It’s once again time for Nightmare Traps, wherein I offer dungeon masters a humiliation machine like the recent Pocket Mimic! 

All sorts of campaigns let a party get a house, while someone ironically sings "Our House" by Madness and someone else immediately sets to ghost hunting. It is usually full of rooms, including a very special place that you and I refer to as... the bathroom. I think you'll find this room bracingly universal. Maybe your group is in the middle of the Nine Hells, and you had to invent them a run-down pile of metal sheets so they could sleep. You might not actively tell your party they need to dig a hole in the nearby cursed ash, but you can assume it’s being done. 

And not to spoil it, but at one point in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist there’s a building with a map that even includes privies. That’s what they called the gross room in medieval fantasy!

But shelter happens, and in real life shelter comes with a toilet (or else you’re paying too much rent). This is a toilet that, like most fantasy toilets, they won’t really know is there until it has become a huge problem. 

Disclaimer

So I've been thinking a lot about that last paragraph since it happened, and I just want to say one more time that odds are you’re not gross and don’t spend a ton of time talking specifically about D&D toilets. And if you do, it’s probably all you talk about, so I won’t even try to compete with that particular community. Too many pitfalls, if you catch my drift. What I'm saying is I'm squeamish and terrified of germs so please forgive me if I don't write fantasy names for all the bacteria found in... certain things.

Many of you are probably very skeptical of a piece like this that purports to be centered around bathroom humor. So, in addition to the synonyms I employ throughout this piece, here are some G-rated phrases you can use to loosen things up. Just roll 1d4 and use one of these synonymous phrases! You can try dropping them when you digest this trap into your own campaigns.

And of course, there's a need for a clean way to describe what is being executed in that bathroom, so here's another wholesome table to help you describe what's going on in there.

While we’re in disclaimer mode, for both humorous and friendship-boundary-type reasons, it is recommended that you play to the deadpan nature of this encounter. Some players don’t even want to imagine their characters as having “bathroom parts.” Proceed with caution. Let your players choose how gross they want to get, and you can play the role of narrative bleacher. 

And let’s… not get into medieval plumbing details. If you want to do an alternate version of this wherein a bag of holding’s opening is fastened to the bottom of a toilet seat, I’ll let you deal with the physics.

Plumbing the Shallows

We’re going to try and sneak this potty puzzle into an insight check. When they enter a building for the first time, it stands to reason that they might request an investigation check right off the bat to loot some goodies ("I LOOK FOR GOLD!"), but throw this insight check into the mix as well and be as poker-faced about it as you can. Do this check at the front door, not the bathroom door. Don’t even call out that such a room exists at first.

Okay, again, not to be this guy, but who even brings up the bathroom in the middle of a D&D session? Me excluded, I’m just trying to be subtle funny-gross here. It's an art, and to paraphrase a Brian Posehn album name, I am attempting to be a fartisan here.

If this is a homebase your players will return to often, make the Insight check’s DC for this reveal very high. 25 and above, even. That way time will pass, and there will be additional toilet tension from that weird roll they had to do that one time, when you the Dungeon Master were being so weird. 

If it’s a single-use shack, ratchet it down to a DC 12 or 15 Insight check. After all, you don’t want them to miss out on what could easily be the weirdest fartisan trap you’ll ever force on your adventurers. But frame this success thusly for the winner:

“After an hour or so, you find you need a perfunctory visit to the privy. However, when you use it, you notice that for whatever business you need to deposit in the loo, it eerily enough does not make a sound.”

If that doesn’t pique their interest, then maybe you and your group should have a talk about how humanoid waste doesn’t just take care of itself and how it is inexorably linked to climate change. Or, if you're not a Greta Thunberg fan, maybe just wink really hard.

A detect magic, or a DC 15 Investigation check reveals that void has no discernible end. Blackness starts at the edge of the seat, and sound does not seem to escape it. There is no trace of their misbegotten leavings, only a void that clings to the underpinnings of the accursed seat. 

If they are curious (or roll a 1 on their Investigation check) attempting to lower more than a hand inside will cause an unnatural gravity flux to take over their actions, and they will need to make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw to keep from being drawn completely into the void, lost forever, swirling for an eternity in an infinite expanse. If you “defeat” the void, (more on that shortly) you can allow the swallowed character to be ejected from the toilet with… you know, all the stuff from down there.

Once they’ve at least lost some spare change trying to suss out the situation, it’s time to acknowledge that there is indeed some sort of a pocket dimension in the toilet. 

Commanding the Commode

Thing is, the wizard who created this dimension had a real problem gauging when sentience becomes an issue. Maybe he was a homunculus-ist (you know, bigoted towards homunculi), or just primed with hubris. But that little void has developed feelings, that has naturally been growing angrier with each use. Now that they know something is up it’s time to launch an attack, and for players to perform an excremental exorcism.

By making a successful DC 18 Charisma check, players can get limited reaction, but otherwise this sentient pocket dimension will vengefully launch a vampiric mist into the bathroom once per round.

The sentient eldritch toilet dimension can only be removed by someone who can Turn Undead. A dispel magic will only cause it to dissipate for 24 hours. After a full day passes, it will once again expand itself downward from the rim of the seat, now full of even more pointed rage, mud mephits now also rising from its depths once every two rounds. There might not even be anyone around as this happens, so feel free to fill the bathroom with as many mud mephits as physics allows. If anyone gets close enough, they will attempt to drag heroes into the lavatory’s void, or if I were able to make an official monster entry for it, the Lavoidatory.

 Dan Telfer is the Dungeons Humorist aka Comedy Archmage for D&D Beyond (a fun way they are letting him say "writer"), dungeon master for the Nerd Poker podcast, a stand-up comedian, a TV writer who also helped win some Emmys over at Comedy Central, and a former editor of MAD Magazine and The Onion. He can be found riding his bike around Los Angeles from gig to gig to gaming store, though the best way to find out what he's up to is to follow him on Twitter via @dantelfer.