Okay, here's the situation: I'm running a custom campaign in the normal Golarion setting. The party is currently five members, all level 4. They are on a quest to collect the weapons of four minor gods who were killed by someone or something called the Godkiller. They were tasked by Iomedae herself to find and collect these weapons.
I don't want all the collection stages to be the same. So I have one where they had to just get to it first (they failed, and they'll have to get it back from the anti-paladin later), another where they have to face a fighting trial.
The third one (they're not at this one yet, I'm planning ahead), is a 40 ft. diameter wall, 3 ft. thick, and 400 ft. tall. At the top is a wall of force preventing anyone climbing over. They will not be able to dig through it either. They will be told by the statue of the dead deity that they must solve the secret of the wall to get inside and obtain the weapon. The god is a minor god of motion, so I feel movement should be involved in the answer somehow. But I also kind of want this to be a maze of traps and tests too, not so much brute fighting.
I've hit a creative roadblock, and I need some help of some other creative GMs.
What do you suggest for a good puzzle/test connected with getting through a wall of this kind that may involve an extradimensional maze of some sort? Or is that a terrible idea? I'm open to any kind of suggestion.
I'd skip the wall aspect completely and have it start with a portal that takes them somewhere unknown and that needs to be given the correct password to be activated. That way there won't be any questions or wasted time with tunneling, climbing etc. to get inside.
Riddles are tricky, personally I love them but a lot of people don't. Be prepared at the very least for alternate ways of getting the answer. There are sites of riddles online, possibly you could find one that will work well for you there.
Once inside, I'd probably try and create a challenge for each PC, something that they are good at. I'd probably have some be anti-magic zones to highlight some mundane skills, particularly physical ones. Something like climb a wall and ring a bell. Obviously tailoring these would depend greatly on your PCs and you will also probably not need to to be single failure, since you want/expect the PCs to 'win'. Having a consequence for failure that doesn't end the quest is important. Something like they take damage or go back to a previous challenge and have to repeat or something.
Inside the wall of Force, is a portal they can see. Have that portal tie to a specific demiplane.
On that demiplane there are a series of portals. Each portal has unique movement rules, and environmental effects.
Swimming in water; flying through the air; magical teleportation -- all up to whatever you think is appropriate for a god of motion.
You could try an escort mission through a portal, they must continuously move a head sized orb to a new square each round. Squares start clear, as it passes through them they turn sparkly yellow providing dim light in their square only. If it sits in one place too long the motes of light begin to turn a harmful red (or green, or blue, or whatever) and cause a constant amount of damage associated with the orbs element each round. The damage should be tankable, but not something they can ignore (immunities/resistances/FH) for long. maybe 1d2+1 at most.
Then it is a matter of the party working together with limited tiles and limited time to stop and ponder physical challenges. Have them progress from portal to portal, with each new one being a surprise. You could then have whatever you needed in each of x number of rooms. Plus the odd loot from a fallen challenger who died trying to carry their orb alone (Do they stop for gear and cash or move ahead?).
Only the orb opens the next section to prevent peeking (or not, depending on how challenging you want it). If they drop the orb, or it sits for 3 rounds in the same square the challenge ends and the portal order resets.
Randomize the portal/doorway rooms.
They are level 4 so make the challenge DC's appropriate, or appropriate if they use aid another for the +2 (or +4, or +6).
It could be as simple as a room with floors that move in lines like a treadmill. each floor moving a different square value each round with an obvious don's stand here spot for nominal damage.
A time the bursts of flames gauntlet run.
A climb the wall quickly run.
A slide the statues into their spot run.
A zero G get to the other side without running into the spike balls run.
A avoid the stunning nearly invisible/intermittent electricity wall maze run.
A match the symbols to the (Selected KNOW CHECK) match quickly in a tiny space (so they need to pass checks in a hurry or start tanking damage, forces the orb carrier to change too possibly).
A sacrifice room (you sink into mud when you stop, but your previous footprints make a path for the next).
A swimming room (either cross a stream, dive, or etc).
A room of doors, break or disable device quickly to find the real one (1d4/2d4 rounds).
Slippery ice room, acid tripwire room (acrobatics), and a teleport pad room (figure out the pattern that gets you to the top platform).
Then have an associated poem/saying/linguistics check that loyal followers would understand. Linguistics/KNOW/WIS/INT checks could provide the players with a very clear GM answer to the puzzle/maze.
A helpful NPC/book of worship could arm the players prior to the test with foreknowledge and circumstance bonuses.
Interesting ideas. Thank you, everyone. I may combine some of these ideas together.
Swinging Blades O' Death!
Make a DC 30 Reflex save or take 6d10 slashing damage.
Make a Knowledge engineering check and grant yourself a +2 bonus per 5 points of the check.
You can attempt to sunder the swinging blades; each success reduces the damage by 1d10, on a failed attempt, make a Reflex save or take 6d10 damage.
Alter math to suit your needs.
What about a simple game of Ker-Plunk? Essentially the game is a bunch of sticks with marbles at the top and you want to remove sticks while dropping the fewest marbles.
Other tower-based movement games in real life to model the challenge from: Jenga, Don't Break the Ice, Tetris, Blockbuster, Tempest, or even Pachinko.
That's kind of a neat idea.
Swinging Blades O' Death!
Make a DC 30 Reflex save or take 6d10 slashing damage.
Make a Knowledge engineering check and grant yourself a +2 bonus per 5 points of the check.
You can attempt to sunder the swinging blades; each success reduces the damage by 1d10, on a failed attempt, make a Reflex save or take 6d10 damage.
Alter math to suit your needs.
I like the idea of this as an obstacle for them to get past, but if I were to implement it, I would have to lower the damage and/or the DC, there's no way my party would survive that, and none of them can make a DC 30 save, not even the Paladin (excluding a nat 20, that is).
Yeah, definitely alter the math to suit your needs. The DC 30 check is supposed to be virtually impossible. This forces them to interact with the trap to lower the DC.
Maybe have the swinging blades make a +18 attack roll against opponents moving through their space. (Or whatever will hit the average AC of the party 90% of the time.) If hit, they take 6d4 damage. (Or 4d4 or 8d4, whichever will be a dangerous or deadly threat to your party, depending on how perilous you want this encounter to be.)
There should be several ways to bypass the trap.
You can make a Knowledge (engineering) check to grant yourself a +1 insight bonus to AC per 5 of the check. Even someone untrained in Knowledge (engineering) can grant themselves a +2 to AC if they think to examine the pattern of the swinging blades.
You can make an Acrobatics check to grant yourself a +1 dodge bonus to AC per 5 of the check.
You can attempt to sunder the swinging blades, but this provokes an AoO (unless you have Improved Sunder or use a reach weapon). If successful, the blades' attack roll is reduced by 3, and the damage is reduced by 1 die. When the attack roll is +0 and the damage is 0, it is disabled.
You can make a DC 25 Disable Device check to reduce the attack roll by 3 and damage by 1 die.
The key is to provide a variety of ways to overcome the challenge: Acrobatics, Knowledge, Sundering, Disable Device, etc. Maybe the pivots of the swinging blades can be jammed up with arcane lock.
To spice it up, you can have the blades swing slowly initially, doing 6d4, speeding up every 1d4 rounds, to 6d6, 6d8, 6d10, until it maxes out at 6d12.
You can replace the blades with bursts of fire (requiring Reflex saves), puffs of poison gas (requiring Fortitude saves), fusillades of poison darts (requiring a ranged attack roll AND Fortitude saves), blasts of psychic energy (requiring Will saves, possibly with carrier effects such as shaken, frightened, staggered, dazed, stunned, etc.).
Yeah, definitely alter the math to suit your needs. The DC 30 check is supposed to be virtually impossible. This forces them to interact with the trap to lower the DC.
Maybe have the swinging blades make a +18 attack roll against opponents moving through their space. (Or whatever will hit the average AC of the party 90% of the time.) If hit, they take 6d4 damage. (Or 4d4 or 8d4, whichever will be a dangerous or deadly threat to your party, depending on how perilous you want this encounter to be.)
There should be several ways to bypass the trap.
You can make a Knowledge (engineering) check to grant yourself a +1 insight bonus to AC per 5 of the check. Even someone untrained in Knowledge (engineering) can grant themselves a +2 to AC if they think to examine the pattern of the swinging blades.
You can make an Acrobatics check to grant yourself a +1 dodge bonus to AC per 5 of the check.
You can attempt to sunder the swinging blades, but this provokes an AoO (unless you have Improved Sunder or use a reach weapon). If successful, the blades' attack roll is reduced by 3, and the damage is reduced by 1 die. When the attack roll is +0 and the damage is 0, it is disabled.
You can make a DC 25 Disable Device check to reduce the attack roll by 3 and damage by 1 die.
The key is to provide a variety of ways to overcome the challenge: Acrobatics, Knowledge, Sundering, Disable Device, etc. Maybe the pivots of the swinging blades can be jammed up with arcane lock.
To spice it up, you can have the blades swing slowly initially, doing 6d4, speeding up every 1d4 rounds, to 6d6, 6d8, 6d10, until it maxes out at 6d12.
You can replace the blades with bursts of fire (requiring Reflex saves), puffs of poison gas (requiring Fortitude saves), fusillades of poison darts (requiring a ranged attack roll AND Fortitude saves), blasts of psychic energy (requiring Will saves, possibly with carrier effects such as shaken, frightened, staggered, dazed, stunned, etc.).
It would be easy to adjust, yes. I don't want to make it too easy or too hard on them. I'm a GM who believes that if the game has no risk, it's no fun. So, I want it to be challenging but not TPK hard. Not unless they're own stupid choices get them killed that is. LOL.
So yeah, I may take this, and some of the other suggestions posted here and work out a suitable trial for the party to be put though. I have time to work it out, they won't reach this part of the campaign for a while.
OK cool. Moving the numbers up and down to meet your party needs is a good way to make it fun! :-D
The weapons themselves are minor artifacts (being weapons of gods), so I don't want them to have to find an artifact to get to the weapon. But the idea itself is neat. Maybe a special key is required to open the portal that leads to the trial maze or something like that.