[Information] Puzzles & Traps

[Kurokuwashu]

"Mind Your Manners"

A door in a dungeon has a magical seal on it, and it is recommended to make it impossible to truly detect by roll what the players have to do. Whenever a player opens the door, they are met by a gloved, floating hand which pushes or punches them back, makes an angry or rude gesture and then slams the door shut (I use 1d4 damage here).

The solution: Knocking on the door and asking nicely to come in has the hand welcome you in.

[Kurokuwashu]

Chandelier Trap

The party enters a large hall, with a high ceiling. There's a chandelier hanging from the ceiling just over the landing for a flight of stairs. A careful inspection of the chandelier will reveal that it is pointier than strictly necessary.

Any player who steps onto the landing before the stairs triggers an anti-gravity trap, and immediately falls fifty feet towards the ceiling, hitting the chandelier like the bottom of the classic pit trap. After being impaled on the spikes, the anti-gravity effect ends, and the player falls 50 feet back towards the floor.

Simple. Elegant. Stolen.

[Kurokuwashu]

The Door

A door with no discernible features (handles/windows/etc). You can make the door plainly obvious or hide it and make it fairly easy to find with a search check (your call). Next to the door is a hole in the wall. (Think the lever deal from Temple of Doom)

The heroes can detect magic coming from the hole, there is a darkness spell cast on the hole, stopping the heroes from seeing in, any kind of light put into the hole is extinguished immediately upon entering the hole.

The solution: They put their hand in and pull the lever. Nothing bad happens, the door opens normally. The reason they can detect magic is just from the darkness spell (they can't tell this by detecting). See how long your heroes will spend arguing about who is going to stick their hand in and risk it, or trying to find another way to get the door open (sticking in weapons and such doesn't work, must be their actual hand - you could even reinforce this by "harming" the weapons they try to put in, will make it even funnier)