Traps?

[Alibear]

So I'm planning on running my lads through a tomb laden with traps. Basically a pyramid full of traps and maybe some kind of monster.

 

The party have a trap specialist on board but want to get a good idea of how to make some traps and how he can spot them and disarm them. I want them to be realistic, mundane and probably be mechanical in nature.

 

What is the trap?

What sets it off?

How do you spot it?

Ho to disarm it?

If can't disarm it how to dodge it?

If the worst comes to the worst how much damage does it do?

 

Assuming this tomb is still used by people how do they get past the traps without making it obvious to othrs how to dodge them?

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Traps?

 

Have you any access at all to the "Grimtooth's Traps" books from Flying Buffalo?

[Alibear]

Re: Traps?

 

No idea what you are on about. Link?

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: Traps?

 

No idea what you are on about. Link?

 

This.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Traps?

 

No idea what you are on about. Link?

This.

Yup, that's the set, all right. About 100 traps per book, of various degrees of lethality and other factors.

 

My name appears in the second tome of the series, in the paragraph describing "Fibber McGee's Closet of Caltrops."

[TSandman]

Re: Traps?

 

Got one here... geez, those are mostly for sheer comedy factor!

 

Unless you want all your party dead, very dead

[Alibear]

Re: Traps?

 

While that looks very interesting and worth a punt I doubt if I'll be able to get it before Wednesday when we game next.

 

Any othre ideas? What are your favourite traps?

[jtelson]

Re: Traps?

 

A couple of decades back a buddy of mine had asked me to design for him a trap riddled maze designed by the greatest trapmaker in history for his fantasy world. The Seven Doors of something or other, I can't remember the guy's name. Anyway - The first "door" - was a set of seven doors with reasonably mundane traps between them opening into a 'treasure room' that had obviously been looted many many times. So the trap was psychological - you defeated the 7 Doors but leave with pretty much nothing but a bent copper. Somewhere in the dozen or so pit traps was one that had a safe landing area and a secret door that led to the next "Door"

 

The mundane traps were things like moderately complex pits

Pit cover is a 10' square stone with an axel - so when someone goes through the stone spins. It's locked shut by a simple set of bars underneath that prevent it from spinning. The bars are held out by springs but are retracted when someone steps on any of a series of stones starting 10 feet past the pit. So the guy probing ahead for traps has a chance of dropping his pals behind him into a pit with spikes and a shallow pool of stagnate water. Perception checks to spot the pit or the trigger stones, spiking both sides of the pit well may pevent it from spinning. Scale damage to the group - but include risk of infection from the water.

[Steve Long]

Re: Traps?

 

See the "Security Systems" section of The Ultimate Skill for plenty of traps written up in HERO System terms, and rules for how they work.

[Alibear]

Re: Traps?

 

I had a look at that last night, Steve. There wasn't that much there well, nothing too specific.

[Escafarc]

Re: Traps?

 

When I need a trap I go to my roadrunner toons. Unlike the ACME versions that Wile E. use mine work

 

[phookz]

Re: Traps?

 

I had a look at that last night' date=' Steve. There wasn't that much there well, nothing too specific.[/quote']

 

What exactly are you looking for? TUS pp 271-275 lists a dozen or more different traps, complete with descriptions and how they are built. Are you looking for diagrams, or more elaborate traps, or did you have something else in mind?

[Alibear]

Re: Traps?

 

my apologies, that is exactly what I was looking for. I seemed to have somehow* missed 3 pages of examples. Sorry.

 

*it's 'cos you're thick, Al.

[phookz]

Re: Traps?

 

It happens. To be honest, I didn't even think to look in TUS until Steve posted about it.

[AlHazred]

Re: Traps?

 

While I love Grimtooth's (I own The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps, which collects many and gives them d20 stats to boot), there's not that much usable material in there. Many of the traps require more magic than is feasible for a Low Fantasy campaign, for instance. Many are absurdly complex or require particularly stupid actions (like sitting in a provided chair and picking up the available fishing pole to go fishing... in a cavern-dungeon.) Some are mean-spirited enough to make players reluctant to return to the table to create new characters. Others are merely there to provide a punchline to a joke, or to use some vile pun.

 

On the other hand, a few are Pure Gaming Gold.

 

I'm not sure what kind of traps you're looking for. For instance, like this?

The characters enter an 8-meter by 8-meter room, with a ceiling 3 meters high. In the center of the room, and taking up most of the floor, is a 10-meter deep pit filled with poisonous spiders of many sorts. If the heroes dally, Medium and Large spiders start climbing the walls of the pit to attack. The bottom 6 meters of the pit is filled with a mass of webs, which give the spiders down there complete concealment (treat as if the spiders there are invisible). If a spider climbs to the top of the webs, the webs still cause -4 to attack rolls, not including range penalties.

 

On the other side of the room is a door. A narrow, greased ledge runs around the pit. Climbing rolls need to be made, at -4 due to the grease, to cross the room this way; those who move faster than a few meters must suffer penalties as noted for Climbing. Through the door is a small corridor with a spiral staircase running around a 1-meter diameter pillar; the staircase leads up to another door.

 

When the adventurers open the door, a trap door opens on the top of the pillar, dropping characters down a chute back into the spider-filled pit in the previous room. The chute opens up five meters above the floor of the pit, shooting heroes into the webbing, and the clutches of the Enormous spiders that live at the bottom of the pit.

Too elaborate?

The characters enter a room with a fountain in the center. In the middle of the fountain is the gold-plated statue of a woman holding a four-meter-long spear at the ready. At the bottom of the fountain are a number of coins of various types. If any character steps into the fountain, they activate pressure plates that cause the arm of the statue (which is hinged at the elbow) to lower the spear into the water; when it touches the water, the circuit is completed and it delivers electricity damage to those in the water. The same damage applies if someone tries to remove the gold plating.

[Rapier]

Re: Traps?

 

Have you any access at all to the "Grimtooth's Traps" books from Flying Buffalo?

 

Wow. There's a blast from the past. I have two fairly skinny volumes in white by that name that I've had for about 20 years now. I'm not sure if those are the same volumes, but iirc they were a bit more tongue-in-cheek brutal than actually useful.

 

While I can't necessarily recall anything specific, a number of them were almost guaranteed to kill the character (eg the Acid Bath of Flesh Eating).

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Traps?

 

Wow. There's a blast from the past. I have two fairly skinny volumes in white by that name that I've had for about 20 years now. I'm not sure if those are the same volumes, but iirc they were a bit more tongue-in-cheek brutal than actually useful.

 

While I can't necessarily recall anything specific, a number of them were almost guaranteed to kill the character (eg the Acid Bath of Flesh Eating).

That was a frequent objection. The first defense given was that one could always tone them down, or set them up so the PCs can discover and bypass them without necessarily falling into them. The second, more useful one was in the form of "Grimtooth's Traps Lite."