For some reason, DMs love putting traps in their adventures. I’m unsure exactly what that reason is. It probably differs from person to person. Some DMs like challenging their players; forcing them to think rather than just hack’n’slash their way through monsters. Some just want to give something for the thief of the party to do. (Remember, the Thief wasn’t included in the original D&D game!) And some just like seeing their players’ characters die in the most gruesome ways possible. Traps. Something for every DM!
A recent release from “Jester” David Gibson of 5-Minute Workday, Traps, offers a selection of 22 new traps with which to kill – I mean entertain – your players. The traps aren’t original – as I’ve seen most in previous editions – but that’s not important. What’s important is that they’re now presented in the 5th edition style, so that they’re easily included in your campaign. Traps takes an extremely professional approach to the descriptions and mechanics of the traps. The results are fantastic: it’s an excellent selection and the traps are extremely well described. The traps are entertaining to use and provide some real perils for the players.
You’ve got the classic crushing wall traps. Corridors that contain poison gas (in a manner that makes sense!) Necromantic skulls. Gravity reversal rooms. The collection covers both mundane and magical traps, and they’re all interesting.
Although there are a couple of phrasing errors in the text, for the most part it is very well edited. The traps do lack an indication of what levels you should use them for, but – unless you want to have a very short-lived campaign – I wouldn’t suggest using some of them with first-level characters without modifications to the damage dice. 6d6 damage, save for half? Yes, that’d wipe out most of a first-level party!
I’m particularly pleased that not all of the traps can be found by Wisdom (Perception) checks; some have their triggering mechanisms better concealed and require Intelligence (Investigation) checks; there aren’t any traps that require Intelligence (Arcana) checks, although detect magic spells can prove of assistance.
This is an excellent product, well worth its extremely low cover price. Traps. They’re how the discerning DM proves to their players that they care!