Wednesday 7 September 2016

d20 Traps

  1. A crown floating on a jet of water. Taking the crown allows the jet of water to hit the ceiling, where it brings to life a dehydrated and carnivorous fungus.
  2. A bar of silver held between the mouths of two copper dragons. A powerful electric current flows through the silver. Taking it will force the current to instead flow through the copper chains that hang like a curtain over the room's door.
  3. A room with a ruby on a pedestal in the centre. Every second wall is mirrored. The ruby acts as a lens for a blinding white light emitted by a fleck of rare metal in the pedestal, making it redder and darker. Removing the ruby will blind everyone. Replacing the ruby with an emerald will reveal secret messages written on the walls.
  4. An urn in a stone alcove. The top of the alcove is flush with the top of the urn, acting as a stopper and sealing inside a powerful djinn. The djinn is the bored djinn from this story, and has decided just to kill you.
  5. An ankle-deep pool of clear water. From one side, you can see the floor through it. From the other side, it reflects the sky from the window above the opposite door, which is too bright to see through. Once you've crossed from the first side, the floor slides away and the water becomes ten feet deep with piranhas in it.
  6. An ogre chained to the wall. A sword stuck in a plinth, out of reach of the ogre. The blade of the sword passes through the links of the chains, holding them in place. If it's removed the ogre will be freed.
  7. A wall-sized painting depicting an impressionistic parlour scene of a distraught, howling figure. The painting is actually a framed sheet of glass that makes anything behind it look like a painting. Behind it is a drawing-room and a ghoul standing very still with its mouth open.
  8. A pleasant grassy clearing with small trees, blackberry bushes and a couple of birds. Actually a pool of cow shit abandoned by a negligent farmer. Anything heavier than a child walking across it will break the crust and drown. There's no air within a foot of the pool's surface, as cow shit swallows oxygen.
  9. A river of quicksilver with a thin layer of flammable oil floating on top. Lighting the braziers in the walls also lights a fuse that conducts flame to the oil, which burns away and allows lethal quicksilver fumes to flood the room.
  10. Razortoothed rats in the walls that emerge in their thousands if even a drop of blood is spilt. A very fat woman sitting on a treasure chest who demands an extravagant sum before she'll move and let you open it. She will make sure you know about the rats. She has a crossbow. Its bolts are blunted, stunning but not wounding.
  11. A vampire nailed to the wall with ruby-tipped silver spikes. Its palms continually bleed. It pretends to be a normal person who has only been there a few hours, but its clothes are dusty and it won't let you see its teeth.
  12. A bone whistle on a glass pedestal. The walls of the room are strangely curved, echoing and amplifying any sound made within. The resonant frequency of the pedestal is such that, if anyone blows the whistle in the room, it will shatter and explode into a thousand flying shards of glass.
  13. An old dusty book, expensively bound and illuminated with gold leaf. Contains several hundred years of parish records. Infested with tiny black worms that are experts at mimicking letters and live to sow strife and discord. If undetected they will crawl into the wizard's spellbook and riddle it with tiny punctuation errors, meaning the next spell she memorises will go horribly wrong when she tries to cast it.
  14. A rack of venison roasting on a metal spit. A big carving knife with a metal handle standing in a block of wood. An electric current runs through the spit, which bulges inside the meat so that if you try to carve it you will probably make contact with the metal and be electrocuted.
  15. On the floor, a trompe-l'oeil painting of a spiked pit. Perception save to realise it's only a painting. It is made of canvas, which will tear if you walk over it and drop you into a spiked pit.
  16. Spring of fresh water with a faint reddish tinge and metallic tang. Testing for poison reveals a high but harmless concentration of iron. In the next room there is a giant magnet that will pin anyone who drank it to the wall by their stomach.
  17. Spiral staircase that is actually a spring. When you turn the doorhandle at the top it releases a latch at the bottom and the staircase collapses upward, crushing you between its coils.
  18. Mushrooms emit a curious light that makes it impossible to distinguish between humans and statues. The room they illuminate contains ninety-nine statues and one blind assassin.
  19. Swarm of mummified macaques. Big flaming torch on the wall beside you. If you set them on fire you'll swiftly discover they're stuffed with gunpowder and shrapnel.
  20. Floor is covered with pyramids, from the base of the door you walk in through to the far wall. On top of each pyramid is balanced a small green egg. Ten thousand starlings stare at you politely from the walls. If you manage to get to the other side without disturbing any eggs you'll find out that the door to the next room opens inwards.
BONUS: An abandoned drawing-room with rats scurrying across the floor and a spiral staircase in the centre. The stairs get bigger as you go down, as do the tapestries and torches. At the bottom is an exact duplicate of the first drawing-room only much larger and with giant rats in it. We wanted to put this in the list but it turns out it's just funny, not a trap.

BONUS TWO: Worm in a bottle of alcohol. If the worm is ever not submerged in alcohol it will rapidly grow to problematic size. Nico insists that this is an item and not a trap.

surely you know what oglaf is
(it has naked pictures! beware!!)

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