Best Chest? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Best Chest? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
heirodule
08-29-07, 01:59 PM Help me make an interesting high level trapped chest, that the PCs will have to spend some time thinking about before opening

1. lead lined

2. Dimension locked?

3. trapped (with what?)

4. more?
RobbyPants
08-29-07, 02:02 PM You could have the chest in the center of a large anti-magic field, and protect it with some seriously potent mundane traps. You could also trap the area just outside the AMF with all sorts of magical traps.

This prevents all sorts of shinanegins like teleporting in and nabbing the chest to disarm later. Suddenly, nothing gets you in other than a realllly high Search and Disable Device mod.
Hsien
08-29-07, 02:57 PM Riddles are a classic.
Have a clues/hints that may not seem like they have anythng to do with the chest(s) throughout the dungeon. They reference items, possibly found in dungeon, or spells that must be used to unlock the chest(s).

An old Dungeon had an adventure, Hitch in Time (iirc), used some very off the wall spells to unlock chests/de-trap them. The traps were brutal and often fatal. If the spells are very "off the wall" perhaps their are scrolls located in the dungeon...see riddle suggestion above.

I've done a Prismatic chest before...check Pris Wall/Spray spell for needed spells.

Fake lock, real lock is actually in a recessed bottom. Had a guy try forever to unlock this chest, then finally decided to throw it off a wall to break it, and when they picked it up....
Ack
08-29-07, 03:32 PM The chest has a Gelatinous Cube in it. It's locked as normal, and doesn't register as magic (although the lining that prevents the Cube from dissolving the chest might be noticeable).

Fun all round :D
Gargs454
08-29-07, 03:47 PM Dang thought there'd be pics in this thread. :p
Ack
08-29-07, 03:53 PM No, this is not a discussion thread about The Book of Erotic Fantasy :P
Eerongal
08-29-07, 04:18 PM awww, this thread is totally not what i was hoping for :P

well, while i'm here....
One of my favorite traps is to have and easy trap like a simple dart trap or something, which the character will obviously notice first, and make disarming it the trigger for a more powerful trap
Hsien
08-29-07, 04:25 PM Forgot to mention...
some truly evil trap ideas, check out the Grimtooth's Traps books. (shudders)
StevenO
08-29-07, 09:28 PM The nastiest of chests is the miniture replica of Mordenkain's Secret Chest that has been disguised to register as non magical. Who knows what something so small can hold.
FponkDamn
08-29-07, 10:24 PM In the center of a large anti-magic field, there is a giant iron statue. The statue's torso is in fact a mighty chest (ah, the pun!) and his face is just a big keyhole-looking helmet. Probably looks pretty cool.

The point is, as long as the statue stays in the anti-magic zone, then the lock and mundane traps can be dealt with, but must be dealt with mundanely. However! I giant portcullis wheel in the room allows characters of great strength to move the statue along a conveyor belt until it's out of the zone, so magical means can be used to open the chest.

Of course, when this happens the PCs learn tha the statue was a Golem of some kind, and they get to fight it! Make the golem more powerful than the PCs (not super-high, but maybe CR 4 higher than the PCs level, so they won't die in one round) but its programming makes it fight for only 5 rounds before going back into the zone.

So if they can beat it, then they can use magic to open it. Or! They can avoid fighting it at all, if they can open it without magic. Could be a very neat encounter.

Hope this helps!

- Johnny
Iczer
08-29-07, 11:12 PM oh tricky.......

A mimic surrounded by a ring of traps..... (though not technically a chest)

a trapped chest with locks on either side that must be undone at the same time or else the other relocks (bypassed by a DD i know but still)

A chest that teleports when the lock is touched by metal (such as a lockpick) countered of course by a stone key

place a trap 5 feet in front of any given chest. most rogues won't look for traps until they actually reach the chest itself (IE the trap gets triggered when the rogue steps forward to look for traps)

Or.... a heavy chest atop a plinth. A large metal pylon is obviously in place to swing down and slam anyone messing with the chest. Opening the chest proves worthless (or worse) as it's just the decoy. triggering the trap causes the metal weight to swing downwards to slam anyone in the way...BUT the metal weight is in fact a chest in and of itself.

The chest is atop a 40 foot greased pole. Assess a open locks penalty for having to hang on with one hand while picking a lock. make the floor covered in spike while you are at it.

Fake out the lock: The prominent, and probably trapped lock (leomunds trap?) is obvious, but a a lock at the base allows the user to lift the chest facade away from the chest underneath.

Put the chest in a pit. Fill with water.

Anything that involves the gelatinous cube

Make the chest look like something other than a chest. a demon's belly for instance. Or cover the room in hallucinatory terrain.

Fill the room with something flamable, and loose stones have vials of alchemists fire underneath. tread carefully.

Chill metal the whole chest.

Firetrapped chest with another chest inside with...explosive runes across the top.

I can think of more buit i have run out of time

Batts
jaspercrey
08-30-07, 12:40 AM Salma Hayek
RobbyPants
08-30-07, 10:35 AM I guess another route is to have lots of chests that are indistinguishable. You can use spells to spoof magical auras, have lead lining, or whatever to pervent the PCs from knowing what's inside each. So in addition to all of them being heavily trapped, all of the wrong chests contain bad things (like poison clouds, small constructs, or whatever seems nasty).

If you want to be nice, you can leave clues as to which chest is the right one. The trick is to make one chest bad enough to chew through a significant portion of the party's resources, so they can't possibly get through all the chests in one sitting.

If you're affraid they'll just sit there for two months resting after every few chests, you can do things to mix it up a bit. Perhaps the whole room has some time-related trap on it (the room floods after 30 minutes, or whatever). Maybe the chests can be mechanically reset, and they all teleport around, like playing three card montey. Suddenly, the PCs have no idea which chests they've already done!
wolf_man007
08-30-07, 10:59 AM Salma Hayek

Amen.
_Jayne_Cobb_
08-30-07, 02:39 PM Salma Hayek

I gotta go with Rosario Dawson.
Ack
08-30-07, 03:42 PM A party I was with once encountered a normal wooden chest in a dungeon; we spent nearly an hour real-time looking for traps or other nastiness. There was nothing. When we finally opened it (the rogue was so paranoid, when he found it was unlocked, he relocked it with his tools then unlocked it again, just to be sure it was really unlocked. And then checked for traps again.) we found that it was about half-full of copper pieces. Overall, we calculated the chest was more valuable than its contents.

Of course, the next chest we encountered was trapped to a fare-thee-well ...
Aurun
08-30-07, 06:09 PM could have the chest be as big as the entrance to the room its in, then when it gets opened it activates a portal to the entrance to the room. Problem is the portal is two way so once your in the room you cant get out as you just come through the chest.
Solution there's a secret catch on the inside of the chest lid which is only revealed when it's closed so the lockpicker has to close the lid then fiddle with it through the door. If you wanna be really nasty make the portal so that you cannot see through it. Ie the chest just looks empty the doorway normal. So the lockpicker has to stand waving his hands in an empty doorway searching for a little catch for hours and hours...
Taddilius
08-30-07, 06:34 PM A chest that has two three locks. One lock is open, the other two is locked. If you cast knock on the chest it unlocks one lock that locks the other, imagine a lock toggle.

Traps:

Surround the chest with undead, the characters fight the undead. The chest has an animate dead spell on it or some other sort of death spell that can revitilize the undead.

Have a trap on a ring in the chest. The ring radiates magic. If the ring is removed from the chest after 1 day the ring and 1 cubic foot around the ring teleports back into the chest. That could include a hand or if the person put the ring in with thier treasure what ever they have around it.

A trap that sprays the thief with a scent and then releases some sort of creature to hunt them that would be attracked to the scent so it is really hard for them to get away.
Icewraith
08-30-07, 09:34 PM Technically the entire room is a trap, but I am so going to use this one on my PCs...

The chest itself is fairly easy to open, but it is built into the floor. An antimagic field extends 35' from the exterior of the chest, but the interior of the chest is protected from the field whether the top is open or not. The ceiling is 40' high. The chest contains a miniature magical sensor built into a false top that is the depth of the chest that sticks out of the floor. The false bottom of the chest is designed so that it appears exactly identical to the room the characters stand in, including a miniature doorway cut into the front of the inside of the chest (the doorway does not extend all the way through the chest). A see-through wall of force lies across the top of the chest, just under the lid. When the characters open the chest, the sensor activates and projects an illusion of the characters standing in the chest, and copies their movements. At the same time, the room projects an illusion on the ceiling that shows the characters from the perspective of the magical sensor.

Thus, when the characters open the chest lid, the roof appears to unhinge and they see themselves towering above where they are standing, and simultaneously see themselves standing in the chest. Furthermore, they observe that the sky behind the projection of themselves is actually another projection of themselves, and that when they observe the illusion in the chest, the illusions in the chest appear to observe an even smaller illusion in the fake chest inside the chest.

The whole point is to completely blow the PC's minds.

The characters who don't immediately turn to psychotropic drugs or take levels in the Alienist prestige class need to make an appropriately high search check at a substantial circumstance penalty to notice the false bottom in the chest. Below the false bottom is appropriate treasure. More prudent characters will probably have already run screaming from the room, assuming that the opening of the chest lid does not have any additional side effects, such as closing and locking the guards or activating constructs to attack the PCs.

Important points to remember: divination spells such as true sight will not work unless the pcs are hovering next to the ceiling of the room, they have no way of detecting that the AMF does not extend all the way to the top. The see-through wall of force prevents the characters trying to reach into the chest and pick themselves up, and interaction that would allow a will saving throw and risk spoiling the illusion. Characters must have a non-magical method of flight to be able to reach the ceiling of the room and interact with the second illusion, until they do so they recieve no saving throw.

Edit: This is obiously a one-way trap for storage of valuable, irreplaceable treasures that hopefully never need to be used. It works well for the phylacteries of powerful liches and campaign-altering artifacts. If the treasure IS a Lich's phylactery, the treasure area of the chest that extends under the floor should be at least tall enough for the Lich to stand up in, and should contain a wand of light and a scroll of teleport. To bypass the wall of force, characters will have to break apart the chest to access the anti-magic field, since they will not have access to disintegrate (although a successful caster level check using an epic spell with the destroy seed will zap both chest and field, if cast from the exterior of the room)
KillerVole
08-31-07, 12:04 AM Try a stone "chest" that is actually just a sculpture of a treasure chest. Of course, as it is absolutely worthless, it may frustrate some PCs, but it would be interesting to watch them try to open it.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
heirodule 08-29-07, 01:59 PM	Help me make an interesting high level trapped chest, that the PCs will have to spend some time thinking about before opening 1. lead lined 2. Dimension locked? 3. trapped (with what?) 4. more?
RobbyPants 08-29-07, 02:02 PM	You could have the chest in the center of a large anti-magic field, and protect it with some seriously potent mundane traps. You could also trap the area just outside the AMF with all sorts of magical traps. This prevents all sorts of shinanegins like teleporting in and nabbing the chest to disarm later. Suddenly, nothing gets you in other than a realllly high Search and Disable Device mod.
Hsien 08-29-07, 02:57 PM	Riddles are a classic. Have a clues/hints that may not seem like they have anythng to do with the chest(s) throughout the dungeon. They reference items, possibly found in dungeon, or spells that must be used to unlock the chest(s). An old Dungeon had an adventure, Hitch in Time (iirc), used some very off the wall spells to unlock chests/de-trap them. The traps were brutal and often fatal. If the spells are very "off the wall" perhaps their are scrolls located in the dungeon...see riddle suggestion above. I've done a Prismatic chest before...check Pris Wall/Spray spell for needed spells. Fake lock, real lock is actually in a recessed bottom. Had a guy try forever to unlock this chest, then finally decided to throw it off a wall to break it, and when they picked it up....
Ack 08-29-07, 03:32 PM	The chest has a Gelatinous Cube in it. It's locked as normal, and doesn't register as magic (although the lining that prevents the Cube from dissolving the chest might be noticeable). Fun all round :D
Gargs454 08-29-07, 03:47 PM	Dang thought there'd be pics in this thread. :p
Ack 08-29-07, 03:53 PM	No, this is not a discussion thread about The Book of Erotic Fantasy :P
Eerongal 08-29-07, 04:18 PM	awww, this thread is totally not what i was hoping for :P well, while i'm here.... One of my favorite traps is to have and easy trap like a simple dart trap or something, which the character will obviously notice first, and make disarming it the trigger for a more powerful trap
Hsien 08-29-07, 04:25 PM	Forgot to mention... some truly evil trap ideas, check out the Grimtooth's Traps books. (shudders)
StevenO 08-29-07, 09:28 PM	The nastiest of chests is the miniture replica of Mordenkain's Secret Chest that has been disguised to register as non magical. Who knows what something so small can hold.
FponkDamn 08-29-07, 10:24 PM	In the center of a large anti-magic field, there is a giant iron statue. The statue's torso is in fact a mighty chest (ah, the pun!) and his face is just a big keyhole-looking helmet. Probably looks pretty cool. The point is, as long as the statue stays in the anti-magic zone, then the lock and mundane traps can be dealt with, but must be dealt with mundanely. However! I giant portcullis wheel in the room allows characters of great strength to move the statue along a conveyor belt until it's out of the zone, so magical means can be used to open the chest. Of course, when this happens the PCs learn tha the statue was a Golem of some kind, and they get to fight it! Make the golem more powerful than the PCs (not super-high, but maybe CR 4 higher than the PCs level, so they won't die in one round) but its programming makes it fight for only 5 rounds before going back into the zone. So if they can beat it, then they can use magic to open it. Or! They can avoid fighting it at all, if they can open it without magic. Could be a very neat encounter. Hope this helps! - Johnny
Iczer 08-29-07, 11:12 PM	oh tricky....... A mimic surrounded by a ring of traps..... (though not technically a chest) a trapped chest with locks on either side that must be undone at the same time or else the other relocks (bypassed by a DD i know but still) A chest that teleports when the lock is touched by metal (such as a lockpick) countered of course by a stone key place a trap 5 feet in front of any given chest. most rogues won't look for traps until they actually reach the chest itself (IE the trap gets triggered when the rogue steps forward to look for traps) Or.... a heavy chest atop a plinth. A large metal pylon is obviously in place to swing down and slam anyone messing with the chest. Opening the chest proves worthless (or worse) as it's just the decoy. triggering the trap causes the metal weight to swing downwards to slam anyone in the way...BUT the metal weight is in fact a chest in and of itself. The chest is atop a 40 foot greased pole. Assess a open locks penalty for having to hang on with one hand while picking a lock. make the floor covered in spike while you are at it. Fake out the lock: The prominent, and probably trapped lock (leomunds trap?) is obvious, but a a lock at the base allows the user to lift the chest facade away from the chest underneath. Put the chest in a pit. Fill with water. Anything that involves the gelatinous cube Make the chest look like something other than a chest. a demon's belly for instance. Or cover the room in hallucinatory terrain. Fill the room with something flamable, and loose stones have vials of alchemists fire underneath. tread carefully. Chill metal the whole chest. Firetrapped chest with another chest inside with...explosive runes across the top. I can think of more buit i have run out of time Batts
jaspercrey 08-30-07, 12:40 AM	Salma Hayek
RobbyPants 08-30-07, 10:35 AM	I guess another route is to have lots of chests that are indistinguishable. You can use spells to spoof magical auras, have lead lining, or whatever to pervent the PCs from knowing what's inside each. So in addition to all of them being heavily trapped, all of the wrong chests contain bad things (like poison clouds, small constructs, or whatever seems nasty). If you want to be nice, you can leave clues as to which chest is the right one. The trick is to make one chest bad enough to chew through a significant portion of the party's resources, so they can't possibly get through all the chests in one sitting. If you're affraid they'll just sit there for two months resting after every few chests, you can do things to mix it up a bit. Perhaps the whole room has some time-related trap on it (the room floods after 30 minutes, or whatever). Maybe the chests can be mechanically reset, and they all teleport around, like playing three card montey. Suddenly, the PCs have no idea which chests they've already done!
wolf_man007 08-30-07, 10:59 AM	Salma Hayek Amen.
_Jayne_Cobb_ 08-30-07, 02:39 PM	Salma Hayek I gotta go with Rosario Dawson.
Ack 08-30-07, 03:42 PM	A party I was with once encountered a normal wooden chest in a dungeon; we spent nearly an hour real-time looking for traps or other nastiness. There was nothing. When we finally opened it (the rogue was so paranoid, when he found it was unlocked, he relocked it with his tools then unlocked it again, just to be sure it was really unlocked. And then checked for traps again.) we found that it was about half-full of copper pieces. Overall, we calculated the chest was more valuable than its contents. Of course, the next chest we encountered was trapped to a fare-thee-well ...
Aurun 08-30-07, 06:09 PM	could have the chest be as big as the entrance to the room its in, then when it gets opened it activates a portal to the entrance to the room. Problem is the portal is two way so once your in the room you cant get out as you just come through the chest. Solution there's a secret catch on the inside of the chest lid which is only revealed when it's closed so the lockpicker has to close the lid then fiddle with it through the door. If you wanna be really nasty make the portal so that you cannot see through it. Ie the chest just looks empty the doorway normal. So the lockpicker has to stand waving his hands in an empty doorway searching for a little catch for hours and hours...
Taddilius 08-30-07, 06:34 PM	A chest that has two three locks. One lock is open, the other two is locked. If you cast knock on the chest it unlocks one lock that locks the other, imagine a lock toggle. Traps: Surround the chest with undead, the characters fight the undead. The chest has an animate dead spell on it or some other sort of death spell that can revitilize the undead. Have a trap on a ring in the chest. The ring radiates magic. If the ring is removed from the chest after 1 day the ring and 1 cubic foot around the ring teleports back into the chest. That could include a hand or if the person put the ring in with thier treasure what ever they have around it. A trap that sprays the thief with a scent and then releases some sort of creature to hunt them that would be attracked to the scent so it is really hard for them to get away.
Icewraith 08-30-07, 09:34 PM	Technically the entire room is a trap, but I am so going to use this one on my PCs... The chest itself is fairly easy to open, but it is built into the floor. An antimagic field extends 35' from the exterior of the chest, but the interior of the chest is protected from the field whether the top is open or not. The ceiling is 40' high. The chest contains a miniature magical sensor built into a false top that is the depth of the chest that sticks out of the floor. The false bottom of the chest is designed so that it appears exactly identical to the room the characters stand in, including a miniature doorway cut into the front of the inside of the chest (the doorway does not extend all the way through the chest). A see-through wall of force lies across the top of the chest, just under the lid. When the characters open the chest, the sensor activates and projects an illusion of the characters standing in the chest, and copies their movements. At the same time, the room projects an illusion on the ceiling that shows the characters from the perspective of the magical sensor. Thus, when the characters open the chest lid, the roof appears to unhinge and they see themselves towering above where they are standing, and simultaneously see themselves standing in the chest. Furthermore, they observe that the sky behind the projection of themselves is actually another projection of themselves, and that when they observe the illusion in the chest, the illusions in the chest appear to observe an even smaller illusion in the fake chest inside the chest. The whole point is to completely blow the PC's minds. The characters who don't immediately turn to psychotropic drugs or take levels in the Alienist prestige class need to make an appropriately high search check at a substantial circumstance penalty to notice the false bottom in the chest. Below the false bottom is appropriate treasure. More prudent characters will probably have already run screaming from the room, assuming that the opening of the chest lid does not have any additional side effects, such as closing and locking the guards or activating constructs to attack the PCs. Important points to remember: divination spells such as true sight will not work unless the pcs are hovering next to the ceiling of the room, they have no way of detecting that the AMF does not extend all the way to the top. The see-through wall of force prevents the characters trying to reach into the chest and pick themselves up, and interaction that would allow a will saving throw and risk spoiling the illusion. Characters must have a non-magical method of flight to be able to reach the ceiling of the room and interact with the second illusion, until they do so they recieve no saving throw. Edit: This is obiously a one-way trap for storage of valuable, irreplaceable treasures that hopefully never need to be used. It works well for the phylacteries of powerful liches and campaign-altering artifacts. If the treasure IS a Lich's phylactery, the treasure area of the chest that extends under the floor should be at least tall enough for the Lich to stand up in, and should contain a wand of light and a scroll of teleport. To bypass the wall of force, characters will have to break apart the chest to access the anti-magic field, since they will not have access to disintegrate (although a successful caster level check using an epic spell with the destroy seed will zap both chest and field, if cast from the exterior of the room)
KillerVole 08-31-07, 12:04 AM	Try a stone "chest" that is actually just a sculpture of a treasure chest. Of course, as it is absolutely worthless, it may frustrate some PCs, but it would be interesting to watch them try to open it.