Traps

The first area to cover is traps. Traps are generally not too complex a thing in Dungeons and Dragons or in your RPG. In a fantasy setting you have physical and magical traps that players can go into, and since I write these from the point of Dungeons and Dragons, we’ll work with that system.

When using a trap there are a few steps for creating something interesting. Though not every trap needs to be that interesting. It, instead, is able to be used to set expectations if you want. I create a trap in a room at the start of the dungeon, every player is going to check every room for traps. And I think there are good uses for that. But let’s talk about those steps.

• Type of Trap
• Finding Trap
• Disarming Trap
• Setting Off Trap

Type of Trap

Each of these is simple in it’s own right. But you need each of them to be there. Firstly, what type of trap is it goin to be. Physical, magical, and if it’s physical, pit trap, spike trap, poison trap. Or if it is magical, fire, water, changes room, teleport? There are a lot of fun things that you can do. But pick that and that is going to determine some other things as you go down.

Finding Trap

Next is how can the players find the trap. Even if it is arrows being shot off of a floor trigger when they step in a spot, there are signs. Or a magical trap, there might be a glyph that is triggered. But I think there are two worthwhile numbers coming up with. First, what is the difficulty for just passively perceiving the trap? If someone is very good with their passive perception can they just spot it? Or what is the perception check to see it. And then, what is an investigation if they are looking for a specific type of trap.

The second one shows up more if it’s a known trap. If in room one there is a pit trap, in room two they might look for a pit trap again. That is investigating to find something specific. So use both.

Disarming Trap

Next up is disarming a trap. Know kind of how this is going to work. Let players maybe brute force it, if you don’t have a rogue in the party. The Barbarian rips up the pressure plate on the floor, sure. But generally, rogue with thieves tools. Or if it’s a magical trap, do they need to dispel magic?

But this is again about creating that difficulty for the check. It might be a 12 for a rogue with thieves tools and slight of hand to be able to disarm it. It isn’t that complex a trap. But if you don’t have the rogue that day, or the barbarian gets there first, it might be a 18 strength/athletics check to rip it out of the ground. So know what numbers you want. But more so, know the ballpark. If you think they may come up with an alternative way know if you want that to be as easy as a normal way or harder.

Setting Off Trap

Finally, they might just set off the trap. Now, traps can be their own mini little puzzle in a game. What is going to happen if the whole party falls into a pit traps. Now they need to get out. Or maybe it is going to be timed event now for them to get through clouds of poison while taking damage?

Sometimes it is as simple as, a volley of arrows shoot and that is it. Or the player literally gets their foot stuck in a trap (or hand if they were disarming it). But think about how you want to use the trap and the trap affect to advance story or create interesting interactions if you want.

Bonus Dungeon Master Tool – Traps and Expecations

I talked about this a little but I knew I wanted to come back to it. What is the expectation when you create a trap in the first room of a dungeon? Well, the simple answer is, there are going to be more traps. In fact, there are going to be lots of traps. The player is going to check every room for traps.

Change Them Up

Now that the players are checking for traps there are a few things that you can do. Firstly, change up the traps. Not every room should have a trap, but when you set the expectation that there can be traps don’t waste your and the players time by only having one in the first room. But change up the traps, magical and non-magical in nature.

Only One

Or, do only have a single one. But make it so difficult and terrifying that most groups would immediately run in fear. Since a good adventuring party doesn’t have enough fear or brains to know to be afraid, they will just keep checking for traps. If you do that, though, make the rest of the dungeon a cake walk. All the energy was on the start of it, the rest is just empty hallways because no one ever gets through.

Develop History

Another thing, and last one I’ll talk about, is you can develop history. The history of the dungeon could be new traps are being created so it means that someone is still down there taking care of it. Or you might find adventurers who were killed before and the players gather pieces of history from them. Nothing like the first room and the adventurers see someone dead in a sprung trap. Now you immediately plant concern and can give them some history with the adventurers journal as to what they knew of this dungeon.

Puzzles

That is more on traps than I had expected. But I think that doing a great job with traps can make for an interesting campaign. And it is going to give the rogue something to do besides trying to steal everything that isn’t bolted to the ground.

But now we are onto puzzles. And puzzles, I think, offer three different routes to go. Though, the routes can overlap in some ways. But I want to firstly talk about who the puzzle is for, that is two of the routes. And then finally, what if there isn’t an answer.

Determining Who the Puzzle is For

This might sound odd. But there are two groups that the puzzle could be for. When you create a puzzle it is either for the characters in the game. Or it is for the players out of the game. Neither is a wrong way to create a puzzle and doing both can offer a lot of fun in the game for the players. But this is the first thing you want to determine when you create a puzzle, who it is for. Because that is going to change what you do.

Puzzles for the Characters

Puzzles for characters are going to be less of the cryptograms, jumbles, patterns, things like that. Instead, for the characters, a brain teaser or pieces of history and knowledge needed are the type of puzzle that you are going to create.

You go to the temple of the god of death, for example. Well, what is it that your characters know about the god of death? You create a puzzle where they need to know something about it. The players outside of the game don’t know this god of death unless you gave them a document with it all in there (don’t do this it’s a waste of your time). But the characters in the game sure do because it’s the god of death, they’d have heard of it at least.

So think about the checks that you want them to make. It might be an investigation to see if they can tell how someone beat the puzzle before. Or it might be a religion check to determine what they remember about the god of death. Again, it’s the god of death, the characters know of it for sure, but do they know the right detail.

So a puzzle for the characters is all about the checks that they do. And you decide how hard or easy you want it to be. But if you make it too hard, also have a way around it.

Example – The God of Death

So let’s run with this god of death example. There is a dungeon where they need to get down to the lowest level. They know that there is a secret passage called the River Styx that they can use to get down to the bottom. But they get there and it’s locked away behind a riddle.

“Bestow they worship upon me, pay the tolls once, twice, and three. Coins of death marked for their fate. Hours gone don’t tarry late.”

Solution

So, what is the answer to that riddle? The players need to provide the total value of the cost to cross the River Styx either three times or six times. Once, Twice, and Three could be 1+1+1 paying it three times. Or it could be 1+2+3, paying the set each time. I think I’d set this as an intelligence check of 10, pretty simple if they want both options.

But it is also a specific coin. What is a coin marked for death. Well that might be a soul coin from the hells. A soul given up to a devil would be interesting payment to get across the River Styx. This one is more of a religion check, and I think while people know of the god of death, it is taboo to worship them, so it’s less common. Make it a difficulty check of 15 for religion, so tougher.

What If They Fail

So what if in this case they all fail their religion rolls. They don’t know about the soul coins. But after feeding in a bunch of coins and nothing happening are they locked out of the dungeon? No, there is a longer path that is more dangerous for them. But if you need a roll to succeed to progress the story, always gives a different, harder way for them to go forward. If it is just a case of finding some treasure that would be nice. Sure, it is possible that they never figure it out. But if it is for anything related to story, give them that other option.

Puzzles for the Players

Next up, a puzzle can be for the players. This one I think is a bit simpler. Yes, you still might incorporate checks that the characters can do to give the players hints. But it is all about the players for this one. A cryptogram is a great example of this. You give them a little bit of a key and then let them get going on breaking the whole thing. It is something that all the players can take part in, but it isn’t part of the game and it isn’t meant for them to roleplay it out.

I am going to skip an example on this, but it can be a lot of different things. I made a room with gouts of flames that were being shot out. As I describe what the players watch, I kind of expect the players to take notes and solve the path. It isn’t something you do by trial and error but in that case, I also make it simple. And if the players aren’t solving it, I give them an intelligence roll and give some more details that make the puzzle simpler.

Puzzles with no Answer

The final thing is something that I think more Dungeon Masters should do. This is going to be the best Dungeon Master tip overall for traps and puzzles. It is simply, don’t create a solution. This is something that you can do with puzzles but also just with issues that arise. Throw the players a problem and see what happens.

Why wouldn’t you have a solution, though? The simple answer is, the players can come up with one. And this is something that can be done in character as well. You just wait until they try something that you think makes enough sense or is cool enough to work. When they suggest it or they try it, it can work as simple as that. And let’s face it, there is one of you and probably two to eight players, so more brains, more creative solutions.

This also can let you set a time for it. If you think, I want them to sweat a bit on this trap, give them ten minutes to discuss it and try different things, or maybe even longer if it’s supposed to be key and important. Or if it is supposed to be pretty trivial, make it that way, let the first cool or fun idea work.

Example from My Game

This came to be because I actually created one of these, kind of, last night in my game. The players were on a labyrinthian type floor of a tower, the main dungeon in the campaign. Every room was the same except for a few had plaques on the wall. The big thing is that they needed to get to the stairs for the next level. To do that they needed to go into rooms and figure out where to go.

In the rooms, and only a few of them, did I leave clues for the players. But the clues were fairly general. In the first room it said the following.

First Puzzle

“Beware – Zombies
Go this way.”

That was next to one of the four doors in the square room (one per wall). The players had to decide what that meant. But little did they know, and they messed this up in an interesting way, was that every room a character went into had more and stronger zombies. So if they fought, each time the zombies would get tougher and tougher and more and more.

Second Puzzle

So the player went the right direction, eventually, after one had done a loop to see how it would work and ramping up their difficulty. Eventually they got to another room with another plaque and a dead adventurer.

“Two Far
[down arrow]”

This meant head back two rooms and go south. Now going back is going to cause more zombies and harder zombies to appear. At this point, by the way, the zombies had +23 to hit and were dealing 1D6+21 damage.

The Real Puzzle

So the new puzzle was simpler but harder. How do we get through rooms without getting hit by the zombies. They had already spent a fair number of resources on a battle or two with the zombies. And I didn’t give them a solution. If they had gone the ideal route, it wouldn’t have been a major deal. But because they went further and created more zombies, it was way harder for them.

So two flight spells later and the Warforged character being disguised as a zombie the players got to the right room. But they needed to do it in a way where they weren’t taking 3-4 attacks of opportunity each, Because say it was three, all likely hit with a +23 to hit, and that’s a minimum of 66 damage, a lot for even a level 16 bard.

Final Dungeon Master Tools for Traps and Puzzles

This is the reminder that I give at the end of all of these Dungeon Master tools. Or if not at the end, sometime in there. But the point of everything is to create a great experience at the table. And that means progressing characters and stories as you go along. When you create a trap and a puzzle that should be in your mind as well. Because when you do that the most fu n is going to be had at the table for both you and your players.

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What Is A Dump Stat?

A dump stat is going to be the thing that you are worst at. In terms of what that looks like on your character sheet, 10 is supposed to be average. If someone were to have a 10 in all their stats, they are the average person in the world.

So it’s not just your lowest stat, it is a stat that is below that average. If you are even one less, at 9, you get a negative one penalty on the roll and you are lower than average with what you can roll. But that is talking about it mechanically, it is also a weakness in how you role play out that below average trait.

Playing A Dump Stat in Dungeons and Dragons

The first question to ask if if your character knows they have a dump stat. If you are just below average wisdom or intelligence you know that you aren’t as smart. If they are a fair bit below, now they start to think that they are smarter. Some of the physical ones, strength or dexterity, you might always know that you aren’t as good at, but is that how you are going to play it.

Let’s go through each stat and come up with a way to play it.

Strength

For strength, I think that there are two common ways that you could play it. First, you could have the character constantly try and get people to help them. Even for a meaningless task, like opening a pickle jar with a loose lit, or pull a small dead branch off a tree, they also have someone else help them.

Or on the other side of things, they could refuse help. They might know they are weak, but they are going to do it themselves. So when the big fighter or barbarian tries to help them, they get upset and refuse the help. It is a matter of pride that they will be able to do it on their own.

Dexterity

Dexterity is going to follow along the lines of strength. They know that anything slightly dexterous is tricky for them, so they never do it. In fact, really easy things, they try and make someone else do it. Or they are going to try no matter what.

Constitution

For constitution you can make it about them getting sick all of the time. If the weather turns, they get a slight cold. They have the sniffles about 90% of the year. When the group goes into the bar, they are a light weight and after a drink they are up on the table and possibly looking to pick a fight or hitting on someone at the bar and getting into trouble that way.

Intelligence

Intelligence is pretty straightforward as well. You just assume knowledge about things. If someone talks on a subject, you assume that you know more than they do. And you don’t really feel a need to look into it further because, again, you know. On the other hand, you know about libraries but wouldn’t think about going to them to find out information.

Wisdom

Wisdom is going to be more about how the world works. You think you know how criminals work on the streets. You think you know how things will play out in a situation, especially social. But you really don’t know how any of that works. If you are down a little, you’re probably worried about messing any situation up. If you are very low on wisdom, you just assume that you know what is going on and are a bit of a bull in a china shop.

Charisma

Charisma is probably the most interesting to have as a low stat mainly because charisma as a high stat is pretty narrow. Or at least how a lot of people play it, it is. But as a low stat, you have a lot of ways to go. You can just assume that everyone likes you, even though you are annoying. Being very quiet is another way to play it. Or try and overcompensate by talking loudly or being too affectionate, or whatever thing your character believes is the normal things people do that is most certainly not normal.

Final Thoughts

Dump stats are fun, mainly because it gives your character a chance not to shine. There are a lot of opportunities to utilize strengths. And a good DM (Dungeon Master) should present opportunities like that to players. But a chance to create a fun or interesting moment with a weakness, that is going to be as memorable as that great thing that you did. A dump stat is also a great way to bring in comedy or intended conflict.

An example would be a low dexterity character trying to sneak around the edge of a group of goblins versus the rogue doing so. They fall into the midst of goblins, now you have a weird combat that is going to start happening. Or a low charisma character getting flustered by some light flirting and accidentally proposing to a princess in front of the king. You will be talking about when those moments happen way more than when the fighter takes out the goblins.

So lean into it and have fun. That is the fun of a role playing game. Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever system you are using, is about that fun at the table versus winning the game. In fact, very few D&D campaigns reach the end, stories get too big or schedules change, but there are always going to be moments that you remember in the game.

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I’m back with some more Drinking in D&D. Tonight I brought up two Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA, but I only drank one of them. It’s one of my favorite beers, a good IPA.

The topic for Drinking in D&D was looking at the Character Sheet and what sections on the character sheet are. There’s a lot to keep track of it and it’s the basis for how you roll your dice and what your character can do, particularly in combat.

There are a number different areas that I looked at on the board, hit points, speed, initiative, proficiency, armor class (AC), ability scores, and skills. I’m going to go back and do the second half of the main sheet and hopefully the other two sheets in my next stream, which might be happening on Friday, tbd.

Thanks for checking out the video. If you are enjoying the content, it does go out live on Twitch at http://twitch.com/maltsandmeeples. The videos are also uploaded to youtube, and a subscription or a like will help people find the videos there.

Bottoms up!

Alright, now that my bad joke is out of my system, let’s talk about Gnomes in Dungeons and Dragons.

Gnomes, as you can guess, are very small. They are between 3-4′ tall and because of that, they end up moving slower than other races. However, they make up for that by being smart, which comes out in some areas like them being able to talk to animals and being really good at tinkering with little mechanical devices. This is shown in some of the racial abilities that you get, but also with the bump to the intelligence stat that you get. For that reason, Gnomes make very good Wizards.

Gnomes are also a naturally curious race that has a real joy for living. Though, they might accidentally blow themselves up, they really seek to live life to the fullest. And that includes trying new things, trying to make new things, and with that they are a race that really makes a lot of sense to go adventuring. Also being friendly, they are going to get along with all of the other races very well. This love of life and curiosity also tends to make them good jokesters. And while everyone might not appreciate their gnomish humor, that generally isn’t going to dissuade them.

Because of those traits, you can really have a lot of story hooks. A gnome merchant would make a lot of sense as someone who might go along with adventurers if there is a chance to make a profit and see more of the world. Gnomes also leave their homes for stuff like tutoring a noble family, since they are so smart, they will leave to go study at different places and learn even more. Their tinkering and nature focus also can allow them to develop little trinkets that they want to show off.

Let’s jump into some adventuring backstory ideas that are pretty gnomish.

You always had a deft hand with tinkering and making things. It brought you a lot of joy and everyone in the town loved the shows that you’d put on with your little clockwork creatures. You decided to pick up and take your show on the road. It was a great time, however, you weren’t super business savvy and after a little while you ended up losing most of your money and you had to start selling your clockwork performers. Now you just have one left, but you’ve figured out you can make some good money adventuring, and then you’ll track them down and get all of your old friends back.
Class: Wizard/Sorcerer
Alignment: Neutral Good
Background: Entertainer

As one of the smarter gnomes in your village you were recruited, as one gnome was every generation to tutor the local human noble’s children. It was a great job that everyone wanted and while there, you got training with combat that you wouldn’t have gotten back home. But the best part was teaching the children, until one of them was killed with what looked like a gnomish dagger and poison. You had to go on the run as they thought it was you. You, however, are fairly confident that it was an up and coming neighboring noble that had this done, you just need to prove it.
Class: Any Class
Alignment: Lawful Good
Background: Sage

Being small has it’s advantages. It means that I was always able to get into smaller places and get the leftovers in the kitchens while the cooks weren’t looking. That allowed me to survive. My parents left me behind, accidentally I think, in the city when we visited when I was young. I learned quickly to fend for myself and that people weren’t as nice as they seemed. I fell in with a group of children and we were able to survive and eventually we had a nice little group that I was running. Now, I’ve gotten older, a lot of the group has disappeared. I want to go and find my parents if I can to see why I was left behind.
Class: Rogue
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Background: Urchin

That’s a pretty brief overview of playing a gnome. Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes has more information on gnomes that you can read if you want. Would you play a gnome in a Dungeons and Dragons game?

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