Trap Showcase: The Mother of All Pitfalls

This is a trap I’ve only run a couple of times in my time DMing, and it always hits just right. This is a trap which will test the absolute limits of a party, and should only really be used for a dungeon which the players are meant to feel a struggle in.

The trap starts off as the simple pitfall trap, which is to say some mechanism causes some amount of the floor to drop out from under an unsuspecting creature, leading them to fall some distance which causes them damage. This distance can be played with to match the intensity necessary, but for the rules of 3.5, 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6 at 200ft. At the bottom of this pit, we’ll add spikes for a bit more damage, maybe 1d8, but at this point it’s a punji pit, and you know what the Vietnamese did with punji spikes? That’s right, they poisoned them, so that’s what we’re gonna do, quite literally pick your poison, any will do. The beauty here, is that this situation is going to be so intense that some of the lesser known, less punishing poisons can still have an impact due to all of the layers, so go wild, or just go for black lotus extract if you’re a villain to your players, though, it doesn’t stop there.

Now that one or more creatures have fallen into the pit, likely taken a good bit of fall damage, likely been impaled on spikes slathered with poison and are thus potentially suffering the effects of those poisons, it’s time for part 2. Part 2 is a delayed trigger, you can make a ruling that it’s a timed trigger from pressure on the spikes or that there’s a motion sensor trigger, but part 2 should trigger when someone or something enters the pit after the victim. Are the party members lowering rope to pull them out? Are the party members climbing down to assist? Well, if they are, part 2 is their surprise, because now there are metal bars covering the top of the pit.

Well, maybe the top of the pit is covered, and the party member who fell is severely hurt, but surely they can just take some time to figure things out, right? Well, now is the time to inform your players that there were tiny holes in the walls at the bottom of the pit which they likely didn’t take the time to inspect. Water is now flowing into the pit, steadily filling it up.

Okay, surely that’s everything, right? Someone took a bunch of fall damage, got stabbed, poisoned, and now they’re under threat of drowning unless something happens quickly, plus the water is now at chest height. It is at this point that a devious grin snakes across your face, because more than water has been coming through the holes, the players now see that there are water elementals in the water with them… and they’re angry.

Well congratulations, assuming you’ve run all of the components of this trap: your party has at least one severely injured member who may or may not be poisoned, another fresh member to help them fight off the elementals, and the party above is locked out unless they find a way to break through or slip through the bars to get down and help. This trap does a lot, and if presented to a party in a place which they were cruising through, you’re going to get angry faces. If you present this to a party who expected a tough clear of a dungeon that may be slightly above their paygrade, then this will be a massive check for them: do they have the ingenuity, abilities, and teamwork to successfully navigate this trap? When a party successfully makes it through this monstrosity, it’s a huge sigh of relief, they’re finally free from a trap that can feel like a boss fight with a few simple components, which when combined, add up to the full experience.