I’ve written about puzzles and traps before. Your challenges don’t have to be elaborate for your players to enjoy solving them. Keep in mind that just figuring out the “rules” of a room or particular trap is part of the puzzle.

Categories

1. Tricks
2. Traps
3. Puzzles
4. Predicaments

Bonus

Tricks

1. Passing thru a door without speaking the password teleports you randomly to… (1d6: 1=the entrance; 2=a trap; 3=a random room; 4=the previous room; 5=a ledge over the current room; 6=the next room, as expected). The password is the name of the god of the temple. Roll for each character passing thru.
2. A zipline (or crumbling bridge) allows heroes to cross a gap but offers no way back. The only way out is forward.
3. A treasure (marble or some other beautiful stone; but not sovereign material) gets heavier the closer it gets to the entrance/exit of the dungeon (but back to normal as it goes away from the entrance/exit either deeper into the dungeon again or away from it, if the heroes manage to drag the extremely heavy thing past the exit).
4. When the characters touch an idol, gravity flips, and they fall to the (18-foot) ceiling. They must now navigate the dungeon by walking on the ceiling. (Or they must touch the idol again, except it’s fixed in place, 12 feet above their heads.)
5. When the heroes pass thru & close a door, it disappears. Anyone on the other side sees it & can open it, but there is just plain wall on the inside. It may have been spiked open when they find it.
6. Stepping thru a large mirror leads to a mirror-image version of the dungeon. Even words there are backwards. There’s no exit, however; the only way out is back thru the mirror.*

* If you like, the mirror could be moved out of the dungeon and will mirror any structure it’s placed in, altho the size of the pocket dimension is limited to, say, 100×100 feet.

Traps

1. The door closes and locks, and 3 hungry rust monsters scuttle out of burrows to munch the heroes’ armor and weapons. The door’s hinges are on the outside, and the metal door knob and lock are covered with a hinged wood cover. A rust monster’s antenna can destroy the knob and lock up to an hour after death.
2. The floor is smooth flagstone. A powerful magnet drags armor-clad characters toward it across the slippery floor toward a dark pool of swirling liquid….
3. The floor is smooth, damp marble. A long hallway has a slight slope, causing all to roll each round or fall and start sliding. Save vs dexterity to stop. If you hit the end, take 1d4 hp damage per round you’ve been sliding.
4. When a certain item is touched, a section of wall and floor rotates, putting the characters in the adjacent room with no obvious way to activate the wall again.
5. The characters enter at the bottom of a tall room and proceed up stairs to the top. But a trigger causes the room to quickly fill partway with water, trapping them at the top.
6. A character who touches a painting/tapestry is transported into the pocket dimension it depicts with no obvious way out.

Puzzles

1. The heroes find themselves on a ledge, A, at the top of a huge cavern. Two ziplines go to ledges B and C. Ziplines from B go to D and E. Ziplines from C go to F and E. Ziplines from D go to F and G. Ziplines from F go to E and the exit at the bottom. E and G have no ziplines and are still 25 feet from the floor of the cavern. It’s possible to climb from ledge to ledge, but dangerous. [Go from A to C to F to the exit.]
2. A treasure is protected against all attempts to remove it as long as light is touching it. If in darkness, it can easily be taken.
3. In the course of the adventure, the heroes find a brass key, an iron key, and a silver key, which correspond the brass, iron, and silver locks on a vault door.
4. A mirror reflects things just as they are, except that a key the heroes need appears in the reflection but not real life. Grasping it while looking at it in the reflection enables the character to hold it in real life and carry it away to be used.
5. To open a door, items must be arranged as they are depicted in a mural on the wall.
6. Several paintings depict various rooms, one of which depicts the treasure. If one is touched, the character is transported into a pocket dimension of the scene, where he or she can take the treasure (if it’s in that one). But on its wall are different rooms, which have their own paintings… only one of which has a painting of the real world.

Predicaments

1. The treasure consists of many valuable–and fragile–glass goblets, all sitting out on shelves and pedestals.
2. Opening a door carved with intricate fiendish designs causes 1 hp of necrotic damage to the opener–for nearly every door in the dungeon.
3. The heroes must use barrels and crates to build steps to reach a trap door on the ceiling that once had a ladder.
4. A treasure lies in a clear but rather deep pool. The heroes could dive for it, try to hook it with a grappling hook, or find a control that will drain the pool.
5. The key you need is deep inside a niche that is very hot. Grabbing it with your hand would cause 1d4+2 hp damage or, with gloves, 2 hp.
6. A cavern once had a bridge over the crevice, but the bridge is in ruins now.

Bonus

A treasure (or key to a vault) the heroes want appears in the middle of a giant, spring-loaded contraption like a giant bear trap. Simply walking in would touch a pressure plate, triggering the trap to snap closed and lop off the hero’s head. The heroes can try to lasso the object, grab it while hanging from the ceiling, etc.