Hey guys, I'm looking to build a puzzle using LEDs and an Arduino, but before I go to the effort of doing it, I wanted to test the puzzle on you. Possibly looking for extra ideas that could go into it, or ways to change it.
You enter a square room, in the north is a locked door. Around the room are 8 plaques on the wall, each of which has a glass box beneath it. Inside each glass box is a circular stone tablet with an engraving on it. In the centre of the room are 4 plinths, each have a different coloured stone on top; Blue, Red, White and Brown. Engraved into the floor is a line connecting each of the plinths. There is a round cutout in the floor the same size as each of the tablets.
The door is on a spring like hinge and closes behind the party, this can be opened easily if needed. When the door closes, the red stone begins to glow.
How deep is the hole in the middle? Can it hold more than one tablet?
The tablets seem to be engraved with symbols for earth, air, fire and water. The colors red, blue, brown and white could also correspond to fire, water, earth and air.
The red one is lit so presumably it wants one of the fire tablets to be inserted.
The fire ones available are a blue hammer and a red snake.
That's about as far as I get since there are too many ways to interpret the meaning of the plaques.
fire: blue hammer, red snake
water: yellow/black ranged arrow skull, green trident skull
air: red flames? or flower?, blue/yellow lightning bolt
Nothing really consistent jumps out.
I considered using the two adjacent colors mixed to find the matching background color i.e. red+blue = purple or red+white = pink
However, you've used brown instead of yellow so that doesn't really work. Also you don't have a pink plaque.
Matching colors directly doesn't work since there aren't any white ones.
So going back to the elements idea, I'm still stuck picking which of the fire ones for the first tablet - the blue hammer or the red snake. Maybe red snake since fire is typically red, which breaks down right away since neither of the water plaques are blue.
So if the puzzle has an obvious answer ... I'm missing it completely.
I hate puzzles with a firey passion, and the only way I'd ever engage with one is if the stakes of the story make it worth my character's time. What is the telic factor? Why bother with this puzzle?
It seems to me that there's an elemental component and a damage type component to this puzzle. The tablets and the four colors of stones strike me as elemental clues: red = fire, white = air, blue = water, brown = earth. The eight plaques look like they represent kinds of damage: hammer = bludgeoning, arrow = piercing, sword = slashing, snake = poison, flames = fire, comet = force (which is the symbol for force damage on DDB), lightning bolt = lightning, and skull = necrotic. The red stone lighting up would make me infer that the plaques with the matching elemental tablet are in play.
Based on the plaques with the fire tablet (snake and hammer), I would surmise that the puzzle is asking the player to use bludgeoning and poison, and that another stone will light up next if I get it right.
What I do next kind of depends. If it looks like the tablets are needed as a physical key (meaning, if there is a recess in the pit or on the door that would fit the tablets), I might be inclined to use the appropriate damage type to break the glass cases. If there aren't any tablet-sized slots, I might float a couple ideas: either channel the indicated damage types into the pit (though how you bludgeon a hole is beyond me) or onto the lit stone itself.
There's also a possibility that the stone is warning you what damage is coming if you screw up...
So theology, you would be right in that the damage type is required to break the glass required to access the tablets, and you're thinking with your final sentence is kinda bang on. Based on David's logic of which tablet is needed, you use poison damage to access the fire tablet (after attemping bludgeoning to test the theory and realise that has no effect on that plaques glass) and place the fire tablet in the circle, this results in a fire elemental being summoned in the centre of the room. You fight it and kill it, however the red stone is still lit
Well, the red stone lit up when the door I entered closed, so I'd want to see if I locked myself in or if anything changes if I open and close it again, though that design for a puzzle seems rather odd to me. But I'm a dumb adventurer, so I'm going to try to open the door I came through. My suspicion is that I need both tablets to make the next stone light up or the door to unlock, however, and that opening the door I entered through will do nothing.
Given the magical nature of the other damage types, I'd assume mundane bludgeoning, piercing and slashing would be pointless against these glass cases. I find it hard to accept that the hammer, arrow and sword don't represent damage types, since I was correct about the poison. And since I'm operating this puzzle in a vacuum (meaning I don't have dungeon lore or campaign lore to aid me) that leads me to believe that they can be opened the same way the poison glass was.
If the doors do nothing and magical bludgeoning does nothing, and there is nothing in this place that resembles a hammer, I'd start questioning the wisdom of poking the adjacent tablets. Because the likelihood is that I'll unleash more elementals and get my party killed trying to figure out this puzzle. I would also be curious if there were a way to remove the stones and put them anywhere, like in the locked door. However, if we weren't beat up too badly and were game to try more stupid stuff, my next attempt would be the air tablet under the fire plaque. What's the point of Revivify if you aren't going to give your cleric a chance to use it, amirite?
ok so I'll give you this one, I do like the way you are thinking and this is giving me some really good insights! You've definitely been on the right track the whole time, the solution is to place a water tablet into the circle when the fire light is on, which then lights up the white light representing air which requires fire tablet and so on. The basis is that you are placing the tablet onto the circle that is of greater strength than the light that comes on. The glass cases are broken by applying the damage represented on the plaque, ie force damage to get an earth plaque.
Placing the wrong tablet into the circle will conjure an elemental of the stone that is lit. What this hasn't left any room for is failed attempts or trial and error, there are only 2 of each plaque and you went with placing a fire plaque when the stone is red, which is what I expected, but thought the next progression would be to use water to "extinguish" the red stone and move on to the next, where as using air would have conjured another fire elemental. I suppose that has left a couple for trial and error purposes?
Any thoughts, criticisms, changes you'd make? I'm thinking of 3D printing the tiles, using NFC tags on some 1" tablet icons, and using LEDs to represent the stones, so the whole puzzle is properly interactive
sorry, and to clarify, when I say testing bludgeoning damage does nothing, that is on the case with the snake which represents poison. However poison would only affect that glass case, so you were correct in your assessment, my description/reply was very badly worded!
I hate puzzles with a firey passion, and the only way I'd ever engage with one is if the stakes of the story make it worth my character's time. What is the telic factor? Why bother with this puzzle?
i'm on this wagon....why is it there in the first place? If you can build some lore into it and can easily get the players to understand why they're doing what they're doing and why the puzzle is there in the first place....then maybe. But just a puzzle for the sake of having a puzzle is super annoying. I would spend the time you're thinking about spending on the Arduino and breadboard on something else.
Because we've been playing very gritty role plays for a few years like Warhammer and my players want classic D&D, they enjoy puzzles and riddles, mixed in with dungeon crawls to break up a story driven campaign after a lot of over ground exploring. The why is irrelevant as my players enjoy challenges whether it is thinking tactically as they are outnumbered, or if it is a puzzle to solve. Something interactive to do makes a fun break when things have been online for so long, but I guess different groups like different things
Placing the wrong tablet into the circle will conjure an elemental of the stone that is lit. What this hasn't left any room for is failed attempts or trial and error, there are only 2 of each plaque and you went with placing a fire plaque when the stone is red, which is what I expected, but thought the next progression would be to use water to "extinguish" the red stone and move on to the next, where as using air would have conjured another fire elemental. I suppose that has left a couple for trial and error purposes?
I don't get why water is "stronger" than fire, as opposed to earth or air. You generally don't play rock-paper-scissors with the four elements
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Water douses fire, fire will expand in air/wind, wind destroys earth, earth blocks water. It's more looking at the typical elemental rock paper scissors trope rather than being grounded in D&D lore. And although this is D&D, taking the real examples of our world, different countries/religions/beliefs have different takes on the elements, so who's to say a similar elemental belief can't be applied to D&D? I'm open to suggestions on tweaks though, I was trying to make this a multi element puzzle, something interactive the players could use with actual 3D printed terrain and reactive elements with some electronics providing feedback to their actions
I agree with AntonSirius, and I would not have gotten that you had to somehow "beat" the current element with another element unless I had recently rewatched Naruto: Shippuden and had chakra natures on the brain.
The reason I went for air instead of water is that at the time, your description made it sound like bludgeoning, piercing and slashing wasn't working for the appropriate glass cases. The air tablet was the only one that had two elemental damage types (fire and lightning), which I knew worked and it was directly connected to the fire stone. Also, I feel like it's unnatural to go counter-clockwise. Water would not have been a natural second guess for me.
To the point about water extinguishing fire, that's true, but if you blow hard on a candle it will go out, and if you dump enough earth on a campfire, that'll put it out too. This also breaks down after you "extinguish" fire. Water and wind both beat earth via erosion.
A couple of notes:
1. I'd have subtle hints about the cycle of the elements in the form of subtle murals or grime-covered carvings in the room. If the party gets stuck, you can have them make perception/investigation checks for clues.
2. I'd have the stone start to pulsate ominously if they were wrong the first time. Give them one chance to reconsider before you unload an elemental on them. Also, if they defeat the fire elemental, haven't they defeated the element itself? Seems like a flaw in the design if that doesn't count for something. At the very least, the recess in the floor should reject the tablet so they know they were wrong and shouldn't try that again.
3. I'd be open to player creativity in solving it. What if they decide to put all the other elemental tablets in the pit at the same time while the fire stone is lit? What if they leave the room instead of fight the elemental - does the trap reset or will it be waiting indefinitely to fight them? Without hints in the room, this can easily turn into a scenario where they just have to keep guessing until they read your mind, which isn't too fun on the player side. Fighting multiple elementals back to back if they don't guess what you were thinking might be a deadly endeavor if they're already low on resources and HP.
I actually threw a similar scenario at my players a few months ago, though they had to provide the elements associated with each pedestal, not counter them ("Give what is asked" was inscribed on the door). They solved it pretty quickly thanks to some elemental murals on the walls, but it was a two-part puzzle. The door opened to another room guarded by a stone golem who had four incomplete runes on his body - one for each element. He awakened upon their entry and initiated combat, and they had to insert the correct elemental rune onto his body while fighting him. The orientation of the runes matched the orientation of the murals from the previous puzzle.
I don't normally enjoy puzzles, but this was fun. Thanks for letting me be a guinea pig!
Water douses fire, fire will expand in air/wind, wind destroys earth, earth blocks water.
But wind can also douse fire, as can earth. Water erodes earth. Fire turns water into steam. And that's even before considering folks whose first thoughts are going to be about the Last Airbender, or people from cultures that traditionally recognize more than four elements
I don't think even the elemental aspect to the solution to your puzzle is as intuitive as you're expecting
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Personally I'd have tried to rotate the central thing so that the red lined up with fire and so on, then gone to interact with it and dropped the stones into the holes. I probably wouldn't have figured out the damage types, it's kind of meta and not something character would think of, only a player.
Note that you've created a binary system here: either the players can figure it out, in which case they get to disarm it easily (I don't see how they would get it right) or they just can't work out how to do it. I guess there's a third option, whereby they mess around and accidentally summon some elementals.
I have an issue with puzzles that can't be reset easily. Like, why would someone with the time and magic to create what is essentially a lock design a convoluted method by which it could be opened, but where if you've opened it then someone has to come in and replace all the magical glass - and not only that but the lock can be disarmed by someone who just works out what the sequence is? They have the power to conjure elementals on demand - but this puzzle is a permanent, one-time-only barrier to entry that gives clues about how it is to be disarmed... and since it's intended that nobody gets past it why not just spend the time putting in fireballs that go off if anyone comes near?
Make sure to input a way in which this trap/puzzle can be bypassed entirely; allow them to brute-force down whatever they need to, but at the cost of another resource draining encounter (enough elementals appear to potentially TPK the party) so that they can progress if they just don't get it.
I hate puzzles with a firey passion, and the only way I'd ever engage with one is if the stakes of the story make it worth my character's time. What is the telic factor? Why bother with this puzzle?
i'm on this wagon....why is it there in the first place? If you can build some lore into it and can easily get the players to understand why they're doing what they're doing and why the puzzle is there in the first place....then maybe. But just a puzzle for the sake of having a puzzle is super annoying. I would spend the time you're thinking about spending on the Arduino and breadboard on something else.
Not to keep beating this drum, but I’m another anti-puzzler. Puzzles are about testing the players, not the characters. I may be a smart person, but I’m no super-genius, while my 20 int wizard or 20 wis cleric should be able to walk in, take a look at the room and say do x, y and z. Puzzle solved.
ok, thanks for the feedback guys. I appreciate some people don't like puzzles, and certainly a lot hate puzzles for puzzles sake, but my party enjoy a bit of that, and don't always question "why is this even here in the first place?", as they like a different encounter to just fighting all the time. So although I understand this type of scenario doesn't work for everyone, it does in my use case, hence asking for feedback on the puzzle and thought process of a player seeing it for the first time, not the rationale of it or "why put it here?".
Looking at the logical thought process you guys have given in response has been useful, which is testing whether the clues and images supplied are enough to get to an answer or if more is needed, I do find it hard to judge whether I am supplying enough but not too much as to give away the answer. I'll have a further think before I go any further!
Subtle clues: - Trace evidence of the damage types on the pedestals that can be found with perception/investigation/arcana checks. "As you're looking, Cleric, you notice faint areas of decay around this glass case. And Fighter, over there you see divots in the stone that look similar to the divots you've made with your sword on training dummies."
- Dungeon theme. When I'm designing a dungeon crawl, I like to give the traps/encounters recurring motifs to help with puzzles. If it's a temple to a lost goddess, perhaps all the rooms require the party to "remember" something - their steps, a pattern of flashing lights, a memory they have to sacrifice, etc. Or if it's a mad alchemist's lab, maybe the puzzles require mixing things to solve them - putting two damage types together, speaking a passcode in multiple languages, creating a new potion, etc. The tasks are all different, but there's a unifying undercurrent the party can remember as they move forward.
Overt clues: - Engraved riddles/limericks/notes from a dying adventurer. "Not same!" - found scrawled in dried blood on the floor near a fire tablet pedestal.
- Visual foreshadowing, with insight/history checks to understand some of it as necessary. "You see a mural of four Elemental Planes converging. A raging wildfire collides with a huge tidal swell as a massive tornado churns up a rocky plain. Wizard, you recall a famous evocation experiment about the interaction of the elements and you think this might be a visual representation of it."
As for giving away the answer...in my experience, players miss most clues we DMs think are obvious. And if they nail a riddle immediately, they feel like complete geniuses. Sure, it's a little less satisfying on our end for them not to struggle, but sometimes it's a bigger win to let them breeze. Especially if we're gonna destroy them with a baddie in the next room...I think if you start off with no/very subtle clues, then slowly introduce more if they have a hard time, you'll hit a good stride. And sometimes, their solutions are just better. If it's worthy, let 'em have it, I say.
Good luck! Designing puzzles is hard. I think your players will really appreciate all this effort you're putting into it, though. I mean, LEDs? That's cool.
Thanks theology, some really useful advice there. Most of the time I create situations and let the players just come up with ideas, and any that seem to work appropriately I'll let work, or sometimes to pick the coolest idea and let that be the solution or path of progression! As this one is intended to have physical interactivity (as just over a year of playing online we will start doing in person sessions soon) a puzzle will need a static solution due to its actually being on the table and reacting to them. Stacking up the clues and slowly revealing them depending on how they are struggling, or the opposite if they clearly don't need them is a really good idea though! Seems kinda obvious now I think about it, especially as I've done that in the past with investigation style sessions
Thanks for filling in the details. However, I'd agree with the other comments that the order of the elements is not something that would be universal. You put water over fire because water will douse it - with enough water - without enough water, the fire turns the water to steam. Both air and earth can put out fire as well but enough fire will turn earth molten while fire will die if air is not present. Both water and air can erode earth while earth forms a wall that could block water, air and fire for some length of time.
As a result, I'd say you might either need to give a hint as to your intended order of elements. Otherwise, if the folks actually make the connection between symbols and damage types, they might just start hitting things to see what works by trial and error. In addition, the restriction on damage types requires the party have the means to create those types of damage. I would assume that is the case? Since if they are missing a damage type then they might not be able to solve the puzzle. Keep in mind that for the magical damage types there are a number of cantrips that don't allow targeting objects. The poison spray cantrip for example only targets creatures unless you've changed that in your game.
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Hey guys, I'm looking to build a puzzle using LEDs and an Arduino, but before I go to the effort of doing it, I wanted to test the puzzle on you. Possibly looking for extra ideas that could go into it, or ways to change it.
You enter a square room, in the north is a locked door. Around the room are 8 plaques on the wall, each of which has a glass box beneath it. Inside each glass box is a circular stone tablet with an engraving on it. In the centre of the room are 4 plinths, each have a different coloured stone on top; Blue, Red, White and Brown. Engraved into the floor is a line connecting each of the plinths. There is a round cutout in the floor the same size as each of the tablets.
The door is on a spring like hinge and closes behind the party, this can be opened easily if needed. When the door closes, the red stone begins to glow.
What do you do?
Here is a crude mockup of the room: https://imgur.com/XmzZQ81
How deep is the hole in the middle? Can it hold more than one tablet?
The tablets seem to be engraved with symbols for earth, air, fire and water. The colors red, blue, brown and white could also correspond to fire, water, earth and air.
The red one is lit so presumably it wants one of the fire tablets to be inserted.
The fire ones available are a blue hammer and a red snake.
That's about as far as I get since there are too many ways to interpret the meaning of the plaques.
fire: blue hammer, red snake
water: yellow/black ranged arrow skull, green trident skull
earth: purple sword, yellow/black explosion? impact?
air: red flames? or flower?, blue/yellow lightning bolt
Nothing really consistent jumps out.
I considered using the two adjacent colors mixed to find the matching background color i.e. red+blue = purple or red+white = pink
However, you've used brown instead of yellow so that doesn't really work. Also you don't have a pink plaque.
Matching colors directly doesn't work since there aren't any white ones.
So going back to the elements idea, I'm still stuck picking which of the fire ones for the first tablet - the blue hammer or the red snake. Maybe red snake since fire is typically red, which breaks down right away since neither of the water plaques are blue.
So if the puzzle has an obvious answer ... I'm missing it completely.
I hate puzzles with a firey passion, and the only way I'd ever engage with one is if the stakes of the story make it worth my character's time. What is the telic factor? Why bother with this puzzle?
It seems to me that there's an elemental component and a damage type component to this puzzle. The tablets and the four colors of stones strike me as elemental clues: red = fire, white = air, blue = water, brown = earth. The eight plaques look like they represent kinds of damage: hammer = bludgeoning, arrow = piercing, sword = slashing, snake = poison, flames = fire, comet = force (which is the symbol for force damage on DDB), lightning bolt = lightning, and skull = necrotic. The red stone lighting up would make me infer that the plaques with the matching elemental tablet are in play.
Based on the plaques with the fire tablet (snake and hammer), I would surmise that the puzzle is asking the player to use bludgeoning and poison, and that another stone will light up next if I get it right.
What I do next kind of depends. If it looks like the tablets are needed as a physical key (meaning, if there is a recess in the pit or on the door that would fit the tablets), I might be inclined to use the appropriate damage type to break the glass cases. If there aren't any tablet-sized slots, I might float a couple ideas: either channel the indicated damage types into the pit (though how you bludgeon a hole is beyond me) or onto the lit stone itself.
There's also a possibility that the stone is warning you what damage is coming if you screw up...
So theology, you would be right in that the damage type is required to break the glass required to access the tablets, and you're thinking with your final sentence is kinda bang on. Based on David's logic of which tablet is needed, you use poison damage to access the fire tablet (after attemping bludgeoning to test the theory and realise that has no effect on that plaques glass) and place the fire tablet in the circle, this results in a fire elemental being summoned in the centre of the room. You fight it and kill it, however the red stone is still lit
Well, the red stone lit up when the door I entered closed, so I'd want to see if I locked myself in or if anything changes if I open and close it again, though that design for a puzzle seems rather odd to me. But I'm a dumb adventurer, so I'm going to try to open the door I came through. My suspicion is that I need both tablets to make the next stone light up or the door to unlock, however, and that opening the door I entered through will do nothing.
Given the magical nature of the other damage types, I'd assume mundane bludgeoning, piercing and slashing would be pointless against these glass cases. I find it hard to accept that the hammer, arrow and sword don't represent damage types, since I was correct about the poison. And since I'm operating this puzzle in a vacuum (meaning I don't have dungeon lore or campaign lore to aid me) that leads me to believe that they can be opened the same way the poison glass was.
If the doors do nothing and magical bludgeoning does nothing, and there is nothing in this place that resembles a hammer, I'd start questioning the wisdom of poking the adjacent tablets. Because the likelihood is that I'll unleash more elementals and get my party killed trying to figure out this puzzle. I would also be curious if there were a way to remove the stones and put them anywhere, like in the locked door. However, if we weren't beat up too badly and were game to try more stupid stuff, my next attempt would be the air tablet under the fire plaque. What's the point of Revivify if you aren't going to give your cleric a chance to use it, amirite?
ok so I'll give you this one, I do like the way you are thinking and this is giving me some really good insights! You've definitely been on the right track the whole time, the solution is to place a water tablet into the circle when the fire light is on, which then lights up the white light representing air which requires fire tablet and so on. The basis is that you are placing the tablet onto the circle that is of greater strength than the light that comes on. The glass cases are broken by applying the damage represented on the plaque, ie force damage to get an earth plaque.
Placing the wrong tablet into the circle will conjure an elemental of the stone that is lit. What this hasn't left any room for is failed attempts or trial and error, there are only 2 of each plaque and you went with placing a fire plaque when the stone is red, which is what I expected, but thought the next progression would be to use water to "extinguish" the red stone and move on to the next, where as using air would have conjured another fire elemental. I suppose that has left a couple for trial and error purposes?
Any thoughts, criticisms, changes you'd make? I'm thinking of 3D printing the tiles, using NFC tags on some 1" tablet icons, and using LEDs to represent the stones, so the whole puzzle is properly interactive
sorry, and to clarify, when I say testing bludgeoning damage does nothing, that is on the case with the snake which represents poison. However poison would only affect that glass case, so you were correct in your assessment, my description/reply was very badly worded!
i'm on this wagon....why is it there in the first place? If you can build some lore into it and can easily get the players to understand why they're doing what they're doing and why the puzzle is there in the first place....then maybe. But just a puzzle for the sake of having a puzzle is super annoying. I would spend the time you're thinking about spending on the Arduino and breadboard on something else.
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Because we've been playing very gritty role plays for a few years like Warhammer and my players want classic D&D, they enjoy puzzles and riddles, mixed in with dungeon crawls to break up a story driven campaign after a lot of over ground exploring. The why is irrelevant as my players enjoy challenges whether it is thinking tactically as they are outnumbered, or if it is a puzzle to solve. Something interactive to do makes a fun break when things have been online for so long, but I guess different groups like different things
I don't get why water is "stronger" than fire, as opposed to earth or air. You generally don't play rock-paper-scissors with the four elements
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Water douses fire, fire will expand in air/wind, wind destroys earth, earth blocks water. It's more looking at the typical elemental rock paper scissors trope rather than being grounded in D&D lore. And although this is D&D, taking the real examples of our world, different countries/religions/beliefs have different takes on the elements, so who's to say a similar elemental belief can't be applied to D&D? I'm open to suggestions on tweaks though, I was trying to make this a multi element puzzle, something interactive the players could use with actual 3D printed terrain and reactive elements with some electronics providing feedback to their actions
I agree with AntonSirius, and I would not have gotten that you had to somehow "beat" the current element with another element unless I had recently rewatched Naruto: Shippuden and had chakra natures on the brain.
The reason I went for air instead of water is that at the time, your description made it sound like bludgeoning, piercing and slashing wasn't working for the appropriate glass cases. The air tablet was the only one that had two elemental damage types (fire and lightning), which I knew worked and it was directly connected to the fire stone. Also, I feel like it's unnatural to go counter-clockwise. Water would not have been a natural second guess for me.
To the point about water extinguishing fire, that's true, but if you blow hard on a candle it will go out, and if you dump enough earth on a campfire, that'll put it out too. This also breaks down after you "extinguish" fire. Water and wind both beat earth via erosion.
A couple of notes:
1. I'd have subtle hints about the cycle of the elements in the form of subtle murals or grime-covered carvings in the room. If the party gets stuck, you can have them make perception/investigation checks for clues.
2. I'd have the stone start to pulsate ominously if they were wrong the first time. Give them one chance to reconsider before you unload an elemental on them. Also, if they defeat the fire elemental, haven't they defeated the element itself? Seems like a flaw in the design if that doesn't count for something. At the very least, the recess in the floor should reject the tablet so they know they were wrong and shouldn't try that again.
3. I'd be open to player creativity in solving it. What if they decide to put all the other elemental tablets in the pit at the same time while the fire stone is lit? What if they leave the room instead of fight the elemental - does the trap reset or will it be waiting indefinitely to fight them? Without hints in the room, this can easily turn into a scenario where they just have to keep guessing until they read your mind, which isn't too fun on the player side. Fighting multiple elementals back to back if they don't guess what you were thinking might be a deadly endeavor if they're already low on resources and HP.
I actually threw a similar scenario at my players a few months ago, though they had to provide the elements associated with each pedestal, not counter them ("Give what is asked" was inscribed on the door). They solved it pretty quickly thanks to some elemental murals on the walls, but it was a two-part puzzle. The door opened to another room guarded by a stone golem who had four incomplete runes on his body - one for each element. He awakened upon their entry and initiated combat, and they had to insert the correct elemental rune onto his body while fighting him. The orientation of the runes matched the orientation of the murals from the previous puzzle.
I don't normally enjoy puzzles, but this was fun. Thanks for letting me be a guinea pig!
But wind can also douse fire, as can earth. Water erodes earth. Fire turns water into steam. And that's even before considering folks whose first thoughts are going to be about the Last Airbender, or people from cultures that traditionally recognize more than four elements
I don't think even the elemental aspect to the solution to your puzzle is as intuitive as you're expecting
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Personally I'd have tried to rotate the central thing so that the red lined up with fire and so on, then gone to interact with it and dropped the stones into the holes. I probably wouldn't have figured out the damage types, it's kind of meta and not something character would think of, only a player.
Note that you've created a binary system here: either the players can figure it out, in which case they get to disarm it easily (I don't see how they would get it right) or they just can't work out how to do it. I guess there's a third option, whereby they mess around and accidentally summon some elementals.
I have an issue with puzzles that can't be reset easily. Like, why would someone with the time and magic to create what is essentially a lock design a convoluted method by which it could be opened, but where if you've opened it then someone has to come in and replace all the magical glass - and not only that but the lock can be disarmed by someone who just works out what the sequence is? They have the power to conjure elementals on demand - but this puzzle is a permanent, one-time-only barrier to entry that gives clues about how it is to be disarmed... and since it's intended that nobody gets past it why not just spend the time putting in fireballs that go off if anyone comes near?
Make sure to input a way in which this trap/puzzle can be bypassed entirely; allow them to brute-force down whatever they need to, but at the cost of another resource draining encounter (enough elementals appear to potentially TPK the party) so that they can progress if they just don't get it.
Not to keep beating this drum, but I’m another anti-puzzler. Puzzles are about testing the players, not the characters. I may be a smart person, but I’m no super-genius, while my 20 int wizard or 20 wis cleric should be able to walk in, take a look at the room and say do x, y and z. Puzzle solved.
ok, thanks for the feedback guys. I appreciate some people don't like puzzles, and certainly a lot hate puzzles for puzzles sake, but my party enjoy a bit of that, and don't always question "why is this even here in the first place?", as they like a different encounter to just fighting all the time. So although I understand this type of scenario doesn't work for everyone, it does in my use case, hence asking for feedback on the puzzle and thought process of a player seeing it for the first time, not the rationale of it or "why put it here?".
Looking at the logical thought process you guys have given in response has been useful, which is testing whether the clues and images supplied are enough to get to an answer or if more is needed, I do find it hard to judge whether I am supplying enough but not too much as to give away the answer. I'll have a further think before I go any further!
On the point about clues, here's some thoughts.
Subtle clues:
- Trace evidence of the damage types on the pedestals that can be found with perception/investigation/arcana checks.
"As you're looking, Cleric, you notice faint areas of decay around this glass case. And Fighter, over there you see divots in the stone that look similar to the divots you've made with your sword on training dummies."
- Dungeon theme. When I'm designing a dungeon crawl, I like to give the traps/encounters recurring motifs to help with puzzles. If it's a temple to a lost goddess, perhaps all the rooms require the party to "remember" something - their steps, a pattern of flashing lights, a memory they have to sacrifice, etc. Or if it's a mad alchemist's lab, maybe the puzzles require mixing things to solve them - putting two damage types together, speaking a passcode in multiple languages, creating a new potion, etc. The tasks are all different, but there's a unifying undercurrent the party can remember as they move forward.
Overt clues:
- Engraved riddles/limericks/notes from a dying adventurer.
"Not same!" - found scrawled in dried blood on the floor near a fire tablet pedestal.
- Visual foreshadowing, with insight/history checks to understand some of it as necessary.
"You see a mural of four Elemental Planes converging. A raging wildfire collides with a huge tidal swell as a massive tornado churns up a rocky plain. Wizard, you recall a famous evocation experiment about the interaction of the elements and you think this might be a visual representation of it."
As for giving away the answer...in my experience, players miss most clues we DMs think are obvious. And if they nail a riddle immediately, they feel like complete geniuses. Sure, it's a little less satisfying on our end for them not to struggle, but sometimes it's a bigger win to let them breeze. Especially if we're gonna destroy them with a baddie in the next room...I think if you start off with no/very subtle clues, then slowly introduce more if they have a hard time, you'll hit a good stride. And sometimes, their solutions are just better. If it's worthy, let 'em have it, I say.
Good luck! Designing puzzles is hard. I think your players will really appreciate all this effort you're putting into it, though. I mean, LEDs? That's cool.
Thanks theology, some really useful advice there. Most of the time I create situations and let the players just come up with ideas, and any that seem to work appropriately I'll let work, or sometimes to pick the coolest idea and let that be the solution or path of progression! As this one is intended to have physical interactivity (as just over a year of playing online we will start doing in person sessions soon) a puzzle will need a static solution due to its actually being on the table and reacting to them. Stacking up the clues and slowly revealing them depending on how they are struggling, or the opposite if they clearly don't need them is a really good idea though! Seems kinda obvious now I think about it, especially as I've done that in the past with investigation style sessions
Thanks for filling in the details. However, I'd agree with the other comments that the order of the elements is not something that would be universal. You put water over fire because water will douse it - with enough water - without enough water, the fire turns the water to steam. Both air and earth can put out fire as well but enough fire will turn earth molten while fire will die if air is not present. Both water and air can erode earth while earth forms a wall that could block water, air and fire for some length of time.
As a result, I'd say you might either need to give a hint as to your intended order of elements. Otherwise, if the folks actually make the connection between symbols and damage types, they might just start hitting things to see what works by trial and error. In addition, the restriction on damage types requires the party have the means to create those types of damage. I would assume that is the case? Since if they are missing a damage type then they might not be able to solve the puzzle. Keep in mind that for the magical damage types there are a number of cantrips that don't allow targeting objects. The poison spray cantrip for example only targets creatures unless you've changed that in your game.