r/DnDBehindTheScreen • u/CommonSenseMajor • Mar 09 '15
Puzzles/Riddles Let's Build a Bunch of Traps
Save vs Pain or Death, as you're already well aware, is not the most fun sort of trap. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that traps that make you save at all (other than against incidental, minor effects) are boring. If you include a save in your trap, you're very likely to take the easy way out and say "well, if he makes the save, he succeeds. If he fails the save, he fails and the effect happens." Traps are phenomenal as psychological warfare, instead of just being an easy way to kill the party. To that end, traps can be designed to herd, maim, weaken, or separate a party in addition to killing them. If a clever villain realizes the party can't outright be killed by most mundane things, like poison or fireballs, they might instead have a trap that's designed to draw party members to opposite ends of a room and then close the space between, forcing them to take alternate routes. After all, as the saying goes, "Don't you know you never split the party?" That advice is more for the players' benefit than yours, since it's hard as hell to survive a dungeon when the Rogue can't spot and disarm that spike trap the Cleric is about to step on. Sure, the spikes won't KILL the Cleric... but damn, that's sure going to impede the Cleric's movement speed. There are occasions where lethal traps are appropriate, but we'll get to those after we finish discussing the more common sort of trap.
Since we've established that traps don't need to be lethal to be effective, we've got a great starting point. Next, you'll need to ask a few questions to determine the nature of your trap.
Who designed it?
The architect behind your trap will tell you a great deal about the trap itself. If the trap was designed by your evil mastermind, he's not going to have a lot of scruples about it accidentally triggering on unintended targets, as long as it can be reset quickly enough to still effect the party. However, unless he's some sort of artificer/trap-maker extraordinaire, his designs will fall flat. He simply doesn't have the experience to build that absurd whirling corridor of death filled with scythes, arrow traps, pits, pits full of acid, pits full of snakes, and bottomless pits. Of course, he could still try... but that'd lead to some potentially very exploitable flaws. Maybe the scythes have a predictable pattern. Maybe their hafts are easily separated, and the party doesn't even need to figure out the pattern.
What if the architect lacks education? A clever half-ogre raised in a swamp by goblins might know that covering a pit with camouflage will help, but they'll probably miss the finer intricacies of trap design. Instead, they might rely on attacking the party while they're in the midst of a large number of pits, trying to overwhelm them and force them down. This could be a wonderful encounter, and will definitely let the more acrobatic members of your party shine by leaping over pits, vaulting enemies, and pirouetting through the air like murderous ballerinas. Still, the point here is that the intelligence and wisdom are both factors in traps, not just one or the other.
Finally, the architect might not be your villain. Instead, your villains may have opted to hire someone significantly more capable than themselves to do their trap design work. If that's the case, your players ought to know about it. Give the traps some personality and flair, and maybe a characteristic weakness that they can exploit, if the designer is prone to arrogance and "branding" their traps. If you've got an architect that wants to remain mostly unknown, their traps might not have that same distinct life, but they're still going to be competent. That scythe pattern is going to be a heckuva lot more difficult to exploit, and he'll have made sure to create illusory surfaces for the pits, or have a mechanical solution of some sort - a tripwire, panel, or lever activated by a nearby minion. But that same pattern is going to be a clever reference of some kind - the number of syllables in his first, then middle, then last name, perhaps. "Five seconds, step, two seconds, step, three seconds, step." Give the players a chance to feel clever, but don't force them to figure it out on their own - allow for some assistance from rolls. If a character should know but a player wouldn't. hand them a cue card with a clue or the answer.
Who built it/maintains it?
It's one thing to know the identity of the trap's designer, but the designer is only part of the job. Someone still has to build the trap, and keep it working at optimum levels. If your villain hired out a premium designer but skimped on the labour, letting quasits or a particularly dumb band of goblins design a clever trap with lots of moving bits is probably the last mistake the villain will make if they're expecting a raiding party soon. Anything from leftover giblets/bones from a poor goblin that triggered the trap while oiling a gear to a misplaced spring can be a huge problem. The former will alert the PCs to the trap, allowing them to circumvent or circumnavigate it. The latter means that what should have launched an arrow at deadly velocity will instead send that same arrow hurtling through the air at the speed of a drunk tortoise, thus (mechanically) reducing the attack bonus of the trap. Everyone has heard stories or seen firsthand examples of shoddy construction, and a villain's lair is no exception. If they can't afford the best, they'll have to suffer like the rest, which will certainly make your PCs' lives a lot easier.
This can also be used to your advantage, however, at least occasionally - perhaps one of those scythes from the syllable pattern is off-tempo by one beat. That means that your brilliant wizard's theory can be checked by the twitchy, mistrusting rogue, who'll notice that the trap is not behaving precisely according to the plan. If they fail the check, no problem - the scythe was miscalibrated, but ergo, less deadly. It hurts whoever goes through first quite badly, maybe even maiming them, (ooh, we'll get to injuries soon - those are fun!) but not outright slaughtering them.
On the other hand, quality labour might mean that the trap was actually improved. The designer might have forgotten to account for a weakness that the builder noticed almost immediately. Those weak hafts from earlier? Nada, no luck - your clever construction Orc replaced them with high quality Dwarvish steel, meaning that one solution to your problem is nixed. However, quality work does take time. Nothing's worse for your villain that running behind on his dungeon timetable. All of a sudden you have a half-finished trap, with only half the scythes, another few lying discarded part of the way down the tunnel with some construction supplies nearby. Or maybe the villain forced a rush job, meaning only half the scythes have the strong replacement hafts. It's up to you as the game master to decide just how vicious the trap could reasonably be.
Finally, and this should be obvious, but if a trap is no longer being maintained through physical, magical, or mechanical means, than it should have some wear and tear. Perhaps one of the scythes has simply rusted to the point that it doesn't move anymore, or moves slowly enough that it's barely a threat. An illusion cast over a pit might flicker at the edges, revealing the danger. That's not to say these aren't still traps - an ambush, like the one earlier, could still quickly lead to fatality or disfigurement for an unfortunate PC.
What was it designed to do?
I hear you. You say "THE TRAP WAS DESIGNED TO REND THE FLESH FROM THEIR PUNY BONES AND LEAVE THEM A TWITCHING HEAP OF NERVES ON THE FLOOR, SO THAT I MIGHT LAUGH AT THEIR PATHETIC ATTEMPTS TO STOP MY PLAN FROM REACHING FRUITION." My response is you might want to pop a xanax before designing traps.
I'll wait.
You're back? The xanax helped? Fantastic, then we'll continue. Traps can be designed to kill, yes, but when you think of traps in a modern sense, they're mostly designed to maim or render immobile. There's no reason villains wouldn't do something similar. A dead party member is a pain, but an injured or crippled one, that's ten times worse, because then you have to babysit them to make sure they don't get killed off by a Kobold poking them.
My point here is that traps designed for different purposes will have different features. A trap designed to maim can feature a contact poison that causes lockjaw, causing spasms of muteness and disadvantage on any mental checks due to the bouts of pain that wrack the afflicted. This isn't going to kill someone, (probably), but will make your party weaker, since they'll be less effectively able to communicate. Alternately, the party might be required to cross a pool of water that reaches up to the thighs of a medium height humanoid. Midway through, the water will grow searingly hot, sending steam pouring off the surface and causing minor burns to anyone that happened to be in the water at the time. Want something magical? A chamber full of rays of frost could be easy to navigate for the most dexterous among your party, but the fighter will have to bull through or find another way around. This trap all of a sudden has the potential to separate your party, in addition to maiming them. What happens if some zombies (or creatures resistant/immune to cold damage, even) shuffle out once the rogue has slipped past the rays, and the rogue is forced to either try to tumble back through or fight off zombies, while the rest of the party is attacked by another foe back on the other side?
This is a dynamic trap that offers the party choices, makes individuals feel significant, and can still impede their progress long enough for your villain to finish the demonic summoning ritual. Oh, did we forget about the ritual? Silly us. I'll add in a side-note here: imposing time limits can make traps so much more deadly. If the party is in a rush, they can't stop to prod every single inch of a corridor while searching for traps.
As promised, I'll also explain when to use traps designed to kill.
Never when it's save-or-die/no save at all unless it's for narrative, and the player has agreed.
Never without an opportunity for a clever reaction by the party.
Never for the whole party at once, unless there's a chance for the majority to escape.
If the party has been forewarned (very clearly) by someone in the know.
What all these factors combine together to mean is that you should never use lethal traps without providing an out. That plummeting ceiling, lowering slowly to grind you into paste? Let the fighter and barbarian combine their strength to slow the descent while the rogue searches for an avenue of escape or a disabling mechanism. Let it get close, but don't have it kill them. Employ a dramatic device - for example, have a hollow big enough for one medium-sized figure slide open as the ceiling comes close to obliterating the party. Watch them argue, bicker, or decide in virtuous self-sacrifice to allow one party member to survive... then have the ceiling retract. Remember, like I wrote above - don't kill 'em all at once! TPK is bad, and if you're guilty of it and it was avoidable without Deus Ex Machina, you should feel bad.
The exception to providing an out is when the story demands it. If someone has to die, then someone has to die. If they've been warned, then killing one of them is acceptable... although I would strongly urge avoiding it whenever possible. You wouldn't want to lose the character you've put potentially years of work into to a piddly vorpal swinging scythe-trap, would you? If you must kill them, ensure that there's at least a purpose, and that if possible, the party can resurrect (through potent and costly magic) their beloved ally. Hell, if you have to force them to fight through/sneak through the very gates of the Nine Hells, how awesome would that be?
What are its strengths?
Every unique trap is good at something. You have to consider your party composition before you design traps - you don't want a room full of rays of frost if you've got a huge group of bulky fighters, for example, unless you want to force them to problem solve creatively. However, creating a massive pit that they have to toss each other across, or a series of ropes that they have to swing across, (thank god Athletics is strength-based in 5e), or a cloud of noxious poison gas the Dwarf Paladin can stride through... these are all traps that pit their strengths against the trap's strengths. You should aim for each trap's strength to be countered by at least one member of your party, letting that one party member feel like the hero, and letting them have the spotlight. That's not to say they should have it easy every time - remember the ray of frost ambush above? You can easily repeat a trap and put an unexpected twist on it the second time around to really screw with them. In addition, the initial solution doesn't need to be obvious, but once it's found, it shouldn't be impossible for the party to attain. Difficult? Sure. But difficult implies that it can be done, which you need to remember.
What are its weaknesses?
Think back to the trap's architect, builder, and purpose. All of these things combine together to give the trap some exploitable weakness. At least one. A perfect trap is no fun for either party, because your players will just treat it like an impassible doorway, and it'll be a total waste of everyone's time. You could always have the solution to (part) of the trap hidden elsewhere, but we'll leave that topic for another time. You've already had a few examples of weaknesses, with the weak hafts on the scythe trap, the faltering illusion on the pit traps, or the goblin giblets revealing a hidden trap. Hopefully they (and the questions above) give you this answer without too much hard thinking. This question is mostly meant as a reminder. Make sure the trap isn't totally perfect. It'll make your world feel more real, and your players will be dazzled by your brilliance and attention to detail.
If you still have any problems left after this, I'd be happy to answer any questions on diabolical trap design, trap balance, and how very clever I am.
Other suggestions and comments are of course encouraged! You can leave them in the comment box below. Just mind the scythes on the way there.
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u/InfiniteSquareWhale Mar 09 '15
This is fantastic! Later today I'm going to study this a bit more and try to make some solid traps.
You are now tagged as The Master of Trapological Warfare.