I'm sending my players through a mad scientist's lab and I was thinking of putting a spinning fire trap in the middle of the room during the final boss fight to spice things up. I'm thinking four spigots rotating from a central point. The thing is, I'm not sure how I should do the actual movement of it. It seems not in the spirit of the idea to treat the spinning flames as just an AOE effect, so should I slow the rotation to something just like a quarter rotation every round? Is that too slow?
Oh wait, I just had an idea. What if I rotated it a quarter between each character's turns? That way it's spinning in real time and the players have to react to it as such?
If you have access to "Xanathar's Guide to Everything" then it has a section that goes into lots of detail on traps and designing them. It separates it into "Simple" traps and "Complex" traps. This spinning fire trap would definitely be in the "complex" trap design section. As for what you can do. It suggests that that produce a repeating effect act on either Initiative 10 (slow trap), Initiative 20 (fast trap), or Initiative 20 and 10 (very fast trap). In all cases, it loses initiative ties with characters.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything - Chapter 2: Traps Revisited - Complex Traps, Example Complex Traps, and Designing Complex Traps
If you'd like more help designing one, I have the book and could help direct some of the options the book mentions into your plans.
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Good luck and may you roll 20's when you need them and 1's when you need a laugh. - myself
I'd suggest a special rule for the trap, allow combatants to use their reaction to move to avoid the trap, up to their remaining speed from their last turn. This both allows for a more dynamic feel to the fight and prevents opportunity attacks for combatants that are basically staying together, just moving to a better location.
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I'm sending my players through a mad scientist's lab and I was thinking of putting a spinning fire trap in the middle of the room during the final boss fight to spice things up. I'm thinking four spigots rotating from a central point. The thing is, I'm not sure how I should do the actual movement of it. It seems not in the spirit of the idea to treat the spinning flames as just an AOE effect, so should I slow the rotation to something just like a quarter rotation every round? Is that too slow?
Oh wait, I just had an idea. What if I rotated it a quarter between each character's turns? That way it's spinning in real time and the players have to react to it as such?
Thoughts?
You can do a moving aoe with a save for 0 damage.
If you have access to "Xanathar's Guide to Everything" then it has a section that goes into lots of detail on traps and designing them. It separates it into "Simple" traps and "Complex" traps. This spinning fire trap would definitely be in the "complex" trap design section.
As for what you can do. It suggests that that produce a repeating effect act on either Initiative 10 (slow trap), Initiative 20 (fast trap), or Initiative 20 and 10 (very fast trap). In all cases, it loses initiative ties with characters.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything - Chapter 2: Traps Revisited - Complex Traps, Example Complex Traps, and Designing Complex Traps
If you'd like more help designing one, I have the book and could help direct some of the options the book mentions into your plans.
Good luck and may you roll 20's when you need them and 1's when you need a laugh. - myself
I'd suggest a special rule for the trap, allow combatants to use their reaction to move to avoid the trap, up to their remaining speed from their last turn. This both allows for a more dynamic feel to the fight and prevents opportunity attacks for combatants that are basically staying together, just moving to a better location.