Morgrim's Traps and encounters - Part 3 #

From the Dread Lord Morgrim's tome of Phylactery Defence comes advice for devious traps for any prospective Lich, Demon or Dungeon Master. Perhaps these inspire deadlier traps still.

The Load-bearing wand of wishing #

In the center of the room is a wand of wishing(you may wish to call it a staff if needed). This is wedged in between a low ceiling and the floor. There should be an obvious tell that something is fishy about it, maybe the ceiling is cracked or looks compromised. It should also be reasonably hard to unwedge the wand. I would also make sure the players know it is a wand of wishing. If the ceiling crumbles on them, they will take 16D6 damage. With my players they evaded this by using an immovable rod to keep the ceiling intact.

Attuning with the wand of wishing reveals that it has 1 charge(because Wishes are way too powerful) and a curse that mandates wishes are 3 words long. Such as "I wish for X Y Z" where X, Y and Z are the 3 words. This allows the DM to be quite mischievous about how the wish resolves.

Chuul-based traps #

A note on Chuuls #

Firstly lets briefly go over the Chuul before we talk about traps and encounters with them. They have a low intelligence and average wisdom, so they have basic survival instincts, though their low intelligence means they are not very tactical. Additionally, the block of lore tells us they are in service of the old Abeloth Empire and are often gathering and protecting magical artifacts.

Their general tactics when they are within 10ft of players is to use their multiattack pincers to attack people. These have a special trait that autograpples people whenever they are hit, lowering their movement to 0ft. It is important that you attack from 10ft away as this ensures they have no movement, and as most melee weapons a player will use, has a range of 5ft, so in terms of action economy, they will have a forced action to try and escape the grapple, which for players with low strength and dexterity scores is rather difficult. Secondly, whenever a player is grappled, the Chuul may make an additional attack on top of regular multiattack rules, to use their tentacles. This is a DC 13 Constitution saving throw and on a failure they are paralysed for 1 minute(10 combat turns) unless they are healed to remove Paralysis. This is rather hard to make pass when the party has a Paladin which was the case for me. There was a particularly strong time to use it, which was when the Cleric was using Spirit Guardians, as this Paralysis means they are incapacitated.

As a general note for other DMs, if your Cleric is spamming Spirit Guardians every fight(or you have a problem Wizard, Sorcerer or other magician), consider deploying creatures that incapacitate players in some way. Paralysis-poison coated weapons, bows etc.

Finally, Chuuls have innate non-magical magic detection. The stat block states that it's 120ft. In effect, this means they are good choices as a wandering monster if the party has magic gear, and it should be hard to hide from them when you are using magic gear. If you are using this, I'd say it's worthwhile giving the players a clue about this, say in a scroll, because it's a much more subtle thing.

The Chuul-lava corridor #

When walking down a corridor, a pressure plate is clicked, closing walls in around the pressure plate and opening walls to the left and right of the player. To the left some 15-20ft is slow moving lava creeping into the room 5ft per combat round that would deal 10d10 damage. To the right, there is a Chuul, and behind that Chuul is a lever to open the doors back to the main corridor and block off the lava. I would generally rule these doors can be broken down by teammates, but if they do so and the lava creeps out, they will have to contend with lava blocking the corridor.

What makes this trap so devious is grappling and paralysis. I would be very diligent and careful about using this trap as lava has the potential to kill characters like this.

The sleeping Chuuls guarding the gate #

4-6 Chuul sleeping by a waterway in a room with 2 levers. On the left is a bunch of water, on the right is a pit with gear mechanisms below. On the far right is a lever and on the far left is another lever. One is a brake mechanism for the gears, and the other is a rotating mechanism for the floor. In the floor are 2 channels that initial do not connect the water to the pit, but once rotated by a lever, connects it to the pit. The water then spins some wheels that turn the gears which either make a very loud noise if the brake is on, or a little noise if they aren't on.

In the water are 4-6 Chuuls(depending on how vicious you want to be, and how much time you have). These are by default sleeping, UNLESS: a player with magical items comes 5ft away from them, OR, the brakes are still on and make loads of noise, OR the players attack them, or other reasonable sources of noise.

Pit traps #

The Pit with mashy ceilings #

This is a simple corridor, with a 15ft wide and long pit, with lava falls on either side of the pit. There is a door on the north and south side of the room and small platforms on either side. Opening the south door, makes the north platform's ceiling smash in on the floor. Opening the north door makes the south platform's ceiling smash in on the floor. Throwing flammable ropes or failing an athletics or acrobatics check allows you to either make them start slipping into the pit, or to catch fire from slightly touching the lava(5d10 damage?).

The idea here is to make crossing the pit dangerous, and to make excessive caution with 1 player opening the door on the north side and players sitting on the south side inadvisable.

Lever platform over a pit to the Abyss #

A very simple room, where there is a perfectly level platform with a lever on it some 20-25ft away from the players. Ropes, fishing rods, magic hands etc are useful here to activate the lever. On both sides of the room are other doors made of wood that are more red herrings. One leads straight into lava, so if you're smashing open doors your weapon(or yourself) are damaged by the lava. The other has broken up stairs leading to a chest mimic.

A note on Acid Damage #

As the Mimic bite inflicts acid damage, I have made more of a homebrew rule that acid damage makes an equipped item of the player's choosing get a -1 modifier. Any item that becomes -3 disintegrates from being corroded.

A magical field of Darkness #

This is more or less just a custom thing I ran for this floor. This COMPLETELY negates Darkvision, and requires torches, lanterns and other light spells or sources of light. I think this was a good change of pace as Darkvision is way too powerful and lets the players not really have to care about their resources.

In future games of D&D 5e I run, I will probably ban innate Darkvision on player races.

Conclusion #

This concludes the third part of Morgrim's everlasting miserable defences of doom.

Send all complaints of failed traps to "1, Dungeon of almost certain Doom and Misery, City of Yendor, M1S-3RY".

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Published on 2026/02/16

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