Party is going through a dungeon, and a barrier wall falls down on either side of a player (in my game, it happened to be the thief). A board slides out from the wall, crossing the corridor, and a magic mouth says "Can you break this board?". Buddy breaks board, and barriers retract. A little while later, same deal, except it's a stone beam, (and their fighter was the trapped one). Buddy breaks said beam, and the barriers retract. A bit later, the same thing, except it's a wooden pole, (and the mage is trapped). Buddy breaks the staff, and the DM looks up Retributive Strike... See Staff of Magi & Power, page 154, DM's Guide 2nd Ed.
Party enters a 10x10 room, and stone doors seal the room at all entrances. Looking about, there is a button on the wall, beside a number dial (like on a gas pump) that counts down 10-9-8... Some bright soul presses the button, and the dial resets to 10. In my campaign, the party spent fully 45 minutes of real time searching the room for an escape, while one PC stayed near the button to continue resetting the dial. Finally, they said forget it, and let the dial count down to 0, at which point the doors slid open, and the DM was chased from the room.
By: Fireball
This trap is intended for the greedy party, most likely the thief (of course). It is a circular room of whatever size you want, two exits (the one they entered and the exit, both easily opened and used), and a 5' wide groove around the
outside of the room. The entire area has a very faint aura of magic, ala spell-casters. Whenever the party enters, the greedy is dragged to the center of
the room, lifted off the ground about 5' and, quite literally, put the spin cycle. EVERY item on their person, except for the clothes on their back and a
normal weapon, if they have one left, is flung from them towards the outside wall. This continues until the character is 'cleaned' completely of their stuff.
The trap then drops the character (for falling damage where you see fit), opens the 5' wide along the wall into a collection pit, and dumps all the stuff into it. For nice DMs, you may allow the character to find some of their things later
on. I can assure you, for those characters who figure themselves sneaky and greedy, having nothing for awhile will humble them to an extent.
In the center of an otherwise empty, totally ordinary, middle-sized room, a gem-encrusted crown floats in a sparkling column of golden light. Any detection reveals that the entire room radiates magic. But it's not the magic that's going
to harm the hapless adventurers...more like the lack of it. Sooner or later, someone is probably going to try to dispel that glowing column to get the crown,
since the golden light appears to be some sort of magical force field. (This works best in a system like AD&D where "Dispel Magic" is an area-affect spell)
As soon as that spell goes off, the *floor* vanishes. So does the pillar of light, but nobody is going to be worried about the fact that the crown is fake;
under the floor, of course, is a pit built to your specs. (I like about a 20' drop to a thicket of spikes, myself) The floor was a magical wall of stone,
deliberately cast to be "magically brittle" and with no defense against any attempt at dispelling it. It's their own magic that does them in.
How about a 'trading' well, a large well where various swords & daggers hover above it in mid air, and don't budge at all if grasped and pulled, but one must place a sword or other weapon in exchange for one in the well. Note if a PC tries to put a normal weapon in the well in exchange for something magical, this is a good way to give a *cursed* weapon instead.
The PCs reach the end of a large hallway with double doors at the end. They open
them and walk through, and enter a large chamber with a window in front of it. Past the window is a room about 100' lower than the PC's room. Inside, they see a huge red dragon chained up, with a gigantic axe hanging above it. They will
also see stairs leading down out of the room and a doorway leading into the room. Also in the room is a rope that runs out of the room, and leads up to the axe. They will, of course, chop the rope, killing the "red dragon". Notice the quotation marks. The red dragon is actually some sort of beast that will split up or release more monsters (in AD&D, a Grand Old Master Neogi). The new monsters run up the stairs and attack the PCs. When/if the PCs actually go down the stairs, they realize the monster room was off on a side passageway. This
will certainly make them scout ahead next time.
From: Jason Seeley
Now, what party is there out there that doesn't want to increase their ability scores? Not very many, I'm sure. Well, here is a trap to make them all wary of
easy outs.In a room, they will find various potions, scrolls, etc. (whatever, really) -- maybe even an electric chair (hehe.) The first character to quaff a potion, read a scroll, sit in the chair, or whatever, has some kind of beneficial effect (temporary or permanent, GM's decision.) Anyone else doing the exact same thing will have a malignant effect happen (ie, eletrocuted in chair, poisoned badly,
blinded by scroll, etc.) Of course, most players will want to try it for themselves to try to duplicate the effect on the first player. It is very fun to
help the first player understand that there was a beneficial effect, so that he can brag about it so that the other players try it, too. Maybe even have a good effect at random after the first (like a 5% chance or something.)
From: Andrew Boulton
Okay, here's a good one. Have a deep pit, concealed somehow. The victim falls
down, then, just before he hits the bottom, a teleport device/spell sends him back up to the top, with the same velocity. You could keep him in this loop forever, but an alternative is, after a while, (say, when he reaches *terminal* velocity :-), to change the destination of the teleport...say, the same place, but the opposite direction (ie up into the air - see if you can reach escape (velocity!) Another one is to put the teleporter at the end of a corridor, with the destination point at the other end, facing it. You then project the image of a monster in front of the 'porter, and wait for the party to shoot it (and so shoot themselves in the back).
Jeff Naujok
Author's Note: I ran this in the dungeon of a wizard's castle. It is not especially nice, but it is cool to watch. A section of a long corridor changes
over to having a tiled floor. Half of the hexagonal tiles are white, the other half are black. Every other black tile is actually a glass plate over a deep
shaft, at the bottom of each shaft is an iron spike. As the PCs walk onto the area, they feel the floor shift slightly. Roll some dice and wince, like
something has gone wrong. Tell the PCs that they hear a squeal of metal on metal, but then nothing else. What has actually happened is the pit beneath the glass is being filled with some explosively flamable liquid from a large storage
tank. This takes about 10 seconds.Towards the middle of the corridor is a second pressure plate, ten feet wide. Stepping on this strikes steel on flint in the pit below. *Boom* The ignited gas
drives the spikes up through the glass plates. Each PC will be hit by 1-6 spikes, each doing 2d6 damage. The spikes embed themselves in the ceiling.Now here's why it's a wizard's castle. The trap triggers a variant of the Mend spell, causing all of the glass plates to reassemble. Then a teleport is triggered, popping all of the spikes back into the bottom of the shafts. This sudden removal of the spikes one round after the detonation causes the ceiling to collapse. PCs still on the trap suffer an additional 6d6 of damage. After three turns, a panel in the side wall will slide open, and a charmed gelatinous cube will slink up and down the hallway removing the rubble from the floor. It
will then return to its cubicle, and the panel will slide shut. When it does, it triggers a Wall of Stone across the ceiling, restoring the trap to pristine
condition, ready to use again.Originally, this trap did more damage, but that was for 18th level players. This version is a little less deadly, as it doesn't do fire damage and damage from
the breaking glass. To avoid the trap, all the players need to do, and what the wizard does, is jump over the first pressure plate, thus not releasing the flammable liquid.
The wizard was especially mean, because he put a set of double doors at the end of this corridor. They opened onto blank rock. Of course there was a secret door there that led on, but the PCs thought that the whole thing was just a trap, and
gave up on it.
Sword in the Falls
By: Paul Henrichsen
This is an item trap. It consists of a room behind a waterfall. The bigger the waterfall the better. The doorway to this room has a magical field to keep water out. (Note this will do no harm to typical adventurers, but it will exclude water elementals and the like.) The room is lit by a glowing sword set in a large white (marble) stone in the center of the room. (Think of Arthur's test.)
A crystal dome covers the hilt and the portion of the blade which extends from the sword. The stone and the crystal are enchanted with a spell to destroy water. (Again this will not harm the typical adventurer.) The crystal dome is fairly easy to break and any warrior worth the name should be able to pull the sword from the stone without difficulty. There is no sheath for the sword and it is silver of very high workmanship and obviously enchanted. If the adventurers leave the sword and the crystal dome alone, nothing happens. The room would even make a good place to camp since everything but the adventurers ignores the place entirely. If the crystal or stone is broken or the sword somehow removed from the stone, all the spells against water in the room vanish. If they look the
party will notice that spray from the falls now enters through the doorway, but it did not earlier.
Upon further examination it will be noted that the sword is actually made of two very soft silvery metals--sodium and potassium. (The sword is soft enough that you could cut it with a butter knife.) If the party has the sword in the air in the room for more than 2 hours they will notice that it has tarnished. If they carry the sword from the room, without taking extreme precautions, it will
spontaneously ignite and do lots (6d6 GURPS or 6d10 AD&D) of damage to whomever is carrying it. If the sword is left exposed in the room, for more than one hour after the protective spells fall, there is a 10% chance per ten minutes that it
will ignite.
Editor's Note: ooooh! I can't resist making comment! This one is such a nasty and devious trap!! The possibilities with this one...
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