Trap

thumb|350px|Being able to escape a trap was almost as good as being able to disarm it.
Traps were a broad category of mechanical and magical devices used to protect an area from invaders. They could be found in wizard's towers, temples, palaces, bandit lairs, and all sorts of dungeons.
==Description==
===Spoiler Traps===
Certain traps could be thrown down near-instantly, most often used by rogues trying to spoil a pursuit:
* Aniseed could be placed to distract guard dogs, potentially taking care of them for hours.
* Caltrops were spiky implements dropped en-masse, covering a wide area with foot-impaling threats.
* Catstink, an alchemical compound that could be used to distract guard dogs more effectively than aniseed.
* Marbles and ball bearings could be scattered on the ground to make it difficult to run across.
* Snaptraps were tiny jaw-traps that could be thrown down by the hundred, covering an area with traps that would snap shut on feet.
===Hunting Traps===
Hunters, foresters, and other folk in the wilderness often used traps and snares to catch wild game. These were quite small and simple constructions that ensnared game with rope or dropped them into a pit. Snares intended for humanoids and other intelligent prey were also called "man-traps", and were much more elaborate and lethal, making use of spikes, springboards, and deadfalls to kill or incapacitate a potential target.
A common hunting trap was a pair of saw-toothed steel jaws with a pressure plate, chained to a secure anchor. When weight was placed atop the trap, it would snap shut and bite deeply into the victim. Another design of hunting trap used a crate or cage that was baited with food, luring an animal in and then shutting the door on them. Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue offered these in rabbit, boar, and bear sizes, as well as lethal traps that simply used a large pair of blades that snapped shut over the animal's neck and decapitated it instantly.
Fowler's snares let a small bird be captured unharmed inside a cage. Lobster and eel traps were common implements that let a fisher place them and come back to the results.
===Dungeon Traps===
A more dramatic use for traps was in the small-scale, high-stakes endeavours faced by adventurers as they delved into ancient ruins and enemy strongholds. These traps tended to be much more complex than those used by hunters to catch game, potentially involving intricate mechanical devices laid out over an entire area or structure with the intent of halting dangerous and (sometimes) intelligent intruders. While some traps were plainly designed to automatically kill invaders, most were intended to slow them down or drain their resources while the defenders responded.
The emplacement of long-term traps in a dungeon or other structure required them to not adversely affect the inhabitants who were ostensibly protected by them. Most importantly for an inhabited area, they needed to not get in the way of or be triggered by the defenders as they moved around both in day-to-day business and during combat situations. Active defenders needed to be completely aware of the locations and effects of their traps and how to best make use of them during a conflict.
* Death traps were the most lethal traps, and often the most expensive and complex. Because of their utility they were best used near the entryway to ensure their usage and not waste the lives of the defenders.
* Softening traps were intended to weaken and tire intruders by without the expectation of slaying them. They worked best when the defenders could actively harass the attackers and keep up constant pressure along with the traps, preventing them from resting or gathering their wits.
* Combat traps worked best when triggered at the start of or in the midst of combat. They were not particularly dangerous in of themselves, but temporarily distracted or disabled the intruder and allowed defenders to take the advantage in combat.
* Pursuit traps were intended to be blundered into while the defenders acted as bait, or placed along the defender's vital escape routes. They were best at slowing down and harming intruders that were rushing forwards without as much care.
* Testing traps were open challenges to intruders. They were intended to overtly test the worthiness of the intruder and give them a fair chance to escape or bypass the threat, according to whatever standards the maker had.
* Ejection traps moved the victims to a different location, such as to just before other traps that had already been bypassed, or out of the dungeon entirely.
* Alteration traps were not a threat in of themselves, as they simply changed the layout of the dungeon by opening or closing passages. This could prevent entry (or escape), corral the intruders into a new path, or unleash guardian monsters.
===Natural Traps===
Most natural traps were simply dangerous areas that occurred on their own. These included quicksand, tar pits, sinkholes, unstable rock walls and ceilings, collapsing architecture, deep pools of water, and other hazards. These were likely to be the only "traps" present in uninhabited locations like natural caverns.
Some creatures created their own snares and traps that they used for defending their lairs or catching prey:
* Giant ant lions and yellow dragons dug pits that prey could fall into instead of actively hunting. The latter would further seal the fate of prey by flapping their wings to cause the pit to collapse.
* Blackspawn stalkers, ettercaps, giant spiders, and werespiders used webbing to trap their prey (as did smaller, less dangerous spiders).
* Giant sundews remained still while spreading their tendrils out, then ensnared prey that came too close.
* Korreds were known to weave their magical hair into all manner of entangling ropes and snares, which some left lying around the perimeter of their glens as a defensive measure.
==Culture==
No one god on Toril held sole dominion over traps. It was part of the portfolios of the Gnomish god Baravar Cloakshadow, the naga god Parrafaire, and the kobold gods Gaknulak and Kurtulmak. Worshipers of Baravar believed he passed his cunning knowledge of trapmaking onto the gnomes. The temples of both Baravar and Kurtulmak were outfitted in elaborate arrays of traps. And Kurtulmak's prospective priests had to make their way through a trap-filled corridor as a final test of initiation.
Some martial gods, though lacking traps as part of their portfolios, had clergies that regularly dealt with them. Clangeddin Silverbeard's clergy kept themselves alert of the latest developments in traps, the clergy of Arvoreen often constructed or reviewed traps as part of their efforts in defending halfling communities, and temples of Haela Brightaxe always featured at least one highly destructive trap to keep their goods out of the hands of enemies to the dwarven people. Additionally, the martial gnome god Gaerdal Ironhand was considered by some to be an expert in traps and the avatar of Gorm Gulthyn sometimes appeared on the material plane to establish traps in the passageways neighboring dwarven strongholds.
Preference in trap types tended to vary among races. Elves generally preferred weaving efficient magical traps into their tombs, foregoing extended gauntlets or false tombs. Some surface elves even constructed magical entrapments for aquatic elves, who usually opted for net traps and spring-propelled booby-traps, hidden amongst coral reefs or beds of seaweed. Most dwarves put their trust into mechanical traps to safeguard tombs. One exception to this was wild dwarves, who instead of stonework and mechanical contraptions relied upon traps suitable to the jungles of Chult, such as deadfalls, pits, and snares. Much was the case with other intelligent races that inhabited the outdoors of Faerûn, such as lizardfolk.
In the Xedran Reefs, every city, town, and temple outpost of the ixitxachitl nation was outfitted with trap-ladden passages.
==Notable Traps==
Some traps surpassed typical examples in their scale, ingenuity, or malice.
* Castle Ravenloft in the Domains of Dread possessed an elevator trap that sealed a section of hallway with steel portcullises, then lifted up a shaft while spraying the victims with magical sleeping gas.
* Downshadow of Undermountain was home to the Grim Statue, an ancient and forgotten statue that shot bolts of lightning at intruders. Over time its triggering mechanism became faulty and it began shooting bolts randomly about itself, eventually blasting clear a large circular cavern.
* The House of Stone was a dwarven fortress equipped with both crewed and uncrewed defenses. Even decades after being abandoned, it was filled with self-setting traps that continued to slay intruders.
* The Tomb of the Nine Gods was filled with a gratuitous amount of traps designed to test one's luck, fortitude, and sanity. This included a chamber flooded with wine, a massive rotating drum (filled with fire), and a nycaloth trapped inside an enormous armillary sphere (specifically, Selûne). There was also an instantly lethal rift to Mechanus, though that may have just been a result of Acererak's disregard for safety.
* The Vault of Dragons beneath Waterdeep was protected by a magical fresco that enthralled those that looked upon it. It forced the victim to remain nearby and stay awake, eventually dying of exhaustion.
===Dragon Traps===
The lairs of dragons and those who worshiped them often featured a variety of distinct traps found nowhere else:
* The lairs of aquatic dragons, such as blacks and greens, commonly featured a flooding trap in conjunction with the spell summon monster V. Once the trapped chamber was flooded, the spell would summon a fiendish giant crocodile.
* Baleful polymorph, attached to detect good as a proximity trigger, was placed on gems or other portable items to be inserted amongst a dragon's horde as a nasty surprise for would-be thieves. When triggered, the trapped object would disappear and the recipient of baleful polymorph would turn into a harmless animal, usually a toad or lizard.
* One common form of trap involved a pair of enspelled carvings, made to resemble the heads of white dragons. These were to placed facing each other, usually protruding from a wall or tunnel. With detect good as a proximity trigger, these heads would unleash cone of cold whenever a good-aligned individual passed between them.
* Some lairs trapped objects with flame strike, attached to the spell deathwatch as a proximity trigger, so that the enspelled object would only go off on those who were severely wounded.
* The fleshshiver spell was commonly placed upon piles of bones that had valuable-looking gems hidden amongst them to lure in thieves.
* Some dragons attached to gems or other treasures an effect similar to the imprisonment spell, which upon triggering would make the trapped object disappear and send those who touched it to a prison deep beneath the earth.
* The Church of Tiamat closely guarded the secret of using the spell summon monster V to conjure one form of abishai every time spells of a particular school of magic were cast within the enspelled area; any abishai conjured by this trap could not summon other baatezu. These traps ranged as follows: black on conjuration and necromancy spells, blue on divination, green on abjuration, red on transmutation, and white on enchantment and illusion spells.
* Similarly, the Church of Tiamat closely guarded the secret of using the spell summon monster VII to conjure a krathbairn every time an evocation spell was cast within the enspelled area; any krathbairn conjured by the trap could not summon more of their kind.
* A common dragon lair trap, particularly among red dragons, was to use summon monster VII in conjunction with a well-camouflaged pit trap. Upon any creature reaching the bottom of the pit a fiendish megaraptor would be conjured.
* A trap unique to shadow dragon lairs was to have a doorknob, flanked by two statues of half-shadow dragons, with the one on the right laced with shadow essence. If the doorknob was turned to the right, it would cause the head on the corresponding statue to bend and bite the hand on the knob.
* Temples dedicated to Tiamat often featured a trapped altar. These altars would hold a reservoir of dragon bile, which would pump it out through tiny holes drilled into the altar, dousing anything nearby.
==Types of Traps==
Many physical traps were possible:
* Booby traps were the simplest traps that used basic mechanical components. They were common and effective for their cost, finding use by kobolds, orcs, goblins, dwarves, and anyone else with little in the way of resources. They were most useful when used to gain some advantage in immediate combat, as they rarely had lasting effects or caused serious harm.
* Alarms caused a bell or similar device to produce a great amount of noise, alerting nearby defenders, but did nothing else to impede invaders.
* Pits used the simple force of gravity to cause a damaging fall. They were usually disguised with a collapsing floor or trapdoor that allowed the victim to walk into it unawares, but even an open pit could cause invaders to shy away, or simply let them be pushed in the old-fashioned way. The impact itself could harm or kill the victim, but secondary traps such as spikes at the bottom of the pit were popular. A pit could also be filled partway with water and then stocked with carnivorous fish or other creatures.
* Separation traps used a moving wall or gate to corral and separate groups of invaders. Once they entered, they could not leave, allowing them to be handled by defenders or a secondary trap system.
* Melee attack traps involved some direct harm being visited upon the target such as spikes or blades being thrust upon them. More elaborate "attacks" involved whole walls or ceilings moving to crush everything within a chamber, complex arrays of blades, and large boulders set rolling down a narrow hall.
* Ranged attack traps used missiles like darts, arrows, bolts, and spears launched from a distance. The simplest required manual reloading, but more advanced types used automatic mechanisms.
* Poison made an excellent addition to a trap, or a trap on its own. Spikes and darts could be envenomed for additional effect, while some contact poisons could be used to make something as innocuous as a doorknob a threat.
* Hobbling traps were designed to cause lasting impediment to the victim, usually by injuring their feet. These could be dedicated mechanical contrivances, or common hunting traps and caltrops that could be quickly deployed.
* Tripping traps aimed to simply lay the victim low for a moment. These could be tripwires, ball bearings, ropes, chains, or anything else that caused someone to lose balance and be at a disadvantage.
* Ensnaring traps used nets and snares that pinned the victims in place temporarily. The webs of giant spiders and similar creatures could also fulfill this role.
* Collapsing traps used an unstable natural or artificial ceiling, wall, column, or other architectural feature as the weapon, or a mass of similar heavy materials. When triggered, they would fall upon the victims, burying them in rocks, bricks, masonry, or timbers.
* Gas traps used poisons and toxic chemicals to fill a small space, causing choking, blindness, or suffocation. Burnt othur, ammonia, chlorine, and fluorine had uses in disabling or killing intruders.
* Dust traps used some kind of powder, sand, or other fine material to fill the air. These could temporarily blind someone by getting in their eyes, hang in the air and block lines of sight, or cause suffocation. They were most popular among creatures that did not depend solely on sight, such as grimlocks and dragons. They could also involve powdered toxins that worked on inhalation or skin contact.
* Light tricks were a sort of trap used to misdirect and lure foes. This involved a source of light such as a campfire or bonfire being set that implied the presence of people, such as a campsite. The fire-setters would await nearby, allowing potential threats such as bandits or monsters to be drawn in by the obvious light source and investigate the false camp. This allowed the fire-setters to plan an ambush or some other response.
* Flood traps involved sealing the invaders inside a chamber, then rapidly filling it up with water or some other drowning liquid.
* In addition to being used as lures into other traps, valuable or useful-seeming weapons could also be trapped directly. They could be given a contact poison on the handle, or have a more complex mechanical setup that caused it to disintegrate when used in a serious situation, or spring back and strike the wielder.
* Plants, fungi, and various molds that did not move or intentionally attack could make useful low-maintenance traps. Flora such as brown mold and green slime not only looked innocuous, but could easily slay an unprepared wanderer.
===Magical Traps===
Magic could greatly enhance other trap designs, or allow entirely new possibilities:
* The alarm spell provided a basic audible alert against intruders.
* Bone bite created a pair of razor-sharp jaws from bones or bone fragments, which could then be placed anywhere to act as jaw-traps.
* The clairaudience spell provided a basic sound trigger to traps.
* Detect evil and similar spells provided a proximity trigger to traps, ensuring they would only go off against intruders of an opposing alignment.
* Explosive runes hid an explosive trap inside a body of text, causing the reader to suffer immensely.
* Fire trap placed an explosive trap upon a container or door that detonated upon being opened.
* The glyph of warding created an adaptable basis for a powerful magical trap, whether a direct damaging blast or a more specialized spell effect.
* Guards and wards produced a variety of defensive magical effects that confused, obstructed, or harmed intruders.
* Powerful Illusion spells such as programmed illusion could lead intruders astray, wasting their time and tricking them into further traps. Even simple illusions such as illusory wall and silent image could create dangerous obfuscations.
* Leomund's trap made an object seem as if it were lethally trapped to magical and mundane senses, causing an intruder to waste time and resources dealing with it, or scaring them off.
* Mordenkainen's faithful hound provided a magical invisible guardian that defended an area.
* Snare caused a loop of rope or vine to tighten around any limb placed within it.
* Stone trap rendered or more of stone, such as boulders, invisible and then kept them levitated. Upon a specific phrase being uttered, or specific conditions being met, the stone would become freed from its mid-air location and turn visible as it fell. Some skilled dwarves would fashion false ceilings of smooth-finished stones for the purpose of this spell, even carving carved ornamentation like vault arches or gargoyle-heads to further sell the illusion. The spell was most often used above strategic areas, such as archways and vault doors.
* Symbol spells provided various deadly and incapacitating effects, including death, fear, weakness, stunning, sleep, persuasion, pain, insanity.
* Trap spellbook produced an effect similar to explosive runes, causing a large explosion upon anyone who opened an enspelled spellbook other than its owner.
* Trip caused a mundane object to hover slightly in position to trip a target that passed over it.
* The waves of exhaustion spell was commonly used as a trap in dragon lairs, usually enspelling two objects or areas that were opposite of each other in order to confuse and weaken treasure seekers.
* Cursed magical items could be intentionally left where looters could find them, allowing the intruders to pick them up and suffer the consequences.
Many magical traps used a discrete magical device, which could usually be re-used:
* A mirror of life trapping was a powerful magical item that could pull an unsuspecting victim into a demiplane.
* A net of entrapment or net of snaring could be used to entrap someone who passed nearby.
* A rug of smothering or rug of welcome could be used to restrain and smother an unwanted visitor.
* A sphere of annihilation could be left in a spot where intruders could stumble upon it unawares, and let its mere presence finish them off.
==Countering Traps==
===Trap Experts===
* Cunning rogues were often the most adept at identifying and disabling traps and devices. This also extended to many subtypes of rogues, such as cat burglars and fences (who needed to be wary of traps when inspecting merchandise).
* Many barbarians had an innate sense of when a hidden trap was ready to spring, giving them a decent chance of spotting a device early.
* Divine seekers, being priests skilled in the art of infiltration, were adept at identifying, disabling, and bypassing magical traps.
* Dwarves could have an innate sense for stone and stonework, which extended to identifying traps and other disguised features within masonry.
* Most earthchildren, specialty priests of Geb, possessed an expertise in identifying stonework traps, pits, and dead-falls comparable to that of dwarves.
* Many geometers possessed an innate sense for detecting magical traps based around glyphs, runes, sigils, symbols, and other forms of writing.
* Lorefinders were carefully trained to detect and evade the effects of magical traps based around glyphs, runes, sigils, symbols, and other forms of writing.
* Being trained in the art of infiltration, ninjas were typically experts at identifying and disarming hidden traps and devices.
* Pathfinders were skilled at recognizing natural traps, allowing one to avoid them, but had no expertise when it came to man-made traps.
* Some rock gnomes were adept at disabling even the most complex of magical or mechanical traps.
* Most scouts were comparably as proficient as rogues when it came to identifying and disabling traps, though their skills were often limited to outdoor traps, such as deadfalls, pits, and snares.
* Many Sembian warriors were skilled at avoiding traps.
===Mechanical Tools===
* Once located, many types of traps could be disabled by brute force. Even the least educated warrior could manage jamming or breaking mechanisms and blocking firing-holes.
* A 10-foot pole was a vital tool that could be used to prod and poke at suspected traps from a safe (or safer) distance.
* Thieves' tools made up a set of handy tools used to bypass or disable devices such as locks and traps. These typically included lockpicks, files, scissors, pliers, and a small mirror.
===Magical Tools===
* Analyze contraption could be used to analyze mechanical traps.
* Detect evil and similar spells could potentially locate traps that radiated an alignment.
* Detect snares and pits could find the presence of very simple mechanical traps, pits, snares created by animals (such as giant spider webs), and naturally hazardous areas like quicksand or unstable rock walls.
* Find traps could be used to find magical and mechanical traps, but not naturally or accidentally occurring hazards.
* Dispel magic could be used to temporarily or permanently disable a magical trap.
* Probing arm could be used to reach far ahead and spring traps from a safe distance.
* Reverse flow and similar spells could be used to mitigate water traps.
* Ruby ray of reversal could be used to trigger any magical or merchanical trap from a distance, though required the caster to be aware of the trap.
* Suppress glyph allowed a caster to read enspelled writing without triggering their effect.
* The talisman of Zagy grew warm and throbbed when passing near mechanical or magical traps.
* A trapmaster's hood provided its wearer an enhanced sense of sight, allowing them to see the most intricate details of traps.
* A wand of secret door and trap location pulsed when within a short distance of hidden doors or traps.
===Psionic Tools===
* Danger sense granted a psionicist a second-sense to alert them of traps, giving a greater chance to evade danger.
==Appendix==
===Behind the Scenes===
Traps are used in the context of Dungeons & Dragons as a means of elaborating on the standard gameplay of exploration and combat. Hidden traps encourage players to be more cautious while draining resources, such as time, hit points, spells, or tools, and can encourage or dissuade certain courses of action.
===Gallery===
Catapult Trap Dungeonscape.jpg|A novel adventurer-launching trap.
Machinery Dungeonscape.png|Complex mechanical traps and other devices required extensive gear assemblies.
Trap Detection Dungeonscape.png|Dungeons often contained deadly mechanical traps.
Pit trap Tomb of Horrors.webp|Acererak's classic pit full of spikes.
Koboldtrap.png|A group of kobolds prepare to unleash their crate trap.
Trap DMG14.png|A wizard attempts to bypass a trap.
===References===
Category:Mechanical devices