It’s a Trap!
If you want to watch your players freak out, put a mundane obstacle in their way. A rickety bridge, a toll house, or even fording a simple river can all lead to some serious overthinking. By the same token, failure to overthink can result in plunging a hundred feet into crocodile infested waters. That’s why the best traps are cleverly hidden.
As an evil GM, I don’t get my jollies by blowing up my players with a fireball trap or sending animated statues at them. Any player who knows his d20 from his elbow is going to spot the scorch marks on the wall or the notches on the statue’s sword. More often than not they’ll quaff their fireball resistance potion or charge the statue before it’s got a chance to animate, ruining your evil plan. So no. Throwing “the classics” at my players only goes so far. Where I really get my evil GM jollies is watching their expressions when they realize, Oh no…it’s a trap! The moment when their foot hits the pressure plate, or the tripwire, or the trapdoor…that’s the moment I’m after. They should have seen the signs, they charged headlong anyway, and now they know that it’s going to hurt. Examples:
- That “passageway” overhead is actually a vacuum tube. It’s going to suck one of the heroes through and into danger du jour.
- The scout went into the hallway, the doors slammed, and now she’s disappeared. Teleportation? No! The floor slammed her into the camouflaged goo that makes up the ceiling. Good luck finding her before she drowns overhead.
- That dead worm you’ve been using as a bridge? It’s been replaced by a live worm. Roll initiative.
- Grimtooth.
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My favorite is the gelatinous cube pit trap. It’s an easy DC to spot the 10 foot deep pit and they think to themselves “Hey, if the wizard with his crummy athletics fails the jump check it won’t kill even him, no problem.” And then when someone does fail they get to have both a figurative and literal sinking feeling as well as an acidic burning one.
Nice! But is there some way we can still make them take falling damage as well…?
Nearly a year later, but yes. A weak and thin sheet of stone that would break on hit. Fall Damage for the first and now jagged handholds for the rest.
Nice! Now to invite my group over for a seemingly innocent session of dungeon delving…. Soon, their spirits shall be crushed!
There’s an amazing trap in one of the 5e modules that’s just a literal ball of animated skeletons (Yes this predates Dark Souls 3). It grabs and holds on and you get run over and over and over before smashing into a wall.
O_o I really need to play more 5e. It sounds amazing.
Just three or four more sessions in my current Pathfinder homebrew before the gang heads off to Ravenloft. 😀
I must remember that ceiling goo one! I hope none of my players read this comic…
That said, mymcurrent players don’t seem to need much trickery to fall into traps. Last session they literally wandered through a gate to a lower plane “just to test” the ominous looking portal key they had aquired (which they had wrestled off the villain as he tried to use it to escape).
I described the hellish landscape before them; they said something to the effect of “OK let’s go back now”; and I wasn’t sure if I should be feeling guilty or just giggling evilly as I said: “back through where?”
They ‘d been told before that many gates don’t open to the same key on both sides. The last gate they’d gone through certainly hadn’t. They are just lucky that the party had just had a domestic and two characters had refused to follow out of general principle (or pique). Though theyre gonna have to work hard to pull themcollective party arse out of the fire next session…
No! You’re doing it wrong! Share the links! Convert the masses! Buy all our playsets and toys!
If you made playsets or toys I would buy that.
heh. we’ve talked about doing little vinyl dudes, but we both suck at 3D modeling.
it’s all t-shirts and hoodies in the merch store at the moment. Actually, I really ought to shout at Laurel about putting together some new designs. thanks for the reminder!