I guess this should be advice but I basically just lifted it from a EN World thread called Trap an Egyptian-Style Pyramid. Celebrim’s answer stood out from the rest of them when I read through the thread. Celebrim is also behind the The Explicatae Incompositae - Being A Bestairy of the Sometime Lords of Chaos – Slaad Lord goodness! Anyway, this is what he wrote:
Trap an Egyptian-Style Pyramid
The Explicatae Incompositae - Being A Bestairy of the Sometime Lords of Chaos
Ok... high level traps.
1. High level traps can’t be passive. All high level traps must actively attack the players. For example:
1. Spreading gas/liquid traps.
2. Pit traps must ’suck’ like vacuum cleaners.
3. Traps should be accompanied by other problems. For example, a incindery cloud trap could be accompanied by creatures immune to flame, a room that fills with sand should have incorporeal creatures, a room that empties of air with creatures that don’t need to breathe, the symbol of stunning is enscribed on a stone golem, and so forth.
4. Traps should often act like monsters, reseting and attacking each round whether with a spell or a volley of poisoned darts.
5. Don’t be afraid of traps that release monsters. In particular, don’t be afraid to design nasty unique monsters that the party won’t immediately know how to react to.
6. Remember that its virtually impossible to get a high level party to walk anywhere or on anything. Corridor traps generally won’t work. Most of the traps should protect portals, keys, levers, and other things that must be touched.
2. It should be designed to defeat ’find the path’. It should have rooms and corridors that spin, passages that open and close at intervals (thus changing the path), one way doors, conveyers, and so forth. It should have puzzles/door that require spoken words and other non-motion keys. It should have traps triggered by contact that must be disarmed by non-physical means (mage hand, spoken words, etc.) It should have large deadly monsters placed along the straightest ’safe’ paths.
3. You have to do something to prevent the Bellock approach (dig up the whole thing), and the scry and fry approach (teleport in). There should be a proactive antagonist that will direct minions against the party if they stop to rest in the environment. I suggest something like a greater mummy that is an 18th level spellcaster. Additionally, the pyramid should be somewhat capable of defending itself. It should have spell resistance roughly near party level. It should regenerate damage through some means (either directly or with hard working minions). It should have random voids in it filled with nastiness to catch people tunnelling. Rooms should be lined in lead to limit scrying. The few rooms that can be scryed should be permenently screened so as to conceal some of the worst death traps in the whole structure - bait for the unwary. There should be unhallowed zones tied to spells like dimension anchor (I’d unhallow the whole structure) or dispel magic (good for the scry and fry bait rooms). The pyramid (or its near double) should exist on the ethereal plane (its probably been there long enough). In fact, one way to defeat ’find the path’ is have the only way to get through part of the pyramid is to move to the ethereal double for a section, before returning. This would mean that there is no path.
4. Require the party to expend resources to even see the trap. Rooms should have magical darkness, be covered with illusions, be filled with mists, be half filled with water, have six inches of sand in them, and so forth. Make them use thier spells. Make them use thier divinations. Debuff the party actively and passively. I’m particularly fond of glyphs of warding tied to dispel magic. Hit the party with a greater dispel magic tied to a situations where magical buffs would be important. The party will likely go in with death ward. So try to debuff them before hitting them with some negative energy attack. They’ll likely go in with freedom of movement. So try to debuff them before hitting them with a heavy grappler. And so forth.
Remember that before this can work, you’ve got to be an order of magnitude more lethal than Tomb of Horrors.
#RPG #thoughts