TOPIC: Puzzle rooms with treasure....or not

Nimble wrote: There was a panel on the wall that effectively said "use the silverware to spell a word," and that's about it.

There was a Rogue box "on the table". I finished the box and took the clue. The clue card literally read:

"The sign on the wall is probably important."

If that wasn't bad enough, there were no other clues in the room to suggest what it was you were supposed to be spelling out. It turns out that the DM was supposed to tell you that the chains holding you to the table and each other were "enchanted."

I recall said puzzle. The plaque on the wall didn't even suggest making a word (I forget what it said). The box clue was to get you to notice that each letter on that plaque was made with three strokes. Three stokes versus your three utensils - probably you need to make a phrase.

That's as far as I can defend it, though, because I also had an unhelpful DM first time through too. Even if I had had one that remembered to give the clue, I doubt I would have picked up on it.

sarielv wrote:

Nimble wrote: There was a panel on the wall that effectively said "use the silverware to spell a word," and that's about it.

There was a Rogue box "on the table". I finished the box and took the clue. The clue card literally read:

"The sign on the wall is probably important."

If that wasn't bad enough, there were no other clues in the room to suggest what it was you were supposed to be spelling out. It turns out that the DM was supposed to tell you that the chains holding you to the table and each other were "enchanted."

I recall said puzzle. The plaque on the wall didn't even suggest making a word (I forget what it said). The box clue was to get you to notice that each letter on that plaque was made with three strokes. Three stokes versus your three utensils - probably you need to make a phrase.

That's as far as I can defend it, though, because I also had an unhelpful DM first time through too. Even if I had had one that remembered to give the clue, I doubt I would have picked up on it.

I still have nightmares about that room!

I think we spelled "disenchant", and the expected response was "unenchant" or something like that.

Maybe it's just the greedy player in me talking, but I personally think any means of solving a puzzle should be considered legit, even if that means a party completely kits out to defeat it. Making equipment available, and then claiming it useless or automatically fails because 'reasons', is highly unfair and calls into question what exactly was the point of having those tokens in the first place. The lava boots are the perfect example of this, but there are other methods of crossing that ignored the stepping stones; consider the Fizzy Lifting Pack, or fire damage resistance + removing the need to breathe to swim across. I mentioned using Speak with Dead in another thread. One of the vets even brought that corpse back to life; if the dude could then supply a clue or the answer to that puzzle, I don't see that sidestepping the 'expected' method of solving the problem means that the puzzle wasn't defeated.

sarielv wrote: Maybe it's just the greedy player in me talking, but I personally think any means of solving a puzzle should be considered legit, even if that means a party completely kits out to defeat it. Making equipment available, and then claiming it useless or automatically fails because 'reasons', is highly unfair and calls into question what exactly was the point of having those tokens in the first place. The lava boots are the perfect example of this, but there are other methods of crossing that ignored the stepping stones; consider the Fizzy Lifting Pack, or fire damage resistance + removing the need to breathe to swim across. I mentioned using Speak with Dead in another thread. One of the vets even brought that corpse back to life; if the dude could then supply a clue or the answer to that puzzle, I don't see that sidestepping the 'expected' method of solving the problem means that the puzzle wasn't defeated.

Fizzy Lifting Pack only works in combat, and is straight up and down

sarielv wrote: Maybe it's just the greedy player in me talking, but I personally think any means of solving a puzzle should be considered legit, even if that means a party completely kits out to defeat it. Making equipment available, and then claiming it useless or automatically fails because 'reasons', is highly unfair and calls into question what exactly was the point of having those tokens in the first place. The lava boots are the perfect example of this, but there are other methods of crossing that ignored the stepping stones; consider the Fizzy Lifting Pack, or fire damage resistance + removing the need to breathe to swim across. I mentioned using Speak with Dead in another thread. One of the vets even brought that corpse back to life; if the dude could then supply a clue or the answer to that puzzle, I don't see that sidestepping the 'expected' method of solving the problem means that the puzzle wasn't defeated.

I agree completely. Creativity with tokens should be encouraged, not stifled. And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't really care if he ends up with 14 vs 15 treasure at the end.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

sarielv wrote:

Nimble wrote: There was a panel on the wall that effectively said "use the silverware to spell a word," and that's about it.

There was a Rogue box "on the table". I finished the box and took the clue. The clue card literally read:

"The sign on the wall is probably important."

If that wasn't bad enough, there were no other clues in the room to suggest what it was you were supposed to be spelling out. It turns out that the DM was supposed to tell you that the chains holding you to the table and each other were "enchanted."

I recall said puzzle. The plaque on the wall didn't even suggest making a word (I forget what it said). The box clue was to get you to notice that each letter on that plaque was made with three strokes. Three stokes versus your three utensils - probably you need to make a phrase.

That's as far as I can defend it, though, because I also had an unhelpful DM first time through too. Even if I had had one that remembered to give the clue, I doubt I would have picked up on it.

I still have nightmares about that room!

I think we spelled "disenchant", and the expected response was "unenchant" or something like that.

We were sitting around that stupid table looking around for some hint, and my wife said "I have no idea how to disenchant these chains," and my sister-in-law grabbed her arm and yelled "say that again!" (Plus, "disenchant" has 10 letters...)

So that's how we accidentally solved that one.