5 Ways to Improve Traps in D&D - Using the Environment & Monsters
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In this video, I talk about 5 ways to improve traps in D&D using the environment and monsters. I give some basic guidelines and then lots of examples to get your creative juices flowing.
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An interesting trap in an SKT module I encountered was that there was a floor in this tower the party is passing through fully flooded with high proof Dwarven alchohol that will immediately and violently detonate when Elemental magic is used on it. It is clear, as are the Gelatinous Cubes blocking the lever that allows the players to continue to the next floor. I liked the way that the party had to figure out what exactly was blocking them and then sucking them in, and then how to kill off the cubes fast enough to not drown in the alchohol without just blowing themselves up.
That's a great monster trap for sure. 😈
Got any advice for a complete newbie wanting to try out D&D on a shoestring budget? I've been told that if I can find a group that all I really need is a pen and paper, but I don't know if that's true, and I don't know how to go about finding a group.
@@TheMinecraftACMan I would recommend looking up tabletop gaming shops in your local area. Some host "Adventurer's League" games, which are basically games endorsed and assisted by Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns D&D. Most AL groups have spare copies of the core books to lend to new players.
Yes, Adventurers League is the easiest and quickest way to try out D&D. Call your local game shops to see if they host AL games. AL games are generally drop in events where you just show up and play.
I have so many great trap ideas, like a cursed monster that can’t be killed, but the players have to play a song that’s got parts posted around the room to put him to sleep so they can progress. Really, incorporating music into a trap sounds awesome; maybe a bard built the dungeon. Either the music is the trap or the way to solve it. Let your bard shine. Perhaps the music traps them in a trance, and maybe they must find a way out of it in their minds. Also, a 3D puzzle room, full of massive blocks the players must push their way thru to find the way to the exit. Could even have them shift occasionally and potentially squish the players.
omg this is awesome
Cnovsky thank you! Feel free to use any, and let me know if you did!
Your video did just what you said it would do. I was suffering from dm block while writing this weeks game. Couldn’t get the traps down. Thank you sir
No problem! Happy to help. What traps did you come up with?
Lost mines of Phandelver was a surprisingly diverse in its traps and dungeons. I feel like that module was full of good lessons and examples for newer 5e DM’s
Great suggestions. The best trap I've invented (and they are few) was intoducing a see-saw floor to a boss fight. It was in the fight with Erylium, a quasit, in Rise of the Runelords, Book 1. The players had to keep the thing balanced with their weight while fighting. It was great! One of the animal companions ended up sliding off into the pit below (and was later rescued). Oh man was that a tense moment for the players! The solution to stop the see-saw was to throw a lever arm on the floor that was right in front of them. But they risked opportunity attacks, and the possibility that the lever could make things worse (they didn't know any better), if they operated it during the fight.
That is a really cool trap. I love the placement during the boss fight. I don't think I've ever used a seesaw trap like that... Probably gonna steal that idea at some point... 😂
I had a similar thought to this of creating a dwarven "tipping tunnel" which leads into the main area of a dwarven fortress, but unless disarmed before walking down the tunnel, it tips to dump anyone walking down it into a jail cell.
I am stealing this. This sounds like a lot of fun!
Monsters as traps:
-Mimics.
-Pit that leads into the mouth of a Purple Worm.
-Bridge is secretly a Bone Naga.
-Mimics are useful in any situation.
-A cannon that shoots an Ooze at the party.
-Use Mephits as mines.
-Monster tag-team. One distracts while the other attacks.
-And of course, Mimics.
Wait, what about mimics? Seriously, how could you overlook mimics? :D
I just had a spinning blade trap last night triggered via pressure plate. Yea, I know, boring. But it caused a player to try jumping across the plate. He managed it and found a hole in the wall about 2 feet deep with a button inside. Pressing the button disengaged the trap, but engaged a spinning blade INSIDE the button hole. The entire party had 5 seconds to get across the plate before the arm pushing the release would be cut off. oops. ;)
I love it. A trap within a trap. You are a truely devious and wicked DM. I salute you. 👊
I agree so much! Creative traps are fantastic! One of my favorite things to do with traps is to combine them with puzzles and/or riddles.
Traps with puzzles/riddles are lots of fun. I'm not very good at riddles though. My players solve them very fast. Lol
My favourite trap I've come up with is a kind of imprisonment/battle trap. I lure my players in with a magical sword (sometimes if I'm evil i even curse it) and a couple seconds after a player has walked within a certain threshold bars go up and lock them in the room with the weapon which is now a flying sword, and I'll have more magically spawn in if there's more than one player within the threshold when the bars go up. I then have everyone roll initiative. This gets the players inside to be busy fighting the sword while the players outside look for a way to get in to help or lower the bars. It's an interesting dynamic.
One of the first traps I made in 5e was a iron golem in a wizard’s tower, with glyphs of warding throughout the floor. Whenever the iron golem was at around half HP, it would intentionally grab a player and move to manually activate one of the glyphs-and each one was set to deal fire damage. It would harm the grappled PC, and the iron golem would use its Fire Absorption trait to heal from the fire damage.
I fine idea my good evil genius. I may indeed steal that one 😊
I have an idea for a puzzle room. There is a rectangular room lined with different doors. There is a door that is much larger than the others. This one is actually a mimic. There are also multiple bottles of liquids, all of which are edible and none of which are poisonous. One bottle is alcohol. You have to bribe the mimic with the alcohol to get a riddle in which they have to open specific doors at the same time. Each door holds a monster. If you get it right, the monsters turn to smoke and the mimic door opens. If you get it wrong, the monsters attack you, but only for the doors you opened. If you try to force your way through the mimic, all doors slam open, then shut. If they do it again, the party is forced to fight all the monsters at once.
Here is the outline for a trap.
The players enter a room and find two gates. Behind the gate on the left is the hall they need to go through, behind the gate on the right there is a monster. In the middle of the room is a control panel with two buttons. They have to decide which button to press. There could be some kind of clue on the panel for which button controls which door, and earlier in the dungeon there could have been the answer if they looked in the right place.
thank you for the video! cant wait to integrate some of these to my dungeons!
You got it! Do you homebrew dungeons or use modules?
@@theDMLair i homebrew my dungeons!! i just love to make custom tailored experiences for my players everytime they go through a dungeon! helps them to stay invested in completing and exploring the dungeon
That's awesome! Customizing stuff for the players is where it's at. 😀
I love traps that cause the characters to experience some form of mental alteration. For example, I had a trap that when triggered caused a character that failed their save to forget the last 24-48 hours. Another trap made them live their greatest fear which alerted the big bad that the character was there, but also gave the character a point of exhaustion.
My favorite psuedo-trap was that every single door in the dungeon is a mimic, but the mimics dont become aggressive until the players reach the end and are trying to come back out of the dungeon. Until that point they feel and act like regular doors.
Another monster based "trap" I like is to have a monster standing at the top of a shaft/ladder the players have to climb, taunting them the whole way.
Not directly related to this video but I was a player in a campaign where we had the opportunity to fortify a old run down manor against a group of vampires. I was playing a Rogue and designed a trap that was basically a rake with wooden stakes along the top and was set up to snap up at chest level and stake any vampires that set it off. Ended up getting 5 of the 8 vampires with that design. They tried to come in at night and got staked, then all we had to do was wait until morning and walk around the field decapitating them and watching them turn to ash in the morning sun.
Oooooooh, I like he idea of the players having to solve a puzzle, and every time they fail it unleashes a monster. Combine that with your idea about letting their last solution be the right one. This would keep it from having your players tpk themselves.
Came here from Random Encounters, looking forward to the contest!
Awesome! Welcome aboard! Yeah, the adventure creation stream should be loads of fun. 😁
I'm planning a Dark Heresy sistem adventure right now, basically exploration of Eldar (space elfs) temple, and, as any normal temple, this one must be full of various traps and puzzles. Your videos are really helping, thank you for making them!
P.S. Any suggestions in comments would be appreciated.
I like to combine a hazardous environment + monsters, But ofc I use combinations in which the monsters are immune to the hazards, traps are expensive to make, gotta make them reuseable!
Like
- In that room of sand, put some earth elementals, sand is like air for them
- poisionous fog + devils, because they're poison immune (at least in pathfinder, I don't play 5e, so I wouldn't know)
- Set an underground room on fire, put anthing fire resistant / immune in there to make the escape more difficult
Or, instead of have mechanical triggers, have hidden switches on the walls to set off traps, and have imps fly around to manually trigger them. The imps are invisible. I like this one because it confuses the players a lot(But I didn't even step on anything? How as I supposed to disable the trigger?) and still has a very fair solution (imp genocide)
Cool ideas!
Of course another idea, have the traps interact with the monsters.... (Who's to say the Monsters are even supposed to be there?) Have a monster step on the pressure plate you so carefully avoided dropping both you and the monster into the pit....) Or maybe the cieling trap was designed to kill medium or smaller creatures and not the dragon that is trying to claw its way into the dungeon to get at you.... (With the trap serving to slow down what is effectively an advancing wall of doom in the form of the monster as it forces its way through the traps, breaking off spears and scraping it's flesh off against the walls that are trying to crush it to death in a single minded quest to eat the players....) Maybe it's a diseased Dinosaur like the one from the Episode "Plague of Madness" from Primal?
Great ideas, and while offensive and defensive traps are pretty well covered, I find distractionary traps to go on relatively ignored...
These are the kinds of things that might look menacing, drawing suspicious attention from the Party trying to avoid it a little too much to avoid running into a monster....
OR... might be the attractive thing (always beware when a GM leaves shiny sh*t laying around)... to trick Players into discharging some hidden mechanism to get it...
OR ... might just be the kind of gods-awful attention gathering thing that will alert some or all the monsters in range to the PC's general location... AND while everyone's suddenly busy trying to shut the thing off, they're collected conveniently for AoE, mass assault (you know a well placed herd of mammoths)... or any of dozens of other interesting variations.
These are the kinds of traps that still "get" seasoned Players, and when caught up in such a thing, the Player is always shaking his or her head "Why didn't I see that coming?" They don't have to cause damage, or damage such as it is, is incidental.
AND remember, the most effective traps aren't the ones stashed in corners and hidden out of sight to be "accidentally" or "coincidentally" triggered. They're the attractive traps, designed entirely to DRAW attention and curiosity... there's nothing so self-destructive as a Player with an insatiable dose of curiosity. ;o)
Not the most optimal trap but extremely flavorful. The spell snare that when activated triggers a glyph of warding to cast animate dead on some dead adventurers who previously died to this trap. Now you are upside down 3 feet off the ground and have disadvantage on the dex throw to free yourself and disadvantage on attacks as well as the two zombies that are now lurching towards you have advantage on tearing you to shreads
I am currently trying to set up my first campaign so my stuff probably screams "Noob" but anyway. One idea I have for traps in dungeons is having the noise players make be a problem. Obstackles which are easily smashed, providing an obvious way forwards could become a real issue when PCs run into an ambush instead of a room full of sleeping goblins.
Another thing was something I made up for kobold tunnels. Have them be small so normal sized PCs need to duck while kobolds can still jump. One leaps up, flees the group, pulls on a string and a cloud of ash falls down blocking view even more. If the players simply walk on, they sink into a gelatinous cube the kobold has hopped over, which was inserted into a flush hole in the ground.
My favorite to use till now: a displacer bridge above a ravine with a giant gelatinous cube in it.
Just sprung a nasty trap on my players, Party enters room with "Treasure" which was illusory and a Summoning Circle w a Large Gem in its center (I knew that would get the attention of our Warlock) As they approached the gem (all four just walked up I couldn't of asked for my plan to go better) a magical trigger teleports them on a failed wisdom save to 1 if 2 rooms. Room 1 was humanoid Experimentation, the 3 regular old humans find themselves in a cell with a horde of zombies and skeletons hungrily waiting a mummy and a poltergeist rounded out the room, 2/3 Party members went down. Room 2 was outsider containment, our Tiefling from the underworld was transported there and forced to deal with a staving Barghest also trapped in the room. The Warlock managed to turn invisible and hold the Barghest off but it wasn't looking good. Much to my surprise the Wizard busted out Nystral Magic Aura and Used it to make the fighter (the only person with much left in the tank) appear as an fiend and he used the trap to teleport into the room and save the Warlock from having his soul devoured
My trap is three zombois chained to a boulder, either they are dragging it Down an incline (now that they see prey) or if they try to fight it poison (or sleep) gas speed from underneath them when the players go to fight them (because the chains and the bell I attached to it are loud and woke up the trap operator underground
My players borrowed some horses for a few hours to clear a nearby dungeon. Now while they were inside that dungeon an assassin NPC poisoned the saddle of their horses and went back to town. Now it took them not only a few hours to clear the dungeons, but a whole day and the city guards are looking for them because they think they stole the horses. Now guess what is going to happen when the party finally saddles up to ride back to the town :}
My gm had a trap door open in a ceiling and a gelatinous cube fell from a compartment above the chamber on to one of my party members
I made a dungeon with a opening in the ceiling to a trap door that the orcs used to put everybody that dies in the dungeon up there so if somebody steps under it on a pressure plate they get crushed by tons of dead bodies, followed by a couple orcs to kill anything that survived and loot the dead
Another one isn't a trap so much as it is a shop security for a potion maker/alchemist.... Where his shop is in a tower.... and stretching along the walls of thoe tower in a room roughly 2-3 stories tall are shelves and shelves of bottles, potions, ingredients, armor eating slime in jars, jars of plain old acid, kegs of explosive powder, alchemest fire, and then give him something that the shop-keep can use as a flying platform maybe a chest or a cauldron he can animate.... Pick a fight with him and he'll be raining fire, acid, poisons, puddings, random potions on you from the air..... (Throw in maybe an Iron Golem for security and you'll be dreading the possibility of one of those potions being of fireball....
What about an inconspicuous crate/barrel/sack that holds a few hordes of tiny monsters?
Why not just out right use the Enemy as a trap? For example: Im working on, my first, Campaign. And I have one of the Bosses Ideas layed out to where the real boss is hidden behind a portal, but minions come out of the portal, only to ever have a single minion outside of the portal. The minion emits a Black smoke that goes up to 3ft off the ground in a 10ft area around the Creature. Any sort of Spark or flame immediatly makes the smoke light and explode dealing x ammount of damage, and knocking them back on a failed DC18 Strength check. The whole way to get to the boss is to Forcefully close the Portal, or have a certain ammount of Minions have come out of the Portal. Did I mention that the minion is wearing Metal Armor to cover nearly every piece of its body?
I have made a AH trap you see a 40x40 room made of marble there is a marble table in the middle of the room on the table lays a bag of Gold finding traps doesn't work detect magic doesn't work you pick up the bag of gold the door closes instinct is to put the bag back but if they do a monster of DM choice shows up on every wrong try another monster shows up and so on and so on they need to put 1 gold piece for each member in the group pay to get out or don't and stay up to the players and if a gold piece is touched from inside the bag you take 6 hit points of damage
With traps that cause a player to fall down and become separated from the group, are their any good tips to manage that at the end of combat? They fall down one level of a tower that hasn't been fully cleared or the giant did mange to push the paladin over the edge of the bridge.
Turning a dungeon into a trap, this reminds me of one I designed a bit ago. A massive crystal pyramid that's been cracked open by an earthquake. It was never designed as a dungeon, what it is is a heat focuser designed to warm the area of the underdark, netherrealms etc underneath it. Going in during the day is certain death except for things like high end elementals and such. the crack meanders throughout the crystal with various natural challenges and a few things that are just that rsistant. The party pretty much needs to get through in a single night, retreat, or die. I expect I'd populate it with fire elemental's ghosts. Cave in hazards etc.
Heating the Underdark wouldn’t really be a problem, to be honest. As I understand it, the underdark is potentially miles underground, so keeping places cool would be the real challenge. The deeper you go underground, the hotter it gets. On the bright side though, the temperature underground is pretty consistent at a given depth... well as long as you don’t go near lava.
But I like that concept nonetheless! Maybe it’s something done in a colder environment or the beings living in that segment of the underdark like it much hotter.
@@Draeckon Yeah, I wasn't particularly worried about physics with this seeing as how a fantasy planet could have a core of ice.
Im new to being a dm, any videos you might recommend from your content?
Check out my Dungeon Mastering 101 playlist. th-cam.com/play/PLo4-n9V0bKIUztUYU4ieN-Arxwo2K-YnS.html
Treasure Bugs
Swarm of Insects stats
Add:
False Appearance: "While motionless, Treasure Bugs are indistinguishable from gold coins, gems, and jewelry."
Modify "Bites":
Paralytic Bites: "When a creature is hit by the Treasure Bugs's Paralytic Bites attack, that creature must make a DC10 Con save or become poisoned for 1 minute on a failure, a creature poisoned this way is also paralyzed. On a success, that creature is immune to the Treasure Bugs poison for 24 hours."
This creature can be found near corpses who have had their coin purses eaten from the inside out.
Something tells me you have an irrational love for saw blades. It's your example for traps 90% of the time
I fell in love with a saw blade middle school, but it rejected me over a piece of wood. I never got over it. :(
@@theDMLair hahahahaha ok which one of you typed this?
The barbarian. 😁
Hey I just GOT to know, but is that a picture of your CUTE Pink-haired Pixling GF from some past gaming sessions..? (points to upper Left corner of screen)
Hear me out: have standard traps by whatever made all those traps and pits. Think Skyrim. Your players will become familiar and know them.
They will use them, abuse them. Lure enemies in. Still die themselbes because players just aren't that smart and already know but.. I actually don't do traps. My players are not that smart. They are enthusiastic and bouncy.
Here is a trap for the Bard of the group. A flirting woman at a bar takes the Bard upstairs. The gm has the bard roll a perception check, upon succession, The Bard will run back downstairs screaming that she wasn't a woman.