I need some cool ideas for cool traps and annoyances for my players. Because I think I've overplayed the spike pit...

That is just pure evil

The floor? A mimic.
The exit? A mimic.
The tavern? A mimic
Your whole life? A mimic.

>Your whole life? A mimic.
How the fuck would that work?

Imagine Matrix. Except mimic.

Some traps I liked in my history as DM:

- A pressure plate right at the entrance of the dungeon that filled the dungeon from the bottom to the top with deadly gas (enemies inside were mostly undead so they were immune to it). The players could find some potions to allow them to breathe the gas harmlessly for a few rounds or they could find a way to stop it.
- A cage lowered on them with one (or more) rapidly expanding gelatinous cube(s) inside.
- A trap mimic. As in, with a succesful trap check you can find a mysterious device. Trying to disarm it gets you attacked.

Do the Right thing user.

Take a good, long look at Viet-cong Traps like
suggested. then go a step further and add in something to make the trap worse.

>fake step in a stair that leads into a short, barbed pit that catches your leg. the room is filling with water
>do you risk fucking up your leg to the point of bleed-out by trying to rip it out fast, or do you take the time to do it slow and risk drowning instead

its pretty easy. Ive already been living a lie my whole life.

Its a gigantic joke/mindfuck being played on one guy by like an entire village of Mimics, then broadcast across the lands Ala Truman show.

Wait, because of the runes or the cube?
There's a pretty good chance my inept party would end up the afterlife either way.

The problem with that kind of traps is that they can all be defeated by simply having a summoned creature or something walking ahead the party. That's why traps on their own are boring, and should only be used in conjunction with an encounter, to make it harder.

i'm not sure what your party is like, but generally any i've seen or been a part of don't just have summoned monsters pacing down halls to check for traps for the party. 'sides, even if your summoned monster did spring the trap, well then bam. 'yer down a monster for one trap potentially, with only so many more ahead.

The outhouse?
I need to know soon please.

Traps are fine on their own for draining party resources. If people are summoning monsters, they are using resources they need.

But do that I agree that traps are best used in conjunction with other encounters. No one ever expects the cleric to walk into a snare trap and get dangled 10 in the air during a boss battle. That will make parties shit themselves.

OP should check into Grimtooth's Grimoire.

sleeping monster trap(the whole team has to pass without the warrior clanking too much, or without the mage tripping over his fancy dress)

quicksand is always fun trap
groundhog day trap
wisdom trap(have them figure out a riddle etc)

trap that requires you to move by standing on certain obvious floorplates, then attack them with NPC's

traps that are already sprung, and requires them to use spells or abilities they posess in a creative manner to get past, unless they want to pass a difficult acrobatics check

my favorite lazy trap:
trap springs(dont care what they roll), and they're stuck. you wait for them to come up with a great idea to escape and pretend it was your plan all along.

hope it helps

and a rather perverted one at that, too!

The mimic is a magical creature, but through some minor oversight by the creator of the original mimics, a rift was opened that channeled nearly endless magical energy into it's transformation. As a result the mimic dreamed into existence a world and real living people, animals, trees, and so on. All going through generation of generation, one era after another, wars, cataclysms, and so on.
All so that one day an abandoned dungeon could be explored by your group, all so that you could find the mimic there waiting for you.
After you deliver the final blow, you are left in the 'white room' with the slowly dissipating essence of the mimic explaining that you just destroyed your entire world.

>No one ever expects the cleric to walk into a snare trap and get dangled 10 in the air during a boss battle. That will make parties shit themselves.

Holy shit I'm doing this

The other party members?
Dopplegangers equipped with Mimics.

Start by making the players give a shit about the environment.

>Doors open one way, and it's keyed which way they open on the map.
>If it opens towards the players, the hinges are on their side and easy to remove.
>If it opens away from the player, the door is trivial to break down.
>Both will prevent barring the door later, and the latter is loud and will summon reinforcements.
>If the door isn't busted or dehinged, you can bar the door but only from one side. If there is no built in bar, jamming a spike in the floor works in a pinch.

>Loud noises and long waits might bring reinforcements from other areas.
>Google The Alexandrian monster roster. It's slightly less arbitrary than fully random encounters and will help you figure out which direction reinforcements might be coming from.
>Now barring doors is a useful defense at the cost of slowing egress by the barred route.

>Track lighting, track torches, make light spells difficult to maintain if you reasonably can. Even if that just means some shit where status effects can end the spell, or you just limit the range.
>Include water. Douse torches.
>Include gusts of wind. Douse torches.
>Include passages that require full submersion to navigate, secret or otherwise. It's a nifty way to hide a secret passage, and everything you carry through gets doused.
>Include enemies with darkvision.

>There should be cramped as fuck spaces you have to crawl through.
>You should not be able to carry big shit through these spaces. No ten foot poles, maybe no heavy weapons, hell your full plate might not fit.
>Do not light these spaces.
>Make these spaces branch, turn, change elevation, and so forth so people are disoriented on the other side.
>Fill these spaces with chihuaha sized ants or something.

Continuing.

Go the Chechen route

>Places you can see but not yet go.
>Scrying pools, windows, bigass chasms.
>Let players see and anticipate things they don't have to interact with yet.
>Let them peek at a puzzle and work on it while they approach.
>Let them get into an arrows-based pissing match with someone who can't close into melee. Ideally this is a one sided fight and you take the opportunity to set a precedent that retreating is the solution to that shit. If your players didn't already know.

Anyway, it's into this environment that you drop traps and puzzles. If the only time the players give a shit about the environment is when you've telegraphed to them that there's a trap or puzzle that's not great. If the thing you hide a trap behind is a roll or a routine action you're going to get a lot of pointless rolling or ten foot pole tapping on every tile or whatever. The first and most important step in making traps and puzzles work is to reward the players for giving a shit about the environmental details they can already see.

I don't understand this one. What's wrong with a billion pounds of this?

Anyway, some general tips once you've got this down:

Puzzles should ideally be seen before they are physically encountered and be solved if they are features of the dungeon. Puzzle boxes or other portable puzzles are also nice. If you've got keycard bullshit, it's probably better to have the "keycard" activate something inconspicuous in a room players are likely to visit. Rather than having a room with an obvious gate that clearly calls for a key that could be fucking anywhere. The former feels like a reward, and the latter like a chore despite having a similar function.

Door traps are easy enough, but don't just hide them behind a check, and don't just trap doors. Do those two things and all you've done is added a roll to every time the party encounters a door. Since enemy placement and patrols and noise matter now, hopefully you've got people looking through knots and keyholes or listening at doors. Letting them hear whirring gears or running water, or see a large boulder is awesome. Piling sand against the door so they get buried when they open it towards them (and know they don't have to worry when it opens away) is cool. Showing dim light under the door to hint at torches, fire, or sunlight is cool.

Once you've got chasms, you should have some rickety as fuck bridges. This is a little like a pit trap, but the party sees it coming and there's more to do. Do they try to put fewer characters on it? Stabilize it by sacrificing rope? Does it fall while people are on it? It could split the party into three different places (chasm and either ledge) and you can show it before the party reaches it, get them thinking about it (again with the chasm). And whether the party navigates successfully or otherwise, they can take a bunch of rope, cut the bridge (same logic as the door barring) so it can be pretty rewarding too.

The Chameleonian is so proficient at mimicry, sometimes even it even fools itself.

...

>Your whole life? A mimic.
That's deep bro

This is all rad. I've been trying to work better description and feel into my DMing. What other things are good for the feel of a place, dungeon or no?

-False doors - just an annoying dead end by themselves, but could be extra trouble when combined with a chase

-pits of lava/sludge/water - similar to the spike pit - can be concealed, or just simply be there to funnel movement. Add deadly creatures swimming in the substance for more lethality.

-poison gas traps - you may want to rate them based on how far they will spread, so that opening/closing doors could contain or spread the gas farther

-shifting walls - can be actual mimic-like organisms or a clever clockwork dungeon mechanism. Like false doors they aren't necessarily lethal on their own, but shifting the dungeon layout could trap/disorient the PCs.

-"Turret" trap - some sort of device that tracks and shoots stuff at PCs entering within a certain area. Fluff accordingly - an ancient obsidian statue that shoots lasers from ruby eyes, etc. Like the gas trap, can serve to deny an area to PCs.

-Alarm trap: makes noise, attracting monsters (roll on a wandering monster table).

vault full of clockwork stuff.
thingamagigs all over, every time a pc touches one of them it starts whirling and ticking. tick. tick, tick. tick...
start one minute clock for each one. they cast diferent shit or explode if attacked. make them feel the pressure of time (or give them initiative if you are lazy) controller spells that push players and further activate other thingies flying debree everywhere the room was full of steel spheres and chained spiked balls. black puddings block the exits and they also get flinged and pushed. use colored dice to represent location of these things as you can roll them around everytime one goes off to determine new locations. you can use colored paper balls too. as to not disturb figures, they take damage too and make eachother explode. may take a minute to set up.

Besides chasms/rope bridges, other hazards that can serve a pit trap function include running water and portcullises. Running water has some of the same party splitting hazards and transversal gameplay as a bridges, and can also act as a barrier for your arrows pissing match or a torch douser. Can even be set at the bottom of a chasm with a bridge for maximum complicatedness.

Portcullises/gates can make for kickass fight scenes. Especially if the gears are on the other side. Say you've got some goblins. Your portcullis makes engaging with the party pretty optional. Archers can hang back from melee reliably and they can crack the gate to shit out melee guys every so often. You can give your high STR character a moment in the sun raising the portcullis, letting him roll not to see if he succeeds, but to see how many party members he can allow through. And now a diminished portion of the party has to try and open the gate by way of gears or else they have to flee in different directions.

>dungeon or no
Really depends heavily on the context and goals. It's all just coming up with interesting decisions/stakes that go beyond basic incomplete information problems and jump scares. One of these days I'll finish my homebrew full of back end shit like this.

Have them have combat, then have a trap that triggers shit falling on top of them, infecting all their wounds.

a tripwire that does nothing but alert someone on the other end of the dungeon. he then leaves through a secret passage and collapses all the openings.

I got you covered. I made these with 5e in mind.

Sticky Sap Tree

Something enticing can be seen/heard within a deep knothole of a tree. When someone reaches in to grab it, their hand is entangled in sticky sap. They are grappled by the tree. The tree’s bark is dripping with the same stuff; attempting to push onesself away will thus lead to more of their body becoming stuck.
Inverted Burial

A large cylindrical room with a radius of about 50 feet and a height of about 100 feet (total) has a floor of sand, gravel, and loose rocks at least 20 feet deep. A treasure chest (or some other bait) sits in the middle of the room. When opened, it triggers a glyph of warding containing reverse gravity. The party falls upwards onto the ceiling; the debris on the ground follows, entombing them.
The Kobold Merchant

The party finds a monster deep in a dungeon who offers to sell them new equipment for prices they can’t afford. (S)he offers to instead let them use it for free for the rest of the dungeon, provided they leave their own equipment as collateral. If questioned, (s)he explains that they will be able to pay his/her prices with the dungeon’s treasure. When the party tries out the equipment, they find it is fine indeed. However, once they are out of range of the monster’s preserving magic, the equipment quickly withers to dust. Ropes break. Lanterns burn out. Metal weapons rust to garbage and wooden weapons crawl with termites. And of course the merchant has fled with their equipment.

(1/?)

Peculiar River
A river about 12-13 feet deep and just a bit too wide for the party to jump over it (about 20 feet or so at lower levels; 30 at higher levels) stands in their path. The river is not fast-moving, and clear enough that they can see the bottom. However, right below the surface is a line of gelatinous cubes (Monster Manual p.242). Something glimmering at the river’s bottom may tempt them further. Attempts to spot the cubes while they are underwater are made with disadvantage; however, a successful Wisdom (Survival) check can tip someone off that the water is not as deep as it appears.

Thin Ice
In a frigid dungeon, the party encounters what appears to be a sliding-block puzzle where the apparent solution requires all the large, heavy pieces to be gathered in the center. Once they are, their combined weight causes the ice to crack, dropping them (and the party with them) into the pit below. For greatest effect, use as the second sliding-block puzzle in the dungeon, with the first being required to open a locked door. When they enter the room with the second “puzzle”, mention they see a door in front of them; neglect to tell them it’s open unless they ask.

Thundering Instrument
In a cave or mountain dungeon, the party discovers an instrument brimming with magic power which is perfect for the party bard. When played, however, the instrument creates an explosion of thunder damage, which in turn triggers a cave-in or avalanche.

(2/2)

Golems sculpted as knights in thick plate armor, made of a material corresponding to PC levels, guarding something (door, chest, etc.), that will wake up when something is triggered, or a puzzle is failed, and attack.

EVEN BOMB IS BOMB

One of my personal favorite is a two-room setup. The first room contains a pile of (secretly worthless) coins. Picking up a coin in the first room causes a skeleton to be summoned into the second room. Putting a coin back down does not unsummon the skeleton, but picking it back up does summon another one.

Today, we'll go in a new, different direction!
Wire pit, giant spike and trip boulders!

...wire pit seems legit deadly.

>allowing players to create unlimited amount of matter in an enclosed space
What could possibly go wrong?

Reminds me of that room in Cube.

When the skeletons reach critical mass, they'd probably just start getting denser instead of more numerous. And then eventually fuse together. If the campaign has to end with having the stop the gigantic gashadokuro before it ruins all of civilization by stepping on it, then that's how it goes.

Did this on some players a while ago. After the corridor does an L turn there is a pressure plate some way down the corridor that fire a salvo of ballista bolts from behind the characters down the corridor at them. Roll to hit the guy at the back. For those bolts that miss the back guy, roll the remainder to hit the next guy in line, continuing with each victim in line until all the bolts have hit, or you run out of targets next in line. Great for using on those groups where the cowards push the thieves ahead to look for danger.

Temple of Elemental Evil (AD&D) had a nasty one, great for the greedy bugger who always grabs the treasure. It consisted of a beautiful cloak (of venom) on a statue. A player grabbed it and put it on, death by poison, no save.

Sliding ramp trap that drops them in a deep pond or well, occupied by something that can only be hurt by fire, like a Black Pudding. (try using fire magic under water!)

My favorite one was an entire, cylindrical room, about forty feet wide and a hundred feet tall, and a lever set into the far wall

Pulling the lever makes the exit ladder drop the ceiling and the floor to start spinning at high speeds

Not particularly lethal, but fun as fuck watching everyone tumble around like fucking laundry in a drier

In the crypt bodies with loot hiden under shroud covered with poisonous dust that rises in the whole tomb chamber

Some traps can be created by getting the player mage to cast Dispel Magic. Have a load of trolls scattered around the room that have been temporarily polymorphed into hedges. A high bridge or tower made from summoned rock, that drops the caster to their death when dispelled. A summoned stone ceiling holding back acidic slimes, frenzied insects, giant caltrops or a river.

And then once their guard's up, that chest is just a normal chest.
the magic sword inside is a mimic

...

...

Rope snare, in plain view, totally obvious, with "Put foot here" written on the ground in the middle of the loop. The rope doesn't actually do anything, it's just there to distract players from the concealed pit trap on the other side of it.

This might sound too obvious, but I swear that I have actually seen this one work, firsthand.

A corridor is filled with knee-deep water. A magic trap under the water will freeze it all solid when stepped on, and then release monsters/arrows/pendulum blades.

An arena with the floor covered in sand. When the arena is entered, the entrance closes and cells open that release monsters. There are obstacles placed around the arena that the players can use to their advantage. There is also what looks like a very defensible mini-castle, but there's several traps inside that will open another cell in the middle of the mini-castle and flood it with more monsters.

Players are confronted with a trapdoor and a lever. Pulling the lever opens the way to a water-filled corridor they must go through to advance. But pulling the lever will cause a timer to start that will shut the trapdoor and bars at the other end of the flooded corridor, trapping them inside to drown. Smashing, lockpicking the trapdoor or using the key is the only safe way to get through.

A mineshaft is filled with flammable gas. It is patrolled by skeletons. The skeletons each have several vials of alchemist's fire visibly strapped to their skulls, shields, and the heads of their maces.

A stone bridge is broken. There is a permanent illusion that makes the bridge look intact.

The far end of a rope bridge runs through a series of pulleys. When someone crosses, a catch is released and the bridge falls. Then someone loots the bodies and winches the ropes taut again.

...

What do you think of traps that can be waited out as a form of avoidance? I've got a couple in mind for a dungeon where the wizard who made it would have canisters of acid gas that would get reloaded every so often, so if the party triggers them they could run out of the room and wait for them to run out, lure enemies in and let them get melted, or maybe if they break through the wall they can detach the canisters and use them later.

>Your whole life? A mimic.
No John you are the zombies

>neglect to tell them it’s open unless they ask.
Now that's just lying (by omission) to your players and makes you look like a massive asshole "Haha I lied and now you're all dead!"

What about sci-fi traps?

Like that laser hallway from resident evil?

>Wizards
>No sense of right or wrong

Why not make this the final boss of the dungeon?
Your party will be most flustered by W'Orc'lock-'chan'

Step up your pun game. Also, get better taste in general.

> no bulge
Shit trap desu. The joy in a trap is the party sees it but falls for it anyway, like mimics. You think you'd learn to smack every chest you see, but nope, they always just loot it

My computer's an asshole with the off button in the wrong place, so this is going to be shorter than the first time I typed it.

Puzzles aren't gates. A puzzle should give the players a bonus for solving it; it doesn't have to be physical, they should come out ahead.
A puzzle should never stop the party cold.

Obstacles must be played around. If they can be solved, they're a puzzle.
An obstacle stops the party from taking the path they thought they were going to take out, or can add tension in some other way.

Traps take resources from the party. They aren't instant kill "ha ha, you were standing wrong" stuff, that's bullshit.
Douse all their torches. Split the party. These are resource denials. "Gimmicks."

is a puzzle if done right.
Once solved, it's a resource to be used by the party.

That's not a trap, that's a pun machine.

This. You might go to /k/ and ask them for diagrams and PDFs for traps. My dad had an old manual for improvised traps developed by the army in 'nam. Anything you see there could be made in a fantasy setting, and mixed with magic and/or fantasy elements, like venoms, alchemical fire, acids, etc.

...

Mimic

Instant death traps are bullshit.

I like a variant of the gas filled dungeon where players are trapped or chased into the bottom on the dungeon and have to fight thier way UP as the gas rises and becomes more potent. The longer they remain in gas filled rooms the weaker they get.

Scent trap that sprays pheromones on them that attracts insects. Both normal and giant.

So if they don't notice or connect that with the sudden increase in fighting giant ants, then they also can't rest as they constantly have creepy crawlies coming over them until they wash the scent off with an alcohol solution or soap.

They're meant to be an annoyance, something to work around or waste resources getting rid of. If you try and put them in as part of an encounter, the party will either waste time trying to trick the enemy into the trap, or get mad at you for forcing them into a trap and not giving them time to get out of it.

What you should do is put two traps together. If there's a pressure plate trap that shoots arrows at the party and they sidestep, the arrows should hit a button which causes a rock to fall. If they activate a rolling boulder trap and avoid it, the boulder will eventually hit a tripwire that cause something to explode.

Booby trapped or fake treasure. Brass coated lead coins cast in the form of the regional currency's gold coin. Plate armor made from shitty, silica contaminated iron. A sword who's handle is actually extremely thin wood surrounding outward facing spikes. Extremely dilute healing potions with red dye. Spell books for spells that don't exist. Quartz carved like a real gemstone

They just assume it's locked. They shouldn't assume.

its a normal bear trap. like with the jaws and shit. pic kinda related. put when its pushed down a bear comes out.

>If the onahole isn't also a mimic, you're doing something wrong.
Bag of Devouring

My favorite trap that I pass unto you.

Damage? Minimal.
Prep work? Nothing a few kobolds and some shovels can't do in a day.
Player humiliation level? 11/10

I present the Double Pit Trap. If you are a fiendish DM you make the reflex check to avoid the trap very hard. Players fall into the pit trap like normal. The pit is deep enough they can't simply climb their way out of the pit but they do see a ladder or a climbable surface on the opposite side of the pit. As they cross over to that part of the pit they casually step into another pit trap - the Double Pit Trap.

Grimtooth traps aren't so much traps as they are signs that the DM doesn't want to DM anymore.

A room filled with all manner of complicated interacting mechanisms. The only way through, however, is to break down the deceptively weak door.

Once, I had a little keyhole trap, where a handful of needles would shoot out and hit whoever was in front of it.

The thief got needled twice in the forehead after making bad lockpick rolls. The dwarf kicked the door in, and got needled in the forehead too (he was the same height as the kneeling thief).

There was a treasure chest in the middle of the room on a pedestal. They were now kinda shook of these needles and didnt even try to figure out where exactly they were coming from for fear of getting needled again. The chest had no lock on it. They were shook now, so they correctly guessed that as soon as they opened it, they'd get needled again.

The thief, thinking he was clever, walked behind the chest, and opened it from behind. He got needled in the ass. The needles had been shooting out of the back wall, over the chest, and through the keyhole the whole time.

If they had just opened the chest from the front, the lid would have blocked the needles

On a pedestal in the middle of the room lays a magical bow made of silver

If someone tries to use the bow like a bow, the string is revealed to be razor wire, and since Silver doesn't bend like a bow would, they slice up their fingers.

And if they try to be smart and give it to a construct or something, the bow just bends because it won't bounce back like a wooden bow would

>a trap that when stepped on summons a bear 4 feet above the player

Similar question, but I don't want to start a new thread. Are there any reasonable magic powers left which haven't been used by capeshit, fantasy, or sci fi?

Not talking magic systems here, I'm just talking powers. It's all invisibility, flight, telekinesis, fireballs, frostballs, controlling weather, controlling animals, mind control, etc. Any suggestions?

That's stupid, your purposefully not giving them the information that their characters would have so that they do something their characters would not.

>their characters would have
Why would they have it? Does a locked door look different from an unlocked door?

Pretty sure he meant "open" as in "not locked." I assume the door would still be closed in this scenario

He didn't say it was unlocked he said it was open.

One trap I always wanted to use was this: In a hallway that ends with two 90 degree turns in it. Trigger closer to the end that leads further down into the crypt/dungeon. Launches a lighting bolt down the hallway, which shatters the opposite wall, letting a shitton of sand to flow in and block the way back.

Mostly set up as a giant fuck you to potential graverobbers.

I want to make a dungeon made by a really shitty dungeon lord. Like it was the first time the Dungeon Master let his apprentice design one on his own and everything is just very ineffectual.

Like a room where a bunch of bears are supposed to descend from the ceiling but instead a bunch of corpses fall down because he forgot to put in air holes

Nice and simple, make a spike pit with a thick glass wall on the opposite end, no one ever checks for tricks when they see a spike pit.