I'm a new DM, I'm about to run session 5 in a couple of weeks where the party (bard, warlock, ranger, rogue and, as a special guest, the co-DM as a wizard). They will enter an old abandoned temple of Tharizdun below the village where the adventure started.
I already have drawn a map for the dungeon, picked some monsters, have a good idea of the path they'll follow and what will happen, but I need one or two puzzles for them and I'm struggling to find them.
The first puzzle would be in the antechamber of the temple. Basically, they will get stuck in the first room where there will be a series of levers that need to be pulled in order to open a secret door that would allow them to explore the rest of the temple. I've been looking for a riddle/puzzle involving levers but haven't found anything satisfying yet. We are Italians playing in Italian, so I can't really use riddles that rely on language as they probably cannot be translated properly.
Do you know any good lever puzzles that I could insert here?
Alternatively, do you have any good puzzle suggestions to insert in an old temple dedicated to an ancient god for characters at level 3?
Have you looked in Tasha's for the puzzle section or the article on the home page for ideas? As the chamber is based around an old God perhaps the levers could have symbology related to it in some way and some that are the opposite, have a story laid out in the room depicting some feat that the good did, and the players have to move the levers that are "good" to the on position and the ones that are bad to the "off" position?
You could use the levers as a way to enter a binary coded message. For example, first lever represents 0, second lever represents 1, and third lever means end entry for this symbol. So if you represent the alphabet by numbers 1-26, I could encode "HELLO" as
I'm imagining you give them the code word as part of some other puzzle in the dungeon or even as a plot hook to this adventure during an earlier one.
The third lever would probably cause some kind of noise such as gears turning, water flowing, or coins clinking to indicate previous data entered was being tabulated. I'm imagining a medieval hydraulic computer.
When I do puzzles I always make sure there’s two or three ways to solve them.
for a lever puzzle i would put a phrase above the levers like
”one holds the key”
and have the phrase be the literal key. So they pull lever one 3 times, lever two 5 times, and so on. While not overly complicated on reading it, upon seeing it your PCs can be stumped. So the next method of solving it would be the int check, have two int checks, one for a partial solve and the other for a full solve.
Partial solve would be dc 12 or 13 at most, and say something along the lines of “you test the first lever three times and it clicks into place.” Then point out that the first word has three letters. Leave it at that and likely as not they’ll work it out.
full solve int check dc should be 17 or so, make it difficult to keep them trying to solve it in a traditional, talk it out type way.
also keep in mind puzzles may just be something they won’t be good at. So if they do fail at it try to keep up your enthusiasm and don’t get bogged down at room 1 puzzle one.
Anyways, have fun with your adventure! I hope I helped.
That's good advice. You can have the correct pattern of levers unlock the door, but also allow a DC 25 Str check to just bust it down. If they can't figure out the puzzle, just Enhance Ability and Bardic Inspiration your barbarian.
With the puzzles I've included in my ideas, I've built around having consequence to the event and an inevitable conclusion. I do this by adding a time limitation (lowering ceiling, gas leak, spreading flames, advancing wall of darkness filled with the scrabbling sound of untold numbers of small, chitinous legs) so that when they enter the room, they have a goal (open the door) and a time limit (before the room fills with water). If you present them with a puzzle without consequence, they will just try things until it works, and then won't feel any pressure to succeed.
In my water trap, the room fills up and the players have to get through a door before the room fills. When the room is full, it "flushes" them to a new location, and not a great one. They can't go back and try again, and they have something like 6 rounds of combat to finish the puzzle before being flushed. I am currently puzzling through how to put riddles into these traps, so that the players have something to solve, and quickly. I'm making sure that there's no situation where the traps will kill or even seriously harm the players, as there's nothing fun about randomly taking damage. For the water room, I've decided to have them push on 3 stones on the walls, which will release the doors. The stones will release air bubbles when they are underwater, so can be noticed by players if they are looking for it.
For the theme of your puzzle, it would make sense that the temple is built to prevent anyone who doesn't worship the god from entering. You could have the water-trap I've described, where the players have to select a lever which denotes some fact or knowledge about the god to deactivate it. If they fail, the front door opens and they are flushed out again. Alternatively you could have them confronted with an image of the gods symbol, missing a feature - when they pull the wrong lever, a wind gets up to throw them back, and becomes stronger with each wrong answer, needing higher strength checks to withstand. Pull the right answer and the wind stops and the door opens.
Sorry for the delay guys, and thank you all for your suggestions it was very helpful!
In the end, I decided to create one myself. Since the whole party is formed of new players (except the guest/co-master that will be more of a support to the others in case they are stuck) I wanted to do something simple, not too hard to solve.
They will enter the temple, which will be only a corridor that lead to the levers room. In that room, some skeletons on the ground (an unsuccessful party), 9 colored levers on the wall and a sign written in Abyssal. In case none of them knows Abyssal, they will also find a creepy doll next to the skeletons. When touched the doll will recite what is written on the sign:
“Qui il Caos Strisciante giace confinato, Devota serva dell’Oblio Incatenato, Velata paladina di morte e follia.
Del suo santuario sigillate son le porte. Per andare in contro alla vostra sorte, Entrambi suoi doni apriranno la via.”
Which means in English:
"Here the Crawling Chaos lies confined, Devout servant of Chained Oblivion, Veiled champion of death and madness.
The doors of her sanctuary are sealed. To go against your fate, Both of her gifts will pave the way. "
Each color of the levers will represent a type of damage that the lever deals if operated. The solution is to operate simultaneously the necrotic and psychic levers, which will open the hidden door to the rest of the dungeon.
They should (I hope) understand pretty fast that they need to use both necrotic and psychic levers, but they might need some time (and damages) to understand that they need to use them simultaneously and also to identify them (black for necrotic is quite obvious, purple for psychic a bit less intuitive).
Not sure about that, the party has between 20-33 HP + the inspiring leader feat. I was thinking of giving them either 1d6 or 2d4 damages of the selected lever type. Too much? Not enough?
well, you want it to be more of a clue than a punishment, so I would maybe say D4, then up it to D6 the second time they pull a lever, then D8, and so on. So if they just keep pulling the same lever over and over it will eventually fry them for their ignorance. pulling different levers would each have their own count. You could exclude the correct levers from this, so they might only work it out that only 2 levers aren't scaling up the hurt each time they pull them. Roll the dice in view of them so the astute observer will notice you changing the dice up each time, and apply knockbacks when it gets to D10's, to emphasise that it's getting impatient.
Hello everyone!
I'm a new DM, I'm about to run session 5 in a couple of weeks where the party (bard, warlock, ranger, rogue and, as a special guest, the co-DM as a wizard). They will enter an old abandoned temple of Tharizdun below the village where the adventure started.
I already have drawn a map for the dungeon, picked some monsters, have a good idea of the path they'll follow and what will happen, but I need one or two puzzles for them and I'm struggling to find them.
The first puzzle would be in the antechamber of the temple. Basically, they will get stuck in the first room where there will be a series of levers that need to be pulled in order to open a secret door that would allow them to explore the rest of the temple. I've been looking for a riddle/puzzle involving levers but haven't found anything satisfying yet. We are Italians playing in Italian, so I can't really use riddles that rely on language as they probably cannot be translated properly.
Do you know any good lever puzzles that I could insert here?
Alternatively, do you have any good puzzle suggestions to insert in an old temple dedicated to an ancient god for characters at level 3?
Thank you in advance!
Hey Ishtar5,
Have you looked in Tasha's for the puzzle section or the article on the home page for ideas? As the chamber is based around an old God perhaps the levers could have symbology related to it in some way and some that are the opposite, have a story laid out in the room depicting some feat that the good did, and the players have to move the levers that are "good" to the on position and the ones that are bad to the "off" position?
Some othe rlinks to check would be:
D&D Compendiuim Traps and Puzzles
Door puzzle ideas
101 Traps, puzzles etc - Hobbylark
You could use the levers as a way to enter a binary coded message. For example, first lever represents 0, second lever represents 1, and third lever means end entry for this symbol. So if you represent the alphabet by numbers 1-26, I could encode "HELLO" as
l2,l1,l1,l1,l3 l2,l1,l2,l3 l2,l2,l1,l1,l3 l2,l2,l1,l1,l3 l2,l2,l2,l2,l3
I'm imagining you give them the code word as part of some other puzzle in the dungeon or even as a plot hook to this adventure during an earlier one.
The third lever would probably cause some kind of noise such as gears turning, water flowing, or coins clinking to indicate previous data entered was being tabulated. I'm imagining a medieval hydraulic computer.
When I do puzzles I always make sure there’s two or three ways to solve them.
for a lever puzzle i would put a phrase above the levers like
”one holds the key”
and have the phrase be the literal key. So they pull lever one 3 times, lever two 5 times, and so on. While not overly complicated on reading it, upon seeing it your PCs can be stumped. So the next method of solving it would be the int check, have two int checks, one for a partial solve and the other for a full solve.
Partial solve would be dc 12 or 13 at most, and say something along the lines of “you test the first lever three times and it clicks into place.” Then point out that the first word has three letters. Leave it at that and likely as not they’ll work it out.
full solve int check dc should be 17 or so, make it difficult to keep them trying to solve it in a traditional, talk it out type way.
also keep in mind puzzles may just be something they won’t be good at. So if they do fail at it try to keep up your enthusiasm and don’t get bogged down at room 1 puzzle one.
Anyways, have fun with your adventure! I hope I helped.
That's good advice. You can have the correct pattern of levers unlock the door, but also allow a DC 25 Str check to just bust it down. If they can't figure out the puzzle, just Enhance Ability and Bardic Inspiration your barbarian.
With the puzzles I've included in my ideas, I've built around having consequence to the event and an inevitable conclusion. I do this by adding a time limitation (lowering ceiling, gas leak, spreading flames, advancing wall of darkness filled with the scrabbling sound of untold numbers of small, chitinous legs) so that when they enter the room, they have a goal (open the door) and a time limit (before the room fills with water). If you present them with a puzzle without consequence, they will just try things until it works, and then won't feel any pressure to succeed.
In my water trap, the room fills up and the players have to get through a door before the room fills. When the room is full, it "flushes" them to a new location, and not a great one. They can't go back and try again, and they have something like 6 rounds of combat to finish the puzzle before being flushed. I am currently puzzling through how to put riddles into these traps, so that the players have something to solve, and quickly. I'm making sure that there's no situation where the traps will kill or even seriously harm the players, as there's nothing fun about randomly taking damage. For the water room, I've decided to have them push on 3 stones on the walls, which will release the doors. The stones will release air bubbles when they are underwater, so can be noticed by players if they are looking for it.
For the theme of your puzzle, it would make sense that the temple is built to prevent anyone who doesn't worship the god from entering. You could have the water-trap I've described, where the players have to select a lever which denotes some fact or knowledge about the god to deactivate it. If they fail, the front door opens and they are flushed out again. Alternatively you could have them confronted with an image of the gods symbol, missing a feature - when they pull the wrong lever, a wind gets up to throw them back, and becomes stronger with each wrong answer, needing higher strength checks to withstand. Pull the right answer and the wind stops and the door opens.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Sorry for the delay guys, and thank you all for your suggestions it was very helpful!
In the end, I decided to create one myself. Since the whole party is formed of new players (except the guest/co-master that will be more of a support to the others in case they are stuck) I wanted to do something simple, not too hard to solve.
They will enter the temple, which will be only a corridor that lead to the levers room. In that room, some skeletons on the ground (an unsuccessful party), 9 colored levers on the wall and a sign written in Abyssal. In case none of them knows Abyssal, they will also find a creepy doll next to the skeletons. When touched the doll will recite what is written on the sign:
“Qui il Caos Strisciante giace confinato,
Devota serva dell’Oblio Incatenato,
Velata paladina di morte e follia.
Del suo santuario sigillate son le porte.
Per andare in contro alla vostra sorte,
Entrambi suoi doni apriranno la via.”
Which means in English:
"Here the Crawling Chaos lies confined,
Devout servant of Chained Oblivion,
Veiled champion of death and madness.
The doors of her sanctuary are sealed.
To go against your fate,
Both of her gifts will pave the way. "
Each color of the levers will represent a type of damage that the lever deals if operated. The solution is to operate simultaneously the necrotic and psychic levers, which will open the hidden door to the rest of the dungeon.
They should (I hope) understand pretty fast that they need to use both necrotic and psychic levers, but they might need some time (and damages) to understand that they need to use them simultaneously and also to identify them (black for necrotic is quite obvious, purple for psychic a bit less intuitive).
That's a cool riddle, and a nice way to give consequence to learning & failure. how much damage will you be dishing out for each lever?
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!
Not sure about that, the party has between 20-33 HP + the inspiring leader feat. I was thinking of giving them either 1d6 or 2d4 damages of the selected lever type. Too much? Not enough?
well, you want it to be more of a clue than a punishment, so I would maybe say D4, then up it to D6 the second time they pull a lever, then D8, and so on. So if they just keep pulling the same lever over and over it will eventually fry them for their ignorance. pulling different levers would each have their own count. You could exclude the correct levers from this, so they might only work it out that only 2 levers aren't scaling up the hurt each time they pull them. Roll the dice in view of them so the astute observer will notice you changing the dice up each time, and apply knockbacks when it gets to D10's, to emphasise that it's getting impatient.
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!