I have my party tapping into an ancient library of a mage and I want the entrance to be a puzzle. I also need help on what creatures to populate it with. Thanks!
I love giving puzzles to my players and have made an entire dungeon filled with them! I only have one that specifically involves a door but here are some of the puzzles that I have used.
The Pillar
When the players enter this room they are in total darkness. Spells that create light are allowed in here but won't be needed for very long. Once everyone in the party has entered the room both the door they came in through and the door across the room both close suddenly with a loud thud as rock meets rock. A short while after all the doors close a small light appears at the top of a pillar off towards the right of the room. With the light shining the players can see a few things.
They can see the light, the pillar, the small mirror and the lever towards the left side of the room. They can also see that the mirror is directing the light towards the top of the door opposite from which the party came in and its beam is currently on the number 10. Once one of the players pulls the lever the countdown begins. Each in-game second is five real-world seconds. The reason for this is so the players feel rushed into making a lot of decisions quickly.
Please note, the players can't do anything magical or physical to the pillar, light or mirror. The only thing the party can do is pull the lever and the lever will reset back to its original position as well. Every time a player pulls the level the timer seems to reset and the light points back at the number 10. To complete this puzzle the players must wait until the countdown hits 0 and then after that the light atop the pillar gets bright enough to fill the entire room with light and the door forward opens.
And this one is pretty good too!
The Rude Door
A very small room that looks plainly, and almost as if someone had been in there recently. There is a small desk with a stack of aged parchment on top. There is also a bottle of ink with a quill sticking out of it. A chair with fox fur lined on the backing and arms are seated underneath. There is a painting of a nature scene on the wall, a small table in the corner with a teapot and two teacups. On the floor is a simple wolverine skin rug. From the ceiling is a plain candle lantern that is lit.
There is absolutely nothing of value in the room. When the characters try to open the exiting door it’ll swing outward and a silver gauntlet will pull the door open, quickly flip off the party, and then shut the door. The gauntlet might even slap the character, or punch them, even.
History DC15 will reveal that Sir Grimlock was a zealot of etiquette.
If the party politely asks to enter the room, the gauntlet will open the door for them. It’s that easy. The gauntlet will then close the door once the party crosses the threshold, and go to the tiny room. If the party attempts to open the door to the small room they will be met with a stone wall.
As for monsters and populating what's past the door I think I would need a bit more context of the owner of the library. With just the idea of a mage, they could either be magical constructs like animated suits of armor that would fit in nicely with the decor and might even catch the players off guard further. Other animated objects could be used as well. This is assuming that the mage is not inherently evil and only uses these to protect the library. If the mage is in fact evil, then you could easily put some demonic guards in the library without breaking the atmosphere too much. I would say he's a warlock at that point but that's semantics.
1). The door is sentient, but only speaks a rare language and only opens when asked in that language (you can make it so that it re-locks itself if forced to unlock via spells or lockpicking, and have the party make a perception check to see if they can hear it chuckle to itself as it does). Runes above the door say “Ask Me to proceed” in the same language the door speaks. This is a variation of the “Speak Friend, and enter” doors from LOTR.
2). The door is inlaid with magical crystals that glow when touched, and stop glowing if touched again...the party has to figure that out, and then draw a pattern found in the area using the crystals (the mages seal or symbol, or some other pattern they can see or discover in the area) to unlock the door. I usually have the party fill in a grid paper to show me what they drew on the door
Large stone door, no handle or hinges and be seen. Its large and heavy and can not be moved by force. Beside it the inscription, "Do not knock the door." If the party does anything physical to the door a Pseudopod of stone smacks the person that hit the door for 1d6 bludgeoning damage (just meant to be irritating, not deadly.) The only way to open the door is to complement the door, which will open with a thank you. This is a play on words since "Knock" is another old term for insult.
Doors are fun. I've moved away from basic locks as they don't really give a challenge to our rogue anymore.
Now they are more magical in nature.
One I'm working on has a turnable compass in the middle surrounded by elements of fire water air and land surrounded by weather effects. A story which has pieces of the answer to the combination are scattered around a dungeon. The correct answer opens the door and creates a spell scroll needed later on.
The result is created in a box which is opened. A failure and in the box could be anything. Say to the north there is a volcano with currently is having a thunderstorm. Wrong answer! In the box is a fire elemental and the room towns into a thunderstorm which can zap a random player for damage.
You search the room, listening and looking carefully, but you find nothing. Suddenly, as you are about to leave, the lips of the mouth on the door move, and in a big booming voice says, "Surprise! You are here for double or nothing! Ready or not, here we go. O-T-T-F-F-S-S. What's next in line? If you solve this riddle, your treasure will double. If you fail, it will all disappear. What is your answer?"
You search the room, listening and looking carefully, but you find nothing. Suddenly, as you are about to leave, the lips of the mouth on the door move, and in a big booming voice says, "Surprise! You are here for double or nothing! Ready or not, here we go. O-T-T-F-F-S-S. What's next in line? If you solve this riddle, your treasure will double. If you fail, it will all disappear. What is your answer?"
Straight from the Basic D&D Red Box... i dig it! Haha. :)
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I have a YouTube channel with 5th Edition D&D Puzzles, Character Creations, DM Tips and Quests ideas. Check it out!
A pretty cool door puzzle I've come across is in Curse of Strahd, described below.
Have the puzzle door require a specific series of movements to open. In Curse of Strahd, there is a door puzzle with which on the door is a circular tablet. This tablet has pictures of figurines on the outside in different poses, like, both arms down to your side, both arms up, or one arm up, bent and one arm down, bent. With all of these poses (I think 10) there is what appears to be a scribble of straight lines in the middle. These lines actually depict the order in which the poses should be made, starting where the line starts. They follow the poses as they follow the line to completion. If they do the wrong sequence or attempt to open the door, have something bad happen, like damage or etc. Once they get the right sequence of poses the door opens.
What do you do if the players can’t figure it out? At all.
This is a simple and yet very important question that speaks to the larger issue of dungeon design. Let's look at the possibilities.
You answer the riddle and you get through. This is the result that would please everyone at the table.
You cannot answer the riddle and the door just won't open. This is less satisfying, but it can work if the thing behind the door is purely optional and you can still continue the story without it. Like maybe the door is a shortcut and you can still go the long way to get to the other side, but with more encounters or something. That's fine. But if the story requires the door to be open, you're potentially looking at a logjam. You do not want this situation.
The correct answer opens the door and all is good. The wrong answer doesn't open the door, but players can still beat the door down, but maybe the noise draws monsters. Or maybe the wrong answer also opens the door and sets off a trap. Maybe the party can proceed, but they miss out on the treasure the riddle would have provided. This still allows continuity, but at the cost of the reward.
I read a simple riddle for a magic door/portal somewhere that I used in my Campaign:
Above the door it says: "To go forward you must go back"
Solution: The players have to enter by walking backwards
gonna steal this partly for a secret/puzzle door in a minor goblin cave dungeon. Feydark corrupted goblins, has a shaman/warlock type mini boss with a archfey patron. The door is plants, roots and the like on the floor is scratched "go back!" in Goblin. Solution is the same, walk backwards through the vegetation. Cheers!
I borrow a lot of mine from Batman the Animated series. One of my favorites:
Room has three rows of letters: Top line has C & F only, middle A through G, Bottom every letter except C or F. They have to push a letter to get a reaction
This is a musical puzzle. The middle C opens the door (no sharps or flats), every other letter sends out the appropriate amount of blades for sharps or falling blocks/hammers for flats.
Incidentally, some of the most fun I recently had in a mage tower is attacking my players with a swarm of sentient books, which was a midsize swarm reskinned to do bludgeoning damage. It also means that they can end with whatever volume you need them to get.
Something I like to do is let the players be creative and come up with different ways to solve a puzzle. In this case a door. The key is that there is no puzzle. At least not a devised or pre-planed one. Just let them discuss a solution and try to figure it out and when you feel they have come up with something creative, give it to them. They will never know that you did not have a puzzle set up and may even look at you for being so creative when in all actuality they created their own puzzle. Fun stuff.
Honestly I've found that players will either guess the answer, or something hilarious enough that works. My players just took out the bishop of an antimagic church along with his templars. All of the confiscated magic items are locked in a vault with no discernable lock. In the opposite church tower was the Bishops office where they were given a riddle, the answer to which was "a river". After debating the riddle for a while, one player goes downstairs and gathers up the ashes of the Bishop (they burned his corpse because the BBEG spoke to them through his dead body), takes them upstairs, and smears them on the antimagic door, figuring the door was keyed to his DNA.
One option is to have the trap actually be the door.
The door has 5 handles on it. Below the door is a basic pitfall trap, 10ft. deep, which is covered by a trap door.
If you use any of the door handles, the trap door opens and you fall into the trap. There is a reset lever which can be accessed from both inside and outside the pit which shuts the trapdoor and allows you to try again.
If you are in the pit and the trapdoor closes, you will see that the open trapdoor was covering the entrance, which is inside the pit. closing the trap door opened the entrance.
Alternatively have a room with a stone door with no handle and a single lever which starts the ceiling descending. Pushing the lever back sends the ceiling back up. If the adventurers pull the lever then leave the room, the ceiling will drop down, and the door will now open onto a staircase upwards. Most adventurers will keep trying to open the door instead!
I have my party tapping into an ancient library of a mage and I want the entrance to be a puzzle. I also need help on what creatures to populate it with. Thanks!
Finish Him!!!
I love giving puzzles to my players and have made an entire dungeon filled with them! I only have one that specifically involves a door but here are some of the puzzles that I have used.
The Pillar
When the players enter this room they are in total darkness. Spells that create light are allowed in here but won't be needed for very long. Once everyone in the party has entered the room both the door they came in through and the door across the room both close suddenly with a loud thud as rock meets rock. A short while after all the doors close a small light appears at the top of a pillar off towards the right of the room. With the light shining the players can see a few things.
They can see the light, the pillar, the small mirror and the lever towards the left side of the room. They can also see that the mirror is directing the light towards the top of the door opposite from which the party came in and its beam is currently on the number 10. Once one of the players pulls the lever the countdown begins. Each in-game second is five real-world seconds. The reason for this is so the players feel rushed into making a lot of decisions quickly.
Please note, the players can't do anything magical or physical to the pillar, light or mirror. The only thing the party can do is pull the lever and the lever will reset back to its original position as well. Every time a player pulls the level the timer seems to reset and the light points back at the number 10. To complete this puzzle the players must wait until the countdown hits 0 and then after that the light atop the pillar gets bright enough to fill the entire room with light and the door forward opens.
And this one is pretty good too!
As for monsters and populating what's past the door I think I would need a bit more context of the owner of the library. With just the idea of a mage, they could either be magical constructs like animated suits of armor that would fit in nicely with the decor and might even catch the players off guard further. Other animated objects could be used as well. This is assuming that the mage is not inherently evil and only uses these to protect the library. If the mage is in fact evil, then you could easily put some demonic guards in the library without breaking the atmosphere too much. I would say he's a warlock at that point but that's semantics.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
1). The door is sentient, but only speaks a rare language and only opens when asked in that language (you can make it so that it re-locks itself if forced to unlock via spells or lockpicking, and have the party make a perception check to see if they can hear it chuckle to itself as it does). Runes above the door say “Ask Me to proceed” in the same language the door speaks. This is a variation of the “Speak Friend, and enter” doors from LOTR.
2). The door is inlaid with magical crystals that glow when touched, and stop glowing if touched again...the party has to figure that out, and then draw a pattern found in the area using the crystals (the mages seal or symbol, or some other pattern they can see or discover in the area) to unlock the door. I usually have the party fill in a grid paper to show me what they drew on the door
Awww yeah, the Prismatic Owl is one of my all-time-favorites. Thank you for sharing the video Wysperra. Much appreciated. :)
I have a YouTube channel with 5th Edition D&D Puzzles, Character Creations, DM Tips and Quests ideas. Check it out!
Wally DM on YouTube
Your site is an awesome resource =)
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Large stone door, no handle or hinges and be seen. Its large and heavy and can not be moved by force. Beside it the inscription, "Do not knock the door." If the party does anything physical to the door a Pseudopod of stone smacks the person that hit the door for 1d6 bludgeoning damage (just meant to be irritating, not deadly.) The only way to open the door is to complement the door, which will open with a thank you. This is a play on words since "Knock" is another old term for insult.
Doors are fun. I've moved away from basic locks as they don't really give a challenge to our rogue anymore.
Now they are more magical in nature.
One I'm working on has a turnable compass in the middle surrounded by elements of fire water air and land surrounded by weather effects. A story which has pieces of the answer to the combination are scattered around a dungeon. The correct answer opens the door and creates a spell scroll needed later on.
The result is created in a box which is opened. A failure and in the box could be anything. Say to the north there is a volcano with currently is having a thunderstorm. Wrong answer! In the box is a fire elemental and the room towns into a thunderstorm which can zap a random player for damage.
Plenty of fun things to do.
I read a simple riddle for a magic door/portal somewhere that I used in my Campaign:
Above the door it says: "To go forward you must go back"
Solution: The players have to enter by walking backwards
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Straight from the Basic D&D Red Box... i dig it! Haha. :)
I have a YouTube channel with 5th Edition D&D Puzzles, Character Creations, DM Tips and Quests ideas. Check it out!
Wally DM on YouTube
What do you do if the players can’t figure it out? At all.
A pretty cool door puzzle I've come across is in Curse of Strahd, described below.
Have the puzzle door require a specific series of movements to open. In Curse of Strahd, there is a door puzzle with which on the door is a circular tablet. This tablet has pictures of figurines on the outside in different poses, like, both arms down to your side, both arms up, or one arm up, bent and one arm down, bent. With all of these poses (I think 10) there is what appears to be a scribble of straight lines in the middle. These lines actually depict the order in which the poses should be made, starting where the line starts. They follow the poses as they follow the line to completion. If they do the wrong sequence or attempt to open the door, have something bad happen, like damage or etc. Once they get the right sequence of poses the door opens.
This can lead to cool roleplay too! Good luck!
This is a simple and yet very important question that speaks to the larger issue of dungeon design. Let's look at the possibilities.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
gonna steal this partly for a secret/puzzle door in a minor goblin cave dungeon. Feydark corrupted goblins, has a shaman/warlock type mini boss with a archfey patron. The door is plants, roots and the like on the floor is scratched "go back!" in Goblin. Solution is the same, walk backwards through the vegetation. Cheers!
I borrow a lot of mine from Batman the Animated series. One of my favorites:
Room has three rows of letters: Top line has C & F only, middle A through G, Bottom every letter except C or F. They have to push a letter to get a reaction
This is a musical puzzle. The middle C opens the door (no sharps or flats), every other letter sends out the appropriate amount of blades for sharps or falling blocks/hammers for flats.
Incidentally, some of the most fun I recently had in a mage tower is attacking my players with a swarm of sentient books, which was a midsize swarm reskinned to do bludgeoning damage. It also means that they can end with whatever volume you need them to get.
Fenchurch, Gnome Wizard, Red Skies in Mourning
Something I like to do is let the players be creative and come up with different ways to solve a puzzle. In this case a door. The key is that there is no puzzle. At least not a devised or pre-planed one. Just let them discuss a solution and try to figure it out and when you feel they have come up with something creative, give it to them. They will never know that you did not have a puzzle set up and may even look at you for being so creative when in all actuality they created their own puzzle. Fun stuff.
I really enjoy this puzzle. Thank you
Honestly I've found that players will either guess the answer, or something hilarious enough that works. My players just took out the bishop of an antimagic church along with his templars. All of the confiscated magic items are locked in a vault with no discernable lock. In the opposite church tower was the Bishops office where they were given a riddle, the answer to which was "a river". After debating the riddle for a while, one player goes downstairs and gathers up the ashes of the Bishop (they burned his corpse because the BBEG spoke to them through his dead body), takes them upstairs, and smears them on the antimagic door, figuring the door was keyed to his DNA.
One option is to have the trap actually be the door.
The door has 5 handles on it. Below the door is a basic pitfall trap, 10ft. deep, which is covered by a trap door.
If you use any of the door handles, the trap door opens and you fall into the trap. There is a reset lever which can be accessed from both inside and outside the pit which shuts the trapdoor and allows you to try again.
If you are in the pit and the trapdoor closes, you will see that the open trapdoor was covering the entrance, which is inside the pit. closing the trap door opened the entrance.
Alternatively have a room with a stone door with no handle and a single lever which starts the ceiling descending. Pushing the lever back sends the ceiling back up. If the adventurers pull the lever then leave the room, the ceiling will drop down, and the door will now open onto a staircase upwards. Most adventurers will keep trying to open the door instead!
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