Traps are one of those elements of every DnD campaign that you can't really do without, but which can so easily become formulaic, predictable, and perfunctory. Sure, a tripwire that drops a guillotine from above has old school fantasy flavor and reminds your players to stay on their toes, but we've seen it all before. Traps don't have to just be an obstacle on the way to the prize - they can (and should) be memorable moments in their own right. As inspiration, we've cooked up three little creations that'll take more than a quick acrobatics check to get past.
My usual caveats apply: I'm a journalist, not a professional DnD homebrew creator, and infinitely more expert trap content is available (this excellent Humble Bundle, for example, has an whole library of the damn things).
My aim here is mainly to create a few traps that should scare, amuse, or confuse your players, and ultimately - like my stupid magic items - leave a memorable story behind to enjoy when the campaign's done. For more straightforward gameplay and rules guidance, we can always help you out with our full guides to all the DnD classes and DnD races instead.
For now, let's get trapping. For the purposes of this, we'll consider a trap to be an artifice deliberately created by another sentient being, intended to stop or slow the party's progress towards the goal. Beyond that basic definition, though, it could get a little weird…
The Deadliest Feast
Best used when the party hasn't eaten for a long time. You can also have a sudden feeling of hunger come over them upon arrival, although this will put them on their guard a bit, so it's DM's choice on that one. Fair warning: it's a bit dark - and a pre session content warning regarding vomiting and eating disorders wouldn't go amiss, either.
The party enters a huge dining room, every wall lavishly decorated with paintings of sumptuous meals; wine being poured from crystal carafes; cooks roasting animals on spits; and servants dutifully laying tables. In the center of the room is a fine, long dining table, lined with 12 chairs either side, and absolutely heaving with the most delicious looking foods of every kind.
On every chair, however, sits a dusty, ancient skeleton draped with ancient, frayed rags of clothing that must be centuries old. The only other door is at the opposite end of the room, and there's no lock, handle, or means of opening it - just a carved wooden plaque that reads "After Dinner Retiring Room".
If any party member eats any piece of food, it tastes utterly delicious and they suddenly feel so ravenously hungry that they can't stop eating. Once this happens, that character is taken out of their body, becoming a kind of illusive form of themselves that none of the other characters can see, hear, or talk to.
They see their real world selves eating madly, but can't communicate with them. It's clear that, if they don't get back into their real body, they'll eat endlessly until they die an extremely unpleasant, full bellied death. Any other party members who also eat the food will suffer the same fate. Once they go 'ghost mode', they join their comrade in the illusory version of the room, and can interact with them again.
To escape this deadly delicious trance, the ghostly versions of the character(s) must examine the paintings on the walls, which - in the illusion - are now moving pictures, each with sound and voices that can be heard when you're standing directly in front of it.
The information heard and seen from the paintings pieces together a tragic whodunit story about several members of a royal household who all tried to murder their liege lord by poisoning him at a feast - but the plot went awry and all the feast's guests were killed, including the killer. The party have to puzzle out and accuse the guilty party, and they won't be released from the deadly dream until they get it right.
The details of the mystery are up to you, but my favorite version has all the would-be assassins trying to recruit the same downtrodden kitchen servant to be their catspaw, and the servant tricking them all by making sure everybody ate the poison, to punish his greedy, gloating, noble masters.
Only once the mystery has been solved, and the players are free from their gluttonous reverie, will the forward door open so the party can venture forth. Some vomiting may seem appropriate for realism upon their return to reality - subject to player consent, as above. I did say it was dark.
The Time Hole
Ordinarily, pit traps are the dullest of the dull - the floor collapses beneath you, you fall some distance, take some bludgeoning damage, and have to find a way to climb back out. Yawn.
This one is a little different. When your characters fall into the Time Hole, they take d6 bludgeoning damage for every ten feet fallen, as usual. Throw some spikes in there too if you want it to feel a bit more gruesome and damaging. Either way, once they've picked themselves up and brushed off the dirt / rock dust / bone fragments, they immediately notice that they're surrounded by a number of dusty, crumpled dead bodies that have evidently been there for months, years, possibly decades.
And the bodies look just like them. Upon closer inspection, the corpses definitely are those of your characters - they have the same equipment, albeit weathered by being long dead. 'How can we be long since dead in this hole, but also here now, alive, to see it?' they'll wonder.
The answer, as they'll have to work out, is that this section of the adventure has placed them in a time loop. They're going to die in this pit - they know this because they've already died, and the evidence is right in front of them. But they also know that they're going to end up falling in and seeing the bodies again, because that's what's happening right now.
There's lots of ways you can tie this little mind-flip into the adventure. It could be that there's one specific puzzle they must solve before the area with the Time Hole trap, which will deactivate the trap and break the loop. Or maybe you'd prefer to extend the time loop concept to more of the dungeon, creating more mind-bending encounters and puzzles. The Groundhog Dungeon is your oyster!
The Bear Trap
A nice, simple one to end on that should still stick in the memory as a delightful dash of silliness (though, of course, it won't suit every dungeon, every campaign, or every group - your mileage may vary).
While heading down a narrow corridor, the party spots a large, obvious bear trap, slap bang in the middle of the floor. You know, the cartoonish sort, with two wide semi-circular metal jaws, lined with sharp teeth, held apart by a strong spring. There's not the usual pressure plate trigger in the middle, however, and the jaws span the whole width of the corridor, too broad to step over or around. A pretty easy Perception check will tell them that stepping on any part of the trap or the floor for two feet around it will trigger the trap.
On the upside, it can be disarmed using Thieves Tools and a Dexterity check as normal. On the downside, as soon as the trap is disarmed, a trap door in the ceiling opens directly above, and a live bear slides down a chute to land directly in front of the party, gaining a free attack against the character nearest the trap.
It's a bear trap, you see.
That's it for today's armory of confounding snares - if you use any of these in your games, please come join the Wargamer Discord community and tell us how your players reacted! We love a good war story, especially one with bears in.