Hazards can be improved by creatures, maybe by expanding a canyon or filling a moat with alligators, but there is typically a lack in purposeful damage. Traps are specifically different from hazards in that traps are often purposefully designed to thwart other creatures, while hazards are typically naturally forming.
When I’m talking about traps, I’m talking about situations where the party might suffer a setback, damage, or to ward an area. This post is going to be aimed at talking about traps, their deadliness, as well as provide a few of my own traps I’ve made at the end of it all. Each trap I placed was based on the party’s skills and abilities, making the party have to work together to solve or avoid it. Not every trap I’ve thrown at my party has even been about hurting them, though one day a character is going to get really hurt when my sphere of annihilation trap finally works. There are common pitfalls (see what I did there?) when it comes to creating traps, like making the traps too hard for your table to overcome or that can kill a full-hit point, raging barbarian in a single hit. Unfortunately, I don’t feel as if the Dungeon Master’s Guide (2014) provides enough guidance on traps and their presence in an encounter, in a hallway, or at the table. If you make it almost invisible, than you were unfair to your players as you never gave them a chance to defeat it. If you make a trap to obvious to your players, than it’s not really a trap. Not just in their design, but also in their execution. As the GM, I’m responsible for deciding the DC and I can feel the pressure of cranking it up to ‘protect’ my trap, but also wanting to make it low enough that my players won’t feel like they are just being screwed by me. On the other hand, it’s not fun for the players if they had no chance in defeating the trap and they just get smashed by a fallen tree in the middle of a temple with no warning or preamble. On one hand, I don’t want my party to find it so I get to watch my Super Original, Top Tier trap go off. The biggest struggle I face when creating traps is setting the DC to notice it. Header Art: Dungeon Master’s Guide by Wizards of the Coast
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