| NPC Dave |
I am running a high level 3.5 campaign with a group of five players that are mid to high in terms of optimizing characters. One of them plays an arcane trickster whose optimization is geared toward traps much more than combat.
This worked fine up until about 15th level where we get to the point that 3.5 doesn't have many traps above CR 10. So I am creating this thread as an index of all the traps I can find that are CR 11 or higher for future reference.
Starting with a few from the Savage Tide campaign...
Dungeon Magazine #145
p72: Fusillade of Poisoned Spears : CR 11 (mechanical)
p80: Collapsing Path (into boiling water) : CR 12 (mechanical)
Dungeon Magazine #146
p71: Chain Energy Drain : CR 12 (magical)
p72: Iron Chest of Hathruman : CR 16 (magical)
Dungeon Magazine #150
p84: Breath of Dagon : CR 13 (magical)
| NPC Dave |
The Age of Worms campaign also had a few...
Dungeon Magazine #133
p73: Advanced Gelatinous Cube : CR 12 (mechanical)
Dungeon Magazine #134
p62: Dispel/Death : CR 12 (magical)
p75: Worm summon : CR 15 (magical)
Dungeon Magazine #135
p69: Mosaic Floor : CR 17 (magical)
p72: Dragonbreath : CR 20 (magical)
I haven't closely examined the mechanics of any of these traps yet although I may do so at a later date. But the general pattern so far that I have seen...
1) Mechanical traps can be pushed up to CR 12 but I haven't seen one pushed higher than that as of yet.
2) The gelatinous cube and worm summon traps are basically a trap that drops a monster encounter onto the PCs if it isn't disabled. The CR of the monster equals the CR of the trap. So that is one way of doing things if you need a trap in a pinch.
3) The magical traps mostly layer additional magical effects onto the trap to keep boosting the CR. The exception to this is the Breath of Dagon from the first post.
| NPC Dave |
And these last few are from the Shackled City adventure path...
Dungeon Magazine #115
p68: Whirling Blades Pit : CR 12 (mechanical)
p68: Grinding Poison Spike Pit : CR 12 (mechanical)
p73: Poisoned Scythe : CR 12 (mechanical)
p78: Egg of Merrshaulk : CR 12 (magical)
Unsurprisingly, high level adventures outside these adventure paths don't include any traps higher than CR 10. Paizo commissioned these high level adventures for their APs, and those authors made the effort to create higher CR traps.
But authors who came up with their own adventures and submitted proposals to Dungeon don't seem to have created high level traps, at least so far in my searching.
Amusingly, the highest level adventure in Dungeon was the adventure to support epic play, designed for 30th level characters, and the only traps are CR 8 warding traps which are regular arcane spells. Likewise, another 20th level Dungeon adventure that supports epic play only had CR 4 warding spells which admits that they are only present to keep 20th level characters on their toes.
| NPC Dave |
Maure Castle doesn't appear to have any such traps, through it does have some respectable CR 10 traps.
But Paizo did develop some additional higher CR traps for Pathfinder 1E, which is close enough to 3.5 that I will include them. A lot of these were introduced in the various Pathfinder APs.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/t raps/
Crushing Cage Trap (CR 11)
Crushing Stone Trap (CR 15)
Deadly Spear Trap (CR 18)
Falling Bell Trap (CR 12)
Lightning Bolt Gallery Trap (CR 17)
Fireball Trap, Maximized (CR 13)
Meteor Swarm Trap (CR 19)
Room of Darts and Blades (CR 11)
Chain Lightning Trap (CR 15)
Cone of Cold Trap (CR 11)
Desiccation Pulse (CR 11)
Destruction Trap (CR 20)
Empowered Disintegrate Trap (CR 16)
Harm Trap (CR 14)
Necromantic Deathtrap (CR 13)
Skull Blast (CR 14)
Pit Trap, Deathfall (CR 14)
Pit Trap, Footgrabber (CR 12)
Pit Trap, w/Poisoned Spikes (CR 12) (two versions)
Prison of Blades (CR 16)
Floor, Weakened (CR 13) (two versions)
Stairs, Collapsing (CR 14)
Whispering Warden (Summon Monster IX) Trap (CR 13)
Teleportation Circle (CR 13)
Lava Flood (CR 14)
| NPC Dave |
The first trap is a mechanical trap from the rulebooks, the next few traps are my extrapolation of that trap to increase the CR to the maximum possible:
Deathblade Wall Scythe
CR 8; mechanical; touch trigger; manual reset; Atk +16 melee (2d4+8 plus poison, scythe);
poison (deathblade, DC 20 Fortitude save resists, 1d6 Con/2d6 Con); Search DC 24; Disable Device DC 19.
CR = +0 search, +1 attack bonus, +0 disable device, +5 deathblade poison, +2 average damage (13hp of damage) = 8
Deathblade Wall Scythe
CR 13; mechanical; touch trigger; manual reset; Atk +20 melee (2d4+8 plus poison, scythe);
poison (deathblade, DC 20 Fortitude save resists, 1d6 Con/2d6 Con); Search DC 30; Disable Device DC 30.
CR = +2 search, +2 attack bonus, +2 disable device, +5 deathblade poison, +2 average damage (13hp of damage) = 13
Deathblade Wall Scythe
CR 14; mechanical; touch trigger; manual reset; Atk +20 melee (3d6+12 plus poison, scythe);
poison (deathblade, DC 20 Fortitude save resists, 1d6 Con/2d6 Con); Search DC 30; Disable Device DC 30.
CR = +2 search, +2 attack bonus, +2 disable device, +5 deathblade poison, +3 average damage (22.5hp of damage) = 14
Black Lotus Extract Wall Scythe
CR 17; mechanical; touch trigger; manual reset; Atk +20 melee (3d6+12 plus poison, scythe);
poison (black lotus extract, DC 20 Fortitude save resists, 3d6 Con/3d6 Con); Search DC 30; Disable Device DC 30.
CR = +2 search, +2 attack bonus, +2 disable device, +8 black lotus extract poison, +3 average damage (22.5hp of damage) = 17
The only problem is that 6th level spell, Heroes Feast, shuts down poison attacks for twelve hours.
So at some point you have to give up on poison traps and that reduces all of these traps to CR 9 or lower. Although you can compensate by upping the damage number, there is no spell to make you immune to hp damage!
| NPC Dave |
I found some additional traps in Oerth Journal...including the first epic trap!
Oerth Journal #22
p51: Virulent Cloud Trap: CR 20 (magic device)
Oerth Journal #23 *
p44: Multi-ray trap: CR 13 (magical)
p47: Heightened Symbol of Spell Loss**: CR 10 (magical)
p49: Maximized Energy Drain: CR 15 (magic device)
Oerth Journal #24
p38: Ruin Door Trap (maximized greater ruin): CR 22 (magical)
* For whatever reason, issue #23 did not assign CR values to the traps, so I assigned them a CR value based on Search/Disable DC and/or equivalent spell level.
** Symbol of Spell Loss is an 8th level spell found in the Spell Compendium.
The use of an epic spell to create an epic trap provides some general guidelines for creating more epic traps...although there are no notes for how they calculated the CR for the epic trap.