![]() If you are deep underground, then there probably aren’t going to be massive logs ready to smash through your players. Traps should not feel out of place in their setting. It could be costing time, resources, or similar, but there should be at least one way for the party to overcome the trap, or else you are just punishing them and they can’t do anything about it. No matter what type of trap you are building, there should always be a way for the party to defeat it or circumvent it. I’ll even award additional XP, and make sure I specifically tell the table this, for coming up with fun or weird ways of defeating traps. The amount is based on the chart in Chapter 3 Creating a Combat Encounter, I pick a trip difficulty of either Easy, Medium, Hard, or Deadly - and award the players the corresponding amount based on their level. When my party overcomes a trap, meaning they either survived it when it was set off or they were able to thwart it, they get experience points. The Dungeon Master’s Guide unfortunately doesn’t advise you to give XP for interacting traps, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Traps should present interesting threats to your party to keep them engaged. If the trap is just another pitfall trap easily avoided, the trap is boring. It is to ramp up the tension in the game. A trap is there to provide a break from exploration and to get the players to lean forward in their seats. It’s important to remember what your party can do at their level and how many hit points they have as even a ‘Setback’ trap would be enough to knock out or even kill a level 1 character. The Dungeon Master’s Guide provides DCs and damage for different traps depending on the party’s level. It can be too easy to fall into the trap (I’m so good at these puns!) of making traps that will always succeed, making it so that your players lose agency and ability to overcome them. By sticking to this advice, you can ensure that traps are fun for the table, instead of just fun for you. When creating traps, there should always be a few things floating at the top of your mind. Hazards are great at deterrence by just existing, while traps are purposefully made to harm in some way. Hazards can be improved by creatures, maybe by expanding a canyon or filling a moat with alligators, but there is typically a lack in purposeful damage. Traps are specifically different from hazards in that traps are often purposefully designed to thwart other creatures, while hazards are typically naturally forming. When I’m talking about traps, I’m talking about situations where the party might suffer a setback, damage, or to ward an area. This post is going to be aimed at talking about traps, their deadliness, as well as provide a few of my own traps I’ve made at the end of it all. Each trap I placed was based on the party’s skills and abilities, making the party have to work together to solve or avoid it. Not every trap I’ve thrown at my party has even been about hurting them, though one day a character is going to get really hurt when my sphere of annihilation trap finally works. There are common pitfalls (see what I did there?) when it comes to creating traps, like making the traps too hard for your table to overcome or that can kill a full-hit point, raging barbarian in a single hit. Unfortunately, I don’t feel as if the Dungeon Master’s Guide (2014) provides enough guidance on traps and their presence in an encounter, in a hallway, or at the table. If you make it almost invisible, than you were unfair to your players as you never gave them a chance to defeat it. If you make a trap to obvious to your players, than it’s not really a trap. Not just in their design, but also in their execution. As the GM, I’m responsible for deciding the DC and I can feel the pressure of cranking it up to ‘protect’ my trap, but also wanting to make it low enough that my players won’t feel like they are just being screwed by me. ![]() On the other hand, it’s not fun for the players if they had no chance in defeating the trap and they just get smashed by a fallen tree in the middle of a temple with no warning or preamble. On one hand, I don’t want my party to find it so I get to watch my Super Original, Top Tier trap go off. ![]() The biggest struggle I face when creating traps is setting the DC to notice it. Header Art: Dungeon Master’s Guide by Wizards of the Coast
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