In Praise of the Pit
In Praise of Pit Traps
There are many holes in fantasy adventure games. Holes to go die in (dungeons), holes that spew fire (dragons mouths), holes to climb out of (enormous debt), and holes to wallow in (discourse). One of my favorite holes in fantasy adventure gaming is the humble pit trap. A truly delightful obstacle.
When I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons I felt derision for the pit trap. A disguised door in the floor opens, your character falls 20' and takes 2d6 damage, then there's some tedious narration about dragging the beholed character up with a rope. Let's get up back to killing troglodytes and rolling Track checks! (I cut my teeth on 3e)
But a pit trap can be so much more! A simple open pit is an excellent source of potential energy for a combat. Make it deep enough and have it take up the whole corridor and it becomes an obstacle that must be cleverly traversed. Once it has it becomes an enormous danger to the party running in terror from The Frumious Bandersnatch that they disturbed further into the dungeon. Or perhaps a trap of their own to lure the poor Bandersnatch into.
Our deep dark open pit could even lead down to the next level of the dungeon. A bold (or foolish) and well equipped party could rappel down the pit and access new riches, new mysteries, new means of moving through the dungeon.
Sometimes pit traps have interesting things at the bottom. Knowledge or treasure gathered by previous and now dead interlopers! Secret doors! New varieties of ooze! A secret door that opens into another pit trap!
Of course pit traps can exemplify the potential unfunness of traps. "15 feet down the non-descript hall a cunningly concealed trapdoor opens beneath you, you fall 50 down the greased pit into the horrible grinding jaws of a devilish mechanism. The door snaps shut and the only thing that escapes are your screams and the squelching of your body being pulled." There are a lot of similar traps in the various "Grimtooth's" collections. While they are often creative, they usually go out of their way not to allow detection or disarming, making them pretty worthless unless you can make use of the component bits.
It's been discussed many times before, but in my opinion a fun trap is: either immediately apparent or has abundant signing; provides a challenge to be overcome rather than a means of ticking off HP; I and provides an opportunity, either to learn about the environment, gain some filthy lucre, or access parts heretofore unseen.
Here's a room with a pit trap:
The room is 20' by 20' there are three doors, one south, two to the west
- A red stained oaken desk with blotter, inkstone, quills and chair.
- A small shelf with a smattering of books
- A richly upholstered, crimson divan, elegant side table and silver tea service
- A cornflower yellow rug placed directly in front of the south door. One corner of the rug is turned up.
- The rug conceals a pit trap, stepping onto it will trigger the trap dropping the character 20' onto the spikes at the bottom. The skeletal remains of a long dead adventurer clutch the magic dagger Catsclaw, their purse contains 57gp and 32sp.
- Examining the rug from a short distance reveals that the corners on the east side are fixed to the floor with staples.
That pit trap is fine. There's enough description of the room that careful players will probably be wary of the rug "why is it so oddly placed, why did the GM mention the upturned corner, doesn't this nefarious noble have a reputation for treachery and misdirection?" It relies somewhat on the Landmark, Hidden, Secret pattern described by Anne. Depending on the number of rooms in your dungeon, having a few that are fairly simple is good practice in my opinion.
Here's another pit trap:
- Great Hall:
- Upon entry a gong sounds. A disembodied voice booms out "Welcome visitors to my abode! Join me in my Solarium and we will discuss your reason for visiting me."
- To the left is the brass gong, there is no mallet.
- To the right is a low rack containing several boots and shoes as well as numerous slippers in a variety of colors and sizes.
- An enormous, high pile rug fills the room ahead. It is brightly dyed yellow and blue in a floral pattern. On close inspection there is a snake depicted within the pattern of the rug, camouflaged.
- If the rug is stepped on wearing shoes the offending character falls through the rug into a 20' pit with 10 pit vipers. The pit vipers are magically sustained, and if slain more appear at a rate of 1/turn until there are 10 in the pit.
- Roll initiative, on the snakes turn the character in the pit will be subject to 1d4 viper bite attacks, +2 1d3dmg and poison: save or take 2d6 damage in 1 turn (10 minutes). The vipers have 1/2 HD.
- There are 4 corpses in the pit, the rug seems to keep smells from escaping. Searching the remains yields a spear, 3 daggers, a staff, a magical axe (Wind-cleaver, +2 axe, 1/day on command [Tempest!] splits the air creating a wind wall in a line extending 50' in a straight line from the wielder, if swung horizontally the wind wall is also horizontal and can be walked upon by the wielder only), and 100gp, 57sp, 1 200gp black pearl. All of the corpses are wearing traveling boots. - Murals: the Great Bazaar of the Port City of Zaeton; The Gates of the City of Brass; a small port town on an island shaped like a giant hand, in a sea of silver (see Planar Compass vol. 1); the tumbledown ruins of an old fortress on a hillside, a river wends it's way through a forest in the background. Each of these tapestries, given the correct command phrase acts as a gate to the locale depicted. - A passageway leading off in the opposite direction from the doors.
This trap is pretty similar to the first, but I think is more interesting. The trigger is based on basic courtesy being shown in the home of a powerful wizard, the signing is more flavorful, and the danger of the pit is a bit more novel (I hope).
And a third pit trap:
- 15' down the hall there is a square seam in the floor, the tile surrounded by the seam is a slightly different shade of grey than the rest of the hall. There is a 2' wide border of normal tile between the square and the west wall. (If the PCs are moving cautiously and have abundant light they will notice this trapdoor easily, otherwise the leading character must make a saving throw or trigger the trap.)
- Placing weight on the trapdoor causes it to fall open, dropping anything on it down a 30' shaft leading to area 2-9. Iron rungs set into the wall of the shaft form a ladder and there are two levers placed 12' down the shaft that operate the door mechanism.
- Just south of the trapdoor is a sliding panel in the wall that reveals two levers which operate the trapdoor mechanism. A simple search of the wall reveals the panel.
This is less of a trap than a means of traversing levels, but an overly cautious party may eschew the opportunity to examine it. The trapdoor also creates an excellent choke point for running battles as discussed above.
Inspiration for this post comes from various above linked blog posts as well as collected wisdom of The OSR in posts I've long forgotten (please reach out if you know some I should cite!), and specifically the work of Courtney Campbell of the Hack&Slash blog collected here and in his book Artifices, Deceptions, & Dilemmas.
Edit: check out this d100 table from ktrey at d4caltrops for things to put at the bottom of your pits!