts like Miss Piggy, a bearlike humanoid who tells really bad jokes, an oger like sweetums"Bad joke, not funny, Brain Hurt!".