Next session my party should be heading into a blue dragons lair to recover an artifact. The lair is inhabited and partially built by kobolds who asct as the dragons servants. The party is lvl 9 so kobolds themselves will be no worry, but I want to fill this lair to the brim with as many creative and fun traps as humanly possible to turn kobolds from low cr cannon fodder into an army of mad geniuses.

I was wondering if any of you have made kobold traps in the past or have any generally creative trap ideas. Any help would be really appreciated!

Quote from RossPott >>

Next session my party should be heading into a blue dragons lair to recover an artifact. The lair is inhabited and partially built by kobolds who asct as the dragons servants. The party is lvl 9 so kobolds themselves will be no worry, but I want to fill this lair to the brim with as many creative and fun traps as humanly possible to turn kobolds from low cr cannon fodder into an army of mad geniuses.

I was wondering if any of you have made kobold traps in the past or have any generally creative trap ideas. Any help would be really appreciated!

 Heres an idea: A pit. Full of bugs. The floor is slippery with grease causing the players to slip into the pit.

Quote from Smokehorn_knight_of_Cats >>

Quote from RossPott >>

Next session my party should be heading into a blue dragons lair to recover an artifact. The lair is inhabited and partially built by kobolds who asct as the dragons servants. The party is lvl 9 so kobolds themselves will be no worry, but I want to fill this lair to the brim with as many creative and fun traps as humanly possible to turn kobolds from low cr cannon fodder into an army of mad geniuses.

I was wondering if any of you have made kobold traps in the past or have any generally creative trap ideas. Any help would be really appreciated!

 Heres an idea: A pit. Full of bugs. The floor is slippery with grease causing the players to slip into the pit.

Replace the insects with Green Slime...or a Gelatinous Cube or two....not that I did that to a party of level 6 pc's, nor did i place the pit down a very long and very narrow (5ft wide by 5ft high) passage but hilarity ensued.

Edit: I am a big fan of the koblod inventor monster from VOlo's guide so, using that for inspiration,  you could also have:

Dire Skunk pen: a koblod is raising Skunks of truly monstrous size and thei skunk musk is akin to a stinking clud.

Alchemical Acid Pool: the kobolds have been stockpilling acid in a crater, it looks like normal water.

Rot Grub Cave: looking and smelling much like a cave where hundreds of bats are nesting, the cave floor is covered by swarms of rot grubs.

Google "Tuckers' Kobolds."  Is the lair occupied by the dragon?  The kobolds will have more than one way in or out, so they'll just bury the main entrance in a cave-in, if they can. Then try to snipe at the characters outside while they try to find the secret entrance.  This is especially true of a blue dragon's lair (see the Monster Manual).  

Find chokepoints on the map where the kobolds can make barricades from rubble, light them on fire and use them as cover from which to shoot at the players from half cover.  Spellcasters, healers, people carrying light sources and people giving orders are the main targets.  If possible, set up the barricades so that they can be used to kettle the players towards a natural obstacle, like a chasm or underground river; or one of the sinkholes that blue dragon lairs are known for.  If you can get a bunch of players feeling harassed enough, you can run them into a sinkhole and then the characters are exposed to fire from all sides from above.  Heck, just collapse a tunnel ceiling on top of a sinkhole, then clobber the characters as they individually dig their way out.

They could use a "come on" to lure party members into a trap.  The players chase a few of the kobolds around a blind corner and catch a faceful of the dragon's breath weapon.

Maybe give them a pet ankheg and see if it can grab someone by the ankle during a moment of confusion and separate them from the party by dragging them off into their little side tunnels.

If the blue dragon engages with the party physically, every kobold attacks spell casters with advantage.

Oh heck yes, my players still give me crap for this one. The characters discover a bag of wooden O's (a DC 20 investigation check reveals an odd smoky smell about them), then come upon a mechanical 3x3 grid with a red wooden X in one square: a tic-tac-toe board. (I have the actual board at home, but you could do it on paper.) The characters play tic-tac-toe, and the kobolds manipulate the board to add red X's, but they play to lose. If there are ever three O's in a row, the board explodes, and the kobolds laugh hysterically from the next room.

Kobolds will use whatever they have handy to make their traps. Soft ground? Pit trap. Loose ceiling? Rocks fall. Local insects? Encourage them. Slimes around? Use them. Underground waterway in the vicinity?That could be a trap too.

The thing to remember about Kobold traps however, is that they are not typically of the best construction. That makes them fairly low DC to find them. One way around that is to have those clever rascals make the rest of the dungeon look the same. That way the DC to find them stays the same as normal traps elsewhere. But be prepared for the party to end up doing one of two things:

1. Decide to blunder onward and hit every trap in the place.
2. Spend an inordinate amount of time checking every inch of the walls, ceiling and floor with a 10-foot Pole, resulting in that dungeoncrawl actually becoming a crawl.

Thanks to all of you there's a ton of awesome stuff in here to give my players a proper headache

Remember that Kobold traps will be avoidable by a 2' tall creature and designed to affect medium ones. This isn't exactly a trap, but fill passages with sand the dragon can burrow through and the kobolds can use smaller tunnels the PCs can't enter.

I have a fun trap that I really want to use against my party eventually.

Burning Tunnel Trap

This trap is single use, and it requires a confined tunnel of at least 60 feet in length. The basic premise of this trap is to set a hallway on fire, damaging the entire party and causing them to plummet into the pit below while the trap operator remains unharmed. The trap is accomplished by replacing current walls of a corridor or tunnel with walls made of hard, dry wood. These wooden walls are camouflaged to look like the walls of the rest of the dungeon they are in. The DC to discover that the walls are wooden is determined by using the Trap Save DCs and Attack Bonuses table in the DMG. A single creature can operate the trap from the opposite side of one of the walls. When the party gets to the midway point of the wooden section of the hallway, the operator activates the trap by striking their side of the wall with a flint or igniting it using a torch or spell. The wall immediately bursts into flames. The party should roll initiative at this time. The trap itself activates on initiative count 20, and does fire damage equal to half the amount determined by the Damage Severity by Level table in the DMG. The following turn, on initiative count 20 the trap deals the same amount of fire damage, and the floor gives way, plunging the party into the pit that lay beneath the tunnel. The depth of the pit should be low enough that the characters survive the fall, yet deep enough that they can’t escape easily.

This sounds awesome I'll definitely throw it at them

Quote from Thauraeln_The_Bold >>

I have a fun trap that I really want to use against my party eventually.

Burning Tunnel Trap

This trap is single use, and it requires a confined tunnel of at least 60 feet in length. The basic premise of this trap is to set a hallway on fire, damaging the entire party and causing them to plummet into the pit below while the trap operator remains unharmed. The trap is accomplished by replacing current walls of a corridor or tunnel with walls made of hard, dry wood. These wooden walls are camouflaged to look like the walls of the rest of the dungeon they are in. The DC to discover that the walls are wooden is determined by using the Trap Save DCs and Attack Bonuses table in the DMG. A single creature can operate the trap from the opposite side of one of the walls. When the party gets to the midway point of the wooden section of the hallway, the operator activates the trap by striking their side of the wall with a flint or igniting it using a torch or spell. The wall immediately bursts into flames. The party should roll initiative at this time. The trap itself activates on initiative count 20, and does fire damage equal to half the amount determined by the Damage Severity by Level table in the DMG. The following turn, on initiative count 20 the trap deals the same amount of fire damage, and the floor gives way, plunging the party into the pit that lay beneath the tunnel. The depth of the pit should be low enough that the characters survive the fall, yet deep enough that they can’t escape easily.

I'd have the fire only weaken the floor so that the characters fall through, because as I mentioned in my first post, most traps are designed so that kobolds can ignore them. It's helpful if you have a bait kobold(Although the only reason I can think of for the kobold's survival being important is that the bait is a kobold scale sorcerer who ignites the hall.) in the center of the hallway.

A spiked pit trap. But with 2 or 3 giant scorpion stingers at the bottom instead of spikes (use the damage of the sting from the giant scorpion stat block, times the number of stingers, and let the PC make a DC 14 dexterity saving throw, taking half the damage on a success). And when it’s triggered, a net of 4 or 5 giant scorpions is dropped into the pit. While this is happening, have a dozen or so kobolds pelt the character in the pit with slingstones, gaining Pack Tactics advantage, thanks to the scorpions.  This will get the attention of any level 9 character. If you feel this is too mean, only use 3 giant scorpions instead of 4 or 5. 

EDIT: ensure that it’s a fighter, barbarian, or paladin type character who has A LOT of hit points that falls in. 

Quote from legolasgreenleaf333 >>

A spiked pit trap. But with 2 or 3 giant scorpion stingers at the bottom instead of spikes (use the damage of the sting from the giant scorpion stat block, times the number of stingers, and let the PC make a DC 14 dexterity saving throw, taking half the damage on a success). And when it’s triggered, a net of 4 or 5 giant scorpions is dropped into the pit. While this is happening, have a dozen or so kobolds pelt the character in the pit with slingstones, gaining Pack Tactics advantage, thanks to the scorpions.  This will get the attention of any level 9 character. If you feel this is too mean, only use 3 giant scorpions instead of 4 or 5. 

EDIT: only use this on a fighter, barbarian, or paladin type character who has A LOT of hit points.

 Unfortunately I'm working with a wizard, a high ac cleric and a monk with the mobile feat, so maybe a couple less scorpions... but I definitely like where your heads at

I played through an Adventure League game in a Kobold cave that involved a few traps.

The first and most obvious one... a wall with holes in it that they shoot blow darts through as the party makes their way through the room.

Secondly they had a treasure chest that was just straight up full of bees. Honestly... just stuffing random things full of bees is a solid trap.

The one that sticks out most in my mind was a thin, low-ceilinged hallway filled with muddy water (but still had enough air space for a small creature to walk through and breathe)... and which had a ton of caltrops at the bottom. So anyone who walked through slowly could essentially feel with their feet and avoid the caltrops, but anyone who rushed through or didn't realize what was down there would step on the caltrops, and suffer the damage and speed reduction that implies.

As the party descends the gently sloping corridor that turns to the right they begin to smell a foul odor like a dead animal or something.  <Roll passive perception - on a success the party notices the ceiling is suddenly much higher and sloping down much more rapidly to restore the passageway to five feet in height> <If the party attempts to investigate further they realize a team of two or three kobolds is waiting on a ledge above them to spring a trap>  <If the party proceeds the kobolds spring the trap by dumping a large iron pot full of liquid animal fat down on the party into the corridor floor that slopes down and away.  The floor becomes slick.  The kobolds then toss a lit torch down on the party and the animal fat catches fire burning any member of the party for 1d4 damage each round they are in the range of the fire.  If the party attempts to go uphill back where they came from they have a DC15 acrobatics check to stay on their feet each round they more at more than half-speed.  If they fail they become prone and lose the rest of their movement for that turn, and the PC behind them (downhill from them) needs to make their next check as a DC 20 check.>  If the PCs attempt to go forward, the animal fat is only able to cover the next 60 feet of the corridor and they may escape it.  If they attempt to move forward (downhill) at more than normal speed they must follow the DC15 acrobatics check as well.>  Meanwhile the two kobolds fire short bows at the party until they begin to think the party is able to fight back properly, at which time they retreat.

All this talk of Kobolds, traps and slopes has reminded me of the original Donkey Kong acade game. I can see a team of Kobolds at the top of a shaft with angled platforms and ladders dotting the way up. The party start to climb the ladders only for the Kobolds to start rolling barrels down the platforms.....

i've now got a new monster to use for my kobold lair thank you (kobold inventer)

Just always think of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, if you want to harass your players the PCs with traps.

Quote from RossPott >>

Next session my party should be heading into a blue dragons lair to recover an artifact. The lair is inhabited and partially built by kobolds who asct as the dragons servants. The party is lvl 9 so kobolds themselves will be no worry, but I want to fill this lair to the brim with as many creative and fun traps as humanly possible to turn kobolds from low cr cannon fodder into an army of mad geniuses.

I was wondering if any of you have made kobold traps in the past or have any generally creative trap ideas. Any help would be really appreciated!

When it's kobolds alone I often advocate grungy traps like poisoned caltrops.  However because they are with a dragon I think its a better idea to go a bit more high magic with them and have them make use of the dragons power and resources.  


I like to look at lair actions for that.  In particular these 3 make good jump offs for traps 

• Lightning arcs, forming a 5-foot-wide line between two of the lair’s solid surfaces that the dragon can see. They must be within 120 feet of the dragon and 120 feet of each other. Each creature in that line must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or take 10 (3d6) lightning damage.

• Sudden Sinkhole. The dragon chooses a point on the ground that it can see within 120 feet of it. A 5-foot-radius, 20-foot-deep pit forms centered on that point. A creature on the ground above where the pit formed must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a creature falls to the bottom of the pit, taking 7 (2d6) bludgeoning damage and landing prone. On a successful save, a creature moves to the nearest unoccupied space instead of falling in the pit.

• Misleading Mirage. Until initiative count 20 on the next round, at each intersection or branching passage in the lair, a creature other than the dragon has a 50 percent chance of going in a different direction from the direction it intends.

You can have kobolds 

• Electrify traps with lodestones charged by the dragons power 
• Use  dragon generated mirages to conceal traps 
• Have entire rooms that suddenly become sink holes 

Other ideas  to play off the dragon 

• weaponizing magic items like having a broken wand that explodes 
• smashing lightning glass to trigger traps or using it to create difficult or dangerous terrain