Doing traps

[bloomann]

I have serious problems figuring out how to write up traps for a typical dungeon adventure.

I have in mind the following :

 

Cage of a thousand knives - the cage is suspended over a small 4" room. If the character misses a picklock roll to the door in the room leading to a long hallway, the cage falls releasing a thousand knives from the cieling. The cage covers the entire area of the room.

 

Huge falling block - like the cage but this time a huge block is released from the cieling crushing anything beaneath.

 

bottomless pit, the character just keeps falling falling falling...

 

pit with spikes, if the character springs the false floor he falls into a pit of spikes.

 

normal pit, 20 meters deep, another false floor

 

Fireball keyhole - when the wrong key is inserted in the keyhole a 1 charge 3d6 rka firball is released.

 

Deadly door knob - when the character grasps the door knob his life energy is drained by a demon bound in the door knob

 

deadly darts - stepping on certain stones in the floor releases several poisoned darts on either side of the hallway

 

low-fi net drop - walking into the room releases a heavy 2" net over the characters

 

Now my questions are :

 

do traps have dexterity and speed (to see if the character has a chance to dogde or jump to safety)

 

would you allow dwarfs to sense a trap that is "magic" or "demonic" in origin?

 

It would really help me flesh out my adventure if I could get some help building these devious deadly dastardly doohickys...

thanks.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Doing traps

 

Cage of 1000 Knives, Huge Falling Block, Lo-Fi Net Drop: Treat as area effect attacks. I'd allow a chance to dive for cover, if they see the trap. Additionally, a nice shield held overhead can protect against many of the 1000 knives.

 

Pits, et al: Allow acrobatics roll to avoid. Luck can also come into play. And by bottomless pit, do you mean a pit without a bottom, or a "bottomless" teleport trap? (Character falls into pit, almost reaches teleport at bottom, is sent to top, until terminal velocity is reached). The first is basically a "build another character" trap, while the second becomes a puzzle for the other party members to rescue the falling person before the teleport wears out.

 

Deadly Darts, Keyhole Fireballs, and other nastiness: You can build them with liberal use of the Trigger advantage. Remember that appropriate skills may allow detection and bypassing of traps. Treat all traps as an automatic area effect (it always hits the same hex). Diving for cover still applies.

 

Demonic Doorknobs: Traps triggered by touch frequently use either the Trigger advantage, or, as part of this one's definition, may actually have a "ghost in the machine" to dish out damage. I'd probably work it as "you touch it, it automatically attacks you", figuring in a continuous feature to powers, where appropriate.

 

As to whether Dwarves can detect Magic or Demons, it all depends upon the type of Dwarf in your world. For example, in a world where Dwarves can't cast magic, and have high magic resistance, I would probably rule that they can't detect magic. As far as demons go, do you want Dwarves to detect them? Maybe anyone can detect a Demonic Doorknob if they really pay attention (because it rattles itself, chuckles, or radiates a really bad aura). Maybe you need a special item to detect them, or it's a priestly power, or something. It's up to you, based upon how you see it in your game.

 

As always, YMMV, especially in your game,

JoeG

[Markdoc]

Re: Doing traps

 

As a general rule of thumb, I design traps using the following guidelines.

 

mechanical traps attack at OCV 0: they can't aim after all. However, since traps are designed to attack by surprise, the targets will usually also be either DCV0 (surprised, out of combat) or 1/2 DCV if they are taking some sort of evasive action.

 

There are two exceptions: things like the rain of knives or falling ceilings, which affect an area. They are assumed to be "covering" the area, since they have been sighted in when they were built - they automatically hit the area and characters have to dive for cover to get out. The other exception is non-area affect weapons (like darts or spears) that have also been "sighted in" on a specific location. They will automatically hit that location since it is "covered". For example, a spear-thrower might be described as "will hit location 3-5 of anyone standing in the doorway". If the character is a dwarf, or enters on hands and knees, it's going to go over his head, automatically (unless it was built for Dwarves!). If they are a normal-sized person, it will hit that location - automatically, although I always allow a 0 modifier "dive for cover" (ducking jumping, etc) to avoid such traps if the player can perceive them.

 

As for magical traps, I don't allow characters to find them unless they have suitable magical powers or the spell has been brought with some kind of obvious focus: wierd glowing runes are a dead give-away

 

Basically all traps in my game are essentially triggered powers, so they do not have SPD or DEX (or any other attributes) - if the trap is to release a demon or to animate a statue, obviously that has a stat line, but the trap itself does not. It takes effect "when triggered".

 

cheers, Mark

[bloomann]

Re: Doing traps

 

thanks for the advice,

just wondering if you guys have any other ideas for original traps, also how many traps should I put in? so for for the crypt i have four, thousand knives, a deep pit, a fireball door knob, and a falling block, the demon door, net etc, is for the second part of the adventure which leads to the vast caverns underneath...

[Geryon]

Re: Doing traps

 

You know, a trap book or a trap section in another book might be a very good addition to the game. There are some other things you could throw in too. Maybe "The Ultimate Dungeon"?

[Guest Keneton]

Re: Doing traps

 

Steve has a section about this in Fantasy Hero. In addition you will find an adventure I wrote in The Free Stuff section that has a couple of traps. Perhaps this will help you.

[arcady]

Re: Doing traps

 

The Ultimate Dungeon does sound like a good name for a Fantasy Hero expansion on running dungeon crawls in the 'DnD gamer style'.

 

So what goes in the book?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Doing traps

 

The Ultimate Dungeon does sound like a good name for a Fantasy Hero expansion on running dungeon crawls in the 'DnD gamer style'.

 

So what goes in the book?

 

The care and feeding of huge monsters kept in small spaces.

[Sketchpad]

Re: Doing traps

 

How about this trap -

Library of Doom: Major Transform 3d6 (Sane Person into Psychopathic Murderer, Normal), Trigger (Read Books in Library; +1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Continuous (+1), Invisible Power Effects (Fully Invisible; +1), Area Of Effect (68" Radius; +1 1/2); OAF: Library Immobile (-2) [236 AP/79RC]

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Doing traps

 

Nice one, Sketchpad.

[Sketchpad]

Re: Doing traps

 

Thanks

[Markdoc]

Re: Doing traps

 

Somewhere I have a library of Hero system traps I wrote up, I'll see if I can dig it up at home tonight.

 

But I do remember one trap fondly - and judging by the player's comments they remembered it too...

 

This one is only suitable for places where you have a wizard involved in making traps.

 

It's a pit, which is carved into the rock in an hourglass fashion - so from the top it's a funnel, with a hole in the bottom, and then another chamber below that. Cast on the rock by the hole is a magic rune:

 

20 points of shrinking, usable as attack, area affect (1 hex), triggered by contact with rune. (55 active points)

 

When someone falls into the pit they slide towards the little hole in the middle. If they can't stop, they will almost certainly contact the rune (Dex roll at -3 to avoid, or an acrobatics roll, IF they notice it - a PER Roll) - which will shrink them to a fraction of their normal size so they fall through the hole. The effects only last one phase, so they will morph back to their normal size, after they hit the bottom, and be unable to get out, unless the rock can somehow be destroyed, the PCs have a teleport spell or something similar

 

This is a good non-lethal trap, that will catch and hold someone. More sadistic versions will have a monster in the hole - the trapped person has to fight it on his own, unless his buddies join him, or a trap chamber too small to hold a normal person (so when they expand again... squish! I treat that as a large non-killing attack) or in one version, the trap chamber was below the high tide mark and and had little holes in the chamber walls where the sea could get in. As the tide came in, the character in the trap chamber would drown unless he could get out in time (this is the one the players remembered!)

 

cheers, Mark

[Old Man]

Re: Doing traps

 

Nice idea with the hourglass trap. But when it fills with water can't they just float up and touch the rune to get out? I suppose that would require Swimming and the sacrifice of lots of gear...oh...I get it.

[Geryon]

Re: Doing traps

 

SHHHHHH! Don't give away how to get out of the trap? What if the PCs are reading this?

 

Seriously though, if you upped the shrink on the rune and made the hole smaller (smaller than a finger) it would solve this problem. Plus, all your friends would think you just disappeared since the hole will likely be tough for them to notice.

[Toadmaster]

Re: Doing traps

 

I'll start with your dwarf question regarding detecting magic / demons /traps etc, it is common in many games for certain races to be able to detect specific things, with HERO if you want them to do this they need to buy it as part of the racial package, this makes many D&D races very expensive, but the ability to detect items is just as useful as night vision so I wouldn't give the characters anything like that for free.

 

 

As far as traps, if you can find them Flying Buffalo used to (out of print I assume?) have a series called Grimtooth's traps, I think they did 4 of them, full of dastardly clever traps. Perhaps ebay might come up with some.

 

As far as using traps I don't particularly care for instakill traps, I prefer to use irritating traps, the fireball on the door type thing, step on the threshold and a large hammer swings down, contact poison on the knob, things that will make the characters very paranoid, prodding each door with a 10 foot pole, throwing a back pack in front of the door etc, makes for great fun when only one or two doors were trapped and know the characters plan each assault on the next door like its the D-Day landings at Normandy.

 

Another type are traps that make the characters lives difficult, leg breakers, water traps that force them to shed their gear etc, these are nice because they make just gettng home almost as much fun as getting there in the first place.

 

If I use killer traps I usually make it fairly easy for the characters to avoid death, its not much fun to make up new characters but the threat of death adds to the excitement so I always allow generous hearing rolls or dex rolls to let characters dive for cover, and even then limit them to damage rolls so there is still a chance of only serious injury if they don't get clear.

 

Anyway besides thinking about nifty traps you might want to give some thought to what you want to get out of the traps, a flavor for the "dungeon", to scare the players, to make them think, to make them take that "detect traps" skill you mentioned next time, to make them lose all that cool equipment they bought with the proceeds of their last adventure, make them live off the land on the journey home or just to entertain yourself at their expense (perfectly acceptable in my view, GM's need fun too), if you figure out why you want the traps I find it helps come up with how to build the traps.

[Rage]

Re: Doing traps

 

The Ultimate Dungeon does sound like a good name for a Fantasy Hero expansion on running dungeon crawls in the 'DnD gamer style'.

 

So what goes in the book?

That would be pretty good, becasue Hero is a very tactical game.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Doing traps

 

I'd second the Grimtooth books. One of my favorites out them is called a "Click" trap. Sometimes, simplest is best.

 

JoeG

[bloomann]

Re: Doing traps

 

Anyway besides thinking about nifty traps you might want to give some thought to what you want to get out of the traps' date=' a flavor for the "dungeon", to scare the players, to make them think, to make them take that "detect traps" skill you mentioned next time, to make them lose all that cool equipment they bought with the proceeds of their last adventure, make them live off the land on the journey home or just to entertain yourself at their expense (perfectly acceptable in my view, GM's need fun too), if you figure out why you want the traps I find it helps come up with how to build the traps.[/quote']

 

Thanks for input,

actually I'm trying to recreate an old board game, the first fantasy game I ever had called Dungeon Dweller, and it had three types of traps : thousand knives, falling block, and bottomless pit. Very basic but I have really fond memories of this game and converting it to hero system is just good fun.

 

also I was thinking a good title for the Fantasy companion book could be:

Traps, Tricks, and Treasure. I'll post it up and see what everyone thinks should be in it.