Traps & Puzzles for Dungeons and Dragons

Traps

Pit Traps

Boulder Traps

Mind-Game Traps

Quest for an Evil Dragon (also contains traps for an abandoned bandit hideout dungeon) Ancient Green Dragon (CR 22) contains a variety of traps

Minor Traps

Green Dragon Wyrmling (CR 2) Simple Traps, made challenging by the dragon’s presence. Ancient Black Dragon (CR 21) Using simple traps as a minefield, to make fighting it difficult. Doppleganger (CR 4) Basic traps, easily changed with a lever that can be pressed by either side. Maralith (CR 16) Using timed traps and platforms to make movement tricky. Darkmantle (CR 1/2) Simple Traps inside Darkness Crawling Claw (CR 0) Extremelly Minor Traps to slow players Bugbear Chieftain (CR 3) When the enemy is threatening to unleash danger, and can’t be easily stopped.

Monster-Based Traps

Cockratrice (CR 1/2) Ankheg (CR 2)

Traps for the Player’s Arsenal

How to Fight a Dragon: Part 2

Complicated/Puzzle-like Traps

Erinyes (CR 12)

Puzzles

Hezrou (CR 8) Coutal (CR 4) Turning change shape into a puzzle Cloaker (CR 8) Basic puzzle, made tricky by a monster that is secretly an ally Basilisk (CR 3) Animated Armor (CR 1) Displacer Beast (CR 3) Manes (CR 1/8)

Tests of Character

Deva (CR 10)

Minions/Allies for Trap Encounters

Using minions together with a trap is a great way to add difficulty. It also adds flexibility, as a trap can’t adapt to what the players do against it, but minions can. That said, it can add quite a bit of difficulty, so you’ll want to be careful how and when you do it. What are the different minions you might use together with a trap?

Types of monsters to use with traps:

Insubstantial monsters – includes Shadow Demon, ghost, shadow, wraith, will-o’-wisp. This is probably my first choice, as these monsters can easily avoid trap effects, and can attack the PCs at any point. Ranged attackers – includes Barbed Devil, Spined Devil, flameskull, kenku, kobolds, quadrone, skeleton, wight, yuan-ti. Ranged attackers don’t add to the traps’ difficulty so much as impose a time limit, in the form of a damage penalty for every turn the players spend on reaching them. Flyers and climbers – includes Flying Sword, imp, gargoyle, hook horror, mephits. This is the hardest category to defeat, as these monsters can and will knock the PCs back, prevent movement, and generally double the trap’s difficulty. Not recommended – Monsters that impose conditions, monsters that effect movement directly, large sized monsters. The first two types will make the traps extremely lethal, the last will have a hard time moving around and avoiding the trap.

D&D Puzzles

Tips for Running D&D Puzzles

Keep them simple. I have seen DMs boasting of a puzzle that took their players two sessions to solve. I’m left amazed that they had any players left by the second session. Nor should D&D puzzles be too complicated to explain. I once saw a puzzle that relied on the players figuring out what to do based on a set of fifteen pictures. Reading it, I was originally impressed. It was quite a clever idea. Had I tried to play it, though, I would never have known that. No player is going to sit through and remember that much description. Keep the penelties for failing the puzzle light. One way is for the puzzle to be blocking an extra treasure, not the way forward. Nor should the treasure be something that the players won’t be willing to miss out on. A different way is if the puzzle can be brute forced at the cost of affordable damage or other minor penalty.

Ideal D&D Puzzles

The best types of D&D puzzles are the ones that the players can interact with. Lever puzzles, also called button puzzles, involve the players pulling levers to unleash various effects and figuring out the right combination. This is fun, and it also lets multiple players participate even if some of them are better at puzzles, and therefore always solving them before the slower players can. After all, the levers don’t have to be in one place. Sometimes you need one lever to reach another lever. For examples, see last encounter in my Manes article. Another puzzle that fits TTRPGs easily is floor puzzles, where there are different colorings/symbols on the floor, and the players have to pass by stepping only on the right ones, or in the right order. For examples, see the end of Displacer Beast. With both cases, if/when the players cheat by using Mage Hand, climbing on walls, pressing levers via slingshot, etc. let them. This is their solution.

Spot the Puzzle

Another thing to realize about puzzles in a TTRPG is that they don’t come with rules. This means that even a puzzle that would be easy for a six year old can feel clever if your players figure out what to do. I have a “Which one doesn’t belong” puzzle in my Coutal article that relies on this.

Basic Puzzles: Matching Games

Another basic puzzle is a matching game. Below are two matching games I designed, placed here simply because I currently have no better place.

Puzzle Idea 1: Match the Terrors

Suggested setting: Something spooky. Good for when you want a slightly creepy vibe, too casual for if you’re trying to run a full-out horror game. This is horror themed, not actual horror. (I designed it for an abandoned ship my players would find when exploring an island, but that game never got off the ground.) There are four pictures on the wall, decipting a boy sitting up in bed scared, a girl on a stool holding up her skirt, a girl crouching down covering her hair, and a man in a dark ally making a holy symbol with his hands. There are four small figurines in a package inside a desk drawer, and each needs to be tossed into the correct picture. The are a creepy gnarled tree, a rat, a bat, and a black cat. If you toss a figurine at the wrong picture, it will reappear somewhere else in the room. (I suggest making finding it just enough of a pain that they won’t be able solve via trial and error.)

Spooky Effect Additions

For stronger effect, while the effect of them appearing in the picture in the first place is minor (an ordinary bat, cat, rat), when they look away from the picture and then look again, the effect has grown much more pronounced. For example, the floor is covered with a swarm of rats, the bat has become a menacing vampire bat, etc. Finally, you can add creepy echoes, a time limit, and when the treasure is revealed give it has a horror-themed guardian that attacks them. (You can find undead for any level. You can also change the description of most D&D monsters to make them creepy, provided the players don’t match them to the original. When possible, having something that was there in the room all along attack is more spooky than entering from another room, provided they didn’t anticipate it happening, which is likely. Having the monster emerge from a dark corner is another good option.)

Puzzle Idea 2: Library Puzzle

This was something I originally posted on D&D Beyond, after someone asked for a library puzzle. There are eight bookshelves, each dedicated to one of D&D’s eight schools of magic. To make it harder, don’t announce this entirely, just stuff each shelf with volumes containing analysis of spells from that school of magic. Each shelf also has a conspicuous empty space. On a table in the middle there are eight fairy tale books. When each one is placed on the appropriate shelf, a hidden door will open. The matches are – Abjuration: King Arthur. (The knights of the round table are obviously paladins, and abjuration suits paladins. That said, if anyone can come up with a better way to make this fit, or a better match, please let me know in the comments.) Conjuration: Aladdin. Divination: Snow White, with a picture of the evil queen talking to the mirror on the cover. Enchantment: The Pied Piper of Hamlin. (Sleeping Beauty also works, except that the thorns and dragon might confuse the matter.) Evocation: Heroes of Olympus, with a picture of Zees holding a lightning bolt. (Another one I wouldn’t mind improving. You wouldn’t think Evocation would be the hard one.) Illusion: Leprechaun story. Necromancy: Frankenstein. Transmutation: Rumpelstiltskin. (Also, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, The Frog Prince, The Swan Princess, and many others. This is the most common fairy-tale magic.)

Dragon Encounters