So you want to get rid of those pesky adventurers? Keep your dungeons spotless? Leave a clean scent of lemon and destruction (Other scents include pine and death)? Well this Cleaning Product, sorry, thread is for you!
1. Ideas
When you are making traps, think of themes. Your traps should have one theme that underpins them like spikes or lava. Or ya know just throw every singular last thing under the sun at them (Including sun).
2. Play to kill, as often, you won't
Adventurers are right sneaky little derps. If you try crush them, one is gonna have a bunch of stuff to keep the roof up and buy time. Anything happens, they will try to think of a way round. So try and kill them, because you always have a chance.
3. Hide your triggers
You want magical triggers, or pressure plates. Why? As if a trigger is disarmed, your WHOLE trap is now a paperweight. Hide them, and stop expensive paperweights.
4. Take advantage of weaknesses
If someone is cocky or paranoid, make the most! If a character/person playing has a flaw that they project into the game use it, get them into situations where their flaw is going to make thing worse.
5. Fire!
Get extreme, fire is your best friend. Fire does lots of damage over turns, and lava can remove about anything.
6. Sodium is your pal
Sodium is the single most reactive element in all existence. If it contacts with water, BAM! Give them a potion bottle full of it, chances are they are gonna be having some serious intestinal problems.
7. Let them do your work for you
If your characters are dangerous, demented nut jobs, give them a environment where damage is just going to make everything worse.
8. Take inspiration
Read all the volume of Grimtooths Traps. Done? Read it again. Stealing is the best method for trap design.
9. Don't be unrealistic, but then again...
Either make your traps super nonmagical, or have it where every component is somehow magic. It pays to make a descion and stick with it in this case.
10. Share traps with others
And here is the perfect place! Post your traps and advice here!
Adventurers are right sneaky little derps. If you try crush them, one is gonna have a bunch of stuff to keep the roof up and buy time. Anything happens, they will try to think of a way round. So try and kill them, because you always have a chance.
Your inability to see your players' beloved characters as anything other than inconveniences waiting to die is rather sad.
You shouldn't play to kill. Your monsters should want to play to kill, but YOU, the DM, should want your players to win. While it has more or less the same effect, it's a key difference in your mentality.
Give players and their characters a chance to beat your traps, and anything else you throw their way. Let them feel the joy of overcoming challenges in the game where that is their goal, instead of simply beating them all the time and making the game feel unfair. Talk to them to determine how you can all have fun, instead of trying to get your happies at the expense of your friends. Only then will you be able to end the powergaming arms race and enjoy the game as it was meant to be enjoyed.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
Panda_wat said it well, but let me add on to what they wrote; the DM and the players are not enemies, they are friends, who's goal is to have, share, and spread, their fun with one another. If the DM wanted, they could just throw a tarrasque at their level 1 party. Killing with traps is no different, it is an abuse of your power as a DM, and the goal of making the game fun for your groups and players.
The exception to this is if your players want you to do your best to kill them in cool, creative, trap-y ways. But adventurers are not "pesky" and you should not "play to kill" them. You should play to make sure everyone at the table has fun, and telling other DM's to destroy their players characters that they spent hard work making is not good advice if you want that group to stick together, or any of the players in it to have fun.
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
The key question for trap design, which you haven't even addressed, is "how do I make them actually fun?" Otherwise, they basically just fill the role of land mines -- either the PCs slow down by a lot, or they take damage, and that doesn't require particularly artistic traps.
I'll share a trap that I recently ran for level 12/13 characters. I like it a lot because it's both potentially lethal and designed not to be lethal, and requires social interaction to solve.
Players, in a forge dungeon (but a cluster of rooms that they consider safe), meet ForgeHelper, a construct that they reactivate with a power pack. ForgeHelper is entirely neutral, but it does have instructions from its master.
The PCs find a large iron box with four glass plates of differing colours in blue, green, yellow and red set in the lid. It has an aura of transmutation magic. The box has 150hp and a damage threshold against attacks of 15 or less.
The box can be opened safely if first the colours are depressed in a particular order. Any other order, nothing happens. The box can be opened by any PC and is not locked.
If a PC opens the box, then they are immediately shrunk to be 2 inches tall (no saving throw) and sucked into the box, which then closes its lid immediately. Inside the box everything is dark, but there are a couple of small skeletons in there with them. The PC in the box has no idea they are small. Their Strength becomes 1 and their movement speed is 5 feet. The effect can only be removed by Remove Curse, Major Restoration, or Dispel Magic against an 8th level spell.
If the PCs attempt to smash the box, anything inside it takes the damage.
ForgeHelper knows the correct sequence, and will admit this to the PCs, but will not give up the information without being magically coerced, tricked, or a Persuasion roll of 30 or more (my group's bard is capable of this). ForgeHelper cannot be intimidated or threatened.
The character can be removed from the box, but they are still small until the magic is cured.
This is a very fun trap and we had a ball. Tell the victim/s they have to speak in a very high voice as well!
I'll begin by saying that writing in the style of Grimtooth is unfortunately unnecessary: there's enough books by Grimtooth, are appropriately sadistic and antagonistic for their time, and it gets in the way of a constructive conversation about the place of traps in 5th Edition, an edition which goes to greater lengths than any other to keep characters alive and mostly intact. Also, I highly recommend The Angry GM's article on traps for practical advice on running and building traps, the downside being Angry's writing style (which can wear thin) and you don't have the awesome illustrations from Grimtooth's readership.
1. Ideas
When you are making traps, think of themes. Your traps should have one theme that underpins them like spikes or lava. Or ya know just throw every singular last thing under the sun at them (Including sun).
I get what you're trying to achieve with the "Or ya know," but it makes this first bullet point moot. Suggesting DMs have a theme and then tell them 'or don't' isn't particularly helpful.
To be constructive I would like to ask what kinds of themes one could have? A 'Serpent Temple' is an obvious one: lots of snake pits, spike traps laced with venom, maybe some poisonous gas. A temple dedicated to a god of radiance could feature easy to see fiery runes in shadows that would be obvious if it weren't for the characters' reliance on darkvision, along with blinding light that makes it hard to see fairly obvious harmful devices.
But does there need to be a theme? If characters have a resistance to the single type of damage such as piercing or fire, what then? The same with other 'one-trick ponies' like a maze of illusions or artificial darkness or whathaveyou.
2. Play to kill, as often, you won't
Adventurers are right sneaky little derps. If you try crush them, one is gonna have a bunch of stuff to keep the roof up and buy time. Anything happens, they will try to think of a way round. So try and kill them, because you always have a chance.
I see what you're trying to do but DMs already know that the players are at their mercy. The DM need not try anything: anyone can die for any reason.
I would like to offer constructive criticism here but there's not much to be constructive with. How do you advise DMs to improv a trap going into its second phase? How many failsafes is too many?
3. Hide your triggers
You want magical triggers, or pressure plates. Why? As if a trigger is disarmed, your WHOLE trap is now a paperweight. Hide them, and stop expensive paperweights.
I would've thought the triggers would be hidden in the first place, so what now? 'Hide them more?' Going back to the DM being God Almighty, the quickest way to hide them better is to simply raise the DC.
What I would recommend instead is applying penalties to the spot checks rather than buffing the DC of the trap. I mentioned before darkvision and the shades of grey, lighting conditions impose penalties. Or maybe the light's too bright to see past clearly. Perhaps a load of triggers in plain sight, but which ones are tied to a trap (if any), and which are false?
For all its faults, the SAW franchise can provide a lot of inspiration for traps: that in order to disarm them the players may need to make a sacrifice. Fallout: New Vegas' expansion Dead Money ends with the question of what the player is willing to give for money. It could be a physical or sentimental sacrifice, from bodily harm to breaking a tenet of one's faith.
4. Take advantage of weaknesses
If someone is cocky or paranoid, make the most! If a character/person playing has a flaw that they project into the game use it, get them into situations where their flaw is going to make thing worse.
How?
5. Fire!
Get extreme, fire is your best friend. Fire does lots of damage over turns, and lava can remove about anything.
Fire's one of those elemental types that can be easily countered: water, wind, kicking some dirt and debris on it can usually halt its course. It's common and has the potential for danger, but its commonality makes it easy to bypass at later levels. The same with poison damage: it stops being scary after a while.
6. Sodium is your pal
Sodium is the single most reactive element in all existence. If it contacts with water, BAM! Give them a potion bottle full of it, chances are they are gonna be having some serious intestinal problems.
I imagine if there's a Wizard, Artificer or someone else of moderately high intelligence the party will figure that out. If my DM told me I had a vial full of something that essentially has all the properties of sea salt I'd treat it with caution and would ensure it was stoppered properly.
Components such as this and fire before it could have good applications... but as the OP the onus is on you to provide advice on how to better use them. Say the party sees the vial and decides not to take it: what then? We're back to point 2.
7. Let them do your work for you
If your characters are dangerous, demented nut jobs, give them a environment where damage is just going to make everything worse.
Such as...?
Even then people who want to play characters who are dangerous, demented nut jobs will need to find another table, I'm not running that kind of game and I don't see how they'd fare in a dungeon. That sort of character would sooner thrive in an environment where they're in control of the calamity, which wouldn't really be a dungeon.
8. Take inspiration
Read all the volume of Grimtooths Traps. Done? Read it again. Stealing is the best method for trap design.
Agreed.
9. Don't be unrealistic, but then again...
Either make your traps super nonmagical, or have it where every component is somehow magic. It pays to make a descion and stick with it in this case.
Doesn't this go against point 1, and why does it pay? Is there a case to be made for everyone in the party's strengths being used to uncover traps, and traps affecting some members more? Does the use of magic indicate how close the party is getting to treasure in a more mundane, non-magical environment?
10. Share traps with others
And here is the perfect place! Post your traps and advice here!
A pleasant note to end on. My favourite trap is the Vinegar Trap, which isn't my idea so I'm not sure if it actually works: quite simply it's a gigantic pool of vinegar and - barring its off-colour and awful smell - is perfectly harmless on its own. Anyone who goes into it will sink straight to the bottom as vinegar is an incredibly dense substance, and the party will simply not be able to swim through it. The best they can do is walk through it as fast as they can holding their breath (if only to not sting their noses) and make it to the end where there's steps. They'll also reek of vinegar at the end, which beasties will smell and either be attracted to or repulsed by (the latter especially being fun if they need to chase it for the key around its neck). Of course if one really wants to be sadistic about it, they could just not have any means to walk out of it, like removing the ladder from the swimming pool in The Sims!
This thread has the beginnings of greatness. If you can add more to your original points that would be grand.
This is a very fun trap and we had a ball. Tell the victim/s they have to speak in a very high voice as well!
I wasn't so sure about this one at first, but the magic about it is it's not just doing damage: it has the character inside the trap actually doing something other than lying on the floor dead or rubbing soreness away. There's not a whole lot they can do, I grant you, but at least the player can amuse themselves with a squeaky voice. Bring helium the next time this trap appears in your game, Sanvael!
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
First, on the sodium thing, that seems weird and arbitrary. There's no reason to assume that real world chemistry works in a world where some bat guano can become a fireball. Furthermore, there's plenty of things in the rules that can create an explosion, and no RAW for sodium (or any number of other chemicals which are just as volatile), so how would you even rule it working? In the end, it would simply be an arbitrary, homebrewed decision for the size of the explosion, and wouldn't have any resemblance to the way sodium would function, so why bother calling it sodium? And how is someone in the D&D world going to isolate a quantity of sodium, and if they did, why would they put it in a trap instead of much more useful applications? To me this seems like another example of why not to try to apply real world science to D&D.
Which brings me to a big thing the OP overlooked, imo. What is the point of the trap, and how is it set? Traps on a chest have an obvious point, protect what's inside. But that job would rule out something like a big explosion, since that would destroy whatever it was the owner was trying to protect. And it will need to have a way of disarming it from the outside since whoever put the stuff in there will want to be able to get it back out safely. Traps in a hallway also have an obvious point, protect one end of the hallway from anything coming from the other end of the hallway. But whoever set it will, presumably, need to be able to get past it themselves, so there really needs to be an off switch somewhere -- even if it's just on one end, so they can set it as they go by -- or an alternative exit.
Finally, my favorite traps are ones that are obvious. If the characters walk into a room, and realize that if they step on certain areas, there will be an explosion, now you've challenged them to find a way through the room without triggering the explosion. If it's not obvious, it plays out something like: "DM: What's everyone's passive perception? Oh, no one has over a 16? OK, dex saves as a fireball goes off. If you fail you take (rolls dice) 24 fire damage. Save for half. Anybody drop? Ok, let's move on." Or some variation of that. If you make the trap visible, you've created something the PCs can interact with instead of just a hit point tax for either forgetting to say "I check for traps" or rolling poorly when you do make the check.
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So you want to get rid of those pesky adventurers? Keep your dungeons spotless? Leave a clean scent of lemon and destruction (Other scents include pine and death)? Well this Cleaning Product, sorry, thread is for you!
1. Ideas
When you are making traps, think of themes. Your traps should have one theme that underpins them like spikes or lava. Or ya know just throw every singular last thing under the sun at them (Including sun).
2. Play to kill, as often, you won't
Adventurers are right sneaky little derps. If you try crush them, one is gonna have a bunch of stuff to keep the roof up and buy time. Anything happens, they will try to think of a way round. So try and kill them, because you always have a chance.
3. Hide your triggers
You want magical triggers, or pressure plates. Why? As if a trigger is disarmed, your WHOLE trap is now a paperweight. Hide them, and stop expensive paperweights.
4. Take advantage of weaknesses
If someone is cocky or paranoid, make the most! If a character/person playing has a flaw that they project into the game use it, get them into situations where their flaw is going to make thing worse.
5. Fire!
Get extreme, fire is your best friend. Fire does lots of damage over turns, and lava can remove about anything.
6. Sodium is your pal
Sodium is the single most reactive element in all existence. If it contacts with water, BAM! Give them a potion bottle full of it, chances are they are gonna be having some serious intestinal problems.
7. Let them do your work for you
If your characters are dangerous, demented nut jobs, give them a environment where damage is just going to make everything worse.
8. Take inspiration
Read all the volume of Grimtooths Traps. Done? Read it again. Stealing is the best method for trap design.
9. Don't be unrealistic, but then again...
Either make your traps super nonmagical, or have it where every component is somehow magic. It pays to make a descion and stick with it in this case.
10. Share traps with others
And here is the perfect place! Post your traps and advice here!
I have a PHD in traps
Your inability to see your players' beloved characters as anything other than inconveniences waiting to die is rather sad.
You shouldn't play to kill. Your monsters should want to play to kill, but YOU, the DM, should want your players to win. While it has more or less the same effect, it's a key difference in your mentality.
Give players and their characters a chance to beat your traps, and anything else you throw their way. Let them feel the joy of overcoming challenges in the game where that is their goal, instead of simply beating them all the time and making the game feel unfair. Talk to them to determine how you can all have fun, instead of trying to get your happies at the expense of your friends. Only then will you be able to end the powergaming arms race and enjoy the game as it was meant to be enjoyed.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I was writing in the grimtooths traps style geez
I have a PHD in traps
I play as well as DM, I know what it's like to lose a character, I'm not heartless
I have a PHD in traps
The key question for trap design, which you haven't even addressed, is "how do I make them actually fun?" Otherwise, they basically just fill the role of land mines -- either the PCs slow down by a lot, or they take damage, and that doesn't require particularly artistic traps.
I'll share a trap that I recently ran for level 12/13 characters. I like it a lot because it's both potentially lethal and designed not to be lethal, and requires social interaction to solve.
This is a very fun trap and we had a ball. Tell the victim/s they have to speak in a very high voice as well!
I'll begin by saying that writing in the style of Grimtooth is unfortunately unnecessary: there's enough books by Grimtooth, are appropriately sadistic and antagonistic for their time, and it gets in the way of a constructive conversation about the place of traps in 5th Edition, an edition which goes to greater lengths than any other to keep characters alive and mostly intact. Also, I highly recommend The Angry GM's article on traps for practical advice on running and building traps, the downside being Angry's writing style (which can wear thin) and you don't have the awesome illustrations from Grimtooth's readership.
I get what you're trying to achieve with the "Or ya know," but it makes this first bullet point moot. Suggesting DMs have a theme and then tell them 'or don't' isn't particularly helpful.
To be constructive I would like to ask what kinds of themes one could have? A 'Serpent Temple' is an obvious one: lots of snake pits, spike traps laced with venom, maybe some poisonous gas. A temple dedicated to a god of radiance could feature easy to see fiery runes in shadows that would be obvious if it weren't for the characters' reliance on darkvision, along with blinding light that makes it hard to see fairly obvious harmful devices.
But does there need to be a theme? If characters have a resistance to the single type of damage such as piercing or fire, what then? The same with other 'one-trick ponies' like a maze of illusions or artificial darkness or whathaveyou.
I see what you're trying to do but DMs already know that the players are at their mercy. The DM need not try anything: anyone can die for any reason.
I would like to offer constructive criticism here but there's not much to be constructive with. How do you advise DMs to improv a trap going into its second phase? How many failsafes is too many?
I would've thought the triggers would be hidden in the first place, so what now? 'Hide them more?' Going back to the DM being God Almighty, the quickest way to hide them better is to simply raise the DC.
What I would recommend instead is applying penalties to the spot checks rather than buffing the DC of the trap. I mentioned before darkvision and the shades of grey, lighting conditions impose penalties. Or maybe the light's too bright to see past clearly. Perhaps a load of triggers in plain sight, but which ones are tied to a trap (if any), and which are false?
For all its faults, the SAW franchise can provide a lot of inspiration for traps: that in order to disarm them the players may need to make a sacrifice. Fallout: New Vegas' expansion Dead Money ends with the question of what the player is willing to give for money. It could be a physical or sentimental sacrifice, from bodily harm to breaking a tenet of one's faith.
How?
Fire's one of those elemental types that can be easily countered: water, wind, kicking some dirt and debris on it can usually halt its course. It's common and has the potential for danger, but its commonality makes it easy to bypass at later levels. The same with poison damage: it stops being scary after a while.
I imagine if there's a Wizard, Artificer or someone else of moderately high intelligence the party will figure that out. If my DM told me I had a vial full of something that essentially has all the properties of sea salt I'd treat it with caution and would ensure it was stoppered properly.
Components such as this and fire before it could have good applications... but as the OP the onus is on you to provide advice on how to better use them. Say the party sees the vial and decides not to take it: what then? We're back to point 2.
Such as...?
Even then people who want to play characters who are dangerous, demented nut jobs will need to find another table, I'm not running that kind of game and I don't see how they'd fare in a dungeon. That sort of character would sooner thrive in an environment where they're in control of the calamity, which wouldn't really be a dungeon.
Agreed.
Doesn't this go against point 1, and why does it pay? Is there a case to be made for everyone in the party's strengths being used to uncover traps, and traps affecting some members more? Does the use of magic indicate how close the party is getting to treasure in a more mundane, non-magical environment?
A pleasant note to end on. My favourite trap is the Vinegar Trap, which isn't my idea so I'm not sure if it actually works: quite simply it's a gigantic pool of vinegar and - barring its off-colour and awful smell - is perfectly harmless on its own. Anyone who goes into it will sink straight to the bottom as vinegar is an incredibly dense substance, and the party will simply not be able to swim through it. The best they can do is walk through it as fast as they can holding their breath (if only to not sting their noses) and make it to the end where there's steps. They'll also reek of vinegar at the end, which beasties will smell and either be attracted to or repulsed by (the latter especially being fun if they need to chase it for the key around its neck). Of course if one really wants to be sadistic about it, they could just not have any means to walk out of it, like removing the ladder from the swimming pool in The Sims!
This thread has the beginnings of greatness. If you can add more to your original points that would be grand.
I wasn't so sure about this one at first, but the magic about it is it's not just doing damage: it has the character inside the trap actually doing something other than lying on the floor dead or rubbing soreness away. There's not a whole lot they can do, I grant you, but at least the player can amuse themselves with a squeaky voice. Bring helium the next time this trap appears in your game, Sanvael!
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
First, on the sodium thing, that seems weird and arbitrary. There's no reason to assume that real world chemistry works in a world where some bat guano can become a fireball. Furthermore, there's plenty of things in the rules that can create an explosion, and no RAW for sodium (or any number of other chemicals which are just as volatile), so how would you even rule it working? In the end, it would simply be an arbitrary, homebrewed decision for the size of the explosion, and wouldn't have any resemblance to the way sodium would function, so why bother calling it sodium? And how is someone in the D&D world going to isolate a quantity of sodium, and if they did, why would they put it in a trap instead of much more useful applications? To me this seems like another example of why not to try to apply real world science to D&D.
Which brings me to a big thing the OP overlooked, imo. What is the point of the trap, and how is it set? Traps on a chest have an obvious point, protect what's inside. But that job would rule out something like a big explosion, since that would destroy whatever it was the owner was trying to protect. And it will need to have a way of disarming it from the outside since whoever put the stuff in there will want to be able to get it back out safely. Traps in a hallway also have an obvious point, protect one end of the hallway from anything coming from the other end of the hallway. But whoever set it will, presumably, need to be able to get past it themselves, so there really needs to be an off switch somewhere -- even if it's just on one end, so they can set it as they go by -- or an alternative exit.
Finally, my favorite traps are ones that are obvious. If the characters walk into a room, and realize that if they step on certain areas, there will be an explosion, now you've challenged them to find a way through the room without triggering the explosion. If it's not obvious, it plays out something like: "DM: What's everyone's passive perception? Oh, no one has over a 16? OK, dex saves as a fireball goes off. If you fail you take (rolls dice) 24 fire damage. Save for half. Anybody drop? Ok, let's move on." Or some variation of that. If you make the trap visible, you've created something the PCs can interact with instead of just a hit point tax for either forgetting to say "I check for traps" or rolling poorly when you do make the check.