Treasury trap idea?

[Braininthejar]

Having found players who never player Baldur's Gate, I am converting Durlag's Tower for their next adventure.

(For those who haven't played: Durlag was a dwarven hero, and the tower was a small fortress, which was supposed to be the seat of his new clan. All went to hell when a group of dopplegangers murdered and impersonated Durlag's family - he killed the impostors but went violently paranoid as the result and spent the rest of his life (and much of the fortune ge gathered in his adventuring days) to convert his tower and the halls beneath into a trapped maze.)

The party is level 5, way too weak to go all the way down - they are only going there in search of an item that belonged to one of the previous parties that went there and never returned. - the first underground level is still pretty dangerous but much has already been disabled by previous groups - it should scare them but they can back down at any moment so all should survive.

What I need is a trap for the treasure room. It is a small chamber containing a pile of gold that turns out to be just an illussion (Durlag was being a bit bitter with this one) and one enchanted gem the perty needs for a puzzle.

Since there has been no maintenance for the last 100 years, all the traps that still work are either self-resetting mechanical ones or "charges per day" magic items permanently incorporated into the walls.

[Kasz]

What works well with an illusion of coins is then suddenly coins.

An illusion of coins draws the greediest members of the party to a square in front of the illusionary pile, as the pile vanishes the ceiling opens and a real pile of gold appears, falling onto the characters heads. Gold is Heavy. If you need it to be resettable then have a reverse gravity trap beneath this gold that then sucks any bodies or gold back up into the ceiling that has a pressure plate that ends the reverse gravity and closes the ceiling.

It's self resetting, self cleaning and now any of your party who rushed forward greedily are trapped in the ceiling with the gold they wanted so badly. A character could open the ceiling from the inside or outside with a disable device check otherwise there's a limited amount of air in the ceiling trap, if you want the party to panic give them a few rounds, crushing damage from gold and air loss or if you want them to just figure out a safe way of opening everything have it be like ten minutes. Once it's opened the gold will fall onto the trap so they need to either disable the reverse gravity trap or the trapped character needs to get out of the stream. If they want the treasure then they need to turn off the gravity anyway...or catch the cash as it flies past. Substitute gold coins for silver or copper if it breaks the WBL using the weight you want for the damage you want.

You could also have a poison dart trap fling poisoned coins instead. smeared with contact poison. This works because the characters are hit with coins against their will and possibly poisoned, then when they realise it's gold they'll send the highest AC to 'use' the trap / coin generator... but they'll still need to clean the coins of poison.

When the treasure is an illusion the traps can be the treasure

[Eagle of Fire]

The party is level 5, way too weak to go all the way down - they are only going there in search of an item that belonged to one of the previous parties that went there and never returned. - the first underground level is still pretty dangerous but much has already been disabled by previous groups - it should scare them but they can back down at any moment so all should survive.

Be wary of this kind of thought. If there is something I've learned from my DMing experience is that PCs very rarely do what you expect, especially if it fall under reason or common sense. This is a game and some players are simply content to send their characters onward to trouble since that's pretty much the game simplified right there. Some other expects you to build challenges and encounter they can actually have a chance of overcoming so... I guess what I'm trying to say is expect the unexpected. If you really want your group to fall back without casualties then make it clear OOC that they can't do it, or give them some very strong incentive IC not to dwelve too deep.

About the trap itself, I'm very fond of the treasure illusion too. I use it often. The last time I did was for a non lethal challenge. The lethal part of that treasure was to be able to overcome the traps on the vault door (there was three of them and the rogue didn't manage to overcome the last trap and fell down with 1 wisdom left. Good times. ) Once that was done, behind the door inside a small chamber was a single mirror engraved in runes. Someone managing to decypher the runes understood that by pronouncing the power word while touching the reflecting surface (the word was provided) one would be transported inside the real treasure chamber. It was made clear in the explanation that once someone got there and came back, return to the treasure chamber was impossible.

So, once inside the treasure was of course an illusion which disapeared as soon as someone got close enough. At that moment all light already provided inside the chamber disapeared and any light source used by the PCs were dimmed to one square away. They were almost blind. Furthermore, when they tried to explore the chamber they realized that it was looping back to itself. After much trials and errors, they also realized that there was a second mirror on the wall facing the mirror they entered when they walked in a straight line away from it. The power word didn't work on this one though, as one needed to move backward from the first mirror down to the second and then use the power word to finally get inside the real treasure chamber.

To my surprise, the PCs found everything out with time and they got out with a huge increase in magic items, weapons and armor.

[Braininthejar]

No worries. The tower has resisted adventurers for the last couple of centuries (since many of the traps and doors reset, the stronger ones died deeper down and the traps re-set behind their backs. That also means that most of the original valuables are gone, but instead one can find some quality adventuring gear on the bodies) so there are plenty of old bones to warn the party about the most dangerous spots.

Also, we take turns DMing and have (admittedly, through trial and error - a wacky PC who asked a glabrezu if he likes being scratched behind the ear died along with all NPCs within earshot) worked out how far we can go with each other and which horrible stories are adventurers bait and which are genuine warnings.


In the end I decided for simplicity - a permanent despair effect within the vault, so that when the rogue clears half the floor (largely through evasion) only to find the treasure is an illusion, she suffers a nervous breakdown and has to be dragged out of there.