Trapped Chest: An Alternative to Poison
On Thursday Gothridge Manor posted a whole 'last minute game setup' post. What caught my eye was an alternative trap to put on a chest. Tim's idea was, instead of having a needle trap or a fireball trap, to use a teleport trap on the chest. I want use the idea and expand it a bit
1-A thief can use Find/Remove traps to find the trap, but there is a penalty due to the magical instead of mechanical nature of the trap.
2-The opener of the chest gets a saving throw vs spells. If the opener fails, they are teleported to a cell deeper in the dungeon/structure.
3-The spell is a proximity spell, so it is going to effect whoever opens the chest. It doesn't matter which direction the chest is facing, for instance.
4-The opener needs to make a second saving throw vs spells or they will also succumb to a sleep spell.
5-The cell to which they are transported has a permanent Silence spell cast on it. The imprisoned PC is potentially asleep and is silence and cannot, therefore, attempt to get the party's attention. The party has no idea where the PC is or if the PC is still alive.
The party then has an important decision. Is the chest opener dead? Transported to some faraway land? Polymorphed into a dust mite? Do they start a search? Where do they look? What does the player do with the character incapacitated? I suggest not telling the character what happened, at least for a bit (the rest of the sitting, if possible), especially if they were put to sleep. For the rest of the time, maybe that player can play one of the hirelings or become a co-DM, tracking things and roleplaying monsters.
That's outside of the scope of this post.
1-A thief can use Find/Remove traps to find the trap, but there is a penalty due to the magical instead of mechanical nature of the trap.
2-The opener of the chest gets a saving throw vs spells. If the opener fails, they are teleported to a cell deeper in the dungeon/structure.
3-The spell is a proximity spell, so it is going to effect whoever opens the chest. It doesn't matter which direction the chest is facing, for instance.
4-The opener needs to make a second saving throw vs spells or they will also succumb to a sleep spell.
5-The cell to which they are transported has a permanent Silence spell cast on it. The imprisoned PC is potentially asleep and is silence and cannot, therefore, attempt to get the party's attention. The party has no idea where the PC is or if the PC is still alive.
The party then has an important decision. Is the chest opener dead? Transported to some faraway land? Polymorphed into a dust mite? Do they start a search? Where do they look? What does the player do with the character incapacitated? I suggest not telling the character what happened, at least for a bit (the rest of the sitting, if possible), especially if they were put to sleep. For the rest of the time, maybe that player can play one of the hirelings or become a co-DM, tracking things and roleplaying monsters.
That's outside of the scope of this post.