One of my favorite traps I put in my final BBEG dungeon was a series of false doors. Party knew their quarry was deeper in the dungeon, and teleportation was impossible, so through the doors it was. However, while some doors led to further corridors, a few just opened to blank walls that had massive flamethrowers or Glyphs of Warding behind them.
One of my favorite traps I put in my final BBEG dungeon was a series of false doors. Party knew their quarry was deeper in the dungeon, and teleportation was impossible, so through the doors it was. However, while some doors led to further corridors, a few just opened to blank walls that had massive flamethrowers or Glyphs of Warding behind them.
the Order of the Stick aren't too far into a dungeon that fronts a large number of doors. less a wack-a-mole with damage, and more misdirection with portals.
i wonder if it'd be "fun" to have a (relatively uncomplicated) hall-of-mirrors portal maze but then a monster appears that they would rather run from than face head on. and suddenly the portals are dumping them back to the monster, sometimes right behind or beside with only moments to decide if they'll stealth to another portal or jump back in and keep running.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
If you've done 60 floors of traps already, what are the chances we'll come up with one you haven't?
Still, for something deadly I'd go for a variety of Small Room + Damage over Time. So, Cloudkill, Incendiary Cloud, Wall spells, Blade barrier. Comboing stuff seems popular, so, like, falling into Cloudkill seems to be considered more clever than just casting it on the room, but ... meh. Dropping Gelatinous Cubes on people would also be fun - wall of force ceiling, dispel that, six dozen gelatinous cubes drop. Or any combination of the more annoying slimes and jellies.
Instead of the walls closing in - have walls of fire closing in. Like, round by round, a wall of fire moves 1 square closer. And if any player is foolish enough to try to run through, it turns out it's not moving, each is an individual casting.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
i'm certainly a fan of the dropping people/things on things/people, as long as the understood objective is 'meat grinder.' i'd feel especially too-clever if i could figure out how to get my players to wave a modified wand of Dispel Magic (cone of effect!) at something annoying but not overly deadly (like flying goblins?) only to have them accidentally deactivate one of the levitate spells holding up the corners of the bridge they're standing on. but even then, since i'm such a softy, they'd only land in thorn bushes or something. but, then again, since i don't want to be seen as going soft, there'd be an up-leveled Meenlock or similar to chase them back and forth through the thorns. the magically poisoned thorns that have them seeing illusions or misjudging dimensions of things like the width of a simple stream of running water or their distance from a rope ladder.
love that fire wall idea, by the way!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
The Doombox itself is 27 10 ft. by 10 ft. rooms arranged in a larger cube shape. Basically, it's a Rubik's Cube, but the little cubes making up the Cube are rooms with various traps. A wall of spikes that can be easily avoided? One rotation later, and now it's a much deadlier floor of spikes. You know, stuff like that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
i'm certainly a fan of the dropping people/things on things/people, as long as the understood objective is 'meat grinder.' i'd feel especially too-clever if i could figure out how to get my players to wave a modified wand of Dispel Magic (cone of effect!) at something annoying but not overly deadly (like flying goblins?) only to have them accidentally deactivate one of the levitate spells holding up the corners of the bridge they're standing on. but even then, since i'm such a softy, they'd only land in thorn bushes or something. but, then again, since i don't want to be seen as going soft, there'd be an up-leveled Meenlock or similar to chase them back and forth through the thorns. the magically poisoned thorns that have them seeing illusions or misjudging dimensions of things like the width of a simple stream of running water or their distance from a rope ladder.
My players aren't super into "meat-grinder" types of adventures, but I did send them through a "trap gauntlet" encounter once, and the ones they enjoyed were trap combinations rather than single traps:
1. In a roughly-dug-out tunnel, with tangles of roots and moss covering the floor, the party encounters an uncovered pit (this one was very very deep but it could just as easily be filled with spikes) with a party-rotted plank of wood spanning it. For players who didn't trust the sturdiness of the wood, or didn't feel confident in balancing to cross it, the pit was not too big to leap across with an Athletics check (I know RAW just uses fixed leap distances, but I house-ruled otherwise because of the terrain). The catch is that someone also hid a bunch of bear traps among the roots, moss, and dirt on the other side.
2. Later in the same encounter, a section of wooden floor was rigged to collapse, dropping characters about 4 feet into shallow water under that floor. The small amount of falling damage wasn't bad, and the characters just had to wade through it to get to the far side so getting out wasn't a problem either. The problem was the swarms of quippers in the water that were attracted to the scent of blood on anyone who'd already been hit by piercing/slashing traps -- like the bear traps by the pit -- earlier in the encounter.
3. That encounter also had a very easy-looking "series of swinging maces" obstacle to walk through. The maces were an easy DEX save, which I allowed advantage (or maybe even auto-success) for anyone who studied the pattern for a minute and took their time. The problem was the Glyph of Warding partway through, which triggered Hold Person when stepped on. Failing a WIS save gets you smacked, possibly more than once.
4. At the end of the trap gauntlet (which included the 3 above, plus several less-interesting ones), the final trap opened the far wall of the tunnel, releasing an oversized gelatinous cube, which filled the tunnel and the PCs had to run back through all the traps again while being slowly pursued. That's a creature, and not *exactly* a trap, but my group thought it was funny getting forced to sprint back through all the traps a second time. (And I like it as a variation on the classic Indiana Jones "rolling boulder" trap.)
5. Different dungeon, a long set of stairs had some steps in the middle rigged to flatten out into a ramp when stepped on, so if the lead character failed their DEX save they got to fall down the last 10-15 feet of stairs.
6. A common floor rug coated in strong adhesive can be a fun complication to add to other traps that require DEX saves or fast movement. It's not very useful by itself but it can add difficulty (and humor) to other obstacles- especially when the character's feet get tangled up and then they fall down on it.
That's all I can think of at the moment. As others have pointed out, traps are exactly as deadly as you make them, so making them interesting and fun is usually the real challenge as a DM. Maybe these will give you some ideas.
i just remembered a clever "trap" from White Plume Mountain (Tales from the Yawning Portal). just after likely acquiring a great deal of treasure there was this one powerful magic ring...
upon finding this ring it immediately told everyone in the smallish room of its many powers including detect magic, invisibility, flying, spell turning, etc. AND one Wish. the only catch was that the magic would supposedly evaporate immediately if the ring left the room without being on a character's finger and if ever it was removed after that. it was a commitment for life. the ring would do everything it promised (except grant a wish (nor fly for some reason)) while in the room. what deals would you make for a wish at, what, level 10? whose throat would you cut?
the trap was part loyalty test and part intelligence test. after a long debate the players would walk out of the room and the ring would stop functioning regardless. there was never any Wish. personally, i would have kept the spell turning and given it a berserker's curse just to keep up the ruse that maybe it was worth having on. but, no, in this story it's just worthless metal after leaving the room.
If you've done 60 floors of traps already, what are the chances we'll come up with one you haven't?
...
actually, yeah. if this is a trap thread then lets hear some of your traps! :)
haha and what's the activation? i'm imagining a panel on the wall with a sign and two buttons: "if you can read this, you're too late. press the right one and you will walk away to live a little longer." to your left a line of peasants gives shy waves of greeting. to your right a quivering tendon of some sort under tremendous pressure and stretching out into the darkness the way you were headed. "hmm."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
i'm certainly a fan of the dropping people/things on things/people, as long as the understood objective is 'meat grinder.' i'd feel especially too-clever if i could figure out how to get my players to wave a modified wand of Dispel Magic (cone of effect!) at something annoying but not overly deadly (like flying goblins?) only to have them accidentally deactivate one of the levitate spells holding up the corners of the bridge they're standing on. but even then, since i'm such a softy, they'd only land in thorn bushes or something. but, then again, since i don't want to be seen as going soft, there'd be an up-leveled Meenlock or similar to chase them back and forth through the thorns. the magically poisoned thorns that have them seeing illusions or misjudging dimensions of things like the width of a simple stream of running water or their distance from a rope ladder.
love that fire wall idea, by the way!
Thanks - and likewise. The idea of a cone shaped dispel magic is wonderful. I'd make a little show out of having the party find it earlier, explain that the wand has what seems to be a miniature central beholder eye - but also limited charges. So as to make sure they know the right timing to use it. Ha! That would be wonderful.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
A locked door prevents the party from progressing much further, but there is no key. The door can only be opened if the lock is picked, and if they fail a DC 20 Dexterity check...
Well, have you ever heard someone say their 'blood was boiling'?
Yeah...
The door casts heat metal on whoever was trying to pick the lock, specifically super-heating the iron in their blood. This is something that lasts the full duration of the spell, so the poor party member who failed the check has to endure this constant, unavoidable damage: for a total of 20d8 fire damage over the course of 1 minute. That's an average of 90 unavoidable damage, and that's at the spell's base level.
At higher spell slots, it adds an extra d8 of damage per 6 seconds, meaning a 6th level casting of the spell is a whopping 60d8 damage, with an average roll of 270 fire damage, that cannot be avoided if cast in this way.
Yeah, the whole 'super heating the iron in a person's blood' thing might be a little sketchy in terms of the spell's mechanics, but if you can get past that, then you have a deadly trap on your hands.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
eh, just boil their blood without calling it anything specific and you're plenty fine. it's not like there's a plaque to the trap artist beside each series of small holes in the wall. "why, this artist was a fraud! boiling blood? i feel rather more like my bones are on fire and, as i die, i scoff. two out of five skulls, would not die again." but, this metal heating reminds me of another trap in White Plume Mountain (the sale is still going, fyi!) and leads me to something i like most about my favorite traps: they're consensual. what i mean is, i like traps where you don't just damage the characters and say "hah, you on fire!" instead, you ask "now that you're burned a little, who is brave enough to stand the longest in this fire?" and someone volunteers.
so, what if everyone within 40ft of the door falls under something similar to the heat metal spell but maybe it's a combination lock with two big, slow wheels of numbers. someone will have to stand in the danger zone, listen closely, and spin the painfully slow wheels. except they'll find that they can't do the spinning and listening at the same time. one or two people will have to turn the wheels while someone else listens. and they'll all have to be completely unarmed while they do it or else in immense pain. EDIT: after some thought, the caltrops within five feet under the mechanism are necessary. i'd even go so far as to say that if the players don't decide to stand on metal to avoid the minor annoyance of the spikes then those too are made of metal and heat up as well. just for continuity, maybe there was a creature earlier who wore clicky-clacky wooden shoes with long "teeth" under them (like japanese geta) and that allows them to stand over the spikes (without metal) while they turn knobs. the player very likely didn't take the shoes but maybe (with a successful intelligence check) someone might make the connection and slap their forehead.
certain additional complications i'd flirt with would be... maybe a longer hall or a climbing obstacle which makes it difficult to traverse the heat-metal area quickly. perhaps they found this by bashing open one of the many regular air vents in the wall and climbing to find this maintenance door and had to block or break a fan to proceed and only as they work does it become obvious this fan was preventing the buildup of itchy acidic gas. or perhaps smoke from elsewhere now fills the top half of this tunnel if they don't crawl (reduced movement speed means more slower progress when attempting to travel). perhaps an ooze might flow out of the vent behind the workers and envelop their pile of cast off armor and weapons. maybe if the party was split, the left behind guard would find themselves facing alone something that previously was indistinguishable from rock or statue (gargoyle or hungry xorn?). maybe it turns out this isn't a door but rather a power panel which they don't realize until they go back to their pile of armor has turned on the heat-metal feature all along the rest of tunnel in 100ft both ways (better catch it before your mail shirt sets that haversack on fire!). but if it is a door, what's on the other side: a blast of painfully freezing air? additional heat-metal cursed hallway and they'll soon find that pulling their equipment behind them with a rope only sets the rope on fire? perhaps it reveals a hallway with an arrow trap at the end encouraging them to flee and return with a (hot!) metal shield? etc, etc, etc...
...somehow i can't just leave things at "whoops, you take unavoidable damage." there has to be at least the illusion that this could have been circumvented or avoided but they were careless. the 'boob' in 'booby trap.'
If you've done 60 floors of traps already, what are the chances we'll come up with one you haven't?
...
actually, yeah. if this is a trap thread then lets hear some of your traps! :)
haha and what's the activation? i'm imagining a panel on the wall with a sign and two buttons: "if you can read this, you're too late. press the right one and you will walk away to live a little longer." to your left a line of peasants gives shy waves of greeting. to your right a quivering tendon of some sort under tremendous pressure and stretching out into the darkness the way you were headed. "hmm."
There's a third party book called "The Game Master's book of Traps, Puzzles and Dungeons" by Jeff Ashworth. It contains some pretty brutal traps that might be worth a look in your case.
Have you got 3 billion spare peasants? Take one sword of kas and pass down the line. 180 BILLION miles per second.
The funny thing about this is that ... it's stop motion. Yes, it will travel 180 billion miles in a second. But, it will do so in stop motion. It will travel instantly from one peasant to the next, but then stop. Then travel instantly to the next. It will arrive in the hands of the final peasant with zero momentum. He can then throw it as an improvised weapon - unless he just so happens to be proficient in .. whatever type of sword Kas' is.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I've run two particularly dangerous traps before, and they went down very well.
The first was a puzzle room with a time limit. The party stepped through a door to find themselves inside a room, which had one wall missing, replaced with unbreakable glass which couldn't be teleported through. The wall opposite the glass had an oil painting of the same room, with a figure stood in it. The glass wall was a window to the same room again, but much larger. In this huge room, the opposite wall was covered in paintings of the room, but in each there were renditions of people, seemingly screaming, or slumped in the corner, or frozen mid-motion, or painted as if they were banging on the glass.
The room is a trap, which requires the party to assume the stance of the character in the picture on their wall, whilst wearing the items he is wearing, which can be found around the room. The trap activates at Initiative 20, and slowly turns the party into a painting. Depending on the number of adventurers, adjust the time - a lower amount of turns if there are more party members, and more turns if there are less. After so many turns, they are frozen in place.
The players found it very cool when they walked in, and when I started narrating that their skin and clothes feel oily, and they find themselves able to paint with their fingers, because they are made of paint, they started to connect the dots, then freaked out. It was very fun, and they escaped in the nick of time!
The second cool trap/puzzle I created was a tilting room with a heavy metal statue in the middle which comes to life. Fighting the statue is pointless, but if it moves, the floor dips and the various doors open to reveal levers. I will definitely be running it again!
Thirdly is a very creepy monster I made, which will freak them out as they throw more and more at it. Just remove the radiant damage vulnerability and have it immune to all damage, give it immutable form, and make it immune to being moved, and there's a guarantee that not only does one of them drop, but everyone doesn't trust them again after they recover. Chuck it in any trap to add major tension!
I am curious as to how you're going about this competition with your fellow DM, seeing as (as others have said) you have no restrictions, and can just say "you all die". I do think a dungeon-building competition between DMs would be a very good thing t odo, with a group of adventurers set to try and push through!
One of my favorite traps I put in my final BBEG dungeon was a series of false doors. Party knew their quarry was deeper in the dungeon, and teleportation was impossible, so through the doors it was. However, while some doors led to further corridors, a few just opened to blank walls that had massive flamethrowers or Glyphs of Warding behind them.
the Order of the Stick aren't too far into a dungeon that fronts a large number of doors. less a wack-a-mole with damage, and more misdirection with portals.
i wonder if it'd be "fun" to have a (relatively uncomplicated) hall-of-mirrors portal maze but then a monster appears that they would rather run from than face head on. and suddenly the portals are dumping them back to the monster, sometimes right behind or beside with only moments to decide if they'll stealth to another portal or jump back in and keep running.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
This is brill, thx
I have a PHD in traps
If you've done 60 floors of traps already, what are the chances we'll come up with one you haven't?
Still, for something deadly I'd go for a variety of Small Room + Damage over Time. So, Cloudkill, Incendiary Cloud, Wall spells, Blade barrier. Comboing stuff seems popular, so, like, falling into Cloudkill seems to be considered more clever than just casting it on the room, but ... meh. Dropping Gelatinous Cubes on people would also be fun - wall of force ceiling, dispel that, six dozen gelatinous cubes drop. Or any combination of the more annoying slimes and jellies.
Instead of the walls closing in - have walls of fire closing in. Like, round by round, a wall of fire moves 1 square closer. And if any player is foolish enough to try to run through, it turns out it's not moving, each is an individual casting.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
actually, yeah. if this is a trap thread then lets hear some of your traps! :)
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
i'm certainly a fan of the dropping people/things on things/people, as long as the understood objective is 'meat grinder.' i'd feel especially too-clever if i could figure out how to get my players to wave a modified wand of Dispel Magic (cone of effect!) at something annoying but not overly deadly (like flying goblins?) only to have them accidentally deactivate one of the levitate spells holding up the corners of the bridge they're standing on. but even then, since i'm such a softy, they'd only land in thorn bushes or something. but, then again, since i don't want to be seen as going soft, there'd be an up-leveled Meenlock or similar to chase them back and forth through the thorns. the magically poisoned thorns that have them seeing illusions or misjudging dimensions of things like the width of a simple stream of running water or their distance from a rope ladder.
love that fire wall idea, by the way!
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Here's an idea: Rubix's Enigmatic Doombox.
The Doombox itself is 27 10 ft. by 10 ft. rooms arranged in a larger cube shape. Basically, it's a Rubik's Cube, but the little cubes making up the Cube are rooms with various traps. A wall of spikes that can be easily avoided? One rotation later, and now it's a much deadlier floor of spikes. You know, stuff like that.
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
1 ton log, VERY long rubber band. To work out the damage, use this equation: 100,000g * 100mph = 100,000,00n
Have you got 3 billion spare peasants? Take one sword of kas and pass down the line. 180 BILLION miles per second.
You could tell I was HIDEOUSLY bored
I have a PHD in traps
Par excellence
I have a PHD in traps
My players aren't super into "meat-grinder" types of adventures, but I did send them through a "trap gauntlet" encounter once, and the ones they enjoyed were trap combinations rather than single traps:
1. In a roughly-dug-out tunnel, with tangles of roots and moss covering the floor, the party encounters an uncovered pit (this one was very very deep but it could just as easily be filled with spikes) with a party-rotted plank of wood spanning it. For players who didn't trust the sturdiness of the wood, or didn't feel confident in balancing to cross it, the pit was not too big to leap across with an Athletics check (I know RAW just uses fixed leap distances, but I house-ruled otherwise because of the terrain). The catch is that someone also hid a bunch of bear traps among the roots, moss, and dirt on the other side.
2. Later in the same encounter, a section of wooden floor was rigged to collapse, dropping characters about 4 feet into shallow water under that floor. The small amount of falling damage wasn't bad, and the characters just had to wade through it to get to the far side so getting out wasn't a problem either. The problem was the swarms of quippers in the water that were attracted to the scent of blood on anyone who'd already been hit by piercing/slashing traps -- like the bear traps by the pit -- earlier in the encounter.
3. That encounter also had a very easy-looking "series of swinging maces" obstacle to walk through. The maces were an easy DEX save, which I allowed advantage (or maybe even auto-success) for anyone who studied the pattern for a minute and took their time. The problem was the Glyph of Warding partway through, which triggered Hold Person when stepped on. Failing a WIS save gets you smacked, possibly more than once.
4. At the end of the trap gauntlet (which included the 3 above, plus several less-interesting ones), the final trap opened the far wall of the tunnel, releasing an oversized gelatinous cube, which filled the tunnel and the PCs had to run back through all the traps again while being slowly pursued. That's a creature, and not *exactly* a trap, but my group thought it was funny getting forced to sprint back through all the traps a second time. (And I like it as a variation on the classic Indiana Jones "rolling boulder" trap.)
5. Different dungeon, a long set of stairs had some steps in the middle rigged to flatten out into a ramp when stepped on, so if the lead character failed their DEX save they got to fall down the last 10-15 feet of stairs.
6. A common floor rug coated in strong adhesive can be a fun complication to add to other traps that require DEX saves or fast movement. It's not very useful by itself but it can add difficulty (and humor) to other obstacles- especially when the character's feet get tangled up and then they fall down on it.
That's all I can think of at the moment. As others have pointed out, traps are exactly as deadly as you make them, so making them interesting and fun is usually the real challenge as a DM. Maybe these will give you some ideas.
i just remembered a clever "trap" from White Plume Mountain (Tales from the Yawning Portal). just after likely acquiring a great deal of treasure there was this one powerful magic ring...
upon finding this ring it immediately told everyone in the smallish room of its many powers including detect magic, invisibility, flying, spell turning, etc. AND one Wish. the only catch was that the magic would supposedly evaporate immediately if the ring left the room without being on a character's finger and if ever it was removed after that. it was a commitment for life. the ring would do everything it promised (except grant a wish (nor fly for some reason)) while in the room. what deals would you make for a wish at, what, level 10? whose throat would you cut?
the trap was part loyalty test and part intelligence test. after a long debate the players would walk out of the room and the ring would stop functioning regardless. there was never any Wish. personally, i would have kept the spell turning and given it a berserker's curse just to keep up the ruse that maybe it was worth having on. but, no, in this story it's just worthless metal after leaving the room.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
haha and what's the activation? i'm imagining a panel on the wall with a sign and two buttons: "if you can read this, you're too late. press the right one and you will walk away to live a little longer." to your left a line of peasants gives shy waves of greeting. to your right a quivering tendon of some sort under tremendous pressure and stretching out into the darkness the way you were headed. "hmm."
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Thanks - and likewise. The idea of a cone shaped dispel magic is wonderful. I'd make a little show out of having the party find it earlier, explain that the wand has what seems to be a miniature central beholder eye - but also limited charges. So as to make sure they know the right timing to use it. Ha! That would be wonderful.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Here's another idea:
A locked door prevents the party from progressing much further, but there is no key. The door can only be opened if the lock is picked, and if they fail a DC 20 Dexterity check...
Well, have you ever heard someone say their 'blood was boiling'?
Yeah...
The door casts heat metal on whoever was trying to pick the lock, specifically super-heating the iron in their blood. This is something that lasts the full duration of the spell, so the poor party member who failed the check has to endure this constant, unavoidable damage: for a total of 20d8 fire damage over the course of 1 minute. That's an average of 90 unavoidable damage, and that's at the spell's base level.
At higher spell slots, it adds an extra d8 of damage per 6 seconds, meaning a 6th level casting of the spell is a whopping 60d8 damage, with an average roll of 270 fire damage, that cannot be avoided if cast in this way.
Yeah, the whole 'super heating the iron in a person's blood' thing might be a little sketchy in terms of the spell's mechanics, but if you can get past that, then you have a deadly trap on your hands.
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
eh, just boil their blood without calling it anything specific and you're plenty fine. it's not like there's a plaque to the trap artist beside each series of small holes in the wall. "why, this artist was a fraud! boiling blood? i feel rather more like my bones are on fire and, as i die, i scoff. two out of five skulls, would not die again." but, this metal heating reminds me of another trap in White Plume Mountain (the sale is still going, fyi!) and leads me to something i like most about my favorite traps: they're consensual. what i mean is, i like traps where you don't just damage the characters and say "hah, you on fire!" instead, you ask "now that you're burned a little, who is brave enough to stand the longest in this fire?" and someone volunteers.
so, what if everyone within 40ft of the door falls under something similar to the heat metal spell but maybe it's a combination lock with two big, slow wheels of numbers. someone will have to stand in the danger zone, listen closely, and spin the painfully slow wheels. except they'll find that they can't do the spinning and listening at the same time. one or two people will have to turn the wheels while someone else listens. and they'll all have to be completely unarmed while they do it or else in immense pain. EDIT: after some thought, the caltrops within five feet under the mechanism are necessary. i'd even go so far as to say that if the players don't decide to stand on metal to avoid the minor annoyance of the spikes then those too are made of metal and heat up as well. just for continuity, maybe there was a creature earlier who wore clicky-clacky wooden shoes with long "teeth" under them (like japanese geta) and that allows them to stand over the spikes (without metal) while they turn knobs. the player very likely didn't take the shoes but maybe (with a successful intelligence check) someone might make the connection and slap their forehead.
certain additional complications i'd flirt with would be... maybe a longer hall or a climbing obstacle which makes it difficult to traverse the heat-metal area quickly. perhaps they found this by bashing open one of the many regular air vents in the wall and climbing to find this maintenance door and had to block or break a fan to proceed and only as they work does it become obvious this fan was preventing the buildup of itchy acidic gas. or perhaps smoke from elsewhere now fills the top half of this tunnel if they don't crawl (reduced movement speed means more slower progress when attempting to travel). perhaps an ooze might flow out of the vent behind the workers and envelop their pile of cast off armor and weapons. maybe if the party was split, the left behind guard would find themselves facing alone something that previously was indistinguishable from rock or statue (gargoyle or hungry xorn?). maybe it turns out this isn't a door but rather a power panel which they don't realize until they go back to their pile of armor has turned on the heat-metal feature all along the rest of tunnel in 100ft both ways (better catch it before your mail shirt sets that haversack on fire!). but if it is a door, what's on the other side: a blast of painfully freezing air? additional heat-metal cursed hallway and they'll soon find that pulling their equipment behind them with a rope only sets the rope on fire? perhaps it reveals a hallway with an arrow trap at the end encouraging them to flee and return with a (hot!) metal shield? etc, etc, etc...
...somehow i can't just leave things at "whoops, you take unavoidable damage." there has to be at least the illusion that this could have been circumvented or avoided but they were careless. the 'boob' in 'booby trap.'
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I love this
I have a PHD in traps
Most brilliant thing I've ever read, hands down
I have a PHD in traps
There's a third party book called "The Game Master's book of Traps, Puzzles and Dungeons" by Jeff Ashworth. It contains some pretty brutal traps that might be worth a look in your case.
The funny thing about this is that ... it's stop motion. Yes, it will travel 180 billion miles in a second. But, it will do so in stop motion. It will travel instantly from one peasant to the next, but then stop. Then travel instantly to the next. It will arrive in the hands of the final peasant with zero momentum. He can then throw it as an improvised weapon - unless he just so happens to be proficient in .. whatever type of sword Kas' is.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I've run two particularly dangerous traps before, and they went down very well.
The first was a puzzle room with a time limit. The party stepped through a door to find themselves inside a room, which had one wall missing, replaced with unbreakable glass which couldn't be teleported through. The wall opposite the glass had an oil painting of the same room, with a figure stood in it. The glass wall was a window to the same room again, but much larger. In this huge room, the opposite wall was covered in paintings of the room, but in each there were renditions of people, seemingly screaming, or slumped in the corner, or frozen mid-motion, or painted as if they were banging on the glass.
The room is a trap, which requires the party to assume the stance of the character in the picture on their wall, whilst wearing the items he is wearing, which can be found around the room. The trap activates at Initiative 20, and slowly turns the party into a painting. Depending on the number of adventurers, adjust the time - a lower amount of turns if there are more party members, and more turns if there are less. After so many turns, they are frozen in place.
The players found it very cool when they walked in, and when I started narrating that their skin and clothes feel oily, and they find themselves able to paint with their fingers, because they are made of paint, they started to connect the dots, then freaked out. It was very fun, and they escaped in the nick of time!
The second cool trap/puzzle I created was a tilting room with a heavy metal statue in the middle which comes to life. Fighting the statue is pointless, but if it moves, the floor dips and the various doors open to reveal levers. I will definitely be running it again!
Thirdly is a very creepy monster I made, which will freak them out as they throw more and more at it. Just remove the radiant damage vulnerability and have it immune to all damage, give it immutable form, and make it immune to being moved, and there's a guarantee that not only does one of them drop, but everyone doesn't trust them again after they recover. Chuck it in any trap to add major tension!
Shadowstalkers
I am curious as to how you're going about this competition with your fellow DM, seeing as (as others have said) you have no restrictions, and can just say "you all die". I do think a dungeon-building competition between DMs would be a very good thing t odo, with a group of adventurers set to try and push through!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!