So, for your viewing pleasure, I have two knee-slapping side-splitters for you to read. One about a great sword wielding fighter, and the other the last hurrah of Lazlo, our beloved "what if 007 was in a fantasy world" rogue. I post these stories to remind you, the reader, to always be careful of traps. Seriously, us DMs will sprinkle them everywhere, and sometimes liberally. I mean, who else wanted to make spinning blades on the floor combined with spears from the ceiling and fire spurts from the walls? That has to be about 4d4+1d6+12 damage at the most basic (maximum of 34 damage, enough to kill off squishier characters). Or, better yet, how about the activation of that trap alerts the Hobgoblins in the next room that there are invaders, and now both your rogue and wizard are down? Yeah, hero-kebabs for dinner for that troupe of Hobgoblins!
We begin with the fighter. Now, this was on Neverwinter Night's server-based games, and I logged onto a server and explored a bit, after a while, I was invited to tank for a party, and to be close-range DPS, to which I happily obliged. We went to raid an Orc cave, and those are nasty, dirty, wet holes, filled with ends of worms and that oozy smell that hobbit holes don't have. So we fight our way down two levels if I remember, and the end of our quest lay before us, however, the chieftan also was before us. The party bit off more than it could chew, and soon it was just me and the chieftan. And in that battle of man versus food... I mean... man versus orc, MAN WON! The rest of the party comes back and of course they claim I can get first pickings, leading me to walk forward towards the chest, and into a trap. POOF! Suddenly my fighter turned to stone, and the wonderful adventuring party took the loot and left. Well, at least the Orcs got some wonderful modern art, Blundering Fighter in Trap.
BTW, that's an image from the actual story
And now, we come to the second story today: just what in the Nine Hells of Baator did happen to Lazlo? Well our adventure brings us back quite a few sessions, back where we had to bring back stolen riches to a Gnomish town, stolen by a woman simply called the Gold Lady. We ambushed a gang of gnomes stealing from the town (called the Underpants Gnomes by the way), who lead us to the lair. well we easily find her throne room, and discover that the Gold Lady is a halfling. Well Ollie, whom you might remember as the Halfling cleric of Olidammara, and was immediately infatuated. He began walking forward, utilizing his Charisma score in hopes of putting his tithe into her temple, if you catch my drift. Well, being a rogue, I immediately detected a trap, and ran forward to stop Ollie from blundering into a trap. Well, Lazlo was right, it was a trap, which also included where he was standing, dropping both the cleric and the rogue into a pool of acid.
Which also included Acid Sharks with the fricken laser beams attached to
their heads.... okay okay, there were no sharks
While Ollie fought and struggled to stay alive, the moment Lazlo touched the acid, well, he was done for the evening. There was no way he was coming back, as the acid ate away at his equipment, his charmed rapier, and his body. There was no Lazlo to reclaim and ressurect. I think I forgot to mention that what happened there was almost a full party wipe. After a fight with a Delver at the end of a chase sequence (led by the ghosts of Ollie and Lazlo, so we weren't completely out of the picture), the fighter, Krusk, was killed. Only Boots the monk and Kal the Wizard survived. However, it was a very fun session, and I got to harm the Delver form the insides. And then the next iteration of the party had to help the Gold Lady bring her tiefling niece to the Gray Elf City for the fate of the world.
So there are my two barging in stories and about falling into traps. Just like the title of this post, it's best just to not barge into a dungeon, the traps are more likely to kill you than the monsters. Play it cool, let the rogue check for traps, but even the, don't barge in. A good DM knows that, if a rogue succeeds on a search check for traps, and there are no traps in that area, to say "you don't think there are any traps." So cautiously go forth, best to put the Tank at the front, to soak up any damage, or, better yet, have them poke around just in case the rogue was wrong, and there are traps. Don't expect to have the monsters trip them, they probably know the traps are there, and won't activate them, or use them to their advantage.
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