In game puzzle help needed!

[Kramer]

Hi all! I need your collective knowledge. 

I'm playing a narrative skirmish campaign with my girlfriend. Her first mini game, my first time GM'ing a game. Game one was great fun, Game two will be tomorrow and the result of that will we end up in a dungeon. 

I would love to get some puzzling in there to avoid traps & combats or to gain rewards. So ideas for beginner players and GM's needed!

Context: 
Solutions can't be lore based as she has no knowledge.
The dungeon will be inhabited by Skaven.
I have enough dungeon walls to fill a 4 x 4 table. 
I have this weird alter with a sword on it I would love to use. Excalibur-esque. 
I'd love to get some portal like puzzles in there. 
She's playing a warband with a: Stormcast sequiter, Protector, Zyphyros, Raptor, castigator, gryph-hound and a aether wing. 

Puzzles I already have:
- After 1 or 2 locked doors she finds a door with in Skaven talk-squeek the instruction that the door only opens if you ring the bell next to it. Of course the door is simply unlocked and the bell is the trap. If she falls for it she will ring the bell and alert an ambush. 
- Classic items on Ice. 3 crates, give one a push and it will keep going until it hits something. Only works by pushing the crates in the right order.
- A silly riddle by some sort of Guardian. Get it right get an item, get it wrong get a fight.
 

[Maturin]

How about :

 

[Maturin]

It's called a Tower of Hanoï. You could easily replicate or buy one

[Kramer]

5 minutes ago, Maturin said:

It's called a Tower of Hanoï. You could easily replicate or buy one

Yeah we have one of those, so she sadly knows that one! Good shout though! 

I might have one of those japanese shape puzzles lying around. This is a good line of thought though! Thanks!

[Khaedhras]

54 minutes ago, Kramer said:

I have this weird alter with a sword on it I would love to use. Excalibur-esque. 

Hello there! Long-time D&D/Pathfinder GM here. LOVE this topic! 

I have an idea for your your altar, derived from something that I read a long time ago and that I adapted for one of my games with great success. English is not my first language, so let's see if I can explain it properly - please, don't hesitate to ask for clarifications! Warning: wall of text incoming!

Granted, a magical sword sitting in a dungeon is a bit of a cliché, but for a reason: it is an idea that works well with fantasy tropes, specially in high fantasy as that coming from AoS. Let's make this particular sword magical by recurring to yet another cliché: the table will have an inscription in High Azyrian runes, describing that "The <Stormheart Blade> will only be wielded by the brave souls who weather the storm, and will only serve those who value knowledge before strength" (you can replace the <name> as fitting).

Obviously, the Skaven in the dungeon have tried to take the sword and have failed in doing so: the ceiling has zapped with lightning every single one of them that has tried to take the sword, so in fear, they have left the chamber alone for the most part. If your player has the chance of interrogating an Skaven on the way to the chamber, all the better, you can give her the particular bit of information. Otherwise, make sure to describe "a spike surging from the center of the ceiling in the room" and the "burned, charred remains of a several dozen or more Skaven-like skeletons dispersed around the borders of the room" when she enters the room.

And then, the fun begins. If one of the characters controlled by your player grabs the hilt of the sword, the spike in the ceiling will begin to crackle with lightning. Immediately, the walls of the room will flare up and glow with shifting blue runes in High Azyrian, and the entrances to the room will shut close. She can also notice that one of the runes burns with a flaming white instead of blue. There are some optional trap mechanisms that you can use to build tension:

• If she decides to let go of the sword, then the runes will disappear and the ceiling will stop the lightning, but the doors will remain magically sealed. The lightning and runes will come back as soon as she grabs the sword again.
• If she decides to try to read the runes in the walls before proceeding with unsheathing the sword, it will seem that some parts of the text are permanently changing, or it may well look like there are gaps to fill in the ever-changing text. It will seem familiar though, like if it would be easy enough to decipher. It's actually a curse, a protection mechanism. The characters who try to decipher the wall of text directly,  with the sword in its place, will become entranced by the text and will be infinitely reading it, their minds trapped in the effort of the impossible decipher. It will seem that it's always close to making sense, but then four of the runes will randomly change, and the meaning will change with it. The white rune will never change, though. Since it's a trap, it is impossible to stop reading the text whatsoever, independently of hunger or thirst: the character is trapped in an infinite reading loop until death.

When she finally unsheathes the sword, the crackle in the ceiling will start to build up, and the room will look close to booming with lightning that will fry everything inside. This is where the skaven failed in taking the sword - their cowardly nature made them drop the sword, which causes the lightning to explode and disintegrate everything (the sword returns to its resting place automatically). The solution is to use the sword as a lightning rod, and catch the lightning inside. You can urge her to hold the grip of the sword in several manners ("you feel your inner courage build up, tensing your grip on the sword", or "the metal of the sword shines briefly, reacting to the lightning above - you see a faint glow coming from the blade, a hint of runes shining on its interior").

As soon as she raises the sword, the lightning will be absorbed by the blade, which will then shine with the radiance of the lightning. Blazing white runes will span the length of the blade as well, and the white rune on the wall will begin to pulse. Touching the rune with the sword will rearrange all the runes in the wall into a coherent text, and if any of the characters is still trapped in the never-ending decipher curse, it will be lifted and they will come back to their senses. You can use the now-coherent text to provide her with lore of the setting ("Here lies the sword of... <relevant character from the past who may or may not return>") or with a prophecy/plot hook for the campaign ("<The full moon behind the Mountains of Laerthia will show the path to the Hidden Gate. Await the Children of the Stars in the carcass of the dead god before your rendezvous with destiny...>"). She can either read it aloud or directly hear it in the mind of the characters with the holographic projection and voice of a long-time-gone sage.

And of course, the sword is a magical artefact that she can keep for her way going forward (<the four runes recharge automatically every day, and she can spend them each one to cause the same or different effects such as lightning damage / lightning chains / lightning rod>). You can use the effects as a component for other puzzles as well (<dead "battery" on a Penumbral Engine mechanism? Hypercharged 4-runes-at-once Stormheart Blade to the core>).

Again, you can replace the texts within <lore/plot/effects> as fitting. Afterwards, the doors open with a "clang" sound, and she may go on her adventure. And, that's all I guess  

TL;DR: Magic altar with sword. The ceiling fills of lightning. Turn the sword into a lightning rod or go the KFC way. Use the magically charged sword to read spooky wall of runes. Leave with sword, stick Skavens with it.

[Kramer]

33 minutes ago, Khaedhras said:

TL;DR: Magic altar with sword. The ceiling fills of lightning. Turn the sword into a lightning rod or go the KFC way. Use the magically charged sword to read spooky wall of runes. Leave with sword, stick Skavens with it.

Haha love it. Thanks so much. 

[Khaedhras]

1 hour ago, Kramer said:

Haha love it. Thanks so much. 

A pleasure to help! If you finally go with something inspired on that, I'd love to hear how it went   

[EccentricCircle]

There is a concept in 3rd edition D&D called the encounter trap, which doesn't come up very much in more recent versions, but which adapts well to skirmish gaming type concepts. Essentially it is a trap which rather than just triggering and then being over, plays out as a small skirmish. The concept works along the same principles that Khaedhras described above, but as a more general template which can be modified and adapted.

Most involve either being trapped in a room with hazards, or having to cross or evade that sort of space. The trap has an attack action of some sort, which acts as a combatant in the fight. Points of attack can be broken to reduce the damage, or the number or effectiveness of attacks. The trap then has some sort of mechanism which has to be located, disabled, destroyed etc. It can get worse the longer it takes the players to find the trigger, such as the classic room filling with sand.

Many magical and mechanical traps in D&D are precisely the sort of thing that the skaven would build to defend their dungeons, so can easily fit the theme of what you are thinking. Clearly some adaptation is needed to convert to warhammer mechanics, but the general principles are the same. Here is  a whole list of basic traps from D&D https://www.d20srd.org/indexes/traps.htm.

Encounter traps specifically aren't in the free open source material, but are detailed in the Dungeonscape book for 3.5 ed primarily, with a few showing up in other places.

[Kramer]

Thanks @EccentricCircle! I;ll have a look at the link as soon as I get home (Y)

 

[JPjr]

You could have a room occupied by just a really disgusting, smelly troll with bits of half-eaten yet half-alive food writhing and wriggling in its moss beard, and when she tries to edge past it it starts asking her riddles like, "so where's your boyfriend?" & "if you're really into Warhammer why don't you tell me all about Malal then?" and then mocks her for being Stormcast who are "clearly trash for noobs".

The trick is though all she has to do is look it in the eye and talk back to it and it will slink back utterly defeated into its troll hole to write nasty things on its cave wall about her.

[JackStreicher]

1: Implement runes she has to put into the right order (3tries) and place hints within the room (on dead dwarves or explorers and the likes).

2: If she likes math: A physical Formular she has to solve (maybe calculating how much weight has to be put on a trigger). That‘d be a clan skyre riddle

3: positioning riddle. There are some hints as to what you need to do: there‘re three spots and each spot needs to be occupied by something special: one needs electricity. One needs metal (she loses an item), one needs a feather. And she needs to figure it out within 4 turns of moving for example.

[Kramer]

23 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

1: Implement runes she has to put into the right order (3tries) and place hints within the room (on dead dwarves or explorers and the likes).

2: If she likes math: A physical Formular she has to solve (maybe calculating how much weight has to be put on a trigger). That‘d be a clan skyre riddle

3: positioning riddle. There are some hints as to what you need to do: there‘re three spots and each spot needs to be occupied by something special: one needs electricity. One needs metal (she loses an item), one needs a feather. And she needs to figure it out within 4 turns of moving for example.

1. Like it, I'll see if I can think of something fun with this. 

2. Love it, i'll make it a padlock of sorts. The more grounded it is, the easier she'll recognise it. i'll put part of the sums somewhere so she'll assume she has the answer. But you only get to the right answer (definitely is going to be 13) if you check all rooms first. 

3. Already doing it! Classic 2 button door situations. With the buttons in different rooms, that only activate with the right warrior on them. As soon as she is on two of them, the door opens, with another button behind it. That one holds open the door on it's own. But it also triggers an ambush. Setting up the distances in such a way that if she rolls high on her run and her charge she can get support on the second turn, otherwise the forward warrior has to survive 3 turns on her own. 

Edited April 5, 2020 by Kramer

[Kramer]

Thanks to everybody's help!  So I'm doing one puzzle a level to keep it light, starting saturday. 
1. two buttons that need to be pressed at the same time. (forces her to split the party and she is betrayed by the darkling coven warriors seemed allies)
2. frictionless ice puzzle. 
3. Riddle monster. 
4. Portal puzzle (that 'accidentally' means she breaks into 'a' silver tower.)

Therefor I also bought Portal 2 for research purposes... Why does that sound dirty 🤔😂

Then went through the first 10 missions without thinking, and didn't really get the inspiration I needed. I'll watch a tutorial of them on YouTube. 

Also found 6 Necron Flayers my dad bought ages ago. So if anyone has some fun dungeon stalker rules for them, bring it on.  

Edited April 8, 2020 by Kramer