Fun with Concealed Pit Traps

1. Pit o' Confusion. Getting your friend out of a hole when he is affected by Confusion is quite difficult, and often amusing, especially when someone else climbs in to help him out

2. Aerial Servant or Invis. Stalker lurks in pit, charged with throwing any who manage to climb out back in again, unless destroyed or Dispelled

3. Floor of pit coated with incredibly sticky, viscous glue (like modern rat trap). Victim can possibly disrobe or remove armor to escape, but the stuff stays in the hole

4. Pit surfaces coated with harmless but smelly bio-luminescent fungus which proves very difficult to wipe off

5. Magicked with Illusion that Pit is Bottomless, but only those falling in are affected. "Malengar, quit fooling around down there! Stop screaming and grab this rope! What the hell is wrong with you?"

6. Floor of Pit littered with large, spore-filled, psychoactive Puffball Shrooms

7. Pit filled with Mild Acid. Causes redness and extreme itching for several turns (penalty to AC, etc), slowly dissolves organic materials like leather, wood, clothing, etc. Does not cause HP damage or corrode metals

8. Classic Spiked Walls begin to close in, then suddenly halt with a loud snapping/grinding sound. As soon as victim sighs in relief, the spikes launch from the walls like crossbow bolts

9. Pit filled with a cloud of denser-than-air, vision-obscuring Sleep Gas. Think about it...

10. Floor of Pit is a single pressure plate, which violently launches the floor (a column of stone) upward if anything falls onto it, smashing said anything against the ceiling above the Pit area. Then, it either slowly descends back into the Pit, revealing whatever it has pulped on its way back down, OR it does not reset, leaving anything it has smashed stuck between the pressure plate and the ceiling, and also blocking off further passage down the corridor

11. Tiny holes along bottom rim of the pit release a creeping mass of flesh-devouring beetles, which flow over any fallen victims, and then rapidly climb up the walls of the pit, seeking further meals

12. Pit is actually in the ceiling above the indicated spot, and pulls victim upward via Magnetism or Reverse Gravity. Once victim has "fallen" upwards and taken damage, this effect ceases, and what went up... must come back down!

13. Oddly, Pit contains a rusty but relatively sturdy escape ladder bolted to one wall. The third rung is trapped to cause a second trapdoor in the ceiling above the pit to open, filling the pit with rocks, bits of ruined armor, broken blades, and other misc. dungeon debris

14. A series of horizontal panes of glass stretch from wall to wall, each a few feet below the previous one. Anyone falling in smashes through each successive pane, eventually ending up on the stone floor covered in shards of broken glass. Its really noisy, too

15. Floor of Pit littered with snap-jaw Bear traps, each chained to the floor. Requires multiple Saves. Also very noisy

16. Contact with floor of Pit Teleports victim to a spot 10' above the Pit opening. "Aaaah!" Thud. Zap! "Aaaah!" Thud. Zap! "Aaaah!"...

17. Bottom of Pit filled with 10' deep mess of metal-flake "glitter". Falling in does no damage, but does cause a sparkly cloud to coat everything within 5' of the opening, and anyone struggling to get out begins to sink in the stuff, which is apparently an inappropriately festive form of quicksand

18. Floor is single metal plate. Each of the walls is normal stone for the first one foot above the floor. Thereafter, up to the opening of the Pit, the walls are covered with metal plates. The floor is negatively charged... and yeah, the walls are positively charged

19. There is a Secret Door in one of the Pit walls. Behind it is (d4) 1. A stairway leading up to a second concealed trapdoor not far from the pit opening, 2. a closet filled with malevolent Skeletons, 3. a small room containing a long-dead adventurer, still clutching whatever treasure he managed to pilfer before dying alone in this hole, 4. an unmapped shaft &/or slide which eventually opens into a concealed trapdoor in the ceiling of a room on the next dungeon level down

20. Your own idea, or a second Random Pit Table you yoinked from some other RPG blog; I'm all out of fun holes