Riddles, Traps, Puzzles, scenarios, or other Challenges

Now I noticed that we don't actually have a thread for this, so I am making one. If you have any great and memorable traps, riddles, puzzles or what have you, that you as players or as DM have used or come across, post them here.

Here's one scenario that I had made for my players in a DnD game years ago:
My players ended up in an old tower, it's walls covered in thick vines, and the ceiling far above them. In the center of the room was a pedestal with a riddle inscribed upon it. Atop the pedestal was one of the artifacts they needed to collect for the quest. They didn't really know what the riddle was about, so they just wrenched the artifact free. Of course they hear a locking sound of the metal door behind them, then there was a sudden spray of water spouting out of the pedestal where the artifact once sat. One big problem they found out was that this water was acid. If they had answered the riddle, the metal doors would have fallen off their hinges, preventing the acid from filling the room.

This turned into a fun battle where they had to climb the walls of the tower as the room slowly filled with acid. About fifty feet up, they catch the sight of a giant spider web at the top and they have to fight spiders as they scramble up the wall. Fun times

Unfortunately I lost track of the riddle that I had written, though I know the answer was 'Autumn'.

I'd like to hear some of your memorable encounters.

Oh yeah, I gave my Classical team a few riddles related to Water, Ice, Emotions and stuff before they revived a God King Alicorn with the magic of friendship. I forget what it was, but there was a quartet of riddles.

Well my favorite trap is "Gelatinous Cube Pit Trap". You take one large hole, fill it with gelatinous cube, sprinkle something over the top to cover, adventurer falls in, and done!

Some friends of mine had a joke about Exploding Poison Money as apparently they were having a sort of one upsmanship with ridiculous traps when it was their turn to GM.

As for riddles. Well in my Sandbox game I had the players get a quest from a guy who called himself Nale Mefas. Which was an anagram for False Name.

Hah, classic

Well, there was this other time I made a door that the players had to persuade to open for them. Instead, they ended up annoying it enough to attack them. It used a move called:
Watch out for Falling Doors
It would deal a fair amount of damage and and knock itself and the a player prone beneath it. It would then use:
Doors are Heavy
Which would do an average amount of damage equal to about half your average player's health.
Fortunately for the players, the door missed, and all the players jumped on top of the door. They held it prone until it agreed to go adventuring with them. That was the first in a series of a bout 14 NPC followers that they managed to gather over the course of the campaign. Each one served a purpose. The door could hover and carry up to two hundred pounds for them and eventually became the front door to their flying castle

SilentBelle wrote:Fortunately for the players, the door missed, and all the players jumped on top of the door. They held it prone until it agreed to go adventuring with them.

...Well, now I've seen everything.

That's... Beautiful.

Everyone knows the Head of Vecna story (if you don't look it up), of the popular stories that one is my favourite.

Personal ones? 3.5e D&D (so no critical skill checks), there was a big labyrinth, and at the centre was a lich, known for his intellect and cunning, hitting the players left and right with everything from minor irritation traps (like paltry damage or weak stat damage) to major assaults (roof cave-ins, 20-foot pits that blocked their path, etc). The key thing is I set a budget for the lich's traps as the Stronghold guide dictated. I ran out of funding halfway through designing the dungeon. I thought this was funny, so instead of ignoring rules, I worked within them to make this work even better.

So the treasure room, full of gold and gems (and the lich's phylactery, a +3 vicious longsword, but that's another tale) had no traps, despite the huge amount needed to get to this point. All it had was, in the centre of the room, written out with treasure gems indenting a wooden plank, "There are no traps in this room that would trigger from trying to remove an item from it. None at all. Certainly not ones that could kill an entire adventuring party."

Obviously, they checked for traps. Some prior ones had pretty high DCs. They rolled fairly high. "You don't see any traps". The wizard uses detect magic. "Strong evocation, conjuration, and necromancy" (from the phylactery, but as a precaution Nystul Mystical Aura was cast to mask the whole room in it to not identify it).

...They left the treasure. The trap of not having a trap was the most cost-effective one in the dungeon.

Ahh, the sweet paranoia of traps

RavenscroftRaven wrote:...They left the treasure. The trap of not having a trap was the most cost-effective one in the dungeon.

*scribble scribble* Duly noted.

Grey Pen wrote:

RavenscroftRaven wrote:...They left the treasure. The trap of not having a trap was the most cost-effective one in the dungeon.

*scribble scribble* Duly noted.

I can't be fully unoriginal, but I think this would be a good starting place for an excellent trap...

*scribble*

Oh, here's a more recent combat scenario I had in Pony Tales. The circumstance was that the party split into two groups of two. This one group, a pegasus and a baby dragon, were chasing down some gryphons. The baby dragon was riding on the pegasus, and of course they end up in combat while way up in the sky. I had this planned, so I had made some special rules for flying combat and asked my players if they seemed fair, and they agreed to using it so here it is:

Flying Combat:
- All attacks do half damage (rounded up). (My justification for this was that there was no solid ground so the force would dissipate slightly)
- Any flying character that is stunned, or has fallen unconscious, remove them (and any creatures it's carrying) from combat at the start of their next turn. When they regain consciousness or the stun ends, they must spend 1 turn to get back into combat (They arrive back in combat at the end of their turn). They can use any combat move they want on this turn but it can only affect themselves or creatures they are carrying. If they are stunned for three or more turns, they crash.

It was pretty fun. One combat ended with the pegasus falling unconscious, and the baby dragon leaping from her and smacking the final gryphon unconscious. After the battle, the Baby dragon had to spend a couple hours, a magic point and a decent heal check to bring her back to consciousness.

In retrospect, the 'All attacks do half damage' would work better for underwater combat. Hmm... this gives me an idea...

Well, in the last session that I DMed with my Living Legends group, they finally caught up to the target of their quest. A kind of smuggler/assassin character. Though they stumbled upon him while he was making a deal with another smuggler boss. Both bosses had 2 body guards each, so the three characters at the time felt like they'd lose the battle if they just charged in (and they would have almost certainly).

So instead they wait around and listen in on the meeting waiting for one of the bosses to leave the secret facility before the other. At which point, the Wolven Player decides to use Stealth Mode and turn invisible. The other two characters go and hide in a side room with a heavy metal door, figuring that the boss will just pass by this room on his way out of the facility.

With clever use of the illusion talent, and a high perception roll, the wolven manages to get the Boss to send one of his bodyguards chasing an illusory creature down a hall way. This is when the wolven springs into action. He sneaks right beside the boss, with his one remaining guard, and using his Howl ability, terrifies the Boss into thinking some vengeful spirit is out to get him. So the boss and the remaining guard going running scared down the hall.

This is when the other two players decide to listen for the boss and try opening the door into the boss as he runs by. Of course one of the players succeed in the assist check, as well as using the 'Yeehaw' (or whatever it's called in LL) ability. The character opening the door then rolls a natural 20 on his athletics check and the boss rolls a 3 on acrobatics to dodge. So I had the effect bloody the boss (about 20 damage or so and stunned him for a turn. At the same time the wolven who was still invisible and chasing the guy made a sneak attack to initiate combat.

So essentially, the boss was KO'd in 1 turn and his two subordinates were quickly defeated as well, all thanks to some clever thinking and some solid rolls by the players. Quite frankly I am very much pleased whenever this kind of situation presents itself, it was far more entertaining than a usual battle (It's always doors isn't it?)