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Apprentice Greytalker
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Sat Dec 28, 2013 8:43 am
Favorite trap and why?
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WoG is filled with a vast sea of creativity (both diabolical and benign), so it's no wonder there are all manner of traps from mundane to magical. What is your favorite trap and why? Stories shaming the players are always welcome. One of my favorite traps comes from The Ghost Tower of Inverness and the regicide trap. Sounds fairly easy to overcome, unless no one has played regicide before. Best. Trap. Evva!  While it has never been a TPK trap for me, it sure makes the pc's sweat a little.
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Journeyman Greytalker
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From: The Pomarj
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Sat Dec 28, 2013 2:03 pm
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Last edited by BlueWitch on Wed Feb 12, 2014 4:54 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Adept Greytalker
Joined: Jul 29, 2006
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Sat Dec 28, 2013 2:21 pm
Re: Favorite trap and why?
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| Uptognomegood wrote: |
| One of my favorite traps comes from The Ghost Tower of Inverness and the regicide trap. Sounds fairly easy to overcome, unless no one has played regicide before. |
Regicide trap? I just ran this module and I have no idea what you're talking about. Area #13?
Not sure what my favorite trap is, but I recently had fun with the simple air-tight pit borrowed from the Undermountain boxed set cards.
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GreySage
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From: LG Dyvers
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Sat Dec 28, 2013 7:46 pm
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I have two answers:
1) Complex
The stretched Sphere of Annihilation in the green demon-mouth frame in the Tomb of Horrors. Players are just too curious about what it is to leave well enough alone.
My brother had his druid poke a stick at it. When the stick came back half as long, he poked at it with his magical dagger up to the hilt. When it came out bladeless, he stuck his whole hand in! At least he was wise enough to have his right-handed Pc use his left hand.  To this day, his druid has only a stump at the end of his left arm.
2) Simple
Any pit. It doesn't even have to be covered. All you have to do is force the PCs to make jump/Acrobatics checks whenever they try to cross it during a fight. Which means that you need to have lots of kobolds (or other nasty monster) attack them when they are near the pit. Large monsters that can bull rush PCs into the pit are also great. Once one or more PCs have fallen in, have the monsters throw exploding, flaming bombs/spells into the pit. Kobolds love to make use of stingchucks in this situation. The kobold spellcasters grease the edges of the pit and the PCs within can't avoid the swarms of biting/stinging insects.
My PCs had the most unfortunate luck with a pit they knew was there in a recent campaign in The Keep on the Borderlands.
http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=5218
SirXaris
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Adept Greytalker
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Sat Dec 28, 2013 9:50 pm
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I once had a covered pit trap that opened to a slide chute that led to a 10x10 pit that was occupied by a gelatinous cube. The character failed his saving throw. It is still funny to me today. Not so much my buddy who's character it was though. Good times.
Last edited by Sheepdog on Sun Dec 29, 2013 9:08 am; edited 1 time in total
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Apprentice Greytalker
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Sun Dec 29, 2013 8:52 am
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I just ran a trap for my players from Crown of the Kobold King. A magnetized trap where metal laden adventurers were sucked to a magnetic pillar on failed str checks, making -2 str penalties whenever they attacked and str checks or have their weapons sucked out of their hands while fighting. All while fighting kissing Vargouilles. Great fun (well for me at least)
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Grandmaster Greytalker
Joined: Nov 07, 2004
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From: Mt. Smolderac
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Sun Dec 29, 2013 6:00 pm
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In White Plume Mountain, the giant crab room with the easily-punctured elastic skin walls inside a lake of boiling water always struck me as devilishly clever and evil.
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Journeyman Greytalker
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Sun Dec 29, 2013 8:02 pm
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My favorite trap that I ever devised for a Living Greyhawk mod (3.5) was a barred force cage combined with summon monster VIII. Once the cage would go off, trapping a PC, the summon monster would deposit an angry blue slaad in the cage with them.
For lower level characters, my favorite trap was an alcove in which a bas-relief carving depicted a pair of hands clapping. When a PC, invariably, clapped their hands together, the walls slammed shut on them.
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Mon Dec 30, 2013 9:20 am
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Tomb of Horrors!  Man, that mouth trap is like a big RED button that has a flashing sign over it saying "You'll never guess what this button does when pressed."
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Adept Greytalker
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Mon Dec 30, 2013 11:48 am
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My favorite trap is the one where you lure the rebels in to attack your battle-station on the pretext that it is not yet operational. However, a legion of your finest troops await their strike team on the forest moon, and the Imperial fleet moves to engage them... oh, wrong genre.
| Quote: |
| Not sure what my favorite trap is, but I recently had fun with the simple air-tight pit borrowed from the Undermountain boxed set cards. |
Add water to above. Either to the top (quick, panicky drowning) or enough to force them to tread water, leaving them with no leverage.
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Apprentice Greytalker
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Mon Dec 30, 2013 8:13 pm
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Open mouthed green headed relief in dungeon of dread -ranked #1. Had a halfling friend toss in a rock and since it didn't seem to make a sound he stuck in his head to have a look. Hehe!
#2 I've used over the years comes from Howard's Conan stories - a massive magnetic monolith in the wilds surrounded by gems galore! Only catch is the players don't know it's magnetic until it's too late and a gigantic gelatinous cube happens to live on top. I've had a lot of players shed a lot of gear with that one -the ones who lived that is.
-GreyMaus
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Black Hand of Oblivion
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Mon Dec 30, 2013 10:19 pm
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Hmm. It is a toss-up between springing spears/scything blades type traps (i.e. anything that shishkabobs/cuts), and the good old poison needle trap (which needn't even be covered with anything particularly virulent, or even anything at all- it just freaks people out! ).
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Grandmaster Greytalker
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From: Mt. Smolderac
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Tue Dec 31, 2013 8:34 am
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| SirXaris wrote: |
| My brother had his druid poke a stick at it. When the stick came back half as long, he poked at it with his magical dagger up to the hilt. When it came out bladeless, he stuck his whole hand in! At least he was wise enough to have his right-handed Pc use his left hand. To this day, his druid has only a stump at the end of his left arm. |
Did not graduate top of his class from druid school.
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Tue Dec 31, 2013 1:41 pm
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I have a couple of favorite traps.
The first was a room that when the PCs step inside, the large metal door swings shut behind them. The floor is covered in soot and there is a big metal lever in the middle of the room. Sticking out of the walls are a series of large metal dragon heads with open maws and sooth covering the metal. A voice begins counting...
"12, 11, 10, 9..." as the counting continues, flame begins to lick the mouths of the dragons from inside.
Pulling the lever resets the counter to 12. Pulling it a third time sets off the dragons to breathing fire and filling the room with flame.
The trick is to not do anything. When the timer hits 0 the doors open and the flames die out.
The second trap I love the most is actually from DDO, in the Monastery of the Scorpion. Fall down a large pit trap and hit spikes at the bottom, reverse gravity sends you up to the ceiling again, but a large gelatinus cube has been forced out of a secret door and now covers the pit's mid-point. Passing through causes paralysis and a chance to get stuck, if you don't get stuck you fall to the ceiling until the reverse gravity ends and you fall back down again - rinse repeat until dead on spikes and eaten by the cube.
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GreySage
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Tue Dec 31, 2013 2:01 pm
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Welcome to Canonfire! Anthelios! It's great to have you participate in our forum. Now, head over to the Welcome to Greyhawk forum and introduce yourself properly to the community. 
SirXaris
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Fri Jan 03, 2014 9:56 am
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| Anthelios wrote: |
I have a couple of favorite traps.
The first was a room that when the PCs step inside, the large metal door swings shut behind them. The floor is covered in soot and there is a big metal lever in the middle of the room. Sticking out of the walls are a series of large metal dragon heads with open maws and sooth covering the metal. A voice begins counting...
"12, 11, 10, 9..." as the counting continues, flame begins to lick the mouths of the dragons from inside.
Pulling the lever resets the counter to 12. Pulling it a third time sets off the dragons to breathing fire and filling the room with flame.
The trick is to not do anything. When the timer hits 0 the doors open and the flames die out.
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I believe I will be stealing this trap!
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Journeyman Greytalker
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Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:16 pm
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My personal favorite has to be area #419 in ToEE. The purple curtain made of shiny ribbed cloth behind the altar, which is actually a cluster of violet fungi that attacks anyone not bearing a special scarab. This thing is so insidious - back in the day violet fungi was way more dangerous - that it killed three PCs in the two times I ran this module. My players still vividly remember the horror of their favorite character rotting to death within seconds. Great stuff.
My runner-up also gets the green devil face from Tomb of Horrors vote. When the party couldn't see inside its mouth, one of them stuck his highly-prized Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn in it. When it disappeared, he jumped in after it.
Great thread.
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GreySage
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From: LG Dyvers
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Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:26 pm
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| Luz wrote: |
| My runner-up also gets the green devil face from Tomb of Horrors vote. When the party couldn't see inside its mouth, one of them stuck his highly-prized Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn in it. When it disappeared, he jumped in after it. |
Excellent!
SirXaris
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Journeyman Greytalker
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Sun Jan 05, 2014 3:09 pm
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Last edited by BlueWitch on Wed Feb 12, 2014 4:58 pm; edited 1 time in total
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GreySage
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Sun Jan 05, 2014 4:14 pm
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| Luz wrote: |
| When the party couldn't see inside its mouth, one of them stuck his highly-prized Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn in it. When it disappeared, he jumped in after it. |
Glad someone thinks I am "highly-prized" and is willing to come claim me! 
-Lanthorn
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Sun Jan 05, 2014 5:23 pm
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Room. Big red button. When the PCs enter the room goes into lockup and a countdown starts.
Dress it up with a big ole dragon statue, inactive portal to the Abyss or something similar and foreboding...
The big red button resets the countdown.
The only way to unlock the exits is to let the countdown reach zero.
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Journeyman Greytalker
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Thu Jul 31, 2014 8:53 pm
Re: Favorite trap and why?
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| Uptognomegood wrote: |
| WoG is filled with a vast sea of creativity (both diabolical and benign), so it's no wonder there are all manner of traps from mundane to magical. What is your favorite trap and why? |
Here are two traps of my own devising (using 3.5 rules) of which I am particularly proud:
My first trap is a seemingly standard and relatively innocuous 20+ft deep pit trap. However, it contains something uniquely diabolical—
From the 3.5 D&D manual Sandstorm:
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BLACK SAND
Mundane volcanic lands sometimes feature black sand composed of ground-up cinders. Other than its striking color, such sand is no different from any other. However, magical black sand is a vile peril, whether on the scoured surface of Minethys in the Tarterian Depths of Carceri (where the Plane of Shadow overlays the Elemental Plane of Earth) or in lands cursed by foul magic. Black sand is infused with shadowstuff and negative energy. A region of black sand literally swallows light; magical darkness rises to a height of 20 feet over the surface. Nothing short of a sunburst spell can disperse this darkness, and even then only for a period of 1 hour per caster level. In addition, creatures that come in contact with the sand take 1d4 points of damage per round from negative energy. Upon reaching 0 hit points, they crumble and join the black sand. |
For added fun, throw 2-4 skeletons in there. They may be unable to see in the darkness (as it's generated by negative energy, however, it's a bit of a DM's judgement call) but they are healed 1d4 per round!
Plus, anything that dies in there becomes more black sand. So its owner can create more pits over time.
My second trap involves a bit of magic that is contained in the 3.5 D&D manual Frostburn, p. 94:
| Quote: |
Flesh to Ice
Transmutation
Level: Sorcerer/wizard 5
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. 10 ft./level)
Target: One creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
The subject, along with all its carried gear, turns into a mindless, inert ice sculpture. If the sculpture resulting from this spell is broken, melted, or damaged, the subject (if ever returned to its original state) has similar damage or deformities. The creature is not dead, but it does not seem to be alive either when viewed with spells such as deathwatch. Only creatures made of flesh are affected by this spell.
Material Component: Water and a drop of blood. |
I use it as a spell-trap in a “Warm” location (i.e. a ruined desert locale, a temple dedicated to evil Elemental Fire, etc.).
A failed Fortitude Save quickly becomes a race against time for the victim’s companions!
- D
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GreySage
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Fri Aug 01, 2014 8:20 am
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DrassustheGuant:
Thanks for bringing those two traps to my attention. I'll see if I can incorporate them into my current Against the Giants campaign.
SirXaris
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Fri Aug 01, 2014 9:29 am
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| SirXaris wrote: |
DrassustheGuant:
Thanks for bringing those two traps to my attention. I'll see if I can incorporate them into my current Against the Giants campaign.
SirXaris |
Glad to help, Sir Xaris!
Let me know how it goes if/when you use them, please.
While I have you on the subject:
Would you rule that the skeletons' darkvision can or cannot be effective in the magical darkness created by the Black Sand? Why?
- D
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GreySage
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Fri Aug 01, 2014 11:44 am
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| DrassustheGaunt wrote: |
Glad to help, Sir Xaris!
Let me know how it goes if/when you use them, please. |
Will do!
| Quote: |
While I have you on the subject:
Would you rule that the skeletons' darkvision can or cannot be effective in the magical darkness created by the Black Sand? Why? |
In 3.5e/Pathfinder, undead all have darkvision. They also have the ability to detect life. It may be a kind of sight, like infravision, but I tend to consider it a magical effect based upon their connection to the Negative Material plane. So, yes, skeletons and all undead, in my campaign, can "see" in the dark.
SirXaris
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Sat Aug 02, 2014 2:42 pm
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| SirXaris wrote: |
| In 3.5e/Pathfinder, undead all have darkvision. They also have the ability to detect life. It may be a kind of sight, like infravision, but I tend to consider it a magical effect based upon their connection to the Negative Material plane. So, yes, skeletons and all undead, in my campaign, can "see" in the dark. |
I didn't realize they had a "life-sense". I believe you but where is that mentioned? I'd like to get more details on it.
Also, the reason I mentioned it's a "judgement call" is Darkvision can't penetrate magical darkness (which is what Black Sand generates), however, the very cause of the darkness is negative energy, which is the "unlife's blood" of the creatures.
- Š
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