The Father of All Death Traps
Hello all, and welcome to Grave Plots in Gygax Week. Because of that, I will be deviating a little bit from the normal fare in order to provide some positively “Gygaxian” ideas for devious tricks and traps you can put in your dungeons. Below you will find three cunning, tricky, and wickedly satisfying ideas to spice up some great old favorite situations, and which are designed to be in the same vein as the famous “Tomb of Horrors”. So I hope you’re feeling sadistic, because the kid-gloves are officially off.
The Goblin Prisoner
It’s a common enough sight when one is out adventuring: a lowly, sniveling goblin prisoner in a recently converted keep. He’s cowardly, simpering, and eager to feed the PCs’ information on the dangers of the dungeon if they’ll only let poor little Grak go. By now your PCs probably don’t think too much about rescuing goblin prisoners – they give the goblin the ol’ “Repent your ways!” speech and go on to ask all sorts of questions. They may start by asking about the keep’s layout and the goblins’ power structure, then move on to try to learn the complex motivations and behind-the-scenes information that, frankly, Grak probably shouldn’t be privy to, but you need the PCs to learn somehow. Perhaps your PCs are a little less respectful of the goblin in question, threatening to eat him, chopping off his extremities one by one until he tells them what they want to hear. Either way, this encounter will certainly play off of their expectations and provide them with a very memorable encounter indeed.
While traveling in the enemy’s stronghold, the PCs find themselves moving through a prison of sorts and find only one living prisoner, a wretched looking goblin called Fryk who screams in a shrill voice for the PCs to help him. Fryk begs the PCs for aid, claiming he was imprisoned for his refusal to perform “evil things” by the “evil goblins” who inhabit the keep. (If the PCs are here fighting something other than goblins, perhaps the keep’s master has hired Fryk – who likely soon be haunting your PCs’ dreams – to show the PCs he means business.) The PCs may notice that every square in Fryk’s cell (except the square that Fryk is in) is trapped with a shocking floor trap; if the PCs inquire about this, they are treated to Fryk’s whining that the other goblins didn’t want him moving – they did this to torture poor Fryk and if the PCs could disarm the trap he would be very grateful to them.
When the PCs go to release Fryk, if they set off the floor trap, at the same time the illusory wall and Fryk (who is just a major image) vanish to reveal a large square stone chamber containing three goblins: two warriors and a sorcerer who strongly resembles Fryk (and in fact created the illusion the PCs saw). The sorcerer mocks the PCs for falling for such a pathetic trap, then blasts them with a lightning bolt. PCs who charge Fryk will soon regret it, finding themselves barreling straight onto an illusory floor covering the 200 ft deep spiked pit trap that bisects the room in two. The pit is 10ft long, and the goblin sorcerer continually blasts the PCs with lightning bolt, scorching ray, and magic missile from the other side. The goblin sorcerer is actually the projected image of Fryk, who is controlling the illusion (and originating his spells) from the safety of another illusory wall concealing about 10 ft of the room’s left side. When the image has been struck in combat 5 or 6 times it collapses to the floor, apparently dead, only to vanish 1 round later as the real Fryk departs via a teleport spell. If the fight lasts longer than 2 or 3 rounds without the image of Fryk taking significant damage, the image runs back to the center of the room and glances meaningfully at the ceiling before vanishing as Fryk teleports away. PCs who have been able to see through all the illusory tricks may find this encounter getting harder, as they must now contend with Fryk’s telekinesis spell and the deadly pit trap. Once he gets PCs in the pit he favors reverse gravity, using the spell to hurl them into the air only to drop them into the pit once more. Fryk still cuts his losses and quickly makes a teleport escape whenever he falls below about 2/3 of his hit points.
If the PCs survive the encounter and cross the pit they notice only one apparent exit from this room: a trap door at the top of an 80 ft high stone shaft built into the ceiling. The trap door is actually no exit at all, leading into a small chamber no more than 7 ft3 and filled almost entirely with green slime. The goo pours down on the unlucky PC opening the door as well as on anyone foolish enough to be standing directly below him.
Besides the shaft and the trap door, the stone chamber contains only one thing of note: scrawled in ancient runic writing is a cryptic message: at the sixth hour shall the walker appear, and reveal the key. The message doesn’t mean anything, and was left there by Fryk in order to confuse and torment the PCs. In fact, the room was constructed by Fryk by stone shaping the earth around that in particular prison cell, his goons were teleported in from elsewhere, and the room serves no purpose other than the demise of the PCs, presumably at the behest of one of their enemies. By the conclusion of this encounter, I sincerely doubt the PCs will ever even stop to speak with a goblin prisoner again without carefully considering the consequences.
The Orc and a Chest
Another classic is the lone orc warrior guarding a treasure chest in a 20 ft by 20 ft room. This is perhaps the most familiar of D&D formulas: kill the monster, take his stuff. And every single player I’ve ever met has never once stopped to give thought to the fact that the treasure isn’t really theirs to take or that their Lawful Good paladin is acting like a Viking raider – at least, not without some prompting. This little meat-grinder hellhole is designed to give your PCs a little more pause before taking things that aren’t theirs.
In the middle of any dungeon, the PCs stumble upon a 30 ft by 30 ft stone room, all but featureless, apparently containing only a single orc guarding a treasure chest. TheoOrc, named Nartim, demands loudly and angrily that the PCs turn back, shouting that they will never take his treasure from him. Assuming the PCs take Nartim’s raging rant as a challenge, they find themselves in for a deadly fight. In the room’s first square is spell trap designed to blind the PCs (use blindness/deafness). Then, PCs must contend with Nartim, a skilled fighter, (a hit point/AC machine, with maybe a little less damage capability than normal, depending on how vindictive your feeling) as well as his invisible helper, the mad wizard Kabaz. As the fight progresses Nartim demands the PCs leave him to his treasure or they will regret it; in later rounds, however, his tone changes. He sadly asks them things like, “What gives you the right?” or “You don’t even know what it is your willing to kill for!” Meanwhile, Kabaz invisibly casts 6 extended, silent, still, delayed blast fireball spells (20d6,all set off to go off in the same round: the round immediately following his and Nartim’s departure). After about 6 rounds of combat Kabaz ends his greater invisibility. He states that greed will only get the PCs killed, and Nartim shakes his head sadly before the pair suddenly teleports away.
The chest is locked and trapped with a mass hold person spell. It holds nothing except three shiny but valueless gems, a magic weapon long since obsolete, and 3d10 gp. PCs who survive the 120d6 fire damage from the six delayed blast fireballs will likely start thinking twice about unnecessarily killing orcs for their meager loot.
The Secret Passageway
Most dungeons have them: a secret door leading down a hall that leads to some relatively impressive reward, whether that be the archmage’s secret throne room, the prison where the duke is holding the princess, or simply the “good treasure.” Players are conditioned to want to go down these secret passageways to get their great reward. This deadly space is designed to show PCs that things are not always so simple as they seem.
After initially slaying an evil lich in his dungeon’s stronghold, the search is on for his phylactery, and the number one prospect seems to be a secret door underneath his throne. The door leads the PCs into a dark passage that seems to go on for quite a ways. The traps the PCs encounter along the way seem to indicate they are indeed on the right track; an 80 ft spiked pit trap relatively early on should prime their suspicions, and from there they should regularly expect to encounter wyrven arrows and cone of cold traps. About halfway down this long, narrow passage, the PCs run into a deeper darkness effect which cuts off their ability to see until, eventually, they emerge into a large room lit by an eerie red glow. This glow is emanating from a metal box covered in wicked looking runes and placed on a pedestal in the center of the room. The floor is covered with some kind of viscous liquid, though it seems basically harmless. The room’s ceiling seems to have a similar substance coating it, held in place by an invisible barrier. This liquid is highly flammable, so any PCs who are on fire may cause the liquid on the floor to burst into flame, destroying the thin layer of enchanted ice on the ceiling.
PCs who strike the apparent phylactery find it shatters like glass and releases a maximized widened 10d6 fireball.If the PCs destroy the box in this room, the fire ignites the flammable liquid on the floor, sending ceiling high flames into the air which melt the enchanted ice and release the 10 black puddings imprisoned there. These creatures immediately begin to sate their hunger by devouring the PCs.
The lich’s actual phylactery was behind a trap door in a hidden chamber at the bottom of the spiked pit trap earlier. The chamber is devoid of other obstacles, containing the phylactery and a good deal of wizard gear to help the reforming lich.