Traps! Every dungeon master needs them; creative ways to keep players on their toes. Check out these six Dungeons and Dragons traps!
As a dungeon master for games like Dungeons and Dragons, I can tell you that the world of table-top gaming is not just about creating wonder and excitement. It’s also a place of danger, suspense, and the risk of untimely death!
In one of my campaigns, set in a frontier land called Medrea, I’ve pressured myself to provide unique challenges for players to face. Something against the grain of what is found in the core rulebooks.
However, when embarking on a quest for trap ideas, I quickly grew tired with a large number of generic options I was reading on the internet. Many of them seemed so… boring! While giving players a traditional set of challenges in-line with traditional fantasy settings is immersive and expected, I’ve decided to rid myself with these overdone relics, and come up with my own take on traps!
So, I’ve opted for building my own traps for players to overcome. After years of putting ideas together on paper, I’ve realized that I have a big enough collection to show off to the world, and share in the same spirit that inspires such a diverse table-top gaming community.
Granted, if you’re a creative type, you’ll have an assortment of your own traps that you’ve built over the time of your home-brewing. Not every trap I list is going to be a hit. However, you may just find a gem or two in this list, and may want to incorporate them into your game!
Enter the dungeon of the mad artificer of traps!
So, to begin this list, let’s imagine a party of adventurers; those bright-eyed creatures of fate seeking glory and a way to sate the inner murder-hobo! They are so driven! So confident!
The spirits, however, are displeased. These so called “heroes of the realm” are arrogant and unwise. A call for blood is made. They must pay for their hubris against the gods!
1. Spiderwebs and Gunpowder Barrels
Not the main event, by far.
… But this is one of the first traps I have ever used in Dungeons and Dragons, and so I feel the need to begin here!
So,… let’s start basic. Sometimes, your party has a habit for jumping to quick solutions. You need to give them something thats incredibly easy to avoid, but by the sheer weight of their recklessness, they can’t. Ahead of them, a round room resides, walls completely covered in spiderwebs. Hidden within that room, behind the webs, something dangerous lies.. Upon closer inspection, they appear to be barrels, and if they decide to poke further, they realize they are filled with explosive material.
… But let’s face it. One of your players ran enough games to know that spiderwebs are flammable. So when a number of giant spiders begin crawling out of the webs, someone thinking themselves clever will stick a torch to it.
This is where you savor that moment when they look at you cocky-eyed like they just unraveled your encounter. Watch closely as their facial expression begins to contort as you tell them with enthusiastic dice rolls that they and the entire party are halved in HP and blown down the adjacent hallway. I hope they like the color of soot! They’ll be wearing it for a while!
SOLUTION: The solution is simple. Don’t. Light. The. Webs. On. Fire.
HARD MODE: No hallway. Just boom.
2. Chessboard of Death
Already, this dungeon seems like a precarious place to delve!
Just wait for what machinations lie ahead.
The party stumbles into a massive trapdoor in the midst of their exploration, and find themselves in a large, checker-floored room. On the other side, they notice the floor rising from below. A familiar assortment of pawns, rooks, bishops, and knights stands ahead of them. Behind them, the king and queen.
They roll initiative!
On the boards turn, the DM controls the chess pieces to the same rules of movement as chess. One chess-piece movement per the number of players in the room. The pieces move so quick that any players struck must make a DEX saving throw or take bludgeoning damage! The player stumbles into an adjacent space. The party looks amongst one another. Screw the rules! They attack the chess pieces at their leisure, their goal being to fight through them to conquer the king!
But beware: Any player crushed without an adjacent space goes to zero. And pawns that reach the other edge turn into any piece, just like in chess. Finally, as it turns out, the King refuses to be subject to checks, so it can move wherever it pleases.
Hint (optional): The king is glowing red atop of its crown.
SOLUTION: Think like a chess-master. “Checkmate” the king, and the traps magic comes to a halt!
HARD MODE: Chess pieces have Attack of Opportunity. Chess pieces can move ‘through’ players.
3. Simon Says: Move your feet!
The players step into an even larger checker-floored room. Wait? Didn’t they already do this one? This one appears to be filled with goblinoids! They turn to notice you, and prepare for battle.
The portcullis drops, triggered by the number of creatures in the room!
Everyone stops in anticipation of what they just started. Floor tiles begin to glow green, with a large line of red in the middle row. On the wall, there appears a counter; a number on the players side, one on the monsters side, and one below.
A goblinoid steps forward onto a red tile, and attempt to look intimidating. Having ended its turn on the red space, a series of spikes shoot out of the floor and impale it to death. The players react horrified. The counter on the monsters side drops by one!
It occurs to them that the counter is the number of live players vs the number of live monsters.
Then the whole floor turns green and red, in the initial checkerboard pattern. They soon realize that all creatures must end their turn on a green space, or be impaled by spikes. Each round, the pattern alternates, the red and green tiles switching. As the battle progresses, however, the pattern changes altogether! A giant X across the room, a box in dotted lines, quadrants, smiley face, etc, etc, etc … slowly becoming harder and harder with less and less green spaces.
Upon an INT check, the number on the bottom is the total of creatures the room must be before the trap stops.
Hint (optional): This one is best without a hint.
SOLUTION: Watch your footwork! Take the trap to your advantage. Risk some AoO!
HARD MODE: The number below is two less than the total number of players!
4. Magnetic Stream Bed + Incoming Flood
As a dungeon master, sometimes you need to provide situations that can literally strip the items from the players possession. Traps make for the best way to do so.
The party steps through a narrow tunnel which stops some 30+ feet above a shallow stream flowing through a larger tunnel. The monk lowers herself to the bottom, turns to notice a large door far upstream. She determines nothing is wrong, and urges the rest of the party to join her.
The paladin gets anxious to reach the bottom first, when he notices that his steel-plated boots refuse to lift from the ground. He tries to use his maul to push himself up, but notices the maul is stuck as well. The sword drops out of the unwitting fighters hand; the rogue is uninhibited, but feels a weight at her back as the metal items of her pack weigh her down. The monk is standing confused. It all seems like a minor annoyance at first, until they hear the sound of the door slowly raising. As it does, more water is coming out, and it appears that if the party doesn’t act quickly, important items could be lost, and some members might drown!
A strength check versus the amount of metal on a player is required to thwart this one! It might be best for them to abandon those heavy weapons, and undon that plate mail before the water pushes them down the tunnel!
Hint (optional): A large, dead body in rusted armor is seen, grasping a large hammer. The head of the hammer is stuck to the bottom.
SOLUTION: Grow some muscles, or grow some lungs!
HARD MODE: Quicker flood, stronger DC. Traps like this are almost exclusively designed to rid the players of some items.
5. Water Wall of Suction
Your players enter a room, and notice that there is a rippling and waving wall ahead of them. Its watery form is imbued with a magic. One of the players peers through the translucid liquid and notices their objective (or pricey treasure) is located on the other side! There must be some way to destroy or deactivate the wall.
…But chances are, someone will touch it, or stick something in it. Unlike other walls build out of magic, this one is less about repelling, and more about… well…. Lets just say that theres an extreme amount of surface tension, and anything that touches it is sucked right into it.
The character quickly realizes that they feel this crushing pressure, and are unable to breathe. They can’t swim out of it themselves, and it seems that any magical effect that touches the wall is instantly negated. They need to get their friend out, quickly! A team effort may be required!
Once the character is out, they may determine that someone can be pushed through it. Tempting! However, testing this may soon reveal that the wall pushes back from the other side even stronger. A substantial roll is required to accomplish this, and the price for failure might just be death, or a major loss of HP! … It’s best to just find the mechanism and deactivate it. Mechanism is up to the DMs discretion, but preferably, multiple conduits in the dungeon need to be turned off, or a special item needs to be used.
SOLUTION: Turn it off. … Just don’t touch it!
HARD MODE: The wall is acid, not water.
6. Magnetic Shrooms
Speaking of magnets, here’s one with less item loss, but just as annoying!
A long room leads towards a door. The players, step into this room, and notice that an assortment of shrooms are growing along the walls, and near the middle of the room. Some of them are grey, others are blue. As they step forward, a very keen eyed individual may notice that the blue ones are vibrating, and a very keen perception would tell the players with metal on them that they feel a bit of “attraction” towards the walls.
However, for the sake of argument, nobody notices anything, and proceeds to walk in. The chain mailed cleric wanders closer to the wall, when suddenly, four of the blue mushrooms fly from the wall and stick to his armor. Immediately, they begin spewing poisonous spores wildly, hurting the cleric, but also those adjacent to him. They struggle to hack off or pull off the shrooms. Each attack with a metal weapon has a chance of transferring the shrooms to that person via the weapon. The more reckless movement closer to the fungal growth, the more shrooms fly at the party!
Hint (optional): An armored, dead body sticking out of an overgrowth of fungi, reaching out.
SOLUTION: Mmm? Oh! You finally need my help, good cleric? *The mage brushes the sleeves of her robe, and begins casting flame magic*
HARD MODE: *mage smiles as the fungi are set ablaze, but dismayed when she realizes they are made of metal, as red-hot shrooms fly at the cleric* Eh… was nice knowing you!
Stay tunes for more Dungeons and Dragons / Pathfinder traps coming in the future!
THIS IS PART ONE OF AN ONGOING SERIES of TRAPS FOR DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, and OTHER TABLETOP GAMES. MORE CONTENT TO COME. STAY TUNED, AND PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PIECE.
STOCK IMAGE CREDITS:
Linus Sandvide– Old ruin | Nicolas Picard – Spiderweb | Lou Levit – Chess pieces | Brianna Santellan – Blue Tile Floor | Max LaRochelle – Cavern/Water | xandtor – Water Wall | Erik-Jan Leusink – Blue Mushroom
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