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Post by kaitoujuliet on Feb 24, 2012 10:14:53 GMT -8
The old board had a post from someone about a puzzle or obstacle used in a game ... something simple, but requiring creative thought from the players to get past. I seem to remember that it involved some rails that had to be crossed, but they were either electrified or became electrified past a certain point, or something like that?
Is this ringing a bell with anyone? If it does, could I get you to repost the details? My group is going to have to break into the HQ of some bandits who are hiding out in a disused mine, and I'm thinking I might be able to adapt this puzzle to add a little extra challenge to getting in.
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Post by Forresst on Feb 24, 2012 10:19:01 GMT -8
Well, if you can't find the old one, I'm sure with all the creative minds here we can make a new one! In fact, if need be, we could get to work right now!
How would you like your puzzle to constrain player movement? Are they in a rail car, or do the rails present an obstacle to them while walking? What will electrifying the rails do for them? Will it let them move forward or potentially shock them? Do you want a maze, or a puzzle where you have to build your route?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2012 2:00:28 GMT -8
I once used the ideas of faraday cages in a magical prison. All the guards were stone golems and instead of big locked doors the prison used electric fields in the doorways. There was no way to turn them off because the guards were all immune to electricity. Prisoners were transported around in big metal cages that conducted the electricity around them and to rails on the floor. To get around the PCs had to get one of these cages, most of them would pile in and then the strong ones would push it along really fast towards the electric field, build up momentum, then jump in and slam the door behind them for protection.
It was a fun way to apply some science to the prison. My group loves magitech and they all felt like geniuses when they figured it out.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Feb 26, 2012 13:18:16 GMT -8
Thanks for the offers of help, since the original concept seems to be unavailable...
I'll give you the background, and maybe you guys can help me work out something useful. (Fortunately, nobody in my group reads the forum here.) I'm preparing for next Wednesday's game, the plot of which will involve the group tracking down some bandits who have stolen a valuable shipment of medicinal herbs. Their HQ is in a disused mine. When the party finds them, they will be having a party and using the herbs "recreationally," which should give them some bonuses to their combat skills but also open them up to flaking out in the middle of a fight. (I'm working on how to handle that mechanically; suggestions are welcome.)
I feel like getting into the mine should be interesting. It seems logical that the bandits should have some kind of lookout, but that also seems kind of boring. To mix things up a bit, I thought maybe there could be one or more traps, obstacles, or tricks to getting in; the bandits might then trust to those defenses and have all their people at the party.
I remembered that sometime last year, someone had posted about an obstacle involving electric rails, and I remember saying at the time that it could be adapted to a fantasy setting by putting some kind of enchantment on the rails. What I liked about it was that it was described as a challenge which could be solved many different ways, using different skill sets. I wanted to re-read it and see if it could be useful in the present situation, but unfortunately, I don't remember enough of the details to know for sure whether it would have been appropriate.
So, any suggestions?
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Post by hoseirrob on Feb 28, 2012 9:42:28 GMT -8
In mines there are lots of off shoot tunnels. Those can be rigged as lived in areas full of poisoned punji traps, rock slide traps (OMG Indiana Jones style rock chase!)
As far as mechanical bonuses for the herbs, you can treat it like a barbarians rage.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Feb 28, 2012 10:59:41 GMT -8
Thanks for the suggestions, Hoseirrob! I don't want to have too many side tunnels because that risks turning out like a maze, and after my one attempt in that direction, I was asked by my group to "please never have a maze again." (To be fair, it happened back when I was very green, and it was a very old-school maze, so I can see why it might not have been terribly entertaining.) Still, maybe one wrong fork with a few traps wouldn't be going too far... I also dug through some collections of trap suggestions that I downloaded a while back and came up with a couple of possibilities (will post them later when I'm on my own computer, in case anyone's curious). As far as mechanical bonuses for the herbs, you can treat it like a barbarians rage. Sounds like a good idea, but we're not playing D&D because my group hates it.* So can you give me a quick sketch of how rage works? From watching Standard Action I know something about rage fatigue... *Okay, they claim not to, but I've never heard them say anything nice about D&D, and when given the choice between D&D and anything else, they always pick the other thing, so what conclusion would you draw?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 29, 2012 5:20:02 GMT -8
If you want to reward different skills, you could have two basic paths. One with an electric rail car/tram system but operating it would require technical skills and the possible dangers include managing current or having to switch tracks or reversing the polarity of the energy so it doesn't explode and I don't know, magitechnobabble stuff.
And the other path is Temple of Doom unpowered crazy mine cart ride with traps in the walls that shoot darts to be dodged, or little gremlins to sabotage the cart. Then some acrobatics for leaping between cars when one is about to leap off the tracks into a chasm.
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Post by hoseirrob on Mar 1, 2012 16:09:52 GMT -8
A barbarians rage will give him something like +2 STR and +2CON, but lower dex making them easier to hit. When they are done raging, they get -2STR and -2Con for a period of time since they are winded.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 1, 2012 17:50:42 GMT -8
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Since the game was last night, though, I had to dig up something in a hurry. Here's what I found from a collection of traps and obstacles that I downloaded a while ago:
Obstacle 1
The PCs are walking down a hallway and see an open pit (10' wide, 20' across) in the floor. It is filled with any liquid the DM wants (ie. green slime, sulphuric acid, or just plain H2O). Dangling above the pit is a chain that a PC must jump to in order to grab. The chain is made of a non-corrosive metal. It is connected to a rope that goes around a pulley and is connected to a weight that is 20 pounds heavier than the chain. When the PC grabs the chain, he sinks into the trap. The only way out besides swimming (if he/she doesn't die) is pulling hand over hand out of the liquid. Then he/she can swing back and forth to land on either side of the trap. If the PC lets go of the chain, the weight pulls it up.
The trap is then reset. Smart PC's will find a way to get the chain and pull it until it's at it's end. They will then be able to swing across to the other side.
#-----# ----!---- ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / ! / * --------- \ \ \ \ \ \ \_______\ # = pulleys ! = rope or chain / = walls above pit \ = walls below pit --- = floor, ceiling, and part of the rope. * = the weight to counter-balance the chain.
Obstacle 2
Combination of a couple of different ideas: an illusory pit with a trip wire on the far side, where it's bound to be set off if someone jumps the pit. The trip wire causes rocks to fall and also sets off an alarm to warn the bandits if someone's arriving.
***
...But both of the obstacles completely fizzled. Fortunately, I think the combat that followed made up for it. Still, I wish I could figure out a way to thwart two tendencies in the party without looking like a douchebag GM who designs obstacles that the NPCs would never really think of just to counter the PCs' exotic abilities.
The first thing I wish I could stop them from doing is sending the thiefy character in to scout out every location. Said character has a cloak of inivisibility and wall-walking slippers, plus the ability to see in the dark (he's half-drow) and a mini-dragon that's mindlinked to him and can broadcast what he sends her telepathically to the rest of the group. So what he likes to do is walk along the ceiling of every passageway and check it out ahead of time with generally pretty complete impunity. It turns into a (sometimes lengthy) solo preview of the area with the thief as the only active character, and I just don't like what the does to the energy level of my sessions. But the thief's player tends to check out mentally if she doesn't have something like that to do, and the rest of the party often suggests sending the character in to scout, so I'm not sure what to do about it.
The second thing I'd like to curb is the tendency to use the flier to bypass all kinds of obstacles. It's already been established that the half-dragon can lift any of the party members including the paladin in full armor, so he just flies them one by one over anything that looks suspicious. I had originally planned to say that the mine tunnels were too narrow for the dragon to fly through, but I changed my mind at the last minute. In the first place, I felt like saying they were too narrow would just be one of those "cockblocking" moves that the podcast crew complains about, and in the second place, I felt like the surprise was already gone thanks to the ceiling scout. It left me feeling unsatisfied, though, and now I wish I'd stuck with my original plan.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 2, 2012 7:01:52 GMT -8
kait,
This is always a conundrum, how to make things challenging without metagaming and using information that you the gm have but the npcs would not.
The question I often ask myself is would it be reasonable to assume that a threat were fairly common or at least something the bad guys would think about. In a fantasy setting, cloaks of invisibility, wall walking slippers and companion animals are all very reasonable threats so it's not out of line to think that the bad guys might think about that too.
The trick becomes figuring out how much. One of my personal favorites is a magical trap that does nothing but dispel magic. So now our thief sneaking along in front of the party suddenly has multi-colored lights erupt around them but they suffer no damage only later to discover that their favorite magical device is no longer functioning. (I would pick what thing it affected at random or by whatever means the rule states for casting dispel magic in an area just to be fair)
The bad guys might also have their own mind linked animal companions wandering around out in the stronghold as well. Consider, the captain of the guard of the evil stronghold and his dozen or so mind linked guard dogs who patrol the grounds and immediately link to him whatever they encounter.
Little things like this are guaranteed to make life more interesting for the pc's (and more difficult) but are also totally fair and totally within the realms of reasonable for the game at hand.
Cheers,
JiB
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Post by hoseirrob on Mar 2, 2012 9:20:11 GMT -8
You can also ambush the group while the thief is sneaking away. That would change the energy in the group.
You are in mid-sentence with the thief, start rolling dice (spot checks or to hits) then it's "Hold that thought - you, you and you are hit with crossbow quarrels"
Now the thief has to scurry back potentially making noise that could put the guards in the cave on alert.
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kevinr
Journeyman Douchebag
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Post by kevinr on Mar 2, 2012 10:30:53 GMT -8
It sounds like the players have been Monty Hall'd And you may be over worried about cock blocking. It is totally reasonable that a mine tunnel is not going to be big enough to fly in unless it was a mine built by giants. That is not cockblocking that's just how mines are made they are tiny cramped spaces. I would probably throw in some places that are so tight the paladin would have to take off his armor to squeeze through if they want to continue. low places like 3 or 4 feet high they have to crouch or crawl thru. Add some weak spots to the ceiling thief crawling across them have a chance to trigger a cave in. Even current active mines collapse a lot a old abandoned one would be even more prone to. they don't even have to be traps just the state of the natural environment working against them. If they want to be able to fly over every obstacle they should only take missions that are in outside zones.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 2, 2012 10:34:55 GMT -8
You can also ambush the group while the thief is sneaking away. That would change the energy in the group. You are in mid-sentence with the thief, start rolling dice (spot checks or to hits) then it's "Hold that thought - you, you and you are hit with crossbow quarrels" Now the thief has to scurry back potentially making noise that could put the guards in the cave on alert. This has long been a favorite of mine. The party is merrily going along doing whatever it is they're doing and I start rolling dice or just make a note in my ever present scratch pad. Doesn't really matter whether anything is really going on or not. JiB
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willh
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Post by willh on Mar 2, 2012 11:07:06 GMT -8
Generally speaking you shouldn't design obstacles that deny characters use of their abilities. You design obstacles that require characters to make use of their abilities. If you have a flier, throw in a chasm. To add a little stress, start an encounter when only half of the group is across. That said, there is nothing wrong with occasionally makes an ability or two unuseable, and a mine tunnel that is too narrow for winged flight makes perfect sense.
As for the rogue's scouting taking too much time, the solution here may be metagaming. If it is detracting from peoples enjoyment stop doing it. It doesn't matter how in character an action may be, if it detracts from peoples fun don't do it. You might encourage the rogue to make shorter excursions that will have him returning to the group and interacting with them at more regular intervals.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 3, 2012 6:20:43 GMT -8
The question I often ask myself is would it be reasonable to assume that a threat were fairly common or at least something the bad guys would think about. In a fantasy setting, cloaks of invisibility, wall walking slippers and companion animals are all very reasonable threats so it's not out of line to think that the bad guys might think about that too. That's a point. I do expect to send the group up against some Drow soon, and it seems like they should be thinking of this stuff even if none of the more mundane opponents have so far. Good idea, and one I haven't used before. I'll have to be careful how I introduce it, though, so that the thief's player doesn't feel picked on. As I mentioned, she's been checking out of games mentally a lot lately, so I've been trying to encourage her. Then again, maybe having the character stuck in a hostile place and suddenly visible would be exciting enough to engage the player. If the thief can't go in personally, the player will probably have him start sending in the mini-dragon to scout instead. But the mini-dragon isn't invisible and is also a distinctive color, so it could be recognized, wanted for capture as probably valuable, or both. You can also ambush the group while the thief is sneaking away. That would change the energy in the group. Now there's something I haven't tried! Good thought. It sounds like the players have been Monty Hall'd Meh, some might see it that way, I suppose. But 1, the campaign has been going on for some time; 2, my players really enjoy higher-level play (they almost never start out a game of any kind at level 1); and 3, it's not that I actually mind the characters having this cool stuff. I just wish I could find ways to make using it seem more meaningful instead of just the routine stuff that they break out for every encounter. I suppose the answer is that I have to start making my encounters more epic. Yeah, I'm really kicking myself for not sticking to my original plan there. Generally speaking you shouldn't design obstacles that deny characters use of their abilities. You design obstacles that require characters to make use of their abilities. That's a good point, and one that I should keep in mind here. Part of the problem is that I was in such a hurry with these obstacles. I did actually fully expect the thief to ceiling-walk past both of the traps, but I figured that would make the player feel clever for using the character's abilities, and then I hoped the rest of the group would have to work together and figure out some more interesting ways of getting across. Honestly, I think the fact that the thief sent them all the details in advance threw me off, more than it probably should have. In my defense, I hadn't had a chance to run this game since last October. It's the players who always want to do it, though! I don't see how I can stop doing it if they want to do it. I just feel like they're sacrificing the pacing of a session for the safety of having a minimum of surprises when they go into whatever place is being scouted.
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