My players are traversing the desert of my home brew world, they are level six. I’m seeking trap ideas, monsters, curses, the more horrifying or even silly the better.
They will come across a temple, sunken in a swamp surrounded by an endless desert on all sides weeks from the nearest settlement, they will enter and be teleported to the center.
They are basically two artificers(artillerist), and a paladin, with a fairy creation bard and fairy ranger (beast master) for support.
Dungeons are best designed around a central adversary, because that adversary is going to dictate what else lives there and what the PCs will find.
Select an appropriate monster from the MM to be the lord of the dungeon. In this case maybe an [monster]aboleth[/monter] that is trapped in a subterranean lake deep in the dungeon's heart.
When you know the dungeon's ruler, choose servants and guards for them. If you go with an aboleth then chuul are appropriate, as are other formerly sea-dwelling creatures now trapped by the desert when the oceans dried up.
Go to Pinterest and search "temple battlemap" to find a map.
Put in a trapped NPC, a prisoner of the inhabitants, and a ghost that could be helpful or hostile depending on how the PCs treat it.
Read the DM guide traps section, and place a few at points in the dungeon that the inhabitants would want to keep the PCs away from.
Try to ensure that only 1 room in 3 (or fewer) has combat things to do. You need some rooms that have things that are interesting, but which don't really do anything and are just for flavour. Theme them around the central adversary.
Ok maybe remnants of a black dragons lair that lost a war with a blue, because the black dragon was a great wyrm the runes still tingle with the fallen dragons magic, give the dungeon black dragon lair actions. As it’s a desert out side consider environment factors. Example quick sand or poisoned water. Other neat contrast the rune gets cold out side is a sweltering desert but as they go deeper they suffer from extreme cold weather effects.
First thing that jumped into my mind when I thought "desert traps" was a room with a big hourglass trap, slowly filling with sand with the heroes trapped in the bottom. Idk if you'd want to come up with a puzzle or riddle they have to solve to escape, or if you'd just want to leave it open ended and see how they try to block the sand from coming down or what else they might think of.
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My players are traversing the desert of my home brew world, they are level six. I’m seeking trap ideas, monsters, curses, the more horrifying or even silly the better.
They will come across a temple, sunken in a swamp surrounded by an endless desert on all sides weeks from the nearest settlement, they will enter and be teleported to the center.
They are basically two artificers(artillerist), and a paladin, with a fairy creation bard and fairy ranger (beast master) for support.
Dungeons are best designed around a central adversary, because that adversary is going to dictate what else lives there and what the PCs will find.
I'm going to include some quick links for dungeon generators:
https://watabou.itch.io/one-page-dungeon
https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/
I've used both when I've needed some quick but also a good starting point to populating the dungeon based on suggestions from the DMG.
Side note: If you want to create your own dungeons I'd recommend DungeonDraft.
Ok maybe remnants of a black dragons lair that lost a war with a blue, because the black dragon was a great wyrm the runes still tingle with the fallen dragons magic, give the dungeon black dragon lair actions. As it’s a desert out side consider environment factors. Example quick sand or poisoned water. Other neat contrast the rune gets cold out side is a sweltering desert but as they go deeper they suffer from extreme cold weather effects.
First thing that jumped into my mind when I thought "desert traps" was a room with a big hourglass trap, slowly filling with sand with the heroes trapped in the bottom. Idk if you'd want to come up with a puzzle or riddle they have to solve to escape, or if you'd just want to leave it open ended and see how they try to block the sand from coming down or what else they might think of.