The party stumbles upon the entrance to an over grown temple. They are obviously going to be alert to anything out of place.
Just inside the entrance is a metal gate. To one side is a lever, hinged at the floor, that is clearly attached to the gate and appears to be holding it in place. Through the gate the party can see a room about 25 feet in diameter with smooth walls curve inward gradually. Upon further inspection the party may see that the walls have rows of small holes circling the room at different heights.
At the far end of the room is a set of large gears that stack toward the top of the room where a ledge can be found. The trap is not activated by the lever but by the door sliding out of the way. When the door slides into the trigger the floor beneath them quickly rotates straight up dumping the party into the room. When in the room the party begins to hear flowing liquid and the gears begin to turn.
Now that it is obvious it is a trap--this is where I get my stop watch out, start the timer, and say 'Go!'. I give the party members 3 minutes real time to figure out how to get out and to get there. The way out is obviously up the turning gears. The party members must all roll enough successful checks to make it up to the top. To make it difficult, failed checks drop them back down a gear. The diameter of the gear will determine DC and make this adaptable to any level party.
The Bad Stuff:
At a certain time interval activate the lowest ring of holes. From which comes spurting your choice of two part fire oil that ignites when mixed or some sort of acid that burns. Next time interval ignites the second ring of holes. The party should be out by the time the third ring goes off or take the damage.
If your feeling really mean you can knock them back into the pit of fire when they get hit by the last ring. A smart agile party member will make his way to the top and attempt to throw a rope to the rest. You may allow this or come up with a way to prevent this. I like this trap because it turns the relaxed thought process into a frantic real time, dice rolling, race to the top.
For those that don't like this its only for 3 minutes.
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? Responses (15)
Useful in any game with traps.
Not bad. I enjoy traps, for me they represent that old-school feeling that attracted me to RPGs in the first place. But there is a lot to be said about them almost always:)
They are not realistic, the "ingridients" are often too expensive. Why put them there? Bla bla bla. Anyway, I think this is within the standards of writing here at the citadel, the formatting could be cleaned up a little bit though. And I would personally cut away some of the personal style, make it more official. That might be because I take myself too seriously though:D
All in all: A nice little submission too read, I wish we had more of these. I really do.
End Note: I am going to give this a higher vote than Cheka and Nafar because I think it is useful in the genre it was intended for. "Dungeon exploring in the high fantasy world where traps are like these are abundant and snakes somehow manage to survive in a dungeon pit for years, just waiting for some fool to fall."
Update: Fixed grammatical error.
Cool, nice to see that you were drawn back by my comment. E-mail notifier? Anyway, I would love to see more stuff from you.
Mike
I like it. Racing across gears has always been a favorite mental image of mine. I typically imagine a clock-tower-like setting, but this oven is a great place for it, too. Race up the gears and watch out for your back end, there's fire on the way. Very cool.
It's alright and fulfills its purpose.
It's simple and not entirely to complex. Any seasoned group will sometimes hinder themselves thinking of ways that the EASY escape could be part of the trap and cause time issues. I've used the, you have five real time minutes to do this task and it works wonders on those who are over thinkers.
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Nice enough trap, would a be great intro encounter to set the mood for a crawl.
Brings me back to my golden era. A trap is a trap is a trap and this IS a trap!
Simple enough trap, with a nice mechanic. Certainly serves its purpose. Perfect for the dungeon crawl crowd. Thanks!
I second Dreamer. Simple, useable, neat.
Update: Added a few lines for readability.
Good Old-school trap.
Sometimes a trap like this is just plain old fun. Not everything needs to make logical sense. Most of us play these games for fun and realism is not important.