A Magical Fresco Trap

Diabolical but fun  

A fresco featuring many adventurers patrolling a dungeon with surprised looks on their faces 

If you step in front of it within arm’s length, throw Save vs. Breath Weapon (or dex save.) If you fail, an arm of stone grabs you and pulls you in. You are gone from the mortal world, and a likeness of you - with a surprised look on your face - replaces one of the adventurers.

Damaging the wall causes hit point damage to the figures inside at 1d6 per man-turn. Punching a man-sized hole or similar inflicts 25 total hits. Creating significant damage to the image of one of the figures (DMO what counts as significant) kills the person. 

A remove curse or stone to flesh restores the entrapped to the realm of three-dimensional flesh and blood; but if dead, not back to life. 

At least you can loot the body, though. 

Should your companions leave you for a sufficient amount of time, you might be replaced by another hapless sod wandering by. If so, your only hope is the Astral spell, or Reincarnation. 

Triggering Traps

Whatever you do, don’t tell them that you can barely see their adam’s apple anymore. Do it this way instead  

If there is a trap that you do not know about and a character performs the trigger action, there is only a 2-in-6 chance that he will trigger it. That means it might hit the second, third, fourth character to pass by. 

Using a ten foot pole as you go is sound practice because then the ten foot pole counts as a character for the purposes of triggering and being targeted by a hidden trap. 

If you have discovered a live trap, you will be able to trigger it harmlessly or bypass it safely unless it is magical in nature. 

Native monsters will always bypass traps harmlessly unless it’s dramatically approaching for a trap to hit them, or the clever players devise a way to use a trap offensively against a hapless monster. 

Better Traps

Dungeons have traps. It’s quintessential. But traps are not always fun. Certainly not as fun as monsters or weird stuff. 

I’ve been thinking about what works and what doesn’t in my dungeons. One thing that I noticed is that traps were a mixed bag, so I began to keep track of the features that work to make traps more fun. 

For  most of your dungeon traps, do not ask your players to have their characters search. The detection step is not very much fun.

Instead most traps “obvious” (that is, obvious to the kind of capable men who would undertake dungeoneering for fun and profit. Just say “you found a trap at location X” rather than demanding the players search everywhere. 

This turns a “trap” into a “hazard” 

For true traps (eg hidden inanimate dangers,) which should be paltry and wide-yonder, give lots of clues. Even specific clues. Make sure the players know there’s something fishy about. Perhaps blood on the walls l, blade marks in stone or skeletons with their heads lopped off. 

Better the first way than the second - just let the players know a trap is there because their characters are knowledgeable about these kinds of things. Or make it obvious. Instead of a hidden blade trap, have spinning blades extant throughout a certain length of dungeon hallway. 

Or instead of a pit with spikes, have the trap be a deep pit (20’) with smooth sides. 

Then the challenge isn’t “find it” but “beat it.”

The second part of this is that beating a trap should not be based entirely on an ability check or skill roll. There’s no real interaction there. Make traps and hazards more like a logic puzzle or party game. Then when the players are ready to put their characters to the test, they can decide to make the rolls. But have the players decide how their characters are going to beat the trap. 

To aid them, make the trap tactile or mathematical or linguistic whenever possible. Yes, this takes the players one step away from the “main” game, but they are still interacting with the world and with each other.