Here is a scenario I made for the PCs last night. They captured a Drow wizard in the hall of a hill giant king. His treasure was under a large stone slab that required a DC25 strength check to move. The hill giants usually use 2 giants and spend around 10 rounds trying to lift the granite slab lid. Its heavy even for giants.
Now the PCs find out the location of the slab and they can't open it as none of them have 20 strength to make the required DC roll. They decided to batter the slab down which I allow. Sadly for them they set off a trap, said treasure horde is packed with gunpowder as the hill giants are allied with fire giants who have been supplying them.
10d6 damage 50' radius, and they blow the hall to kingdom come along with the treasure. The PCs were level 7. I rarely use traps so the PCs get a bit complacent at times and did not bother looking for traps had they made that roll I would have let them spot some wires or something. I ruled that they nuked the giants treasure as well.
It kind of reminds me how in 2nd ed te group at the time sets off a glyph of warding with flamestrike on it that incinerates the treasure including scrolls and cloak and boots of elven kind. I was accused of being a gotcha DM lol. They shouldn't reallycomplain to loud they are all well equipped and wealthy by level 7 just they got greedy and careless as the captive told them the treasure was worth over 10 000gp but they blew it up. the damage was 8d6 fireball explosion but I added an extra 2d6 for the shrapnel of the gold and stuff as they wore molten gold to the face.
Gotcha;).
Rocks fall, everyone dies. Praise comrade DM for his glorious plan.
I'm guessing you always GM and never play, Zaardnaar?
Noon wrote:
Well the good news is that it really does not matter if gold is a little bit melted and/or blood crusted - it still spends just as well.
Wow. That certainly sounds boring and pointless. Is the moral of the story to write better adventures?
I was expecting something totally different from a thread named "Gotcha- Golden Shower," something that probably wouldn't survive on the forum for very long.
2Chlorobutanal wrote:
2Chlorobutanal wrote:
Why not 20 d6 or 30 d6?
frbelanger wrote:
well done Zard! Teach them to fear traps!
Although I do agree that gold wouldn't be "destroyed" in an explosion, so they can probably salvage something...
Now, when something similar happened to my players in a Kundarak bank full of letter of credits... 
A gotcha trap - harhar, what a jape. No telegraphing, just 'splosions. I guess the players made the mistake of not going through their memorized threat mitigation process. Better luck remembering to tap it with a 10-foot-pole next time...
That certainly does sound like that will be a memorable story for the players in years to come. And I'll bet everyone had fun too.
Good job Z. That's a win!
Back in 3.5 I had a villain Mage that had the feat that changed all the aesthetics of the spell to match a theme. This made the spellcraft checks harder to identify the spells and it was a fun way to hit the PCs with spells that mimicked the theme. Oh I made the theme... SEWAGE. Every Fireball was a special type of Golden Shower and don't even get me started about the look of the Magic Missiles...
kalil wrote:
I think it's fair 
. The only thing I wouldn't have done is not give the PCs a Perception check or some kind of check to notice the trap. If the players need to mention every time they search for traps, you might end up spending half your game time describing every place the players search. If that's fun for you and your players, knock yourselves out. I find it extraordinarly boring.
Mind_Flayer_Monk wrote:
seti wrote:
Gnarl wrote:
Do you have more examples like this? I wouldn't mind compiling them into a document for personal reference called "Things I don't want to do as a GM."
2Chlorobutanal wrote:
Reius wrote:
"i'm not really a gotcha DM, but I like to tempt my players into doing things I think are bad and punish them at random when they succumb (and by succumb, I mean 'fail to guess the solution I was thinking of')"
Hypocrisy, thy name is Zardnaar.
Traps should be considered in realism
Any trap where Geoff the Giant can accidently set off by getting drunk and then accidently blow up all of his tribe's stuff is not a good trap.
Reminds me of the 4E comic, which is, of course, the best D&D comic. Specifically reminds me of the gag of the villian's minions getting wiped out by traps frequently
I don't think this is a particularly proud DMing moment, and it's sure not something I'd be highlighting to brag about.
Zardnaar wrote:
I really don't want Golden Showers anywhere near my D&D, there is a time and a place....I mean, unless it is a seriously freaky session...
thespaceinvader wrote:
I have to wait 15 years to hear the account of your PC getting killed? Bah!
Zardnaar wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
And the smell of this quantity of gunpowder ? It's easily recognizable.
I agree, even if the PCs didn't look for traps, you could have given them the chance to detect something amiss by possibly discovering the presence of gunpowoder in the slab for exemple. While not all traps need to necessarily have a chance to be detected in advance without extra effort or use of magic,l i'd still use such gotchas with extreme caution.
How did your players reacted to your Golden Shower Gotcha?
I agree. There are multiple things to consider for death traps (traps or otherwise) in regards to still making it a challenge, allowing for enough clues, or if you want the players to carry a 10 foot pole every where they go. With a giant trap, you could leave clues behind like gun powder burns on the floor mixed with scorched blood, the smell, or even the size of the trap. What is considered hidden or uneasy to detect for an average giant, may stand out like a sore thumb for a smaller and more intellgient humanoid. Where I consider a death trap appropriate it is a dungeon like the tomb of horrors, where it is pretty evident from the first room that it is not a place to walk lightly.
Uchawi wrote:
Yes.
*sceptical glance*
thespaceinvader wrote:
Plaguescarred wrote:
AquaticSpaceChicken wrote:
They did not mind to much and no one died or anything. THye were level 7 so 10d6 is not a fatal amount
Zardnaar wrote:
It doesn't sound unfair to me. Unexpected, sure, but not unfair. The objective (the loot) was entirely optional. Obtaining it required the players to think of looking for traps--a high degree of difficulty given the context of few traps in the campaign, but one in keeping with the level of the reward. The success outcome was getting the loot. The failure outcome was taking some damage (evidently non-lethal amounts) and losing out on the treasure. Looks legit to me--in D&D there's always more treasure.
Personally, I'd have put a clue somewhere to tip a clever player off about the trap, but I wouldn't have done a passive perceptive check unless the PC had some specialty at play.
Well I suppose hill giants are the only ones dumb enough to store precious belongings under a huge slab with gunpowder, especially if that slab has a trap that can ignite said treasure.
kudos to the op, you made me open up the MM to see how dumb hill giants are in this edition. at INT 5, they are smarter than animals, but dumber than a giant ape.
Timborama wrote:
Granville7482 wrote:
Noon wrote:
Granville7482 wrote:
I don't know about you, but I don't find "gotcha"s fun. If I spent 30 minutes interrigating NPCs, digging up slabs and then attempting to move said slab, having it blow up to a completely left-field trap wouldn't feel like fun, it would feel like "whelp, I just wasted 30 minutes of my time."
Did you give them a way to discover the trap? If not: Pointless and unfun.
Same with the ship: Unless you mention something that might hint of secret compartments (maybe it had a dodgy history?), a player shouldn't expect secret compartments, and shouldn't have to go "I do this repetetive task of searching X for Y even though most of the time it wont do anything on the off chance my DM's being a dick." every time they come across something new.
And no, you don't get to respond: You failed to notice I'm wearing a skirt.
Yunru wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Yunru wrote:
Plaguescarred wrote:
Heh, I'd say being given a ship by a notorious pirate is telegraphing enough that it might be a good idea to search the vessel. No gotcha.
As for the trap, sounds fair enough to me and sounds like Zardnaar's group had fun. I think telegraphing by using clues that gunpowdwer had been on the hill giants' premises as some point, would have made it better. The party then could have had a "D'oh so that's where the gunpowder went!" moment after the explosion.
AquaticSpaceChicken wrote:
Haha, no guns for you dirty pornographers. 
Shasarak wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
i'm going to try and carefully word this to try and not open up the RAW/RAI debate yet again, but OP!
The thief/use an object as a bonus action/healer feat/ healing kit, is a very cool combination but more or less so much fine print it's subject to the DM and the table on if it can be used.
And in this case, yeah it's going to make a thief a 2 second surgeon and give them the ability to out heal a cleric at lower levels for less action economy and resources, which makes it much more "broken" than Bless does or your regular cleric healing.
It sounds like you have an optimized party that is more or less pulling the weight for each other. This is advanced player tactics. MANY a rogue player, despite even being min-maxers and allowed the thief-surgeon combo at the table, still wont pick up the healer feat. They will go damage. Your tables Rogue did. (Just curious they did boost Int a bit to cover trap finding or the skill to increase it? Did they take Dungeon Delver or Observant?)
Your party has Farie Fire going off pretty often; awesome. Player have pleanty of options FF tends to be one that help out groups quite a bit instead of a selfish player in a sefish dps race against his fellow players.
Same for Bless. Bless and healing actions were (sadly) one of the reasons my 3.5 group had few to no Cleric players. Then all of a sudeen we had them in 4th because of the laser healing. It let a player do more than heal/buff each turn if they were playing a Cleric. Bless goes back to the Cleric of old, you gave up your turn and your spell slot to help your party out. If i'm playing with you I say thanks, often my PC will in character too. Again, you gave up your spell slot and your action when your turn came around, to make my character kick more butt, thanks.
-Though I still do not think the boost from Bless at my table (I have a Half-orc sword and board fighter at level 6 now) is breaking encounters or causing fustration for the DM who likes to challenge us.
I dont think it is broken, but as far as all the thing on my character sheet go; the thing I feel is the most "Powerful" is the free "death ward" half-orc racial. It's been good for 7 levels and I have a feeling it's still going to be good at level 20. It comes up once a game but it allows me to do some pretty abusive things with a bit of creative tactics.
Granville7482 wrote: