Need some cool traps for a wizards tower built into the femur of a dead god that is filled with traps, puzzles, and extra planar monsters. Players are at level 2, and I would like to include some sort of puzzle that requires someone to be in the astral plane and the material world.
Spells like plane shift require components attuned to the plane if existence, so an item in the tower could be required to travel to the astral plane and the puzzle could involve getting the item to travel to the astral plane?
blink technically is the ethereal realm but a puzzle could change it to the astral plane. It involves randomly jumping between planes so maybe there’s an item in the astral plane they require but have to navigate the blinking to get it. Alternatively a trap/puzzle triggers a mass blink affect and chucks the party to the astral plane, and the party need to solve the puzzle/escape the trap to stop the blinking affect and escape
sine dead gods exists in the astral plane perhaps there’s a trap that jumps the party to another body part in the astral sea or a derelict spelljammer that was involved in the death of the god, perhaps the ship belongs to the wizard who’s tower it is? Or perhaps the wizard uses the tower as a waypoint to the astral sea and travels the astral sea using a spelljammer so various important belongings could be kept on the ship?
In my game I have a Wild Magic Sorcerer and in order to disable some artifacts or traps I will have her basically trigger her wild magic surge. It has lead to a lot of interesting and funny moments. So I think a Wild Magic Surge traps would be fun.
As far as an extra planar puzzle how about objects on each plane that need to be destroyed at the same time (or same combat round) like a giant crystal. They could even have different damage immunities. The crystal on the material plane can only be damaged with magic and the crystal on the astral plane can only be damaged with physical attacks.
You could always end up with some kind of two worlds puzzle. Where there are two versions of the same room which effect each other and they need to alter one or the other to make it passable. This kind of game design pops up in video games some times. Its a classic do actions in x order style thing but you split it across the room and it's astral projection.
You could always end up with some kind of two worlds puzzle. Where there are two versions of the same room which effect each other and they need to alter one or the other to make it passable. This kind of game design pops up in video games some times. Its a classic do actions in x order style thing but you split it across the room and it's astral projection.
i like this puzzle especially if some astral plane spelljamming is happening just for the gravity hijinks. a hallway splits left and right, one lit blue and the other lit red, each path curving away at an odd angle. they could be depicted easily on a tabletop square grid as being beside each other but mirrors of one another. in, uh, "reality" they share a floor. then give them a mirror-and-laser puzzle where moving mirror prism B in one room moves mirror prism B in the other room correspondingly. then you stick some walls in one that aren't in the other so the two sides have to work together. to better simulate the communications disconnect between the two maybe there's a silence spell cast in both rooms... AND on your players. see what they can come up with just bumping their characters along for a bit.
if you need a twist, add a little clear marker to the map in places. let it wander around and follow people to emphasize that it's like a shadow on the floor only showing up on one map and the observing players don't know if it's friendly or what. however, keep track of where it is in relation to the other room because when the "floor shadow" in the blue room, for instance, invisibly crosses the space of a player in the red room then the red room player suffers radiant damage or something. maybe one goal of the laser puzzle is to corral several of these blips into a square of runes and then run the laser past them like a fence. or maybe once they cross into the square they're stuck and the laser is powered-up for a few rounds.
alternatively, if you have access to the Rime of the Frostmaiden maybe check out the Black Cabin quest. It's got exploration, traps that are more like accidents, a potentially jaw-dropping method of getting characters to the ethereal plane, and then a literal miracle rewind finish.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
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What if you just had an octagonal room where every wall is a portal, and one will take you to a higher level , but all the other ones will lead you to weird new rooms or traps ( sorta like the department of mysteries from the 5th Harry Potter book. You could even stack them! Some ideas of where they could take you is into a giant bottomless pit where they can fall forever with a falling portal beneath them that they have to find a way to get to ( you could even put stuff like past adventurers who fell into the same trap.) or a room where skeletons infinitely spawn into that has a thing you need to do to stop it
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“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbithole, and that means comfort.”
A potentially deadly trap - A room of mirrors that creates a duplicate of each party member that they must fight. This can result in a TPK, so use with caution, but it's fun to see what tactics the players use vs the DM with their own character.
A variation of the trap door - When a PC falls through, they hit a floor angled at 45 degrees, covered with an anti friction substance/spell (Like grease). As the PC slides down, iron gates fall and block any attempt at accent or decent. After about 60 feet, the PC is deposited into a dimly lit 10 x 10 room filled with acid up to the waist and a few skeletons who will attack the PC.
Not really a puzzle, but a mini adventure - The PC's get locked into a room, and the only means of escape is a portal that takes them to the Astral plane where they come across a small castle. they must find an object that acts like a key in order to exit the Astral Plane, and continue with the main adventure.
What about if it created simply a duplicate of one of them or all the magical ones or some sort of qualification.
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“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbithole, and that means comfort.”
What about if it created simply a duplicate of one of them or all the magical ones or some sort of qualification.
Well, the DM should adjust the challenge based on his or her player's level and skill.
On thing to keep in mind is that the action economy should be kept in balance. One duplicate against the entire party would not likely be a challenge.
...unless that duplicate waved at the characters, showed them a secret door, then waved again as it went through. they'd follow. and if they saw the character point out a series of pressure plates, they'd avoid them as they walked. then, when the duplicate wordlessly mimed pulling a lever disguised as a torch, they'd likely follow it's lead. and that's when the giant stone ball of death comes rolling out of the ceiling, missing the duplicate. then, if it's a caster they'll probably send out Grease or Entangle. a duplicated rogue might toss a bag full of ball bearings down. an archer might quickly climb a ladder to be above the group when they run recklessly through the pressure plates, shooting down at them through a gap running the length of the ceiling.
when the characters get back to whatever spawned the duplicate... one or two more step out.
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!
Might I recommend one of the floors of the tower to have four hallways leading from a central circle where the party enters the floor. There is one door at the end of each hallway. Above the doors written in celestial is fire for one, water, air, and earth. If they open the fire door, they get burned. If they open the water door, ice spikes would come out. If they opened the air door, lightning will hit the nearest being. If they open the earth door, a stone fist come out and punch them. On the ceiling is a chandelier that’s covering a trapdoor.
Need some cool traps for a wizards tower built into the femur of a dead god that is filled with traps, puzzles, and extra planar monsters. Players are at level 2, and I would like to include some sort of puzzle that requires someone to be in the astral plane and the material world.
Spells like plane shift require components attuned to the plane if existence, so an item in the tower could be required to travel to the astral plane and the puzzle could involve getting the item to travel to the astral plane?
blink technically is the ethereal realm but a puzzle could change it to the astral plane. It involves randomly jumping between planes so maybe there’s an item in the astral plane they require but have to navigate the blinking to get it. Alternatively a trap/puzzle triggers a mass blink affect and chucks the party to the astral plane, and the party need to solve the puzzle/escape the trap to stop the blinking affect and escape
sine dead gods exists in the astral plane perhaps there’s a trap that jumps the party to another body part in the astral sea or a derelict spelljammer that was involved in the death of the god, perhaps the ship belongs to the wizard who’s tower it is? Or perhaps the wizard uses the tower as a waypoint to the astral sea and travels the astral sea using a spelljammer so various important belongings could be kept on the ship?
In my game I have a Wild Magic Sorcerer and in order to disable some artifacts or traps I will have her basically trigger her wild magic surge. It has lead to a lot of interesting and funny moments. So I think a Wild Magic Surge traps would be fun.
As far as an extra planar puzzle how about objects on each plane that need to be destroyed at the same time (or same combat round) like a giant crystal. They could even have different damage immunities. The crystal on the material plane can only be damaged with magic and the crystal on the astral plane can only be damaged with physical attacks.
You could always end up with some kind of two worlds puzzle. Where there are two versions of the same room which effect each other and they need to alter one or the other to make it passable. This kind of game design pops up in video games some times. Its a classic do actions in x order style thing but you split it across the room and it's astral projection.
i like this puzzle especially if some astral plane spelljamming is happening just for the gravity hijinks. a hallway splits left and right, one lit blue and the other lit red, each path curving away at an odd angle. they could be depicted easily on a tabletop square grid as being beside each other but mirrors of one another. in, uh, "reality" they share a floor. then give them a mirror-and-laser puzzle where moving mirror prism B in one room moves mirror prism B in the other room correspondingly. then you stick some walls in one that aren't in the other so the two sides have to work together. to better simulate the communications disconnect between the two maybe there's a silence spell cast in both rooms... AND on your players. see what they can come up with just bumping their characters along for a bit.
if you need a twist, add a little clear marker to the map in places. let it wander around and follow people to emphasize that it's like a shadow on the floor only showing up on one map and the observing players don't know if it's friendly or what. however, keep track of where it is in relation to the other room because when the "floor shadow" in the blue room, for instance, invisibly crosses the space of a player in the red room then the red room player suffers radiant damage or something. maybe one goal of the laser puzzle is to corral several of these blips into a square of runes and then run the laser past them like a fence. or maybe once they cross into the square they're stuck and the laser is powered-up for a few rounds.
alternatively, if you have access to the Rime of the Frostmaiden maybe check out the Black Cabin quest. It's got exploration, traps that are more like accidents, a potentially jaw-dropping method of getting characters to the ethereal plane, and then a literal miracle rewind finish.
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!
What if you just had an octagonal room where every wall is a portal, and one will take you to a higher level , but all the other ones will lead you to weird new rooms or traps ( sorta like the department of mysteries from the 5th Harry Potter book. You could even stack them! Some ideas of where they could take you is into a giant bottomless pit where they can fall forever with a falling portal beneath them that they have to find a way to get to ( you could even put stuff like past adventurers who fell into the same trap.) or a room where skeletons infinitely spawn into that has a thing you need to do to stop it
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbithole, and that means comfort.”
A potentially deadly trap - A room of mirrors that creates a duplicate of each party member that they must fight. This can result in a TPK, so use with caution, but it's fun to see what tactics the players use vs the DM with their own character.
A variation of the trap door - When a PC falls through, they hit a floor angled at 45 degrees, covered with an anti friction substance/spell (Like grease). As the PC slides down, iron gates fall and block any attempt at accent or decent. After about 60 feet, the PC is deposited into a dimly lit 10 x 10 room filled with acid up to the waist and a few skeletons who will attack the PC.
Not really a puzzle, but a mini adventure - The PC's get locked into a room, and the only means of escape is a portal that takes them to the Astral plane where they come across a small castle. they must find an object that acts like a key in order to exit the Astral Plane, and continue with the main adventure.
What about if it created simply a duplicate of one of them or all the magical ones or some sort of qualification.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbithole, and that means comfort.”
Well, the DM should adjust the challenge based on his or her player's level and skill.
On thing to keep in mind is that the action economy should be kept in balance. One duplicate against the entire party would not likely be a challenge.
...unless that duplicate waved at the characters, showed them a secret door, then waved again as it went through. they'd follow. and if they saw the character point out a series of pressure plates, they'd avoid them as they walked. then, when the duplicate wordlessly mimed pulling a lever disguised as a torch, they'd likely follow it's lead. and that's when the giant stone ball of death comes rolling out of the ceiling, missing the duplicate. then, if it's a caster they'll probably send out Grease or Entangle. a duplicated rogue might toss a bag full of ball bearings down. an archer might quickly climb a ladder to be above the group when they run recklessly through the pressure plates, shooting down at them through a gap running the length of the ceiling.
when the characters get back to whatever spawned the duplicate... one or two more step out.
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!
Might I recommend one of the floors of the tower to have four hallways leading from a central circle where the party enters the floor. There is one door at the end of each hallway. Above the doors written in celestial is fire for one, water, air, and earth. If they open the fire door, they get burned. If they open the water door, ice spikes would come out. If they opened the air door, lightning will hit the nearest being. If they open the earth door, a stone fist come out and punch them. On the ceiling is a chandelier that’s covering a trapdoor.
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