A bookshelf slides away to reveal an opening, a hand reaches out to grab a PC by the collar. The hand makes a bad roll and misses, PC is completely oblivious. Cue Scooby Doo theme
The doors in the hallway are all unstable gates, each time a creature enters one on its turn, it emerges from one of the others at random at the start of its next turn. Two creatures passing through the same door at the same time do not necessarily emerge from the same door, and two creatures entering different doors may exit from the same door. Perfect for chases.
A hole in the wall, with an ape man on the other side disguised as one of the players and mimicking their actions, to fool the player into thinking that the hole is actually a mirror
Its quite likely that even if dozens of organized industrial nations inside a fantasy universe met, and created a compact on the limitations of harm and conduct in treatment of prisoners of war, I don't think any sentient species labeled "monster" would have either been invited to sign, nor adhere to the guidelines and limitations. If monstrous beings Were included, then adventurers wouldn't be allowed to assault such creature's sovereign turf and definitely not be allowed to "break, enter and murder" said "creatures" without allowing for said beings to do so in return under strict rules of humane just fairness. Think of the political stink if a band of adventurers raided a goblin cave, only for the local paladins to make the adventurers stand back as the goblin cousins were then allowed to enter the city, burn down buildings, take resources and murder as many people as they could find. D&D is all about the freedom to murder and be murdered without limitations of civilization & justice, let alone socially enforced rules :) Yay childish murder hobos?
A magic trap ive used and liked: A long corridor, narrow enough to force the players to walk single file. A magic trigger that casts "Catapult" on a brick on the other end of the corridor. The brick flies towards the players and the one in front makes a dex save. As per the rules of the catapult spell, if he succeeds on the save, he dodges and the brick flies on, forcing the second player to make a save and so on. Youre pretty much guaranteed that SOMEONE eats a 3d8 damage brick, and its fun to see the brick fly past the rogue and the fighter to smack the wizard in the head. And you can upcast the spell to adjust for player level.
@@leoreoden5821 it actually wasn't that bad, the party was in a dungeon full of trap that they knew could get really bad at any moment. The party was also high enough level to survive it, mostly
My favorite trap is more of a puzzle: The party comes across an ornate golden door. Carved into the door is a single open eye. Beneath the eye it reads 'Draw your weapons and show them to me.' Presenting an actual weapon to the door gets the presenter shocked by lightning. The solution is to take out pen and parchment and sketch one's weapons at which point the door unlocks.
Runesmith sample trap 3: Runesmith uploads a youtube video Trigger: I'm browsing youtube and have nothing to watch Visibility: Most interesting thing in my recommended list Outcome: I spend ±10 minutes learning things i'll never use because i'm not a DM Curse you, trap god, your ingeniosity is only matched by your cruelty, subjecting me to all this interesting knowledge!
@@irok1 you don't need to railroad to tell a story, but you can't go into certain topics, not for the sensitivity of the topic, but simply because you can't go into the topic of something like loneliness, when theres 4 other players.
“How does the party get together” hook in trap form: For the first session have your players make characters but tell them they are not allowed to make backstories. The first session begins with them suddenly finding themselves in a room in the heart of a dungeon with a bunch of dangerous looking, heavily armed strangers. They have all fallen victim to a memory removal trap! This will require a bit of set up on the DMs part to set “forensic evidence” of their passage into the dungeon. If they later get a “remove curse” spell done, they get to write a backstory. If they don’t, the campaign is based on them digging up their backstories piece by piece.
My group has 3 DMs who take turns making/using campaigns. One of my 3 ideas is to tell the party to pick a race and we'll sort out a backstory in game zero, that's the trap, there is no game zero (dun dun durnnn) and all their characters come to in a glass crater about 150 wide with a pool of "liquid gold" that evaporates (even in a sealed container) over the next few minutes. They have no idea who they are, where they are or what happened. Campaign starts out as survival as there is no one and nothing but ruins for miles in every direction.
An ancient medusa with permanent hold person spell on it, inside the illusion of a statue - if you disbelieve the illusion, most likely dead. If you cast dispel magic, definitely dead, because dispel magic affects both spells.
A bear trap. Trigger: an inscription on the door that reads "beware of bear" (can be any language other then common). Saying bear out loud triggers the trap. Failsafe: not saying bear. Visibility: a hidden trap door on the ceiling spotted with a dc 16 perception check. Outcome: a bear skeleton falls from the trap door and lands on the floor in a jumbled mess. The party is spooked, have a good laugh, then turn to leave the room. 2nd trigger: looking away from the bear animates it and it attacks the party.
my absolute favorite trap is the "Cat and mouse" trap from the old "traps and treachery" book *3.5 edition* in a nutshell, it's a trapped book, scroll, item, or whatever you need it to be to attract players to it, sitting as though discarded on a table, counter, desk, or shelf. the only thing odd about the room(originally the library of a wizard who was fond of cats) is that there are a dozen or more cats lounging about the room. the cats can be friendly or just ignore players as they enter. If a player touches the trapped item, they are instantly polymorphed into a mouse... which draws the attention of the cats in the room, who swarm and attempt to devour the unlucky player.
Oh, I had a dm once have a huge room with a door at the other end and a key on a pedestal in the centre. Obviously the players go for the key first, which sprouts legs and evades the players (had a move speed of 50 i think). We spent 15 minutes trying to catch it...... The gods-damned door wasn't locked. The little shit laughed us out of the room. The trapper was later found and summarily executed.
I did something similar once in a famous tomb that the players knew they weren't the first to go there. Not boring you to with details but the entrance had this elaborated magical lock. That was already solved by previuos adventurers. They spend a good half hour trying to solve it until they realize the door was already open. There was a point to it tought. Part of the dungeon itself was learning from those who venture there before hand.
One of my favorites is one of the most simple. An obviously illusory wall that when dispelled not only dispels the illusion but also dispels the wall of force holding back the lava.
A 1' deep pit trap with a teleport spell at the bottom that teleports you 8' above the pit. The spell lasts for around 10 charges getting the victim up to terminal velocity. Perception 10 notices the "pit" Detect magic will notice the spell. Dispel magic will defuse the trap.
Your party enters a dark, narrow hallway, illuminated by a single burning torch affixed to the wall. If a player decides to grab said torch from the wall, they will find it is rigged to open a tube directly above the torch. Oil pours out from the tube, drizzling the player and subsequently igniting them via the torch
Spyglass Surprise Item: A simple spyglass at first glance Lure: A blurry illusion of an attractive member of the race that picks up the spyglass Trigger: Twisting the spyglass to attempt to bring the illusory image into focus. Effect: A dart (optionally poisoned) fired right into the rube's eye. Dealing appropriate damage, and doing only half on a successful, but fairly difficult, reflex save.
oh god. though to make it worse I'd make them first see a ugly overweight 40 year old charging at then and have a penis shaped bludgeoning tool to completely crush their eye.
I surprised my players with a spike pit and followed moments later a bridge mimic. He was caught off guard because “ You aren’t supposed to put 2 traps in a row”. It was a good time.
You forgot one from an anime that I loved, in this cooking in dungeon there's these mimic coin insects that attack parties unaware. Best part is if the stick it in a bag of holding and pull it out in town and suddenly cause a panic and combat which lets you have them arrested or other plot hooks.
Fun trap effects (off the top of my head): A trap that coats the victim in Aboleth mucus. Except there's no pools of water in the dungeon. And the dungeon is in a desert. A trap that curses the the victim with extreme photosensitivity. The players might even finish the dungeon, not realizing they've been affected, but then suddenly start taking constant damage from the sun when stepping outside. A DM could even tease hints about the trap because the party found a bunch of burned skeletons on their way in huddled in their sleeping bags. Their gear was completely unburned. Bonus points for the trap activation spraying a puff of ground ginger root onto the party, but no other obvious effect until the party is touched by sunlight. Make every magical item in the dungeon very powerful and desirable for the party, just a hell of a haul. But each item has a security failsafe built in where, if you remove the item from the dungeon and don't speak the proper command word, they reverse the personal gravity of whoever is wearing it. So, as soon as they step outside, the party suddenly falls upward.
Make it better: the cute pet is both very venomous and very affectionate. At random intervals, have random party members make dexterity saves to avoid painful death from poisonous licking.
@@bitingapotato3277 and make it the bbeg's familiar that they use it to scrying on the party. They should have expected it from the poisonous dog in the middle of the ancient dungeon
@@southanime Yeesss. Now I have to make a ridiculously adorable bbeg and fill their lair with cutesy things that will murder my players to death. It's perfect.
Depends on the party, my first TPK the party killed each other because they had a heated argument over a bunch of chimney sweep lost boys they found in a steampunk city. Half the party wanted to kill the kids bc they suspected they were demons, the other half thought they were just kids. Everyone died at the hands of a samurai with nothing but 1 hp and a grenade powerful enough to level the ruins of the building.
My favorite trap that I stole from a classic D&D module: opening a door in a multi-door hallway teleports the PC inside a crypt a room away, whose identity is assumed by a doppelganger in that room. Slyly give the player the doppelganger character sheet. When the rest of the PCs arrive, they're on the other side of a wall of magical fire. The doppelganger beckons the players to tank the damage and cross through it.
Friend of mine had an idea for a trap that I used once. 20ft wide hallway, 10x10 ft steel plate in the middle. You can easily walk around the edges without trying. Turns out those are the real trap and the steel plate is just a steel plate
Made a Dungeon filled with hilarious traps to troll my players, called it the "Labirynth of THE TROLL". The nearby townsfolk warned them that its the most dangerous place, that no one who entered has ever returned and begged them not to go. Really got their gears rolling and they wanted to check it out obviously. Now they were all level 4 at this time. Turned out the traps werent deadly, but just a lot of jokes I thought of, that caused funny effects like puking beer for 10 minutes or any kind of weird debuff I could think of. After a lot of laughing and joking (and debuffs) they reached the final area - a small labirynth, with torches at each wall for better visibility. As they turn around the final corner, to reach the center of the room - they spot a Troll. In a split second the monster turns away from my (still debuffed) players, runs into the labirynth and lets out a roar - just then a wind starts howling through the corridors and extinguished every torch (and any fire they'd try to use). Only Darkness and the scream of the Troll echoeing between the corridors. One player told me he doesnt get the joke here. I told him: "The joke is that you didnt listen to the townsfolk... Roll initiative."
Same here. I hardly use traps because having to hear "I roll for investigation" every room can get a little grating. And the punishment for not rolling or failing is hit points, rather than supplies or abilities. I don't doubt they can't be interesting and cool, and I do have a few on the backburner I'd like to use at some point. But something about having a random pit killing the level 6 low health rogue doesn't sit well with me. I'd rather give my players a cooler way to go out, or at the very least have it be more a fault of their decisions rather than a "you rolled too low to see it" since they're all pretty attached to who they play.
Incogneko, if you have a problem with traps only affecting hit points instead of equipment why don’t you use something like rust monsters that can eat metal tools or the lighting spell which can burn flammable object. If I recall correctly.
@@fancyb.p.6122 Rust monsters are really cool! I mean more of the stereotypical dart, pit, maybe statue related traps. Even the "[blank] fills the room" traps. Less so intricate monsters that do a specific thing. Basically the "hit point" traps that I often see thrown in dungeons.
Incogneko well you could always talk to your dm if you have a problem with the traps. If I ever dm I guess I should try to use something other than just hit point traps
Try some restraining, paralyzing, or petrifying traps that trigger the attention of monsters nearby. While the party is trying to free them, they will have to simultaneously fight and work on prying their friends free.
From the french role-playing game "Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk", I remember this stupid trap : *Finger guillotine* *Context :* A wall, with two holes at the end of a halway *Trigger :* Something enters the holes *Outcome :* A sharp blade fall, cutting whatever was inserted in the holes (if "whatever" is the fingers of someone... well let's just say he will have trouble holding stuff. Also, pain) *Failsafe :* Just.... do not poke the holes ? I wonder if it ever worked to be honest.
My players would 100% poke these holes. I used a similar trap, a hole wide enough for an arm to go into, and inside a nest of rats that when the arm goes in looking for a lever or something, disturbs the nest and causes a swarm of rats to attack, biting the hand of the idiot first. And yes my players did this.
Wasn't there a trap in Tomb of Horrors, where there were two holes in the wall, one with a lever you needed to progress and the other with a sphere of annihilation?
Not a trap per se, but one of my DMs did this thing where the entire room 2as a reverse pit trap. There was a sigil in the center of the floor that reversed gravity on the room, and the ceiling was 50 ft high. The thing could be deactivated permanently with either Dispel Magic of by messing up the rune. When you walked in you flew to the ceiling and took fall damage. The walls were smooth to prevent climbing out. When you deactivated the sigil, if you were already on the ceiling, you took more fall damage.
Taking more fall damage by dispelling the trap is totally evil. Maybe the failsafe is just, the trap maker can fly, thus allowing them to cross the room with sufficient skill, since they're expecting the trick.
The best trap I know of only works once: The party enters a room, the door slamming shut behind them. There is a button on a pedestal in the middle of the room, several grates along the walls, and a timer. When they enter, the timer starts counting down from 30 seconds. Pressing the button resets it. As the timer gets closer to 0, more effects start to happen- the ground shakes, torches get dimmed, you hear a shuffling get louder in the grates, etc. If the timer reaches 0, all of this stops and the door opens. I had a group stuck on this for almost half an hour. Toss in whatever misdirects you want-those are just the ones I use.
Kent Watson There should be something in there that can lead to a player injuring themself, either through panicking or misplaced threat detection. Like illusory demons in front of spikes or opposite from them; charge at the demon to hurt it and run into spikes, or back away from it into spikes or pits or something. It's a good mindfuck as is but we can let the players hurt themselves if they're not careful. AND make it so the longer they take to complete it the more time the main villain/boss has to prepare troops/traps, making the rest of the dungeon harder.
@@BasketOfPuppies642 my mistake, its "Zee Bashew - The Countdown Puzzle" the video I was reffering too. Check it out, its animated and shit. Very good quality stuff.
According to Volo’s Guide, they average 25-35 lbs. So depending on size, two or three could move in unison and still be fine if at least 100 lbs is required to trigger the plates.
Bonus points if you have the pressure plate in a narrow hall that forces the players over the plate, and then have kobolds run over it multiple times. Lures players into a false sense of security and then suddenly you get vored by an animated suit of armor with a sphere of annihilation in its tummy.
For a more specialized (re: homebrewed monster/villain) enemy, I have passages that are partially underwater; about ankle to knee deep. Throughout the passages are wedge-shaped troughs that are perfect for slipping in and snapping ankles. Also in those literal ankle-breakers is webbing that connects back to the spider-boss responsible. So, said traps serve to hobble/slow down encroaching adventurers and act as an early alarm system to the boss.
I remember a trap in some tomb that consisted of a tunnel going down under the level - at the end there were stairs up with a heavy metal door, and no trap per se... except it lead to the bottom of an artificial lake - opening them would slam you with the door, throw you down the stairs, and then fill the whole tunnel with water. (the guy in charge of the tomb complex had been a bit paranoid.)
Okay, so I have a plot dungeon that is charisma themed and is basically a mirrored hallway. The other side if the mirror, however, is another portion of the dungeon which can and must occasionally be entered to progress. The kicker? The first side of the dungeon is under a continuous Zone of Truth spell. The mirror side, however, is the reverse, it is constantly under a Zone of Lies. Meaning that on the mirror side, you cannot knowingly tell the truth. The trap is thus: Button in the first room shifts the lock to the next room from the real side to the mirror side, and must be held down in order to keep the door unlocked. In the next room, the mirrored wall warbles, indicating some kind of magicky portal stuff, and there is another door straight ahead. Should one player go through the mirror before another can enter the room, they will be stuck on that side of the mirror. The player cannot be seen through the mirror due to the warbling reflection. Say a second player enters after. They are very likely to call out, saying "Did you go through this door, etc?" The first player, now in the Zone of Lies, responds "Yes!" The second player walks through the door, inside which is two umber hulks. The door locks behind them.
Water flows in the entrance to the dungeon but equalizes itself through a hidden drain, keeping the water permanently knee deep. If the players open the sliding self locking entance without blocking the water first, the water floods the rest of the dungeon at the same height. This releases trapped Swarms of Quippers, and grants disadvantage on detecting floor traps,.
Plus, even non-fully-immersive quantities of water can create difficult terrain. Try fighting when you're moving at half speed while the killer fish aren't, you schlubs.
@@anthonynorman7545 Sand Bags Divert the water flow. Shape Water (Freeze) Stone Shape (encapsulate the entrance with a solid short wall). Some other spells would do the trick as well.
I actually ran into a trap just like that. If enough weight was placed on a rooms floor, it would raise up to the top floor. The only way our was a trap door that only opened from the outside on the ceiling, out of reach
A large, wooden chest in a treasure room with a skeleton laying next to it with a dagger in hand. If a player gets within 10 feet of the chest, the skeleton reanimates and shanks them. For maximum effect, make it look like the chest is a mimic, but then reveal the actual trap was, in fact, The Skeleton.
I'm running a very sandbox world. After I got it all written out, the only session notes I write are just like....general ideas 😅 Trying to plan for this sandbox any other way would prove useless.
1) make a cave with a big pit 2) make a large mimic 3) insert large mimic into pit 4) insert alchemy jug into mimic 5) have mimic use the alchemy jug to make its max amount of acid each day 6) have mimic pretend to be the ground and an inconspicuous journal or something innocuous but intriguing in the center 7) party walks onto mimic to investigate book 8) mimic opens mouth, party falls and is grappled in a pool of acid 9) change your name, move towns, and find a new hobby to escape the wrath of your players
I’ve heard of this but instead of an atrium it’s a spiked chandelier... Characters enter the room and trigger the glyph, fly up into the spikes, the spell ends, the characters a fall back to the ground. After a moment of silence, the chains holding the chandelier snap and it falls on them.
The floor and ceiling are made of spikes, with a pillar in the middle of the room that rests on a 10' radius platform. Once atleast 2 people enter the 30' radius of the glyph of warding, they fall upwards into the spikes, then straight down into more spikes, with no way to climb up the smooth stone. Only the first person who jumped will (most likely) survive. Failsave: Be patient and go one at a time.
A tripwire trap that causes a hissing noise to occur, similar to a bomb's fuse being lit or if a creeper is nearby The hissing persists for 5 minutes The party would either panic at a bomb with a long fuse or not give a shit about the seemingly misleading hissing noise If the party is in the next room when the hissing stops, it blows up and caves in, requiring a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw to avoid the collapse It'd be up to the DM if the collapsing would downright kill a crushed character or if they would just be restrained near the exit Either way, the save would tell whether or not the party takes 10d10 Bludgeoning damage, or half as much on a successful save If the party leaves the next room without the room blowing up, it will cave in and blow up after the 5 minute timer is up, where they'll here the boom from any point in the dungeon, feeling the rumble from the explosion
Whenever you consider making a trap that causes condition, specially sleep, remember to make it a chemical effect. A lot of magic resistances and etc lying around, specially with how every party has a half-elf
I'd go half and half. Sometimes it's chemical, sometimes it's magic. You don't want to give Dwarves or Stout Halflings _too_ much advantage, in your rush to nerf half-elves. Vary the nature of traps, in much the same way you'd vary what monsters your throw at a party.
Reduce the amount of oxygen in the room. Or add more carbon monoxide, similar effect with less giggling and more redness. - You can also use nitrous oxide if you like the giggling. - - Oh, and if you like doing damage, an anti-magic room with a pile of candles and an odorless natural gas leak...
Theirs a dog with a key in its mouth in the middle of a room, there’s a door on the opposite side of the room witch is locked. The dog is friendly but will not let go of the key because he thinks it’s a toy, and will think your playing with him if you try to take the key. You have to give the dog something that it wants more than the key. Or find a way to open he dogs mouth. A DC(15) arcana check will reveal that floor is magical. The floor is enchanted to sense death, and will trigger the Alarm spell if anything in the room is dead, including undead. So if the players try to kill the dog , they get punished for being terrible people and alert the bad guys. Once the door is unlocked, the dog will wait until everyone is through the door and then close it and take the key out of the door then sit down like a good doggo. The key has a permanent prestidigitation spell on it so it smells and tastes like bacon.
A physical (but not obviously) trap with a large magic component that's actually just the lynchpin of the failsafe/trigger mechanism. Dispel it and activates immediately.
Hall of Animated armour, activates when players show any hostility towards the statue that isn't on a pedestal and facing them with sword drawn. All the armour just attack the players
I got two traps for you The first is an old trap design, and one of my favorites that I like to include once a campaign, is something I call "the gnasher." This is a visible spiked floor and ceiling corridor. The trigger is a pressure plate that is the entirety of the floor. The failsafe is simply weighting down the pressure plate with something and keeping that weight on it until everyone passes by the trap (your gear-laden backpack would work). When triggered, spikes shoot up through the floor down through the ceiling, causing 1d4+1 attacks from the spikes for at a +4 attack bonus and do 1d6 damage each. However, the designer accidentally overclocked the trigger mechanism. If you are hit by the trap, there is a 15% chance (+5% for every spike that hits) that you will be lifted off of the pressure plate, causing the trap to reset, which causes you to fall back down onto the pressure plate retriggering the trap in a manner similar to gnashing teeth. The second is the room of the flaming maw. A long room, two-thirds of which is blackened from scorch marks, with a large stone face marking the wall at the end, the open mouth serving as the exit. You can see the eyes glowing with fire, and when you get close to the mouth, fire leaps from the floor, cutting you off. Halfway into the chamber is a stone dais with a polished steel or bronze plate, angled in such a way as to be safe from the flame. It reads "to leave this chamber for that which is beyond, speak loudly and with clerity your answer. If correct, you may leave. What is the meaning of love" or some similar question. The question and answer are irrelevant. The trigger is shouting anything loudly. Anything at all. This causes the eyes to blast the two-thirds of the room closest two it with flame, engulfing anyone in the blast range for 4d10 fire damage (Dex save DC 16 for half damage). It doesn't matter what is said, only that is loud enough to trigger the trap. The failsafe is to simply ignore the podium and walk through the mouth. The flame is an illusion meant to deter people and get them to fall for the trap.
"if you wish to pass the door, turn my curse into a cure." Every letter is a separate button and all but one of them deal 1d4 shock damage to whoever pushes them.
I did a variant on this idea for a LARP module. At two points in the module, the party finds letter tiles, one is a 'T' and the other is an 'S'. At the end of the module, they find a sarcophagus with the word C R E A T U R E on the cover, and each letter has a slot where the two letter tiles they found could be inserted. If they put the T over the C and the S over the existing T, they can open the lid to find loot and the stairs to the exit tunnel. Any other way they open the lid, the fight a mummy, and find the stairs to the exit tunnel underneath it (if they survive). It amazed me how many groups of players ended up fighting the mummy, and only one group did it on purpose (out of curiosity).
Traps that mess with your players are great, player steps on a rune/plate/tripwire/mushroom and rolls a DCX wisdom save. Nothing happens, they think it's alllllllll gravy but 20 mins later they attack a teammate/charge into battle/forget who they are/run away screaming. much more fun than "you take some damage. yaaaaay traps."
Jack Sharkey I had a similar trap this past week. PCs attacked floating spheres they thought were beholder-kin, actually spore-filled gas bags. Lvl8 Aasimar archer & human warmage both infected; archer started shooting at PCs & warmage lost a spell slot for the big boss battle.
A locked door with some magic shoved in the lock. the trigger is it being unlocked/opened. The failsafe, the creator has a key that disarms it. The outcome, explosive fire runes start going off all over the dungeon collapsing every pathway in and out of the dungeon. The creator is a paranoid dwarf who could just dig new tunnels. Very paranoid.
Even better: A door with a big glowing menacing lock on it. Make sure to describe the lock very well. The Trigger is the lock being unlocked with explosions just as you said. The failsafe is to simply push the door open. It was never locked to begin with.
A doorknob that when touched, us affected by the spell 'Heat Metal' and burns the person.(with an optional CON save to power through and turn the knob anyways, advantage if a tiefling or someone else with resistance to fire). The trick is the door is actually very thin and flimsy from decay, and snaps apart if punched or broken down in a similar fashion. Though if you want to be REALLY mean, maybe have goblins in the next room who can be alerted by the sound. ....though, uh, use with caution. I used this trap in a campaign, and the guys started using it for JoJo references. *Breaks down door.* "Okay, great, so you guys head in." Spleen the Goblin Bard:Wait...does this doorknob use heat metal? Me:Uh...yeah. Spleen:I'm taking it.*Breaks off rest of the door from it and throws knob in pack.* "Okay....what you doing with that?" Spleen:*Shares evil grin with Rogue* Karl the rogue:I have a few ideas. They then began a strategy of the rogue using his sleight of hand to install the doorknob on peoples house, and the bard using a spell slot to renew the trap. They would then use some strategy, usually the barbarian smashing tables, to try and scare the people so they'd run home and get killed. Corrupt politician:*Running home, panting* Phew...I'm home! I'm safe!*maniacal laughter* *Turns knob* *Freezes when he sees Rogue in reflection of the window* Karl the Rogue:Karl and Spleen have already left their mark on your doorknob*Snap* Politician:*Nat 1* *Loses arm, making ensuing fight easier because he was almost dead and had no access to spells with somatic components* ....So yeah. Be careful, lest a simple trap turn your party into Yoshikage Kira.
@@expertionis794 This is the true power of Karl and Spleen. All evidence of our true selves has been eliminated. *Meanwhile the Barbarian was in prison, trying to cut a deal to avoid charges for destroying 1000 gold worth of tables and chairs.*
I was brainstorming a trap idea earlier today, so this video is well timed. The basic idea came from watching a video about a manikin slowly constructing another manikin. Once the new manikin was complete, it provided a brief moment of companionship before the old manikin died and fell apart. New manikin assumes the role of the now deceased manikin, and the cycle continues. SO, the idea was to have the party enter the room where this is taking place, like a creepy decrepit smith/toy-maker workshop, and have the door lock behind them. They're now trapped in the room with the manikin, as it slowly works away. The room begins to fill with a visible poison gas/mist, which is heavier than air so it sits on the bottom and slowly rises up, like a drowning trap. Few reasons why it's poison gas and not water- the manikin needs to be able to keep working unobstructed, it creates an environment where moving aggressively would agitate the poison from the floor and potentially hurt/kill the party which is a nice subtle way to signal that there is no brute force solution, and it could lead the players to more creative solutions I haven't thought of which is always cool. The solution is to get the manikin to make a key for the door. I haven't nailed down how I want that to happen, but basically the players need to contend with the fact that the manikin is totally single minded in it's work to create the next of it's kin for the cycle to continue, and with such a exact lifespan giving just enough time to complete one manikin, it can't spare time for anything else. Perhaps the players observe the construction of the manikin in a bid to aid it, speeding up the process so there is time to make a key? Not sure. I need to work on this some more.
A pit that’s filled with skeletons. The skeletons don’t do anything unless you take them out of the pit. Good for party members who just want to take EVERYTHING.
Right? I was honestly disappointed that it doesn't. Ongoing Diarrhea - "you can still act but have disadvantage on everything and you smell terrible and make the floor slippery wherever you go, turning it into difficult terrain." Violent Diarrhea - "you shit yourself so hard that it gives your armor the broken condition and you take 2d4 points of con damage"
My first traps was in a spider dungeon. the room was filled with spider web und some ancient stone statues were standing around. The room offered two ways to go, the one on the right was the main way but on the left side was an treasure room wich you cant enter without touching a giant web.(DC 15 on the statues will show that these stones can spill something and that there are connected with this main web) The Trap will trigger if you tear at the web (for example if you walk through or if you cut it etc.) and release toxic gas (choose own stats) you have to remove the web without tearing so you should burn it down.
A large chamber that has a skeleton or some other construct on guard. The "sentry" is standing on a pressure plate so that when it gets off/ dies and falls off the trap goes off. The secret is that the "sentry" has only been commanded to only look around. He will not attack or alert others at all. The damage itself could range from fire to an age spores You could have a rope hanging next to the him to make less obvious or have sentry trapped in cage to make more obvious.
Personal favorite trap I've used is a pretty simple one but it definitely is the kind of thing that an evil bastard puts into his dungeon when he knows thieves are coming into it. Have a room with a statue in the center of it, with subtle magical energy coming off said statue (in my case it was a fountain that was perpetually creating water). On the statue are inscriptions (runes lining the robed hem of said fountain statue) and touching them in the proper order reveals a hidden passageway, which is revealed by having the statue rotate to where the stonework opens up. The corridor this opens up to ends at *just* the right distance to allow the pointed statue to unleash its trap (a lightning bolt, in my case) and still catch anyone who reached the end of it. Should your party survive or avoid the trapped corridor (or if you're feeling charitable), leave the remains of the previous thieves who were "clever" enough to fall for the trap as something to get some loot from!
a room just inside the beginning of a maze has a stone table in the middle. from the room's entrance the table appears to have a map inscribed into it. if you go over to the table and try to read the map, you find instead explosive runes, which trigger upon reading. one way that a friend of mine tried to use exploding runes was to spend down time preparing several runes (since they are permanent) onto parchment. then the plan was to summon flying minions (of an inteligence too low to read) who would grab the parchment and "present" them to enemies. the DM ruled that exploding runes requires the attention of the reader and battle is not a time you would be distracted by a bit of paper. the best use of exploding runes i saw though was a notebook kept by a thief, in it he mentions that one of his favorite tools was a wizard who prepares "exploding runes" and that phrase was the trigger rune.
One of my favorite traps to date is a rug that's 4 feet of quicksand. To most races it's merely inconvenient but it is deadly to most halflings and gnomes.
a pit trap in clear view, the "safe" paths are pressureplates that shoot poisoned arrows at you from the ceiling like 2d6 piercing and 2d10 poison dc 15 con save for half.
a pit of liquid gallium and vinegar makes for a nice drowning insta kill. People are less dense than gallium, but more dense than vinegar, so they get trapped in the middle.
Well you could try drinking the vinegar. Sure it tastes sour and may do some internal damage after awhile but better that than death eh? Can always heal later.
I had a bunch of goblins that overtook an old tomb in my campaign, and the one trap I had in the entire dungeon combined both the flavoring of the room they found it in, as well as the simplicity of goblin engineering. There was a repurposed room turned into a sleeping quarter, where blankets were used as a curtain between the room and the hallway. A tripwire disengages the curtains from the ceiling, and they land on both the party and the torches keeping the hallway lit, engulfing adventurers in burning fabric. It was a pretty easy way to keep the party on their toes, as well as spelling out that, even though goblins are dumb as hell, they've survived this long for a reason.
[In goblin language] Guyan: Guys, I just came up with the best trap idea! Weelark: Another one of your foolish plans? Guyan: This one will work for sure. Neetar, put this dress on! I hear adventurers are into that sort of thing lately. Neetar: What the fuck are you talking about?! I'm not gonna do that! Guyan: You're the prettiest male here, it has to be you. I'll give you half of my share of their riches. (Nat 20 persuasion) Neetar: ... You'd better hold up your end of the bargain. [One TPK later] Neetar: How the hell did that work... Guyan: See, I told you adventurers are gullible and weak to a pretty face. Weelark: I can't believe they fell for the 10 ft. pitfall. We didn't even finish covering it up.
My favorite trap is the "shadow conjuation wall of stone" from 3e. You make a bridge using shadow conjuation to mimic the wall of stone spell. Just a small section over a chasm. Anyone that MAKES their wisdom save realize that the floor is illusory and falls through.
Rug of smothering with a glyph of warding on it. Visibility: The rug has a big golden glyph on it trigger: being grappled by the rug effect: bestow curse is cast on you to give you disadvantage on your athletics check to break free of the rugs grapple bypass: objects with glyph of warding on them cease to function if moved more then 10 feet. Keep 10 feet away from it
I think as with Insight checks, if you suspect there are traps or suspect someone is lying, then you already suspect. Your roll means you can't deduce anything beyond what you already know (i.e. you still think the person might be lying or there might be traps, but you fail to learn anything new). Sometimes I'll roleplay it like that "Hey I checked for traps and we're good!" *TRAP TRIGGERS* but other times I'll just go okay, and proceed cautiously. One way to avoid this though would be to roll the investigate for the player as the DM. Then they truly don't know if they failed to find a trap because they rolled a 20 or if there are and they just didn't notice.
That sucks. I think though that your dm should still allow your character to be suspicious of traps, even if they didn’t notice any (since they were concerned enough in the first place to bother checking).
I had never thought about a deceptive trap like the 2 layer magical trap. That's really smart and im totally using it. Also I never really had good ideas to realistically trap chests in ways that aren't boring but your spore chest has given me other ideas too. Thank you.
The ice Crystal, within 300 ft of the crystal, spells that use fire is dispelled and fire in the area is put out, any spell that does any other types of damage deals cold instead. When a player is within 5 ft of the crystal must make a con save of 18 or take 2d10 cold each turn that they are within 5 ft of it.
Here's the trap: There is a single goblin in a room just sitting on a wooden chair. It is unarmed and has simple cloth clothing on and is not outright hostile, but has a strange way of calling people out on their insecurities. When the goblin dies it is duplicated and the door to the room closes. The two goblins are still unarmed but are now hostile. Every time a goblin dies it is duplicated until the party is dead. The fail safe is ether that the trapper has no insecurities or just walks past the goblin. The way the trap ends without killing the entire party is if the party deals non lethal damage to the goblins in the room until they are all knocked out. I am still tempted to TPK a level 20 party with this trap...
From the Angry GM, I learned a trick for bridging the gap between "you spotted the trap and foiled it instantly" and "you activated the trap and have no agency in the harm about to befall you". He called it the _Click Rule._ Basically, when a PC activates a trap, there's a readily apparent visual or audio cue for it being triggered. The example is stepping on a pressure plate, and hearing a "click". At which point the DM asks the PC (and whatever other PCs would be caught in the trap with them) what their immediate, split second reaction to this is. Depending on what they do, they either get advantage, disadvantage, or no change to the saving throw (or to the to-hit roll of the trap, where applicable). These being determined by whether they do something that aids their chances, hurts their chances, or doesn't really affect the outcome. For example, let's say you have a swinging blade trap that comes from above and slashes from side to side. If the PC reacts to the "click" by ducking or diving back or forward, they get advantage on the Dex saving throw to avoid the blade. If they dive to either side of the pressure plate, they get disadvantage, because they're diving right into the blade. If they hold a shield up to the correct side, they might get advantage. If they pick the wrong side to block - or do nothing - they get no bonus or penalty to the save. The point of the _Click Rule_ is to make it so traps have more player interactivity, besides the result they get on a roll to spot the trap. Some traps, of course, can require cleverness to figure out, but others come down to passing or failing the Perception/Investigation/Arcana check to spot them. The _Click Rule_ makes it so the player still has something they can attempt to do in the event they trigger a trap. Doesn't work for all traps, but it might make many traps seem less like bullshit.
Another good method for traps is layered perception DCs. A DC 14 reveals a tripwire that appears to go to a crossbow hidden in the wall. However that crossbow is the misdirection, the real trap is a box of giant centipedes or container of acid placed just behind the tripwire, to fall on someone who tried to trigger it from a distance. Revealing the second trap is DC18 or something similarly difficult.
I love how devious you are. Thank you for all these ideas. Also have you thought about talking to a therapist about Schadenfreude? (I'm kidding you need some in order to be a good DM)
One of my favorite traps I've made I call the botulism bomb. The trigger is almost always a string attached to a door or tripwire which causes a precariously perched jar of disgusting 1000 year old rotten preserves to fall and shatter on the floor. The odor of the contents is so powerful that the party to projectile vomit (nausea mechanically) on a failed Con save (depending on party level). I usually make it a 30 ft radius and only one round of nausea but it's very customizable. You could pair this with an ambush essentially denying your party a round in combat. I also enjoy when my parties discover the trap and loot it, using the jars on their enemies.
A room with a floor coverd in what look like colored marbles when a red marble touches another red they explode dealing 1 d6 and yes this can cause a chain reaction. To disarm is just pick up the red marbles and keep them separate you can also use them as a weapon if you crazy
I once had a team discover an extending metal pole at the beginning of a dungeon that was supposedly just supposed to be a quarterstaff which gave reach, but I pretended to be caught off-guard by them using it to test and activate a number of traps (a trick they had previously employed under a different GM). Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but my favorite part came when the specific room I created with the use of this pole in mind came into play: A place with a distinctly metallic chest surrounded by numerous pieces of armor and swords hooked up to what looked like a two separate pipes leading from the chest into the floor (they had to roll to specifically notice this last detail). The paladin decided to use the pole and tap the various sections of the room until finally inching to the chest and activating what turned out to be a big ol' magnet. He got stuck to the chest and began getting zapped and the rest of the party had _no_ idea what to do since nobody wanted to go in the room or simply cast a damaging spell at the chest for a bit. Though they tried various attempts such as combining Mage Hands, the Paladin fried to a burnt crisp and they decided to leave. I let the Paladin's player (who was a good sport about character deaths) come back next session with a different character who happened to have looted some of the gear off his former character a few in-game days later. - Awsm Chimera
I did one where my group walked trough the swamps filled with toxic gasses and stuff. Then when the "trap" triggered i made one of the group do a investigation check for smells of rot comming from their bags. Turns out the food and water supplies had turned bad cause of the noxious gasses everywhere. Luckily,(for me)no druid in the party so they had no purifier and no supplies to make the swamp's dungeon run a little harder. They still made it trough.
Magic coin hidden in pile of regular coins. At certain thresholds suddenly becomes immovable rod. Put these thresholds in hallways with big scary thing that chases them. So when they run from the big scary thing their coin purse tears and all their money is lost
Their was this awesome trap made my a beholder that was activated by our thoughts so let’s say if we were angry the room would get hotter or cold if were growing lethargic and all that the room will turn into some endurance puzzle and such or a high slopes up hill.....was trippy to
In a goblin dungeon i made i had a hidden bear trap that acted as a pressure plate which activated dropping a live bear from a hatch 60 ft above dc 16 dex save or take damage equal to the falling damage the bear would take so 6d6 bludgeoning lol
I remember a few of my favorite traps. Thorn Rope: A rope made of vine with thorns, every 5 ft. of movement costs 1d6 piercing damage. It's the only way out of the pit they fell into. The Jester's downfall: Double doors with an inscription, "Amuse the king, or entertain the dead" The players must dance or act silly in order to please a massive crowned statue. If they don't, the "king" will animate. If the king is amused, it laughs itself to "death". (it explodes, leaving a massive gemstone on the ground the size of a pumpkin) The Roses... Okay, gotta give some Backstory here. The party had been tracking a criminal with a knack for escape across a desert wasteland. The find him... Pieces of him. The room they entered (by falling in due to some bad rolls on their part) has tiles that shift beneath their feet. The room is a dome, and upon inspection they see massive metal roses on the wall. The criminal is currently smeared on several. The petals of the roses are razor sharp, instant death. The Barbarian took a step, one single step forward. Failed Dex save. "THWACK!" Went a harpoon, into their gut, dealing 3d6 piercing. The harpoon is connected to a chain, leading all the way to one of the roses. A "Click, click, click." could be heard, and the Barbarian was being pulled towards the rose. This Triggers several other harpoon veing launched from the roses. The party managed to crawl out by the skin of their teeth. The beauty of the trap is this; if they put their torches out, the safe tiles can be seen. Either the roses, or the harpoon will kill them.
How's this: A mirror with the 'imprison' spell on it, activated only when one comments on one's own appearance. I literally just came up with this now.
A pressure-plate activated trap that when activated the dm just grins, rolls a bunch of dice, laughs, then does absolutely nothing.
BlueStamp absolute mad lad
Perfect
Genius
4 D20 physic damage and you have to roll against being frightened ( effects that make you immune to fear are negated)
This seems like a great plan
A bookshelf slides away to reveal an opening, a hand reaches out to grab a PC by the collar. The hand makes a bad roll and misses, PC is completely oblivious.
Cue Scooby Doo theme
The doors in the hallway are all unstable gates, each time a creature enters one on its turn, it emerges from one of the others at random at the start of its next turn. Two creatures passing through the same door at the same time do not necessarily emerge from the same door, and two creatures entering different doors may exit from the same door.
Perfect for chases.
A hole in the wall, with an ape man on the other side disguised as one of the players and mimicking their actions, to fool the player into thinking that the hole is actually a mirror
Traps are a great way for DMs' to explore all the ways they can violate the Geneva Convention.
That's it. Nuke time.
I don't think dragons or litchs care about the geneva convention
I dont think genebra, or conventions, exists in a d&d world
Its quite likely that even if dozens of organized industrial nations inside a fantasy universe met, and created a compact on the limitations of harm and conduct in treatment of prisoners of war, I don't think any sentient species labeled "monster" would have either been invited to sign, nor adhere to the guidelines and limitations. If monstrous beings Were included, then adventurers wouldn't be allowed to assault such creature's sovereign turf and definitely not be allowed to "break, enter and murder" said "creatures" without allowing for said beings to do so in return under strict rules of humane just fairness. Think of the political stink if a band of adventurers raided a goblin cave, only for the local paladins to make the adventurers stand back as the goblin cousins were then allowed to enter the city, burn down buildings, take resources and murder as many people as they could find.
D&D is all about the freedom to murder and be murdered without limitations of civilization & justice, let alone socially enforced rules :)
Yay childish murder hobos?
I believe you mean The Hague Convention. The Geneva Convention was the treatment of prisoners.
A magic trap ive used and liked:
A long corridor, narrow enough to force the players to walk single file. A magic trigger that casts "Catapult" on a brick on the other end of the corridor. The brick flies towards the players and the one in front makes a dex save. As per the rules of the catapult spell, if he succeeds on the save, he dodges and the brick flies on, forcing the second player to make a save and so on. Youre pretty much guaranteed that SOMEONE eats a 3d8 damage brick, and its fun to see the brick fly past the rogue and the fighter to smack the wizard in the head. And you can upcast the spell to adjust for player level.
RIP the wizard or platemail cleric
I'm stealing that
I did this once... Except it was a disintegrate spell.
@@aakodiak117 hahah your a mean dm XD
@@leoreoden5821 it actually wasn't that bad, the party was in a dungeon full of trap that they knew could get really bad at any moment. The party was also high enough level to survive it, mostly
My favorite trap is more of a puzzle:
The party comes across an ornate golden door. Carved into the door is a single open eye. Beneath the eye it reads 'Draw your weapons and show them to me.' Presenting an actual weapon to the door gets the presenter shocked by lightning. The solution is to take out pen and parchment and sketch one's weapons at which point the door unlocks.
so stealing this one
Want to use, but my party would never solve this.
so doing this to my party
The pen is mightier than the sword I guess
If they Stab the eye what happens
Runesmith sample trap 3: Runesmith uploads a youtube video
Trigger: I'm browsing youtube and have nothing to watch
Visibility: Most interesting thing in my recommended list
Outcome: I spend ±10 minutes learning things i'll never use because i'm not a DM
Curse you, trap god, your ingeniosity is only matched by your cruelty, subjecting me to all this interesting knowledge!
Its because of his videos that I became interested in, and finally started dm-ing
If ya wanna tell a story, start dming
@@InviWasTaken If you want to write a story, be an author, not a DM. If you want to see how badly players can subvert your expectations, DM.
Failsafe: become a DM
@@irok1 you don't need to railroad to tell a story, but you can't go into certain topics, not for the sensitivity of the topic, but simply because you can't go into the topic of something like loneliness, when theres 4 other players.
“How does the party get together” hook in trap form: For the first session have your players make characters but tell them they are not allowed to make backstories. The first session begins with them suddenly finding themselves in a room in the heart of a dungeon with a bunch of dangerous looking, heavily armed strangers. They have all fallen victim to a memory removal trap! This will require a bit of set up on the DMs part to set “forensic evidence” of their passage into the dungeon. If they later get a “remove curse” spell done, they get to write a backstory. If they don’t, the campaign is based on them digging up their backstories piece by piece.
This is awesome! I want to play in a campaign like that!
My group has 3 DMs who take turns making/using campaigns. One of my 3 ideas is to tell the party to pick a race and we'll sort out a backstory in game zero, that's the trap, there is no game zero (dun dun durnnn) and all their characters come to in a glass crater about 150 wide with a pool of "liquid gold" that evaporates (even in a sealed container) over the next few minutes. They have no idea who they are, where they are or what happened. Campaign starts out as survival as there is no one and nothing but ruins for miles in every direction.
So it's danganronpa?
Its sooooo good! I need to try it one Day xd
Stone wall inscription in elvish that says "Rocks fall you die." If read out loud rocks fall you die.
Or goblin stag party .... Releasing swarm of mutilated zombified and naked goblins riding diseased and rotgrub infested stags!
@@minecraft425 Oooooo that is a good idea
Disarmed by saying: "no u"
Do you have to read it in elvish?
If you only read the first bit, rocks fall and you survive.
A plain chest in the middle of a random empty room. The chest is legit, but the room itself is a mimic.
That's evil. You have the thanks of this dungeon master.
you monster. i love it.
You're an asshole and I'm stealing this idea
An ancient medusa with permanent hold person spell on it, inside the illusion of a statue - if you disbelieve the illusion, most likely dead. If you cast dispel magic, definitely dead, because dispel magic affects both spells.
A trap within a trap made by a trap in a trap
A bear trap.
Trigger: an inscription on the door that reads "beware of bear" (can be any language other then common). Saying bear out loud triggers the trap.
Failsafe: not saying bear.
Visibility: a hidden trap door on the ceiling spotted with a dc 16 perception check.
Outcome: a bear skeleton falls from the trap door and lands on the floor in a jumbled mess. The party is spooked, have a good laugh, then turn to leave the room.
2nd trigger: looking away from the bear animates it and it attacks the party.
cole stuebs stolen!
that is now the only thing I will consider to be worthy of the title "bear trap"
Instead of the skeletal bear coming to life, the next room has a invisible bear trap in front of its door way
I love this
This is beautiful
my absolute favorite trap is the "Cat and mouse" trap from the old "traps and treachery" book *3.5 edition*
in a nutshell, it's a trapped book, scroll, item, or whatever you need it to be to attract players to it, sitting as though discarded on a table, counter, desk, or shelf. the only thing odd about the room(originally the library of a wizard who was fond of cats) is that there are a dozen or more cats lounging about the room. the cats can be friendly or just ignore players as they enter. If a player touches the trapped item, they are instantly polymorphed into a mouse... which draws the attention of the cats in the room, who swarm and attempt to devour the unlucky player.
awesome
Oh, I had a dm once have a huge room with a door at the other end and a key on a pedestal in the centre. Obviously the players go for the key first, which sprouts legs and evades the players (had a move speed of 50 i think). We spent 15 minutes trying to catch it......
The gods-damned door wasn't locked. The little shit laughed us out of the room. The trapper was later found and summarily executed.
I love this so much. Thank you for this lovely thing. ^~ ^ Gonna start the new campaign off right. XD
Oh you can bet your ass I'm using this
I'm know I'll be killed after using this, but nevermind, my players will suffer...
I did something similar once in a famous tomb that the players knew they weren't the first to go there. Not boring you to with details but the entrance had this elaborated magical lock. That was already solved by previuos adventurers. They spend a good half hour trying to solve it until they realize the door was already open. There was a point to it tought. Part of the dungeon itself was learning from those who venture there before hand.
Oh... So the trapper couldn't catch it either.
One of my favorites is one of the most simple. An obviously illusory wall that when dispelled not only dispels the illusion but also dispels the wall of force holding back the lava.
A 1' deep pit trap with a teleport spell at the bottom that teleports you 8' above the pit. The spell lasts for around 10 charges getting the victim up to terminal velocity.
Perception 10 notices the "pit"
Detect magic will notice the spell.
Dispel magic will defuse the trap.
Portal gun confirmed
Either way, have a healing and/or resurrection spell ready.
Oooooooooo
Your party enters a dark, narrow hallway, illuminated by a single burning torch affixed to the wall. If a player decides to grab said torch from the wall, they will find it is rigged to open a tube directly above the torch. Oil pours out from the tube, drizzling the player and subsequently igniting them via the torch
This is why darkvision is a thing
Stealing this for my Curse of Strahd game
This is why I always paranoidly spam Light in dark places.
WRONG LEVAAAAAHH!
Why do we even have that lever
Spyglass Surprise
Item: A simple spyglass at first glance
Lure: A blurry illusion of an attractive member of the race that picks up the spyglass
Trigger: Twisting the spyglass to attempt to bring the illusory image into focus.
Effect: A dart (optionally poisoned) fired right into the rube's eye. Dealing appropriate damage, and doing only half on a successful, but fairly difficult, reflex save.
oh god. though to make it worse I'd make them first see a ugly overweight 40 year old charging at then and have a penis shaped bludgeoning tool to completely crush their eye.
@@retosius7962 lel
Okay, but how do the players detect it?
@@VorpalDerringer painfully I would say...
I surprised my players with a spike pit and followed moments later a bridge mimic. He was caught off guard because “ You aren’t supposed to put 2 traps in a row”. It was a good time.
What a weakling.
Have they never seen an Indiana Jones movie?
Joseph Schmoeson I know right?
You forgot one from an anime that I loved, in this cooking in dungeon there's these mimic coin insects that attack parties unaware. Best part is if the stick it in a bag of holding and pull it out in town and suddenly cause a panic and combat which lets you have them arrested or other plot hooks.
@@minecraft425 agressive coin insects? Yeah, im stealing that.
EDIT: Also I need the name of that anime, please.
Fun trap effects (off the top of my head):
A trap that coats the victim in Aboleth mucus. Except there's no pools of water in the dungeon. And the dungeon is in a desert.
A trap that curses the the victim with extreme photosensitivity. The players might even finish the dungeon, not realizing they've been affected, but then suddenly start taking constant damage from the sun when stepping outside. A DM could even tease hints about the trap because the party found a bunch of burned skeletons on their way in huddled in their sleeping bags. Their gear was completely unburned. Bonus points for the trap activation spraying a puff of ground ginger root onto the party, but no other obvious effect until the party is touched by sunlight.
Make every magical item in the dungeon very powerful and desirable for the party, just a hell of a haul. But each item has a security failsafe built in where, if you remove the item from the dungeon and don't speak the proper command word, they reverse the personal gravity of whoever is wearing it. So, as soon as they step outside, the party suddenly falls upward.
Murphey Law I am 100% stealing the last one!
"ginger root" hahahahahahahhaha; that's a good one!
Oh, man you actually made me lol with that one. Very funny trap.
Hahaha “Ginger root”. I saw what you did there.
Trap: a cute dog/pet
The players will do everything in there power to keep it alive
Make it better: the cute pet is both very venomous and very affectionate. At random intervals, have random party members make dexterity saves to avoid painful death from poisonous licking.
@@bitingapotato3277 and make it the bbeg's familiar that they use it to scrying on the party. They should have expected it from the poisonous dog in the middle of the ancient dungeon
@@southanime Yeesss. Now I have to make a ridiculously adorable bbeg and fill their lair with cutesy things that will murder my players to death. It's perfect.
Depends on the party, my first TPK the party killed each other because they had a heated argument over a bunch of chimney sweep lost boys they found in a steampunk city. Half the party wanted to kill the kids bc they suspected they were demons, the other half thought they were just kids. Everyone died at the hands of a samurai with nothing but 1 hp and a grenade powerful enough to level the ruins of the building.
My favorite trap that I stole from a classic D&D module: opening a door in a multi-door hallway teleports the PC inside a crypt a room away, whose identity is assumed by a doppelganger in that room. Slyly give the player the doppelganger character sheet. When the rest of the PCs arrive, they're on the other side of a wall of magical fire. The doppelganger beckons the players to tank the damage and cross through it.
Friend of mine had an idea for a trap that I used once. 20ft wide hallway, 10x10 ft steel plate in the middle. You can easily walk around the edges without trying. Turns out those are the real trap and the steel plate is just a steel plate
Made a Dungeon filled with hilarious traps to troll my players, called it the "Labirynth of THE TROLL".
The nearby townsfolk warned them that its the most dangerous place, that no one who entered has ever returned and begged them not to go.
Really got their gears rolling and they wanted to check it out obviously.
Now they were all level 4 at this time.
Turned out the traps werent deadly, but just a lot of jokes I thought of, that caused funny effects like puking beer for 10 minutes or any kind of weird debuff I could think of.
After a lot of laughing and joking (and debuffs) they reached the final area - a small labirynth, with torches at each wall for better visibility.
As they turn around the final corner, to reach the center of the room - they spot a Troll. In a split second the monster turns away from my (still debuffed) players, runs into the labirynth and lets out a roar - just then a wind starts howling through the corridors and extinguished every torch (and any fire they'd try to use).
Only Darkness and the scream of the Troll echoeing between the corridors.
One player told me he doesnt get the joke here. I told him:
"The joke is that you didnt listen to the townsfolk... Roll initiative."
One of my weak spots as a dm.
They're either completely pointless or disgustingly lethal. No in between for some reason.
Same here. I hardly use traps because having to hear "I roll for investigation" every room can get a little grating. And the punishment for not rolling or failing is hit points, rather than supplies or abilities.
I don't doubt they can't be interesting and cool, and I do have a few on the backburner I'd like to use at some point. But something about having a random pit killing the level 6 low health rogue doesn't sit well with me. I'd rather give my players a cooler way to go out, or at the very least have it be more a fault of their decisions rather than a "you rolled too low to see it" since they're all pretty attached to who they play.
Incogneko, if you have a problem with traps only affecting hit points instead of equipment why don’t you use something like rust monsters that can eat metal tools or the lighting spell which can burn flammable object. If I recall correctly.
@@fancyb.p.6122 Rust monsters are really cool! I mean more of the stereotypical dart, pit, maybe statue related traps. Even the "[blank] fills the room" traps. Less so intricate monsters that do a specific thing. Basically the "hit point" traps that I often see thrown in dungeons.
Incogneko well you could always talk to your dm if you have a problem with the traps. If I ever dm I guess I should try to use something other than just hit point traps
Try some restraining, paralyzing, or petrifying traps that trigger the attention of monsters nearby. While the party is trying to free them, they will have to simultaneously fight and work on prying their friends free.
From the french role-playing game "Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk", I remember this stupid trap :
*Finger guillotine*
*Context :* A wall, with two holes at the end of a halway
*Trigger :* Something enters the holes
*Outcome :* A sharp blade fall, cutting whatever was inserted in the holes (if "whatever" is the fingers of someone... well let's just say he will have trouble holding stuff. Also, pain)
*Failsafe :* Just.... do not poke the holes ?
I wonder if it ever worked to be honest.
My players would 100% poke these holes.
I used a similar trap, a hole wide enough for an arm to go into, and inside a nest of rats that when the arm goes in looking for a lever or something, disturbs the nest and causes a swarm of rats to attack, biting the hand of the idiot first. And yes my players did this.
An "f" to all of the horny bards out there.
Wasn't there a trap in Tomb of Horrors, where there were two holes in the wall, one with a lever you needed to progress and the other with a sphere of annihilation?
Not a trap per se, but one of my DMs did this thing where the entire room 2as a reverse pit trap. There was a sigil in the center of the floor that reversed gravity on the room, and the ceiling was 50 ft high. The thing could be deactivated permanently with either Dispel Magic of by messing up the rune.
When you walked in you flew to the ceiling and took fall damage. The walls were smooth to prevent climbing out. When you deactivated the sigil, if you were already on the ceiling, you took more fall damage.
Taking more fall damage by dispelling the trap is totally evil. Maybe the failsafe is just, the trap maker can fly, thus allowing them to cross the room with sufficient skill, since they're expecting the trick.
my dm did something similar except the cieling had a glyph that fixed gravity so we bounced a whole bunch... not fun
The best trap I know of only works once:
The party enters a room, the door slamming shut behind them. There is a button on a pedestal in the middle of the room, several grates along the walls, and a timer. When they enter, the timer starts counting down from 30 seconds. Pressing the button resets it. As the timer gets closer to 0, more effects start to happen- the ground shakes, torches get dimmed, you hear a shuffling get louder in the grates, etc. If the timer reaches 0, all of this stops and the door opens. I had a group stuck on this for almost half an hour. Toss in whatever misdirects you want-those are just the ones I use.
Kent Watson There should be something in there that can lead to a player injuring themself, either through panicking or misplaced threat detection. Like illusory demons in front of spikes or opposite from them; charge at the demon to hurt it and run into spikes, or back away from it into spikes or pits or something. It's
a good mindfuck as is but we can let the players hurt themselves if they're not careful. AND make it so the longer they take to complete it the more time the main villain/boss has to prepare troops/traps, making the rest of the dungeon harder.
Straight up stolen from puffinforest
@@IHateNumbersOnNames Never heard of him before. I'll admit that I didn't come up with this trap originally: I found it a while back browsing Reddit.
@@BasketOfPuppies642 my mistake, its "Zee Bashew - The Countdown Puzzle" the video I was reffering too. Check it out, its animated and shit. Very good quality stuff.
@@IHateNumbersOnNames I didn't know I needed that channel until you told me about it. Subbed.
Kobolds weigh 65-75 pounds. Pressure plate that only activates at 100 pounds.
According to Volo’s Guide, they average 25-35 lbs. So depending on size, two or three could move in unison and still be fine if at least 100 lbs is required to trigger the plates.
Or, it's a magical trigger that is activated by ugly with a clackson the sounds "too ugly!", then punji sticks!
Bonus points if you have the pressure plate in a narrow hall that forces the players over the plate, and then have kobolds run over it multiple times. Lures players into a false sense of security and then suddenly you get vored by an animated suit of armor with a sphere of annihilation in its tummy.
Imagine a gnome being in the front of the party walks past and says "look its safe" and then everyone else preceeds to get obliterated by spikes lol
Aight, that's just evil.
I just used one recently that was a dye-pack trap on a chest, ruining the scrolls inside.
wintermadness87 that’s fucking brilliant and realistic
I'd change it from a dye pack to a lifeless squid that gets reanimated, all the same effects plus you know squid to the face.
@theunnamedgamer 187 squid damage = best damage ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
A surprisingly mundane trap that’s just as effective as any other trap.
This idea reminds me a lot of the Cryptex puzzle from DaVinco Code
For a more specialized (re: homebrewed monster/villain) enemy, I have passages that are partially underwater; about ankle to knee deep. Throughout the passages are wedge-shaped troughs that are perfect for slipping in and snapping ankles. Also in those literal ankle-breakers is webbing that connects back to the spider-boss responsible.
So, said traps serve to hobble/slow down encroaching adventurers and act as an early alarm system to the boss.
I remember a trap in some tomb that consisted of a tunnel going down under the level - at the end there were stairs up with a heavy metal door, and no trap per se... except it lead to the bottom of an artificial lake - opening them would slam you with the door, throw you down the stairs, and then fill the whole tunnel with water. (the guy in charge of the tomb complex had been a bit paranoid.)
A pressure plate activating a pleasure enchantment that is so pleasing, that it would practically hurt the player to leave it.
Nice
But then why wouldn't the trapper just use it himself? Or, y'know, sell that enchantment on, er, carefully crafted items?
@@Fakan The Trapper is a Succubus and has other devices for herself. Also idk if my world is ready for a magic shop of that kind ...
@@jyrvehkormsson7833 very intresting
Did someone say, Slaanesh?
Okay, so I have a plot dungeon that is charisma themed and is basically a mirrored hallway. The other side if the mirror, however, is another portion of the dungeon which can and must occasionally be entered to progress. The kicker? The first side of the dungeon is under a continuous Zone of Truth spell. The mirror side, however, is the reverse, it is constantly under a Zone of Lies. Meaning that on the mirror side, you cannot knowingly tell the truth.
The trap is thus: Button in the first room shifts the lock to the next room from the real side to the mirror side, and must be held down in order to keep the door unlocked. In the next room, the mirrored wall warbles, indicating some kind of magicky portal stuff, and there is another door straight ahead. Should one player go through the mirror before another can enter the room, they will be stuck on that side of the mirror.
The player cannot be seen through the mirror due to the warbling reflection. Say a second player enters after. They are very likely to call out, saying "Did you go through this door, etc?" The first player, now in the Zone of Lies, responds "Yes!"
The second player walks through the door, inside which is two umber hulks. The door locks behind them.
Water flows in the entrance to the dungeon but equalizes itself through a hidden drain, keeping the water permanently knee deep.
If the players open the sliding self locking entance without blocking the water first, the water floods the rest of the dungeon at the same height.
This releases trapped Swarms of Quippers, and grants disadvantage on detecting floor traps,.
Plus, even non-fully-immersive quantities of water can create difficult terrain. Try fighting when you're moving at half speed while the killer fish aren't, you schlubs.
Aaaaaand stolen, hahaha
How would they stop the water?
@@anthonynorman7545
Sand Bags
Divert the water flow.
Shape Water (Freeze)
Stone Shape (encapsulate the entrance with a solid short wall).
Some other spells would do the trick as well.
@@Battleguild oh, it's a small flow like a brooke. I was thinking river! Thanks
I was LITERALLY stuck throwing a trap into my dungeon for my players! Thanks for the save, dude!
How did it go?
Quicksand?
There lot of good traps you can take from like the Vietnam war
Anime has a lot of good traps too
When the trees start speaking Vietnamese
When the cobwebs in the underdark start speaking elven.
Are you talking about the poo poo spikes?
Thanks but I don’t wanna give my players ptsd
Drāno When the cave starts speaking goblin
Fun trap for the whole family:
Stepping on a tripwire drops a bag of holding into a portable hole, throwing the whole party into the astral dimension
How about a trap that raises the floor into a jail cell
That's a cute idea.
I love it
Druid to the rescue!
I actually ran into a trap just like that. If enough weight was placed on a rooms floor, it would raise up to the top floor. The only way our was a trap door that only opened from the outside on the ceiling, out of reach
Chris Kilian I was thinking a fake chest but that works to
A large, wooden chest in a treasure room with a skeleton laying next to it with a dagger in hand. If a player gets within 10 feet of the chest, the skeleton reanimates and shanks them.
For maximum effect, make it look like the chest is a mimic, but then reveal the actual trap was, in fact, The Skeleton.
You've easily became my favourite channel for D&D shenanigans :)
There is not one serious thing about his channel and i love it
What about a pressure plate that does absolutely nothing.
"It might have done something somewhere in the Doungen, but not here"
A dungeon with floors made of nothing *but* pressure plates. Most do nothing. Most.
@@BigusGeekus that's evil bro, lol
The La Mulana approach to dungeon design.
5:17 - The magical inscription on the door is actual advertising. It literally reads, "Buy the Merch."
Rlly
0:12 Wait...other DM's actually write their sessions?
Foot notes my friend, just to make sure they get key locations, people and items.
DM's what?
I'm running a very sandbox world. After I got it all written out, the only session notes I write are just like....general ideas 😅
Trying to plan for this sandbox any other way would prove useless.
1) make a cave with a big pit
2) make a large mimic
3) insert large mimic into pit
4) insert alchemy jug into mimic
5) have mimic use the alchemy jug to make its max amount of acid each day
6) have mimic pretend to be the ground and an inconspicuous journal or something innocuous but intriguing in the center
7) party walks onto mimic to investigate book
8) mimic opens mouth, party falls and is grappled in a pool of acid
9) change your name, move towns, and find a new hobby to escape the wrath of your players
Level 8 Glyph of Warding with reverse gravity with a spiked atrium. Have fun.
I’ve heard of this but instead of an atrium it’s a spiked chandelier...
Characters enter the room and trigger the glyph, fly up into the spikes, the spell ends, the characters a fall back to the ground.
After a moment of silence, the chains holding the chandelier snap and it falls on them.
@@alexandrudorries3307 Because chandeliers MUST fall on the recently injured. It's a cartoon rule stolen from bad cowboy serials.
The floor and ceiling are made of spikes, with a pillar in the middle of the room that rests on a 10' radius platform.
Once atleast 2 people enter the 30' radius of the glyph of warding, they fall upwards into the spikes, then straight down into more spikes, with no way to climb up the smooth stone. Only the first person who jumped will (most likely) survive.
Failsave: Be patient and go one at a time.
@@knightsilverthesoulsenjoyer Nice
How about a gravity effect set sideways, suddenly turning a tunnel into a vertical mine shaft?
A tripwire trap that causes a hissing noise to occur, similar to a bomb's fuse being lit or if a creeper is nearby
The hissing persists for 5 minutes
The party would either panic at a bomb with a long fuse or not give a shit about the seemingly misleading hissing noise
If the party is in the next room when the hissing stops, it blows up and caves in, requiring a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw to avoid the collapse
It'd be up to the DM if the collapsing would downright kill a crushed character or if they would just be restrained near the exit
Either way, the save would tell whether or not the party takes 10d10 Bludgeoning damage, or half as much on a successful save
If the party leaves the next room without the room blowing up, it will cave in and blow up after the 5 minute timer is up, where they'll here the boom from any point in the dungeon, feeling the rumble from the explosion
Whenever you consider making a trap that causes condition, specially sleep, remember to make it a chemical effect. A lot of magic resistances and etc lying around, specially with how every party has a half-elf
I'd go half and half. Sometimes it's chemical, sometimes it's magic. You don't want to give Dwarves or Stout Halflings _too_ much advantage, in your rush to nerf half-elves. Vary the nature of traps, in much the same way you'd vary what monsters your throw at a party.
Or you know Cater to em with a few hell hounds trained specially on half elf meat ... Just like a certain dog breeder in markarth
Reduce the amount of oxygen in the room. Or add more carbon monoxide, similar effect with less giggling and more redness. - You can also use nitrous oxide if you like the giggling. - - Oh, and if you like doing damage, an anti-magic room with a pile of candles and an odorless natural gas leak...
Theirs a dog with a key in its mouth in the middle of a room, there’s a door on the opposite side of the room witch is locked. The dog is friendly but will not let go of the key because he thinks it’s a toy, and will think your playing with him if you try to take the key. You have to give the dog something that it wants more than the key. Or find a way to open he dogs mouth.
A DC(15) arcana check will reveal that floor is magical. The floor is enchanted to sense death, and will trigger the Alarm spell if anything in the room is dead, including undead. So if the players try to kill the dog , they get punished for being terrible people and alert the bad guys.
Once the door is unlocked, the dog will wait until everyone is through the door and then close it and take the key out of the door then sit down like a good doggo.
The key has a permanent prestidigitation spell on it so it smells and tastes like bacon.
A lost dog at the beginning of a dungeon and if you feed him he’ll follow you and purposefully activate every trap on you
Now THIS is an evil trap I like!
A physical (but not obviously) trap with a large magic component that's actually just the lynchpin of the failsafe/trigger mechanism. Dispel it and activates immediately.
Very clever indeed - I'm using that
Hall of Animated armour, activates when players show any hostility towards the statue that isn't on a pedestal and facing them with sword drawn. All the armour just attack the players
Bear Trap: Snaps on ankle dealing damage and holding you in place. Teleports your clothing and gear 10 ft away (Bare Trap) and summons a Dire Bear.
I got two traps for you
The first is an old trap design, and one of my favorites that I like to include once a campaign, is something I call "the gnasher." This is a visible spiked floor and ceiling corridor. The trigger is a pressure plate that is the entirety of the floor. The failsafe is simply weighting down the pressure plate with something and keeping that weight on it until everyone passes by the trap (your gear-laden backpack would work).
When triggered, spikes shoot up through the floor down through the ceiling, causing 1d4+1 attacks from the spikes for at a +4 attack bonus and do 1d6 damage each. However, the designer accidentally overclocked the trigger mechanism. If you are hit by the trap, there is a 15% chance (+5% for every spike that hits) that you will be lifted off of the pressure plate, causing the trap to reset, which causes you to fall back down onto the pressure plate retriggering the trap in a manner similar to gnashing teeth.
The second is the room of the flaming maw. A long room, two-thirds of which is blackened from scorch marks, with a large stone face marking the wall at the end, the open mouth serving as the exit. You can see the eyes glowing with fire, and when you get close to the mouth, fire leaps from the floor, cutting you off. Halfway into the chamber is a stone dais with a polished steel or bronze plate, angled in such a way as to be safe from the flame. It reads "to leave this chamber for that which is beyond, speak loudly and with clerity your answer. If correct, you may leave. What is the meaning of love" or some similar question.
The question and answer are irrelevant. The trigger is shouting anything loudly. Anything at all. This causes the eyes to blast the two-thirds of the room closest two it with flame, engulfing anyone in the blast range for 4d10 fire damage (Dex save DC 16 for half damage). It doesn't matter what is said, only that is loud enough to trigger the trap. The failsafe is to simply ignore the podium and walk through the mouth. The flame is an illusion meant to deter people and get them to fall for the trap.
"if you wish to pass the door, turn my curse into a cure." Every letter is a separate button and all but one of them deal 1d4 shock damage to whoever pushes them.
I did a variant on this idea for a LARP module. At two points in the module, the party finds letter tiles, one is a 'T' and the other is an 'S'. At the end of the module, they find a sarcophagus with the word C R E A T U R E on the cover, and each letter has a slot where the two letter tiles they found could be inserted. If they put the T over the C and the S over the existing T, they can open the lid to find loot and the stairs to the exit tunnel. Any other way they open the lid, the fight a mummy, and find the stairs to the exit tunnel underneath it (if they survive). It amazed me how many groups of players ended up fighting the mummy, and only one group did it on purpose (out of curiosity).
Traps that mess with your players are great, player steps on a rune/plate/tripwire/mushroom and rolls a DCX wisdom save. Nothing happens, they think it's alllllllll gravy but 20 mins later they attack a teammate/charge into battle/forget who they are/run away screaming. much more fun than "you take some damage. yaaaaay traps."
So basically, a trap of Confusion with a delayed reaction.
Jack Sharkey I had a similar trap this past week. PCs attacked floating spheres they thought were beholder-kin, actually spore-filled gas bags. Lvl8 Aasimar archer & human warmage both infected; archer started shooting at PCs & warmage lost a spell slot for the big boss battle.
A locked door with some magic shoved in the lock. the trigger is it being unlocked/opened. The failsafe, the creator has a key that disarms it.
The outcome, explosive fire runes start going off all over the dungeon collapsing every pathway in and out of the dungeon.
The creator is a paranoid dwarf who could just dig new tunnels. Very paranoid.
Even better:
A door with a big glowing menacing lock on it. Make sure to describe the lock very well.
The Trigger is the lock being unlocked with explosions just as you said.
The failsafe is to simply push the door open. It was never locked to begin with.
A doorknob that when touched, us affected by the spell 'Heat Metal' and burns the person.(with an optional CON save to power through and turn the knob anyways, advantage if a tiefling or someone else with resistance to fire).
The trick is the door is actually very thin and flimsy from decay, and snaps apart if punched or broken down in a similar fashion.
Though if you want to be REALLY mean, maybe have goblins in the next room who can be alerted by the sound.
....though, uh, use with caution. I used this trap in a campaign, and the guys started using it for JoJo references.
*Breaks down door.*
"Okay, great, so you guys head in."
Spleen the Goblin Bard:Wait...does this doorknob use heat metal?
Me:Uh...yeah.
Spleen:I'm taking it.*Breaks off rest of the door from it and throws knob in pack.*
"Okay....what you doing with that?"
Spleen:*Shares evil grin with Rogue*
Karl the rogue:I have a few ideas.
They then began a strategy of the rogue using his sleight of hand to install the doorknob on peoples house, and the bard using a spell slot to renew the trap. They would then use some strategy, usually the barbarian smashing tables, to try and scare the people so they'd run home and get killed.
Corrupt politician:*Running home, panting* Phew...I'm home! I'm safe!*maniacal laughter* *Turns knob* *Freezes when he sees Rogue in reflection of the window*
Karl the Rogue:Karl and Spleen have already left their mark on your doorknob*Snap*
Politician:*Nat 1* *Loses arm, making ensuing fight easier because he was almost dead and had no access to spells with somatic components*
....So yeah. Be careful, lest a simple trap turn your party into Yoshikage Kira.
J-josuke!!
@@expertionis794 This is the true power of Karl and Spleen. All evidence of our true selves has been eliminated.
*Meanwhile the Barbarian was in prison, trying to cut a deal to avoid charges for destroying 1000 gold worth of tables and chairs.*
There are a number of "Grimtooth's Traps" books each with 100 or so trap ideas. One of them is an entire "Trap Dungeon"
A trap within a trap, when you go for disarm the secundary one activates.
A trap whiten a trap made by a trap in a trap
Trapception
The failsafe for the first trap is actually the trigger to the second trap
Salt the wound, the first trap wasn't even a trap but a magical dispenser of the finest mead.
Instructions unclear, Astolfo is now inside a fake chest...
"You know it's a good idea if they've reached all their stretch goals"
Looks at star citizen
Just steal dr. Doofenshmirtz’s traps from phineas and ferb my guy
we have an intellectual over here
Ah, Perry the Platypus, you are too late... for I have already activated... the Trapinator!
I was brainstorming a trap idea earlier today, so this video is well timed. The basic idea came from watching a video about a manikin slowly constructing another manikin. Once the new manikin was complete, it provided a brief moment of companionship before the old manikin died and fell apart. New manikin assumes the role of the now deceased manikin, and the cycle continues.
SO, the idea was to have the party enter the room where this is taking place, like a creepy decrepit smith/toy-maker workshop, and have the door lock behind them. They're now trapped in the room with the manikin, as it slowly works away. The room begins to fill with a visible poison gas/mist, which is heavier than air so it sits on the bottom and slowly rises up, like a drowning trap. Few reasons why it's poison gas and not water- the manikin needs to be able to keep working unobstructed, it creates an environment where moving aggressively would agitate the poison from the floor and potentially hurt/kill the party which is a nice subtle way to signal that there is no brute force solution, and it could lead the players to more creative solutions I haven't thought of which is always cool.
The solution is to get the manikin to make a key for the door. I haven't nailed down how I want that to happen, but basically the players need to contend with the fact that the manikin is totally single minded in it's work to create the next of it's kin for the cycle to continue, and with such a exact lifespan giving just enough time to complete one manikin, it can't spare time for anything else. Perhaps the players observe the construction of the manikin in a bid to aid it, speeding up the process so there is time to make a key? Not sure.
I need to work on this some more.
A pit that’s filled with skeletons.
The skeletons don’t do anything unless you take them out of the pit.
Good for party members who just want to take EVERYTHING.
᛬ᚹᛁᛚᚺᛖᛚᛗ᛫ᛋᛖ᛫ᛚᛟᚱᚾᛁᛝᛣᚾᛁᛉᛏ᛬ then I have succeeded
my poor kenku would die, he loves collecting bones
Here is what I want:
A Dnd podcast
A step by step of how to make a mystery campaign
And good stories of you DMing or playing DND
I thought you were going to say "The Dungeon Master's guide has a great set of tables for diarrhea."
Right? I was honestly disappointed that it doesn't.
Ongoing Diarrhea - "you can still act but have disadvantage on everything and you smell terrible and make the floor slippery wherever you go, turning it into difficult terrain."
Violent Diarrhea - "you shit yourself so hard that it gives your armor the broken condition and you take 2d4 points of con damage"
My first traps was in a spider dungeon.
the room was filled with spider web und some ancient stone statues were standing around.
The room offered two ways to go, the one on the right was the main way but on the left side was an treasure room wich you cant enter without touching a giant web.(DC 15 on the statues will show that these stones can spill something and that there are connected with this main web)
The Trap will trigger if you tear at the web (for example if you walk through or if you cut it etc.) and release toxic gas (choose own stats)
you have to remove the web without tearing so you should burn it down.
A large chamber that has a skeleton or some other construct on guard.
The "sentry" is standing on a pressure plate so that when it gets off/ dies and falls off the trap goes off.
The secret is that the "sentry" has only been commanded to only look around. He will not attack or alert others at all. The damage itself could range from fire to an age spores
You could have a rope hanging next to the him to make less obvious or have sentry trapped in cage to make more obvious.
I was literally JUST looking for a helping hand on traps
Same
Same here my guy
Helping hand? How about a statue frozen in mid-handshake with it’s hand reaching out toward the players? Shake the hand and something nasty happens.
Personal favorite trap I've used is a pretty simple one but it definitely is the kind of thing that an evil bastard puts into his dungeon when he knows thieves are coming into it.
Have a room with a statue in the center of it, with subtle magical energy coming off said statue (in my case it was a fountain that was perpetually creating water). On the statue are inscriptions (runes lining the robed hem of said fountain statue) and touching them in the proper order reveals a hidden passageway, which is revealed by having the statue rotate to where the stonework opens up. The corridor this opens up to ends at *just* the right distance to allow the pointed statue to unleash its trap (a lightning bolt, in my case) and still catch anyone who reached the end of it.
Should your party survive or avoid the trapped corridor (or if you're feeling charitable), leave the remains of the previous thieves who were "clever" enough to fall for the trap as something to get some loot from!
a room just inside the beginning of a maze has a stone table in the middle. from the room's entrance the table appears to have a map inscribed into it. if you go over to the table and try to read the map, you find instead explosive runes, which trigger upon reading.
one way that a friend of mine tried to use exploding runes was to spend down time preparing several runes (since they are permanent) onto parchment. then the plan was to summon flying minions (of an inteligence too low to read) who would grab the parchment and "present" them to enemies. the DM ruled that exploding runes requires the attention of the reader and battle is not a time you would be distracted by a bit of paper.
the best use of exploding runes i saw though was a notebook kept by a thief, in it he mentions that one of his favorite tools was a wizard who prepares "exploding runes" and that phrase was the trigger rune.
One of my favorite traps to date is a rug that's 4 feet of quicksand. To most races it's merely inconvenient but it is deadly to most halflings and gnomes.
The best part about quicksand is that, unless you struggle, you only sink to about chest depth.
The poison pressure plate trap with undead in the room from Durlag's tower was a favourite.
a pit trap in clear view, the "safe" paths are pressureplates that shoot poisoned arrows at you from the ceiling like 2d6 piercing and 2d10 poison dc 15 con save for half.
And the "pit" has an invisible floor above it, so it wasn't a pitfall in the first place.
a pit of liquid gallium and vinegar makes for a nice drowning insta kill. People are less dense than gallium, but more dense than vinegar, so they get trapped in the middle.
But you can swim in vinegar probably
Maybe never tried it
@@EradWir humans are denser than vinegar, so they'd just sink. You cant swim in vinegar.
@@EradWir vinegar density is close to water density so you can swim but it will be a little harder at least in theory haven't tried yet
Well you could try drinking the vinegar. Sure it tastes sour and may do some internal damage after awhile but better that than death eh? Can always heal later.
A trap that gives the party omnipotence, causing them to realize they are being controlled by people who forged their backgrounds. Make new characters
SonofRolland do you mean omniscience?
@@peterosborne8315 You stole my line...
But they whould still have the omnipotence, right?
I had a bunch of goblins that overtook an old tomb in my campaign, and the one trap I had in the entire dungeon combined both the flavoring of the room they found it in, as well as the simplicity of goblin engineering.
There was a repurposed room turned into a sleeping quarter, where blankets were used as a curtain between the room and the hallway. A tripwire disengages the curtains from the ceiling, and they land on both the party and the torches keeping the hallway lit, engulfing adventurers in burning fabric.
It was a pretty easy way to keep the party on their toes, as well as spelling out that, even though goblins are dumb as hell, they've survived this long for a reason.
[In goblin language] Guyan: Guys, I just came up with the best trap idea!
Weelark: Another one of your foolish plans?
Guyan: This one will work for sure. Neetar, put this dress on! I hear adventurers are into that sort of thing lately.
Neetar: What the fuck are you talking about?! I'm not gonna do that!
Guyan: You're the prettiest male here, it has to be you. I'll give you half of my share of their riches. (Nat 20 persuasion)
Neetar: ... You'd better hold up your end of the bargain.
[One TPK later]
Neetar: How the hell did that work...
Guyan: See, I told you adventurers are gullible and weak to a pretty face.
Weelark: I can't believe they fell for the 10 ft. pitfall. We didn't even finish covering it up.
My favorite trap is the "shadow conjuation wall of stone" from 3e. You make a bridge using shadow conjuation to mimic the wall of stone spell. Just a small section over a chasm. Anyone that MAKES their wisdom save realize that the floor is illusory and falls through.
Colouroutofspace4 Fiendish! I love it. I’m totally stealing this.
Rug of smothering with a glyph of warding on it.
Visibility: The rug has a big golden glyph on it
trigger: being grappled by the rug
effect: bestow curse is cast on you to give you disadvantage on your athletics check to break free of the rugs grapple
bypass: objects with glyph of warding on them cease to function if moved more then 10 feet. Keep 10 feet away from it
* Pull out Yawning Portal *
"Oh yes... hmmm... YES! this will do just fine"
*checks for obvious traps*
*rolls 1*
“You find no traps”
*can’t meta game*
*dies*
I think as with Insight checks, if you suspect there are traps or suspect someone is lying, then you already suspect. Your roll means you can't deduce anything beyond what you already know (i.e. you still think the person might be lying or there might be traps, but you fail to learn anything new). Sometimes I'll roleplay it like that "Hey I checked for traps and we're good!" *TRAP TRIGGERS* but other times I'll just go okay, and proceed cautiously. One way to avoid this though would be to roll the investigate for the player as the DM. Then they truly don't know if they failed to find a trap because they rolled a 20 or if there are and they just didn't notice.
That sucks. I think though that your dm should still allow your character to be suspicious of traps, even if they didn’t notice any (since they were concerned enough in the first place to bother checking).
Passive skills?
I had never thought about a deceptive trap like the 2 layer magical trap. That's really smart and im totally using it. Also I never really had good ideas to realistically trap chests in ways that aren't boring but your spore chest has given me other ideas too. Thank you.
The ice Crystal, within 300 ft of the crystal, spells that use fire is dispelled and fire in the area is put out, any spell that does any other types of damage deals cold instead. When a player is within 5 ft of the crystal must make a con save of 18 or take 2d10 cold each turn that they are within 5 ft of it.
less a trap and more a hazard. lot of fun though
Here's the trap: There is a single goblin in a room just sitting on a wooden chair. It is unarmed and has simple cloth clothing on and is not outright hostile, but has a strange way of calling people out on their insecurities. When the goblin dies it is duplicated and the door to the room closes. The two goblins are still unarmed but are now hostile. Every time a goblin dies it is duplicated until the party is dead. The fail safe is ether that the trapper has no insecurities or just walks past the goblin. The way the trap ends without killing the entire party is if the party deals non lethal damage to the goblins in the room until they are all knocked out. I am still tempted to TPK a level 20 party with this trap...
From the Angry GM, I learned a trick for bridging the gap between "you spotted the trap and foiled it instantly" and "you activated the trap and have no agency in the harm about to befall you". He called it the _Click Rule._
Basically, when a PC activates a trap, there's a readily apparent visual or audio cue for it being triggered. The example is stepping on a pressure plate, and hearing a "click". At which point the DM asks the PC (and whatever other PCs would be caught in the trap with them) what their immediate, split second reaction to this is. Depending on what they do, they either get advantage, disadvantage, or no change to the saving throw (or to the to-hit roll of the trap, where applicable). These being determined by whether they do something that aids their chances, hurts their chances, or doesn't really affect the outcome.
For example, let's say you have a swinging blade trap that comes from above and slashes from side to side. If the PC reacts to the "click" by ducking or diving back or forward, they get advantage on the Dex saving throw to avoid the blade. If they dive to either side of the pressure plate, they get disadvantage, because they're diving right into the blade. If they hold a shield up to the correct side, they might get advantage. If they pick the wrong side to block - or do nothing - they get no bonus or penalty to the save.
The point of the _Click Rule_ is to make it so traps have more player interactivity, besides the result they get on a roll to spot the trap. Some traps, of course, can require cleverness to figure out, but others come down to passing or failing the Perception/Investigation/Arcana check to spot them. The _Click Rule_ makes it so the player still has something they can attempt to do in the event they trigger a trap. Doesn't work for all traps, but it might make many traps seem less like bullshit.
you should go over death knights, i got killed by one and I desire *revenge*
Another good method for traps is layered perception DCs. A DC 14 reveals a tripwire that appears to go to a crossbow hidden in the wall.
However that crossbow is the misdirection, the real trap is a box of giant centipedes or container of acid placed just behind the tripwire, to fall on someone who tried to trigger it from a distance. Revealing the second trap is DC18 or something similarly difficult.
I love how devious you are. Thank you for all these ideas.
Also have you thought about talking to a therapist about Schadenfreude? (I'm kidding you need some in order to be a good DM)
One of my favorite traps I've made I call the botulism bomb. The trigger is almost always a string attached to a door or tripwire which causes a precariously perched jar of disgusting 1000 year old rotten preserves to fall and shatter on the floor. The odor of the contents is so powerful that the party to projectile vomit (nausea mechanically) on a failed Con save (depending on party level). I usually make it a 30 ft radius and only one round of nausea but it's very customizable. You could pair this with an ambush essentially denying your party a round in combat. I also enjoy when my parties discover the trap and loot it, using the jars on their enemies.
Just a thought but have a weight levitating within a magical trap so when a smart player dispells it they trigger a secondary mechanical trap
A room with a floor coverd in what look like colored marbles when a red marble touches another red they explode dealing 1 d6 and yes this can cause a chain reaction. To disarm is just pick up the red marbles and keep them separate you can also use them as a weapon if you crazy
My favorite evil trap as a DM. Teleportation traps. Nothing says "oh S***" like forcing the party to split
I once had a team discover an extending metal pole at the beginning of a dungeon that was supposedly just supposed to be a quarterstaff which gave reach, but I pretended to be caught off-guard by them using it to test and activate a number of traps (a trick they had previously employed under a different GM). Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but my favorite part came when the specific room I created with the use of this pole in mind came into play: A place with a distinctly metallic chest surrounded by numerous pieces of armor and swords hooked up to what looked like a two separate pipes leading from the chest into the floor (they had to roll to specifically notice this last detail). The paladin decided to use the pole and tap the various sections of the room until finally inching to the chest and activating what turned out to be a big ol' magnet.
He got stuck to the chest and began getting zapped and the rest of the party had _no_ idea what to do since nobody wanted to go in the room or simply cast a damaging spell at the chest for a bit. Though they tried various attempts such as combining Mage Hands, the Paladin fried to a burnt crisp and they decided to leave. I let the Paladin's player (who was a good sport about character deaths) come back next session with a different character who happened to have looted some of the gear off his former character a few in-game days later.
- Awsm Chimera
I did one where my group walked trough the swamps filled with toxic gasses and stuff. Then when the "trap" triggered i made one of the group do a investigation check for smells of rot comming from their bags. Turns out the food and water supplies had turned bad cause of the noxious gasses everywhere. Luckily,(for me)no druid in the party so they had no purifier and no supplies to make the swamp's dungeon run a little harder. They still made it trough.
Flammable carpeting. Have not thought of that in years, hmmm decades. Oh the memories, kobolds, long red carpet. Flames, yipes.
Magic coin hidden in pile of regular coins. At certain thresholds suddenly becomes immovable rod. Put these thresholds in hallways with big scary thing that chases them. So when they run from the big scary thing their coin purse tears and all their money is lost
Evil! But it assumes your players run from anything. That's not something all DMs have :P
remember the golden scarabs from the Mummy that came to life and burrowed into flesh when looted?
Their was this awesome trap made my a beholder that was activated by our thoughts so let’s say if we were angry the room would get hotter or cold if were growing lethargic and all that the room will turn into some endurance puzzle and such or a high slopes up hill.....was trippy to
In a goblin dungeon i made i had a hidden bear trap that acted as a pressure plate which activated dropping a live bear from a hatch 60 ft above dc 16 dex save or take damage equal to the falling damage the bear would take so 6d6 bludgeoning lol
And a sign in goblin that says "Beware of bear trap"
I remember a few of my favorite traps.
Thorn Rope: A rope made of vine with thorns, every 5 ft. of movement costs 1d6 piercing damage. It's the only way out of the pit they fell into.
The Jester's downfall:
Double doors with an inscription, "Amuse the king, or entertain the dead"
The players must dance or act silly in order to please a massive crowned statue. If they don't, the "king" will animate. If the king is amused, it laughs itself to "death". (it explodes, leaving a massive gemstone on the ground the size of a pumpkin)
The Roses... Okay, gotta give some Backstory here. The party had been tracking a criminal with a knack for escape across a desert wasteland.
The find him... Pieces of him.
The room they entered (by falling in due to some bad rolls on their part) has tiles that shift beneath their feet. The room is a dome, and upon inspection they see massive metal roses on the wall. The criminal is currently smeared on several.
The petals of the roses are razor sharp, instant death. The Barbarian took a step, one single step forward. Failed Dex save.
"THWACK!" Went a harpoon, into their gut, dealing 3d6 piercing. The harpoon is connected to a chain, leading all the way to one of the roses.
A "Click, click, click." could be heard, and the Barbarian was being pulled towards the rose. This Triggers several other harpoon veing launched from the roses.
The party managed to crawl out by the skin of their teeth.
The beauty of the trap is this; if they put their torches out, the safe tiles can be seen. Either the roses, or the harpoon will kill them.
How's this:
A mirror with the 'imprison' spell on it, activated only when one comments on one's own appearance.
I literally just came up with this now.
Okay. I just found this video and I know it's two years old, but a Dietz Nuts reference is a super deep cut to anyone from Philly. Well done.
"My blue poop stain of a cat knocked over a tv today" Runesmith 2019