The Ultimate Trap Contest

[Xel]

Wasup Hero fans, I have a problem. I am running a lowpowered superheroic fantasy hero game. Well, here in a few weels the PCs will be adventuring into a dungeon. So I am officially announcing an un-official contest to see who can make the best traps. Ranging from ambushing and attacking the PCs to the ones that play with the PCs mind, to the really nasty Illusions that confuse them. The winner of this contest will recieve 1000 unspent Character points to add to their PC and unleash on their GM. Well....LET THE GAMES BEGIN

[Steve Long]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

I'm not going to enter, but I will point out that in Knights Of The Dinner Table, they have a column each issue with a fiendish trap.

[Xel]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Hmmmm, ill have to invest in some of those. Though i dont want my points to go to The Knight of the dinner table.

 

 

Mmwaaahahahahahaha...

[Old Man]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

I like living traps:

 

Grass that tries to eat the players through their shoes.

 

Plants and trees that attack the players.

 

Delicious tasting berries that cause sever cramping after an hour.

 

The giant worm ala Star Wars.

 

Garments that actually leather skinned parasites.

 

Gems that are critter eggs.

[Outsider]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

A treasure chest that has a bomb inside, in addition to the treasure and/or proof of the bad guy's crimes. The bomb is triggered by having even a small amount of light hit it. If you're really mean, make IR/UV count too, not just visible light. The bad guy knows to douse all his lights before opening the chest, but his enemies will not.

[CDad]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

First, you have a chasm at one end of a long passageway (16" or so) with a nice shiny statuette sitting on a shelf at the other end. The group jumps the chasm, travels down the corridor, and sees the eye candy. If they pick it up, the entire corridor fills with flying spikes - just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

 

Cost	Power	END
14	Indy Jones' Flying Spikes of Pain: RKA 1d6, Trigger (LIfting shiny gold statue off of shelf; +1/4), Area Of Effect Nonselective (16" Line; +3/4), Autofire (5 shots; +1 1/2) (52 Active Points); 5 Charges which Never Recover (-2 3/4)	[5 nr]
14	Total Powers Cost

 

Not sure if you HAVE to include either Persistent (+1/2) or Damage Shield (+1/2)

[Blue Jogger]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Your own worse enemy...

When this trap triggers, the room fills with gas. When the party opens their eyes, they see that they are alone, surrounded by monsters that are about to attack.

 

Of course, the GM knows that gas has triggered a Mental Illusion that makes everyone appears as monsters to everyone else, but they don't know that. (Unless one has a really high EGO and then try to explain that to the others.)

 

Eventually, the party will realize what is happening, but not before they have wounded each other badly.

 

 

There is no trap

The floor is laid out in a black and white squares like a chessboard. Everytime, the party moves onto a square, one of the following happens: 1) A click is heard, 2) That square changes color, 3) The previous square changes color, 4) A magic mouth spell triggers, says something important, and asks a questions. When someone answers a question with either a yes or no, something changes. 5) A sliding noise and then a clunk is heard. Or just the sliding noise. 6) Make something up.

 

Eventually a wondering monster or more will come in and attack them. Or the players will give up and leave. If someone makes their KS: Puzzles by 3 or more, they can solve the puzzle, a small door will open and reveal some treasure.

[Curufea]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Hmm, I've got all Grimtooths, mainly as humour but here are a few from it that I remember-

 

The Statue Trap

This is some kind of either rotating door, or airlock, or chute of some kind that only allows one person through at a time. The second person through the trap triggers it. It teleports them into the rock of the dungeon, replacing them with the rock that was there. The rest of the party is confronted with what appears to be a petrified character, but is actually and exact statue of the person currently suffocating in the depths of the rock.

 

The Wax Trap

This is another one that I though quite cute - over a a chasm filled with boiling wax is a wooden bridge on which stands a stone golem.

The deadliness of this trap is a) Wax fumes permeate the air and are suffused throughout the bridge and any naked flames brought into this cavern will cause an explosion as the air ignites and the golem isn't stone, it's flint.

 

One from a Dungeon magazine of many years ago that caught my interest-

The Falling Trap

A 100 foot tall (or so) room fitted with a false floor and a false ceiling of stone. The ceiling is held up with wooden brackets, and there is a triggered reverse gravity spell that comes into effect when the party attempts to open the far door (or possibly reaches the middle of the room).

Then, they start taking falling damage, in this manner-

1) The party falls to the ceiling for a 100' fall of whatever damage that causes.

2) The false floor falls to the ceiling, squashing the party with several tons of rock.

3) The reverse gravity spell switches off.

4) The false floor falls back into place.

5) The party falls to the floor taking more falling damage.

6) The false ceiling, now having the brackets broken, falls on top of them.

[Guest Champsguy]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

I always liked the old pit trap, where the PCs jump across, to find the floor on the other side is also trapped.

 

I also like the idea of the corridor the PCs wander down, slowly sloping the whole way for several hundred yards. Then, the PCs hear a "click", as they have triggered the release to the large, Indiana Jones-style rolling rock that rolls down the corridor they've already spent 10 minutes descending. They have no choice but to hurry down the rest of the corridor--through various traps and spells--until they fall into the pit filled with spikes (covered with an illusion, of course) near the end of the hallway. Of course, then they hear the ball rolling towards them...

[BobGreenwade]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Check out the "Grimtooth's Traps" series from Flying Buffalo if you can find them.

 

My own entry in the series, appearing in "Grimtooth's Traps Too," has gotten good response. The name, for most, describes it perfectly: "Fibber McGee's Closet of Caltrops."

[StGrimblefig]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Check out the "Grimtooth's Traps" series from Flying Buffalo if you can find them.

 

My own entry in the series, appearing in "Grimtooth's Traps Too," has gotten good response. The name, for most, describes it perfectly: "Fibber McGee's Closet of Caltrops."

LOL! I loved that one!

 

Those books are an invaluable source of inspiration. I especially appreciated the fact that they were not written with any specific system in mind, so the book wasn't cluttered with a lot of data that I couldn't use.

 

btw, Didn't I read recently that there is a new Grimtooth's book coming out soon?

 

UPDATE:

Yes, there is a new book. Well, it's not really new, since it is just the "best" from the previous books. And, much to my disappointment, the traps are now "redesigned for the D20 System."

 

If you are still interested, you can find out more here

[Spence]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

I've always found that simple is more deadly. Start the campaign with one or two really complicated fiendish designs that are triggered (in part) by a simple door knob or something. Then revert to the simple stuff. The PC's will ususally be so paranoid they will make the traps more dangerous. Plus they can't say that you are being too mean or deadly

[Seraphim]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

THE CORRIDOR!!

 

Set a trap in a normal looking corridor be it small as it is in a small humanoid dungeon (I used ratlings). So the heroes have to crouch to go through (no room to move). When the heroes are nearly at the end of the corridor a slab falls at the end blocking them in and a large metal door slams down the other end. Any dwarves in the group should get a chance to realise that this corridor had a slight slope toward the slab as the characters try to run back to the metal door they realise a liquid has been passing through the bottom of the door. (oil) and then the sneaky little ratlings light the oil creating a fire room pretty much

 

My pc's had no idea what was happening

[BobGreenwade]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Yes, there is a new book. Well, it's not really new, since it is just the "best" from the previous books. And, much to my disappointment, the traps are now "redesigned for the D20 System."

 

If you are still interested, you can find out more here

This looks kind of like it's a licensed version rather than a full-on redux. I wonder if mine'll be in there?

[Xel]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

 

The Wax Trap

This is another one that I though quite cute - over a a chasm filled with boiling wax is a wooden bridge on which stands a stone golem.

The deadliness of this trap is a) Wax fumes permeate the air and are suffused throughout the bridge and any naked flames brought into this cavern will cause an explosion as the air ignites and the golem isn't stone, it's flint.

 

The Falling Trap

A 100 foot tall (or so) room fitted with a false floor and a false ceiling of stone. The ceiling is held up with wooden brackets, and there is a triggered reverse gravity spell that comes into effect when the party attempts to open the far door (or possibly reaches the middle of the room).

Then, they start taking falling damage, in this manner-

1) The party falls to the ceiling for a 100' fall of whatever damage that causes.

2) The false floor falls to the ceiling, squashing the party with several tons of rock.

3) The reverse gravity spell switches off.

4) The false floor falls back into place.

5) The party falls to the floor taking more falling damage.

6) The false ceiling, now having the brackets broken, falls on top of them.

 

 

I think Curufea is going to win the contest, the 2 traps above are

just awesome.

[Outsider]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

 

The Wax Trap

This is another one that I though quite cute - over a a chasm filled with boiling wax is a wooden bridge on which stands a stone golem.

The deadliness of this trap is a) Wax fumes permeate the air and are suffused throughout the bridge and any naked flames brought into this cavern will cause an explosion as the air ignites and the golem isn't stone, it's flint.

 

 

Hm.

I would assume you want your chasm to be unjumpable, so the heros have to deal with the golem. That makes it probably 6" across (a 20 str can running broadjump 4 hexes, after all) but maybe only 3", if you dont give the characters room to get a running start. Then it is probably about twice as wide as it is across (6 to 12 hexes). Depth is less important, since im only worried about the wax, but say the bottom has 1.5 hexes of boiling wax in it, enough that people cant wade through with appropriate defences.

 

So.. the volume of wax is 12m*24m*3m = 864 m^3

 

1 Cubic meter of wax ~ 900kg. (a little less than water)

0.5Kg of sealing wax = 3 sp (Standard FH pricelist)

 

Therefore the chasm likely holds 2,332,800 sp worth of wax. Even if you knock off 90% off the that to cover it being 'low quality' wax, and for wholesaling it, thats still 233,280 sp.

 

Hopefully the place this trap is is so far out in the boonies, and the players so lacking magical transportation, that they cant move the wax to market cheaply enough to make it profitable. Or you could just declaire it "maaaagical wax" that disappears if removed from the chasm.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Well, if you want one that's really cruel, put a 300-foot pit in the ceiling, and a pressure plate on the floor below it. When someone steps on the pressure plate, that individual is instantly teleported to the top of the pit, at which point he falls until he hits the pressure plate, and is teleported to the top again, etc., until he's been pulverized into dust.

[Curufea]

Re: The Ultimate Trap Contest

 

Hopefully the place this trap is is so far out in the boonies, and the players so lacking magical transportation, that they cant move the wax to market cheaply enough to make it profitable. Or you could just declaire it "maaaagical wax" that disappears if removed from the chasm.

 

Or you have this trap placed in a room directly underneath the chamber of Giant Bees