Post by StoryTeller on Jan 22, 2006 7:09:53 GMT
Jon Palmer (vpalm@erols.com)
Use this trap in a place where the PCs will use the room a lot. The PCs come to
a room 100' x 100', with some furniture about (the furniture has a permanent
levitate spell cast so that it is just above the floor). There are also some
grooves where the walls meet the floor, but are barely discernable. Either the
floating furniture or the grooves can be seen with a Wis check at -2 because
there is so little to spot. What they will notice is that the floor of the room
is about 1' lower than the rest of the hall(s). Once all the PCs have entered
the room, all doors slam shut, magically locked and can't be opened until the
trap is complete. A Magic Mouth starts laughing at the party and says stuff
along the lines of "Welcome to your doom!!!", etc. This is because the floor has
divided 50' ahead of them and the floors have begun receding into the walls.
Below is a pit, about 70' deep, with the floor there covered in spikes (doing
more than enough damage to kill any PC that might fall). The PCs will try the
doors to find that the will not budge at all, not even a knock spell will work.
The floor keeps receding into the wall until there is no more floor left and
they start to drop.......until they hit an invisible wall! Once all the PCs
leave, the floor returns to its original place. But here is why the room should
be used more and more often. Each time the party leaves and floor moves back to
place, a dispel magic spell is cast (or some other spell to remove the wall)
then the wall is replaced, except 10' squared less so that it is only 90' x 90'
with the outer ring missing. The PCs won't even notice, until someone starts to
fall. Every time they leave, the invisible wall gets smaller by 10' squared each
time until there is nothing left and then it goes back to 100' x 100'. The trap
is triggered by weight so if the party flies through, the doors will slam shut
and lock but the floor won't move. So sooner or later, you'll end up with a
party full of pincushions. If you want to be extra nice, you could put a switch
or something in the dungeon to keep the doors from closing.
The Piston
Chris McNorgan (chrismcn@rogers.wave.ca)
Quite often I see traps that are contrived inventions involving magic and fire
and spikes. Who designs castles where hallways are littered with spike traps?
More realistic is the trap which isn't really a trap, but rather an accident
waiting to happen.
Imagine a pyramid with a crypt accessible through a trap door in the floor at
the end of a long and narrow vertical shaft. The worshippers laid their pharoah
to rest in the room, and sealed it with a huge block of stone at the end of the
shaft. The stone, however, would have to be wedged into place, perhaps with
small wooden wedges.
A character climbing the shaft reaches the dead end. He tries to jostle the
stone. Perhaps he has a girdle of giant strength, or gauntlets, or a KNOCK
spell. In any case, if he is able to move the stone at all, the wedges would
fall loose. They fall down the shaft. The character can't support the heavy
stone, and HE falls down the shaft. And so does the stone... I'd hate to be
standing under that hole in the ceiling!
Invisible Pit
Scott A.W Lewin (Lwns0001@Humberc.on.ca)
This trap is used along with water. At some point there must be a shore that
gradually descends into the water, just like a shoreline. This shore may be
rocky, sandy, or anything you desire. As the players walk into the water, the
water will become deeper until it is up to their thighs. At this point the
character falls into an underwater pit with very smooth sides. The pit can be of
any size, but I use a 50ft in deepness. Anyone with armor will sink to the
bottom, even if they can swim. This trap has claimed many lives.
Steve Tocco (stevet@ff.com)
In a typical hallway section off 10' with magic barriers that prevent gases from
entering or leaving the area. (Solids, liquids, and players can move through
just fine.) Inside this section is an absolute vacuum, along with two magic
gates in the floor and ceiling. The gate in the floor leads to the gate in the
ceiling, with no loss in momentum. The way it works is that anything that is
dropped in this hallway starts falling faster and faster, with no air resistance
to slow it down. Eventually any objects in this section would move so fast as to
be invisible to human eyes. Now have your party walk through this hallway.
(Daggers, gold coins, or even small rocks can make a sizeable dent in your skull
when moving at half the speed of light.) Any "detect invisible" or "detect
illusion" spells won't work, since it's a natural effect. If you're feeling
really nasty (and it fits your game world), have the players take damage from
just the hard vacuum as well.
Mark Morrison (guido@dimensional.com)
This trap is basically a bowling alley. Have your party enter a room or cave
with a long, polished wooden floor, a set of wooden "clubs" at the far end of
the floor...in short, describe it well but don't actually say "bowling alley".
The players will, of course, know what it is, and will hopefully be delighted to
test their bowling skill. A number of balls will be available for their use, but
one of them is cursed: When the player sticks his thumb in the thumb hole, it
instantly shrinks on him so that he can't get it out. Strength and grease won't
help, and of course the ball itself is impervious to physical damage; you need
to somehow remove the curse to get the ball off. (Chances are the PC will use
his/her weapon hand to bowl with. Can you say "serious combat disadvantage?")
Whether or not the trolls arrive at this point is up to you.
HEY I KNOW YOU!
Dean R. Daniels (danielsd2@TIGER.UOFS.EDU)
The players find themselves in a large room with an altar. On the altar is a big
glowing gem. If any or all players touch it, they instantly drop into a deep
coma. Any players not affected can't cure this by any means. This is the
complicated part. The player affected by the gem notices that all his friends
have disappeared! Suddenly, an exact duplicate of the player appears with one
exception: Opposite Alignments! Example: Lawful-Good--Chaotic-Evil,
Lawful-Evil--Chaotic-Good, etc. The player must then fight their opposite, which
is controlled by the DM. If the player wins, nothing changes, if the DM wins,
the player is now of opposite alignment, permanently. No one else knows of this
change of course, except for the DM and the affected player. Characters come out
of their coma instantly and unharmed despite wounds suffered in battle.
As DM you should stop the game for a short while to run the trap for each
affected player. This is to prevent unaffected players from knowing the truth.
Any Neutrals are treated as Good characters.
Steely thing...
Timo Ikonen (tikonen@finlink.net)
PCs see a room with steel floor and walls. When they all are inside the room,
the floor and the walls will become magnetic. Everyone wearing steel armor will
be stuck. Then the room begins to fill with water. Yeah, just try to get out of
your suits before you drown! For this the room should be lower than the corridor
(or whatever) leading to it. IF the PCs survive, they will carry on (they always
do). Then they will see another room with steel floor and walls. Well, I suppose
they will NOT enter the room wearing metal armor (or if they do, treat this room
just as first one . And, when they enter the room: CLICK! "Whatta? OUCH! Where
did that arrow come from?"
The Ring of Fiery Protection
(HCRIFT@aol.com)
This ring raises the body temperature slowly, about 1 degree per 6 hours after
it has been used to fend off fire no hotter than an elemental. They soon find
out though, when the character wearing the ring collapses in a fever. The way to
get rid of the curse is by putting ice on the ring.
Gold anyone?
James Perkins (pheonix@orcote.com)
Basically the trap is simple... adventurer steps on hidden switch, switch
activates trapdoor over adventurer's head, and the contents of a 10x10ft. room
buries puny mortal. The catch is this: the 10x10 room is filled with gold coins
and gold dust. If the weight of that much gold doesn't kill them, then the
smothering effect of the gold dust will. Don't forget, the character probably
won't be able to move... woe to the mage. This might cure greedy players, even
if it doesn't kill their character.
London Bridge is Falling Down
Here is a nasty one. First, the party enters an open chamber (100' circle.) They
see a stone figure in the room holding an artifact and six levers around the
room. Upon the moving of the artifact, the floor falls out from below them.
After a 30' fall, they land in a toxic gas filled room. The gas slowly fills the
upper part of the room. To top it all off, poisoned tipped spears fall from the
top of the room. REASON: the part they were first walking on was glass. It has
silence and permanence cast on it, then covered with dirt. Their weight allowed
them to fall through. Plus, having a wire under the glass to trip the spears.
Eventually, the characters will find out that the stone figure and the artifact
are false.
Swinging Axes
Jeremy Slater (Death_Knight@hotmail.com)
This trap starts out with the characters walking into a long passage maybe 100+
feet by about 10 feet. The PCs see four holes in the ceiling of the (Keep) with
beams of light coming down through the holes. The first thing that they think is
that breaking the beams sets off the trap. My adventurers threw a rock down the
hall w/ a rope attached and dragged it back on the floor to break the light and
press any unnoticed pressure plates, However this does nothing. (Note the holes
are about 5' wide). So when the characters cannot think of any ideas so they
cross the first beam of light, just walk on through. Whoever steps in the beam
hears a crashing and a huge axe blade swings through a thin section on the side
wall right into the character. Dex check to take half damage. I choose 1d10 but
anything is fine. So the characters think they get smart and decide to use a
very shiny shield to reflect the light. The next guy walks through the light and
-- BAM! -- is hit just as the first axe. Now my adventurers were upset, so 2 of
4 bolted the rest of the room, luckily nothing happened. The other 2 did not
want to risk it and levitated as to not touch the floor. As they levitated past
the third light beam the axe swung through and hit the floating person. Now this
is when they got pissed. The monk pulls out a short sword and throws it up
through one of the holes in the ceiling just for the hell of it. There is a
scream and in drops a Goblin with the sword in his chest from the hole in the
ceiling. It seemed that there were Goblins manning switches on the roof of the
keep and were looking through the holes to see the characters. Boy did they feel
stupid. But they loved it!
Room of Dancing Colors
Timo Ikonen (tikonen@finlink.net)
This room has walls painted full of different colored and different sized balls
(basic color of the walls is white). When at least two PCs enter the room, the
door clangs shut and the colors begin to change... slowly at first, then faster
and faster. All those who don't cover their eyes must resist or become
hypnotized. Those who fail are under your control for a while. How long depends
on the amount the roll was failed by. A few rounds should be enough. Note: those
who covered their eyes will be surprised if those under your control attack
them.
Cheese Grater
DZook1@aol.com
A simple pit trap in the hall drops the character twenty feet onto an angled
plate, which is forty feet long, constructed along the same principles as a
cheese grater. It can be constructed of simple sharpened steel (for those
leather clad thieves), or possibly some sort of enchanted tougher-than-steel
design (for the plate-mail clad fighter). Since the "grater" is angled, the
hapless victim tends to build up some horizontal momentum as they are sliced up.
I usually put spikes on the opposite wall of a vertical shaft into which the
character is launched into. Lastly, at the bottom of the vertical shaft ... salt
water. Acid works too, but I think the salt adds an especially mean twist.
The Addams Family-Da da da dum, klik, klik!
Brian Fallstrom (bfallstrom@juno.com)
Have the PCs enter a large room, about 50' in diameter. Hanging from the ceiling
are about 100 or so chains/ropes. One of them must be pulled to open a door, the
others teleport you far, far away. The catch is, the chains/ropes all look
EXACTLY THE SAME, meaning that which one you pull is totally random. Make it so
that they have to roll an 18 on 3d6, or something to that effect, to pull the
correct chain. Wondering about the title? Watch the Addams Family movie; the
scene where Gomez takes Fester down to the vault...
Did I Mention...
Brian Fallstrom (bfallstrom@juno.com)
As the characters enter a room, mention that they see a baby sitting in the
middle of the room. After they have been there for a while, have the baby attack
them. It has LOTS of strength and can breathe fire. After they have been
fighting for a while and are getting their butts kicked, mention offhandedly
that the baby they are fighting is a baby DRAGON. Note: Only try this with a
VERY good-natured party. Otherwise you may get lynched!
Dead End Statue
Ember (mart0236@flinders.edu.au)
A small, devious trap used to trick PC. They should be in a long corridor and
enter a small room containing a statue (of whatever you like) with the corridor
continuing on past the statue. Both statue arms appear to be pointing towards
the stone wall. Careful observation of the statue reveals a hairline seam at the
base. There is, of course, a secret door in the wall (that the statue looks at)
but PC will also head further down the corridor to see what's there - a dead
end. At this stage, the statue turns towards the dead end, and releases a blast
of lightning - 3d6 damage or save vs. breath for half. Curiosity gets the better
of them!
Dehydrated Undead
Tony Summers (223172@sbuniv.edu)
This trap is always fun, whether there is a cleric in the group or not. As the
characters step into the room they should not be surprised to find a chest in
the middle of the room. It has been my experience that many players tend to not
care where the chest is, so long as it's there. Upon opening the chest, the
ceiling drops away so that enough water can cover the floor. Around later, the
room is full of any undead creature you desire (I personally prefer skeletons).
The undead appear in numbers of 30-300 (3d10*10) or as desired by the DM.
Hollow Bricks
Michael Anson (ansons@epix.net)
This is a simple trap. This trap is composed of a section of floor, which
contains hollow bricks. When the party reaches the center (a maximum load of
1000 lbs.), the trap triggers, having the floor disintegrate under the party.
The best part is that the trap is completely undetectable by any means, as it
looks like ordinary floor and is not magical! The same thing can be applied to
the ceiling and walls, concealing a passage or unleashing a large load of stone
when the party moves around too much or probes the walls or ceiling. This is
useful in sealing off the party so they can't escape. Note that once one trap is
sprung, all others in a 50 foot radius are also sprung.
Sean Campbell (THEPOET666@webtv.net)
The PCs come down stone stairs to hallway that continues on for 15 ft and ends
with a lever next to the end on right hand side of wall. My PCs know me and
realized that this was a trap (but they did not know what type or how to disarm
it). But one of them thought, "Perhaps it opens up a secret door..."
One brave soul (the mind mage) decided to stay down stairs and pull the lever.
After checking all three walls and around the ceiling and floor he moved away
from the lever. Standing next to the stairs he used his mental powers to lift
the lever and sprung the trap.
Lever cuts rope, rope releases pin, pin frees spring board (like a diving
board,) slapping 20 arrows and sending them out in a rush. They shot out of the
small circular holes in the stairs hitting the mind mage square in the back d20
hit at random for d6 damage apiece.
Since When Do Pits Go Squish?
John Jackson (johnjackson592@hotmail.com)
Most players are used to having a pit trap end in spikes, molten lava, a kobold
den, etc. But they get pretty confused when their fearless leader falls into a
pit and onto a Gelatinous Cube. I applied the falling damage to the cube, but
had the player take 1d8 for landing on a sword of a previous victim. This trap
is most deadly if they fail their save vs. paralyzation, because someone has to
climb down to get them out and they can fall, so someone has to get them out,
and that person falls... well you get the idea. If you're feeling nice you can
give your players some treasure. Maybe a Sword -2 or other cursed weapon?
(insert evil laugh here)
Incan Light Trap
Daemeon the Devious (daemeon@auracom.com)
This trap is for those dungeons/ruins based on Incan or other ancient type
cultures. The players see a room with the usual type of dust/rubble/heaps of
gold but are unaware (with one exception) of the danger that will befall them.
The room is crisscrossed with refracted light of the infrared variety and the
only way to detect it in a medieval/fantasy campaign would be infravision. The
beams come from gems that are imbued with magical energy or a natural stone that
absorbs light at night. The end of the beam stops inside a hole in the wall and
strikes a flask. In the flask is a culture of very virulent germs that when
deprived of infrared, get very contagious. There is no warning and so in a
couple of days/hours the party that entered the room gets VERY ill, possibly
even die. This is also how the ruins/dungeon got the rumor of being cursed.
There was one very bright (no pun intended) fellow in the campaign that I used
this in who used a light spell (which I assumed used all wavelengths of light)
to keep the bombardment up until they left the room.
Lich With A Sense Of Humor
David M. Johnston (davejohn@st-louis-emh2.ARMY.MIL)
A lich who spent a good deal of his spare time hassling the PCs had a particular
taste for using cursed and unusual magic items. Some examples:
A pitfall, 20 feet deep. Center a Prismatic Sphere on the bottom. Cast a
Permanency on the Sphere.
One PC found an item which made him immune to metal; anything made of metal
would be insubtantial to him. The lich filled a 15-foot cube with solid
steel set into the floor of a hallway. Every one else walked right over it
with no problem. He fell in. No air, no spellcasting, no way to get a rope
to him.
A wand is left on a table in a room with an earthen floor. When the party
gets within 10', a Magic Mouth activates a Rock-to-Mud spell. (It is a Wand
of Earth Alteration.) The party drops down into instant quicksand. If they
do not remove the wand from the table in the same round, in the next,
another Magic Mouth will activate the reverse-spell, Mud-to-Rock.
Stepping on the wrong spot in a hallway causes a brick to fall down from the
ceiling. Attached to the brick by a wire designed to tear it open is a
packet of Dust of Sneezing and Choking.
The group finds a Ring of Haste. The second time it is used, it will speed
up time for the wearer at a 3600-1 ratio; he will experience an hour for
every real second. It will also refuse to come off. The others will see him
vanish. Everything around him seems as solid as steel, including friends,
foes, and food. Doors are impossible to open. Unless he can cast a Remove
Curse on himself, or arrange for someone else to cast one on him, he will
die of thirst and starvation within 5 minutes (=300 hours).
The group finds an artifact, which renders one of them Anti-Magical. No
magic works within 5' of him. Please NO MAGIC! It seems great (imagine
bouncing Beholders like basketballs, etc.) until the PC is in need of
Curing, magical Flight, or tries to go through a magic Portal. The funniest
thing is, this Curse cannot be removed by normal means, since Remove Curse
won't work either. If he's a front-line fighter, spell-casters are going to
hate being behind him, since ALL magic spells and effects cease to function
near him.
A Rope of Entanglement. The second time it is used, it ties up the user and
his group.
You can see the trend here. This lich booby-traps items so that they seem
useful, but boomerang on the PCs after a short while.
Barrel o' Fun
Anonymous
After reading a funny article on the net, I decided to make a fun trap based on
it; it is probably not gonna kill anyone unless you are DM'ing a low-level
group. Anyway...
0
| | * - barrel
| * 0 - pulley
| | - rope
| @ - rusty iron rung
|
|
___@_________
A barrel is suspended about 80 feet in the air by a "web" strand (see spell)
which runs over a pulley (affected with "grease") and is tied to a rusty iron
rung in the ground. There is a lot of excess strand coiled on the ground by the
rung.
A clever player will try to lower the barrel to get at whatever's in it by
untying the web strand and letting the barrel down slowly, but the minute he
touches the strand, his hand sticks. As soon as he tries to pull back, the rung
rips out of the ground.
Here's the thing... the barrel has about 5000 gp weight of poison, boiling oil,
caltrops or whatever in it. The poor PC is jerked upward and the barrel starts
falling downward. At the halfway point, there is a 75% chance he hits the barrel
for 8d6 damage. When the barrel hits the ground, the PC is now 80 feet in the
air. However, the barrel has a 90% chance to break upon hitting the ground,
spewing poison, oil, caltrops or whatever all over the place. The now-empty
barrel flies back up and the PC back down - there is another 75% chance to hit
the barrel again for 4d6 damage (since it's empty now) and then 8d6 falling
damage and also damage from landing on whatever was in the barrel, and item
saving throws for the impact
Note that if the PC simply cuts the web strand, the barrel will possibly land on
them
Solus/Jasmine Silverleaf (Silverleaf@usa.net)
A small one-way door into a small 3m by 1m room with a treasure chest by the
other side. Once the party (or whoever) is inside, they would (most probably)
open the chest. A powerful lightning bolt flies out, frying the players once,
hits the wall in this very small room and reflects back towards the wall with
the chest. If trapped by a powerful wizard... bounce bounce bounce... toasty...
Use this trap in a place where the PCs will use the room a lot. The PCs come to
a room 100' x 100', with some furniture about (the furniture has a permanent
levitate spell cast so that it is just above the floor). There are also some
grooves where the walls meet the floor, but are barely discernable. Either the
floating furniture or the grooves can be seen with a Wis check at -2 because
there is so little to spot. What they will notice is that the floor of the room
is about 1' lower than the rest of the hall(s). Once all the PCs have entered
the room, all doors slam shut, magically locked and can't be opened until the
trap is complete. A Magic Mouth starts laughing at the party and says stuff
along the lines of "Welcome to your doom!!!", etc. This is because the floor has
divided 50' ahead of them and the floors have begun receding into the walls.
Below is a pit, about 70' deep, with the floor there covered in spikes (doing
more than enough damage to kill any PC that might fall). The PCs will try the
doors to find that the will not budge at all, not even a knock spell will work.
The floor keeps receding into the wall until there is no more floor left and
they start to drop.......until they hit an invisible wall! Once all the PCs
leave, the floor returns to its original place. But here is why the room should
be used more and more often. Each time the party leaves and floor moves back to
place, a dispel magic spell is cast (or some other spell to remove the wall)
then the wall is replaced, except 10' squared less so that it is only 90' x 90'
with the outer ring missing. The PCs won't even notice, until someone starts to
fall. Every time they leave, the invisible wall gets smaller by 10' squared each
time until there is nothing left and then it goes back to 100' x 100'. The trap
is triggered by weight so if the party flies through, the doors will slam shut
and lock but the floor won't move. So sooner or later, you'll end up with a
party full of pincushions. If you want to be extra nice, you could put a switch
or something in the dungeon to keep the doors from closing.
The Piston
Chris McNorgan (chrismcn@rogers.wave.ca)
Quite often I see traps that are contrived inventions involving magic and fire
and spikes. Who designs castles where hallways are littered with spike traps?
More realistic is the trap which isn't really a trap, but rather an accident
waiting to happen.
Imagine a pyramid with a crypt accessible through a trap door in the floor at
the end of a long and narrow vertical shaft. The worshippers laid their pharoah
to rest in the room, and sealed it with a huge block of stone at the end of the
shaft. The stone, however, would have to be wedged into place, perhaps with
small wooden wedges.
A character climbing the shaft reaches the dead end. He tries to jostle the
stone. Perhaps he has a girdle of giant strength, or gauntlets, or a KNOCK
spell. In any case, if he is able to move the stone at all, the wedges would
fall loose. They fall down the shaft. The character can't support the heavy
stone, and HE falls down the shaft. And so does the stone... I'd hate to be
standing under that hole in the ceiling!
Invisible Pit
Scott A.W Lewin (Lwns0001@Humberc.on.ca)
This trap is used along with water. At some point there must be a shore that
gradually descends into the water, just like a shoreline. This shore may be
rocky, sandy, or anything you desire. As the players walk into the water, the
water will become deeper until it is up to their thighs. At this point the
character falls into an underwater pit with very smooth sides. The pit can be of
any size, but I use a 50ft in deepness. Anyone with armor will sink to the
bottom, even if they can swim. This trap has claimed many lives.
Steve Tocco (stevet@ff.com)
In a typical hallway section off 10' with magic barriers that prevent gases from
entering or leaving the area. (Solids, liquids, and players can move through
just fine.) Inside this section is an absolute vacuum, along with two magic
gates in the floor and ceiling. The gate in the floor leads to the gate in the
ceiling, with no loss in momentum. The way it works is that anything that is
dropped in this hallway starts falling faster and faster, with no air resistance
to slow it down. Eventually any objects in this section would move so fast as to
be invisible to human eyes. Now have your party walk through this hallway.
(Daggers, gold coins, or even small rocks can make a sizeable dent in your skull
when moving at half the speed of light.) Any "detect invisible" or "detect
illusion" spells won't work, since it's a natural effect. If you're feeling
really nasty (and it fits your game world), have the players take damage from
just the hard vacuum as well.
Mark Morrison (guido@dimensional.com)
This trap is basically a bowling alley. Have your party enter a room or cave
with a long, polished wooden floor, a set of wooden "clubs" at the far end of
the floor...in short, describe it well but don't actually say "bowling alley".
The players will, of course, know what it is, and will hopefully be delighted to
test their bowling skill. A number of balls will be available for their use, but
one of them is cursed: When the player sticks his thumb in the thumb hole, it
instantly shrinks on him so that he can't get it out. Strength and grease won't
help, and of course the ball itself is impervious to physical damage; you need
to somehow remove the curse to get the ball off. (Chances are the PC will use
his/her weapon hand to bowl with. Can you say "serious combat disadvantage?")
Whether or not the trolls arrive at this point is up to you.
HEY I KNOW YOU!
Dean R. Daniels (danielsd2@TIGER.UOFS.EDU)
The players find themselves in a large room with an altar. On the altar is a big
glowing gem. If any or all players touch it, they instantly drop into a deep
coma. Any players not affected can't cure this by any means. This is the
complicated part. The player affected by the gem notices that all his friends
have disappeared! Suddenly, an exact duplicate of the player appears with one
exception: Opposite Alignments! Example: Lawful-Good--Chaotic-Evil,
Lawful-Evil--Chaotic-Good, etc. The player must then fight their opposite, which
is controlled by the DM. If the player wins, nothing changes, if the DM wins,
the player is now of opposite alignment, permanently. No one else knows of this
change of course, except for the DM and the affected player. Characters come out
of their coma instantly and unharmed despite wounds suffered in battle.
As DM you should stop the game for a short while to run the trap for each
affected player. This is to prevent unaffected players from knowing the truth.
Any Neutrals are treated as Good characters.
Steely thing...
Timo Ikonen (tikonen@finlink.net)
PCs see a room with steel floor and walls. When they all are inside the room,
the floor and the walls will become magnetic. Everyone wearing steel armor will
be stuck. Then the room begins to fill with water. Yeah, just try to get out of
your suits before you drown! For this the room should be lower than the corridor
(or whatever) leading to it. IF the PCs survive, they will carry on (they always
do). Then they will see another room with steel floor and walls. Well, I suppose
they will NOT enter the room wearing metal armor (or if they do, treat this room
just as first one . And, when they enter the room: CLICK! "Whatta? OUCH! Where
did that arrow come from?"
The Ring of Fiery Protection
(HCRIFT@aol.com)
This ring raises the body temperature slowly, about 1 degree per 6 hours after
it has been used to fend off fire no hotter than an elemental. They soon find
out though, when the character wearing the ring collapses in a fever. The way to
get rid of the curse is by putting ice on the ring.
Gold anyone?
James Perkins (pheonix@orcote.com)
Basically the trap is simple... adventurer steps on hidden switch, switch
activates trapdoor over adventurer's head, and the contents of a 10x10ft. room
buries puny mortal. The catch is this: the 10x10 room is filled with gold coins
and gold dust. If the weight of that much gold doesn't kill them, then the
smothering effect of the gold dust will. Don't forget, the character probably
won't be able to move... woe to the mage. This might cure greedy players, even
if it doesn't kill their character.
London Bridge is Falling Down
Here is a nasty one. First, the party enters an open chamber (100' circle.) They
see a stone figure in the room holding an artifact and six levers around the
room. Upon the moving of the artifact, the floor falls out from below them.
After a 30' fall, they land in a toxic gas filled room. The gas slowly fills the
upper part of the room. To top it all off, poisoned tipped spears fall from the
top of the room. REASON: the part they were first walking on was glass. It has
silence and permanence cast on it, then covered with dirt. Their weight allowed
them to fall through. Plus, having a wire under the glass to trip the spears.
Eventually, the characters will find out that the stone figure and the artifact
are false.
Swinging Axes
Jeremy Slater (Death_Knight@hotmail.com)
This trap starts out with the characters walking into a long passage maybe 100+
feet by about 10 feet. The PCs see four holes in the ceiling of the (Keep) with
beams of light coming down through the holes. The first thing that they think is
that breaking the beams sets off the trap. My adventurers threw a rock down the
hall w/ a rope attached and dragged it back on the floor to break the light and
press any unnoticed pressure plates, However this does nothing. (Note the holes
are about 5' wide). So when the characters cannot think of any ideas so they
cross the first beam of light, just walk on through. Whoever steps in the beam
hears a crashing and a huge axe blade swings through a thin section on the side
wall right into the character. Dex check to take half damage. I choose 1d10 but
anything is fine. So the characters think they get smart and decide to use a
very shiny shield to reflect the light. The next guy walks through the light and
-- BAM! -- is hit just as the first axe. Now my adventurers were upset, so 2 of
4 bolted the rest of the room, luckily nothing happened. The other 2 did not
want to risk it and levitated as to not touch the floor. As they levitated past
the third light beam the axe swung through and hit the floating person. Now this
is when they got pissed. The monk pulls out a short sword and throws it up
through one of the holes in the ceiling just for the hell of it. There is a
scream and in drops a Goblin with the sword in his chest from the hole in the
ceiling. It seemed that there were Goblins manning switches on the roof of the
keep and were looking through the holes to see the characters. Boy did they feel
stupid. But they loved it!
Room of Dancing Colors
Timo Ikonen (tikonen@finlink.net)
This room has walls painted full of different colored and different sized balls
(basic color of the walls is white). When at least two PCs enter the room, the
door clangs shut and the colors begin to change... slowly at first, then faster
and faster. All those who don't cover their eyes must resist or become
hypnotized. Those who fail are under your control for a while. How long depends
on the amount the roll was failed by. A few rounds should be enough. Note: those
who covered their eyes will be surprised if those under your control attack
them.
Cheese Grater
DZook1@aol.com
A simple pit trap in the hall drops the character twenty feet onto an angled
plate, which is forty feet long, constructed along the same principles as a
cheese grater. It can be constructed of simple sharpened steel (for those
leather clad thieves), or possibly some sort of enchanted tougher-than-steel
design (for the plate-mail clad fighter). Since the "grater" is angled, the
hapless victim tends to build up some horizontal momentum as they are sliced up.
I usually put spikes on the opposite wall of a vertical shaft into which the
character is launched into. Lastly, at the bottom of the vertical shaft ... salt
water. Acid works too, but I think the salt adds an especially mean twist.
The Addams Family-Da da da dum, klik, klik!
Brian Fallstrom (bfallstrom@juno.com)
Have the PCs enter a large room, about 50' in diameter. Hanging from the ceiling
are about 100 or so chains/ropes. One of them must be pulled to open a door, the
others teleport you far, far away. The catch is, the chains/ropes all look
EXACTLY THE SAME, meaning that which one you pull is totally random. Make it so
that they have to roll an 18 on 3d6, or something to that effect, to pull the
correct chain. Wondering about the title? Watch the Addams Family movie; the
scene where Gomez takes Fester down to the vault...
Did I Mention...
Brian Fallstrom (bfallstrom@juno.com)
As the characters enter a room, mention that they see a baby sitting in the
middle of the room. After they have been there for a while, have the baby attack
them. It has LOTS of strength and can breathe fire. After they have been
fighting for a while and are getting their butts kicked, mention offhandedly
that the baby they are fighting is a baby DRAGON. Note: Only try this with a
VERY good-natured party. Otherwise you may get lynched!
Dead End Statue
Ember (mart0236@flinders.edu.au)
A small, devious trap used to trick PC. They should be in a long corridor and
enter a small room containing a statue (of whatever you like) with the corridor
continuing on past the statue. Both statue arms appear to be pointing towards
the stone wall. Careful observation of the statue reveals a hairline seam at the
base. There is, of course, a secret door in the wall (that the statue looks at)
but PC will also head further down the corridor to see what's there - a dead
end. At this stage, the statue turns towards the dead end, and releases a blast
of lightning - 3d6 damage or save vs. breath for half. Curiosity gets the better
of them!
Dehydrated Undead
Tony Summers (223172@sbuniv.edu)
This trap is always fun, whether there is a cleric in the group or not. As the
characters step into the room they should not be surprised to find a chest in
the middle of the room. It has been my experience that many players tend to not
care where the chest is, so long as it's there. Upon opening the chest, the
ceiling drops away so that enough water can cover the floor. Around later, the
room is full of any undead creature you desire (I personally prefer skeletons).
The undead appear in numbers of 30-300 (3d10*10) or as desired by the DM.
Hollow Bricks
Michael Anson (ansons@epix.net)
This is a simple trap. This trap is composed of a section of floor, which
contains hollow bricks. When the party reaches the center (a maximum load of
1000 lbs.), the trap triggers, having the floor disintegrate under the party.
The best part is that the trap is completely undetectable by any means, as it
looks like ordinary floor and is not magical! The same thing can be applied to
the ceiling and walls, concealing a passage or unleashing a large load of stone
when the party moves around too much or probes the walls or ceiling. This is
useful in sealing off the party so they can't escape. Note that once one trap is
sprung, all others in a 50 foot radius are also sprung.
Sean Campbell (THEPOET666@webtv.net)
The PCs come down stone stairs to hallway that continues on for 15 ft and ends
with a lever next to the end on right hand side of wall. My PCs know me and
realized that this was a trap (but they did not know what type or how to disarm
it). But one of them thought, "Perhaps it opens up a secret door..."
One brave soul (the mind mage) decided to stay down stairs and pull the lever.
After checking all three walls and around the ceiling and floor he moved away
from the lever. Standing next to the stairs he used his mental powers to lift
the lever and sprung the trap.
Lever cuts rope, rope releases pin, pin frees spring board (like a diving
board,) slapping 20 arrows and sending them out in a rush. They shot out of the
small circular holes in the stairs hitting the mind mage square in the back d20
hit at random for d6 damage apiece.
Since When Do Pits Go Squish?
John Jackson (johnjackson592@hotmail.com)
Most players are used to having a pit trap end in spikes, molten lava, a kobold
den, etc. But they get pretty confused when their fearless leader falls into a
pit and onto a Gelatinous Cube. I applied the falling damage to the cube, but
had the player take 1d8 for landing on a sword of a previous victim. This trap
is most deadly if they fail their save vs. paralyzation, because someone has to
climb down to get them out and they can fall, so someone has to get them out,
and that person falls... well you get the idea. If you're feeling nice you can
give your players some treasure. Maybe a Sword -2 or other cursed weapon?
(insert evil laugh here)
Incan Light Trap
Daemeon the Devious (daemeon@auracom.com)
This trap is for those dungeons/ruins based on Incan or other ancient type
cultures. The players see a room with the usual type of dust/rubble/heaps of
gold but are unaware (with one exception) of the danger that will befall them.
The room is crisscrossed with refracted light of the infrared variety and the
only way to detect it in a medieval/fantasy campaign would be infravision. The
beams come from gems that are imbued with magical energy or a natural stone that
absorbs light at night. The end of the beam stops inside a hole in the wall and
strikes a flask. In the flask is a culture of very virulent germs that when
deprived of infrared, get very contagious. There is no warning and so in a
couple of days/hours the party that entered the room gets VERY ill, possibly
even die. This is also how the ruins/dungeon got the rumor of being cursed.
There was one very bright (no pun intended) fellow in the campaign that I used
this in who used a light spell (which I assumed used all wavelengths of light)
to keep the bombardment up until they left the room.
Lich With A Sense Of Humor
David M. Johnston (davejohn@st-louis-emh2.ARMY.MIL)
A lich who spent a good deal of his spare time hassling the PCs had a particular
taste for using cursed and unusual magic items. Some examples:
A pitfall, 20 feet deep. Center a Prismatic Sphere on the bottom. Cast a
Permanency on the Sphere.
One PC found an item which made him immune to metal; anything made of metal
would be insubtantial to him. The lich filled a 15-foot cube with solid
steel set into the floor of a hallway. Every one else walked right over it
with no problem. He fell in. No air, no spellcasting, no way to get a rope
to him.
A wand is left on a table in a room with an earthen floor. When the party
gets within 10', a Magic Mouth activates a Rock-to-Mud spell. (It is a Wand
of Earth Alteration.) The party drops down into instant quicksand. If they
do not remove the wand from the table in the same round, in the next,
another Magic Mouth will activate the reverse-spell, Mud-to-Rock.
Stepping on the wrong spot in a hallway causes a brick to fall down from the
ceiling. Attached to the brick by a wire designed to tear it open is a
packet of Dust of Sneezing and Choking.
The group finds a Ring of Haste. The second time it is used, it will speed
up time for the wearer at a 3600-1 ratio; he will experience an hour for
every real second. It will also refuse to come off. The others will see him
vanish. Everything around him seems as solid as steel, including friends,
foes, and food. Doors are impossible to open. Unless he can cast a Remove
Curse on himself, or arrange for someone else to cast one on him, he will
die of thirst and starvation within 5 minutes (=300 hours).
The group finds an artifact, which renders one of them Anti-Magical. No
magic works within 5' of him. Please NO MAGIC! It seems great (imagine
bouncing Beholders like basketballs, etc.) until the PC is in need of
Curing, magical Flight, or tries to go through a magic Portal. The funniest
thing is, this Curse cannot be removed by normal means, since Remove Curse
won't work either. If he's a front-line fighter, spell-casters are going to
hate being behind him, since ALL magic spells and effects cease to function
near him.
A Rope of Entanglement. The second time it is used, it ties up the user and
his group.
You can see the trend here. This lich booby-traps items so that they seem
useful, but boomerang on the PCs after a short while.
Barrel o' Fun
Anonymous
After reading a funny article on the net, I decided to make a fun trap based on
it; it is probably not gonna kill anyone unless you are DM'ing a low-level
group. Anyway...
0
| | * - barrel
| * 0 - pulley
| | - rope
| @ - rusty iron rung
|
|
___@_________
A barrel is suspended about 80 feet in the air by a "web" strand (see spell)
which runs over a pulley (affected with "grease") and is tied to a rusty iron
rung in the ground. There is a lot of excess strand coiled on the ground by the
rung.
A clever player will try to lower the barrel to get at whatever's in it by
untying the web strand and letting the barrel down slowly, but the minute he
touches the strand, his hand sticks. As soon as he tries to pull back, the rung
rips out of the ground.
Here's the thing... the barrel has about 5000 gp weight of poison, boiling oil,
caltrops or whatever in it. The poor PC is jerked upward and the barrel starts
falling downward. At the halfway point, there is a 75% chance he hits the barrel
for 8d6 damage. When the barrel hits the ground, the PC is now 80 feet in the
air. However, the barrel has a 90% chance to break upon hitting the ground,
spewing poison, oil, caltrops or whatever all over the place. The now-empty
barrel flies back up and the PC back down - there is another 75% chance to hit
the barrel again for 4d6 damage (since it's empty now) and then 8d6 falling
damage and also damage from landing on whatever was in the barrel, and item
saving throws for the impact
Note that if the PC simply cuts the web strand, the barrel will possibly land on
them
Solus/Jasmine Silverleaf (Silverleaf@usa.net)
A small one-way door into a small 3m by 1m room with a treasure chest by the
other side. Once the party (or whoever) is inside, they would (most probably)
open the chest. A powerful lightning bolt flies out, frying the players once,
hits the wall in this very small room and reflects back towards the wall with
the chest. If trapped by a powerful wizard... bounce bounce bounce... toasty...