Creating Great Puzzles in D&D 5e

[@johnstarinieri7360]

A personal favorite puzzle of mine that I created was a puzzle that messed with their overthinking. A gargoyle appears before a big stone door and hands the players a rock. He says “You must answer my riddle! Answer wrong, and you die!! What... is this?” The answer is: a rock. But my players immediately shot to overthinking the puzzle, casting Identify and trying to get good History checks on the rock. They think and think and think and then finally one of them said, “What could it be?? This is just a rock!” And with that, the gargoyle said, “Correct!” and then disappears and the door swings open.

[@Lionrhod212]

I like this very much!

[@Jeppezzzful]

I doubt every player around that table enjoyed waiting around for what must have been a bit of an underwhelming solution. It's more of a meta game joke on the players than an actual challenge

[@johnstarinieri7360]

@@Jeppezzzful They all tend to enjoy well placed puzzles, but they know that they will sometimes overanalyze things. So when I revealed the answer, we all got a good laugh out of it.

[@aztecgoldmontizuma]

This is art. I can imagine doing this in our all Goblin campaign.

[@BootyCrusader]

Stealing this :D

[@pixelmonkey7093]

Newer DM here, I had one room that was basically a sealed off square (60’ x 60') with an entrance in one corner and a treasure chest in the opposite corner. Burning torches lined the perimeter of the room and the floor was obviously tiled (2ft or 3ft tiles). The tiles were trick tiles of course, place pressure on a bad tile and it would fall away into the endless pit below. Place pressure on a 'safe' tile and it would support the player's weight. My players were still relatively low level at the time, so they had to traverse it by foot. There were 3 paths that were ‘safe’ but 2 were dead ends with the 3rd leading to the chest. I realized quickly that all my players had to do was just methodically test each tile as they went and that they were going to just work through the puzzle in a rather slow and boring way (Should have seen that coming). I then had one of those awesome on the spot DM moments… I decided to make the first torch by the entrance snuff out on its own. “Pufft” The players were like, “What did that?” as they mulled it over for a minute questioning potential reasons, “Pufft” the next torch extinguished. My players looked at each other with the startled realization that this boring puzzle had suddenly become timed. It got them engaged real quick and their rising panic as they worked across the room while I occasionally tutted “Pufft” was one of the most delicious moments I have had so far as a DM.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

Good adjustment on the fly!

[@ohexenwahno5652]

Nice! I have a similar puzzle set up for my next dungeon. It's a 5 x 5 set of rooms with doors on every wall. When they enter, they get locked in and have to go through one of the 3 doors presented to them. However, every room they leave gets flooded, so they have to keep moving and can't backtrack. One of the rooms is the exit. It's not difficult at all, just stressful.

[@waynecaviston4116]

You sir are an evil genius.

[@biffstrong1079]

Time pressure is always a good idea.

[@Rick-oi3xm]

Yesterday, my player: I love everything we're doing but would love some more puzzles! Yesterday, me: I'll do my best, but not sure how to do them right! Today, the Dudes:

[@mtndewmslayer2564]

From your speakers: Greetings! I’m Marty Martin. From behind you: and I’m Kelly McLauglin From in your head: and we are inside your head

[@indef2def]

One of my favorite moments was having an early-campaign BBEG write a nonsense "riddle" over a door in order to buy herself time. I'd set up her character well enough that the players were pissed off at her rather than me, and felt all the more satisfied when they finally took her down.

[@schrodinger1374]

PLEASE tell me more about her

[@burgerchicken]

I improvised a puzzle for my players once because I ran out of time in planning. I had a sentient door tell the party to make him laugh. The Sorcerer made a door related pun on the spot and it opened.

[@MarcusBeirne]

A great one for this is have the sentient door say "knock knock" then "*** who" when the players interact with it. If the players respond with a knock-knock joke then the door opens, otherwise it responds with "boo" or "not funny".

[@DangerDurians]

I had a classic “speak friend and enter” type puzzle but way easier Even gave them hints that, if they didn’t mind leaving a trail, they could break through the door easily My players were completely stumped, took them 20 minutes of their own insistence to accidentally get the answer But a combination locked based on tangentially related NPC names meant to be hard and optional? They got it in 5 seconds

[@AuntLoopy123]

They had to step off the trail to find the tool to break through the door, right?

[@RylanStorm]

Yeah, you have to understand that your players will not think the way you do.

[@quendi5557]

D&D players man, that's how they be.

[@thebestthereisthreads6849]

It’s the classic overthink something simple.

[@jackgraham3988]

One of my favourite puzzles here, I was a player. This is my favourite less because of the puzzle itself, but more for how my DM handled an idea I had, which still made me feel smart without completely bypassing the puzzle: We were in a dungeon, and came across a big stone door. The door had 4 divots in it, which were clearly meant to hold some sort of maguffin that'd allow the door to unlock. My DM forgot that he'd given me a very specific - and, honestly, kinda strong - homebrew magic ring: a Thief's Masterkey ring. It contained a set of Thieve's Tools, but more importantly, it contained a SILENT version of the Knock spell. So I, of course, tried it on the door. Here's why my DM is a goddamned genius: It would've been so easy for him to say "Mm, doesn't work. Next." But he didn't. He let it work - to an extent. As soon as I used the ring to cast knock, one of the slots became filled with a glowing magical energy. We still had to find the other 3 items, but hoo boy, we shaved a quarter of the time of that puzzle off. I felt super smart for finding a cool workaround, and my DM still got to use most of his puzzle! I think he just got rid of the most "boring" of the 4 item rooms, so we still got to enjoy the other 3 (one of which involved one of our party members almost being replaced by a doppelganger lmao).Good fuckin' times.

[@THEPELADOMASTER]

I mean the knock spell does say that if a door has more than one lock, it unlocks one of them. If you treat these notches as locks, then knock would unlock one

[@Tusitala1967]

I fondly recall screaming the answer to the drinks puzzle at the screen. These things are so much easier to see from the outside.

[@BradNeff]

What’s the answer to that one?! I never figured it out lol

[@Tusitala1967]

@@BradNeff *****SPOILER ALERT***** - - - - - - - I remember "Nothing" being the answer to that riddle. So the proper action would have been to "drink" from an empty cup. The choices (milk, beer, water, etc) were all red herrings.

[@MrGarlan1]

What was the puzzle though?

[@Tusitala1967]

@@MrGarlan1 Go to the Dungeon Dude's channel and find Dungeons of Drakkenheim Episode 22: Down The Hatch the riddle is around 2:32:00.

[@activemoneymaker8286]

I remember thinking that nothing was the answer when watching it but I thought I read a comment from monte saying that wasn't it. Maybe I'm mistaken though.

[@TheWobbinator1]

I've prepared 3 hours for things that have lasted a lot less than 5 minutes.

[@Kevin80237]

I can feel you Snake from mgs

[@radimbok8517]

F

[@maxwellwelch3717]

Same. Spend hours researching mechanics and proper tactics for challenging encounters just for players to get some good rolls and be done in 10 minutes like "Next?"

[@trentonthomas3127]

You can tell this is a dnd channel because this should have thousands of likes but people didn't get it because they just don't get it

[@resilientfarmsanddesignstu1702]

One of the best puzzles that I ever made as a DM was the lair of a Pirate. The lair was subjected to tidal flooding and was strategical and purposely located in an area similar to the Bay of Fundy. The party had to negotiate the tunnels with the aid of an escaped mining slave guide (who was a hunchback from having been forced to stoop as a mine slave since he was a child. He was thrown down a mine shaft by the Pirates and presumed dead but managed to escape. He is not an invalid and has lots of knowledge and skill but he has physical limitations and can't be allowed to die. If he does, it's a virtual certainty that the rest of the party will likewise die). The party had to negotiate this maze and all it's traps as that was their only way into the fortress. The flood waters rose and fell periodically covering passageways, revealing others presenting physical, chemical and biological and radiological hazards. Falls, drowning, collapse, lacerations, anoxic, explosive and toxic gas etc. Pirate traps, Presenting and preventing access to air, land and waterborne monsters etc. Chances to separate the party and be swept away. There were mechanisms to drain or flood areas, ventilation shafts. Boats, diving gear etc. Pirate riddles and ciphers etc. Players solved it eventually but asked to play it again a few months later and after that they wanted to play it again a year later. There are several ways to win and lots of ways to lose and die.

[@jameshwren]

My favorite puzzles are very subtle and straightforward and tend to promote simple problem solving. Often, I don’t even have a solution myself planned out. A 60ft wide ravine that has a bridge that is hanging from only one side, the puzzle is, the bridge is out, that’s it. They are trying to get directions of where the tower is, but the local guy at the tavern gives them directions based on local landmarks and local terms, despite the road signs indicating directions to cities, it helps to take notes. For complex caves and dungeons, I load in multiple copies of the same map in Roll20 but rotate them 90 to 270 degrees, when they try and leave, unless they brought chalk, they tend to get themselves lost. Sometimes the passageway is just blocked by rubble, they have to figure out a way passed it. Or, previous adventures tried to smoke out the goblins, but now the cave is filled with smoke. The spike pit has already been tripped and adventurers hang impaled, in the dead adventures pocket is a list of all their notes of all the traps, but no map is found. Hints at the puzzles are provided, but which is which. Simple things like, how to navigate through a corn field might present themselves as straight forward initially but can often lead to ingenious problem solving. The other thing is, my players don’t groan at these situations, instead they are familiar with these issues and tend to all jump in. Also, they often don’t take a whole lot of prep, and I don’t need to have the answer planned.

[@robe8607]

One of the best combat puzzles I have come across for new players is what I sum up as the "all actions" puzzle. Basically to teach new players all the actions they can actually take in combat you add some clues in a dungeon saying something cryptic like "Battles conclude with satisfaction to those that have taken every action" and then you lock them in a room with skeletons that continue to rise or something until the party has taken every possible combat action. Fill the place with levers and switches to traps and fun stuff and as the DM keep checking off your list until conclusion. I've rewarded players who took the most variety with a boon or item sometimes.

[@landonkryger]

I recently built a "maze" I'm quite proud of. They were essentially walking around the surface of a d20. Had to obscure it by making the rooms hexagons, and inky black doorways between rooms. The rooms were then fill with various monsters correlated to numbers, eg. Nothic=1, Ettin=2, Roving Mauler=5, ect. Players had to walk through the rooms in a certain order after they figured out the numbering.

[@JonnyLOV]

My brother designed a battle puzzle where the party needed to defeat two elementals in separate rooms within the same turn. If one was defeated, but the other survived, the first would respawn with half its hp.

[@GramGramAnimations]

My friends have long wondered where I get all my “octopus clothes” as they were always unique to me. I fear my players may learn my secrets as Kelly so often wears the same brand as me 😂

[@DungeonDudes]

I’m so happy to find another fan. I’m also the only one I know who wears it.

[@notacaulkhead]

@@DungeonDudes are you a Truth fan? DDD gang?

[@raivoturpa]

I would really like to have some as well! Where can I get one, please?

[@GramGramAnimations]

@@raivoturpa the brand is Hi My Name is Mark, a clothing brand of blink-182’s Mark Hoppus. Tips: the clothes are both fitted and shrink (especially the women’s), I’ve found I typically need a size larger than normal. I’ve only ever bought clothes that are discounted/on sale, as they become fairly cheap/affordable

[@raivoturpa]

@@GramGramAnimations Thanks a lot!

[@Thetruepianoman]

So much legitimate praise in the comments but no-one ever mentions your language! Thank you both for caring enough to use language that accurately describes what you want to convey and takes measures to avoid misconfusion. When you've experienced how frustrating it is when people don't do this, videos like this are a godsend

[@ZarHakkar]

God I wish there was an official D&D book with a section dedicated to puzzles.

[@Maninawig]

7:15 Now I am thinking of an eccentric wizard who locked his McGuffin behind a door that can only open when 4 characters sing "I believe in miracles" with a coreographed dance. (He can open it using Mirror Image, and does so because he is crazy and loves the song)

[@michaelcohen8259]

I had a powerful, chaotic (neutral) wizard who created a tower of wonders. Almost every room had a puzzle, and the players finally figured out that even the most illogical, silly action could solve each puzzle. That was the point. He was subtly teaching lessons (teamwork, thinking outside the box, etc.)

[@dutch6857]

As a puzzle fan who has problems seeing why a boss would use a puzzle a part of their defences, you have inspired me. That sewer grate thing at the beginning. It's not a puzzle, just specialised knowledge. One would learn how the levers and sluices would interact on their first week of sewer worker training, but... Without a mentor... or a handbook... in a hurry... IT'S A PUZZLE!

[@AuntLoopy123]

OMG! I just realized the simplest puzzle that actually would make sense in "real life." A filing system! Your PCs have a limited amount of time to find the Macguffin, and they have broken into the storage chamber, where they know it is (along with a bunch of stuff that has no value to them), and they have to figure out the owner's filing system, because it's not standard alphabetic, numeric, or chronological. The "hint" they get would be, "My new assistant organized the place, but then died in mysterious circumstances, and I can't FIND anything! I used to have it all in the order I collected the items, but she came along and said how that was so inefficient, and she had a much better system, so I let her reorganize it, but she never did teach me her system." As to whether or not the new system actually is more efficient, that's up to you. It could be organized by size, by color, by "author" (or creator), by subject matter, such as an alphabetical list not of the names of the objects but of what they do. So, the scroll for Rary's Telepathic Bond would be under C, for "Communication." It should be fairly obvious, once you figure out the connection, and you should have some clues, such as how the assistant organized her own desk. As a former temp worker, I can tell you, I have encountered some real doozies of organization systems, but I had the benefit of being taught the system before I was allowed to file anything. In one place, only the secretary was allowed to put anything away, for fear people would put it in the wrong spot, and it would never be found again. So, the collector needs his thing? Or the lawyer needs his case file? Maybe your players need information on some ancient plans for the layout of a sewer system, and the plans are kept at city hall, but the archivist in charge can't find it, because of the new filing system, and says, "If you can find it, you're welcome to it." Of course, you have to go through some social shenanigans for him to even admit the reason he's being so unhelpful is because he's overwhelmed, and can't find it, and he's breaking all kinds of rules to let you in there, but it's the only way, and he's about ready to just walk out of the job. Maybe he DOES walk out, but he allows you into the file/storage room to retrieve whatever it is you want, if you can find it. And if your players give up in disgust and just burn all the records, well, they'll have to deal with the consequences.

[@michaelrizzo7342]

As a character in RE 8 said "It's only a riddle if you don't know the answer."

[@doubleg281]

A good way around puzzle skipping is to make the puzzle open a secret door, while the obvious locked door that can be broken through leads the wrong way, to a combat, a hint, or a cursed version of the item they are looking for

[@oniminikui]

I ran a puzzle for my D&D group. It was a "maze" that was colored or decorated with one particular element (air, earth, fire, and water). There were 4 keys (silver, adamantine, gold, and mithril) and the rings were placed on an altar signifying north, south, east and west. Each room had fours doors. Depending on what color or decoration of the room determined which key and door to use it on. If they chose the wrong key or wrong door, then it triggered the trap on the door that resembled the element of the room in which they should be going. The party were pretty paranoid and surprisingly looked like they weren't going to make it, until they discovered the pattern involved. The further they went through the maze, they found themselves in bigger rooms, which provides more than the standard 4 doors (but if one side of the room was supposed to be used, they would discover that either door used would be safe). Also I had some rooms decorated with volcanoes (fire or earth?) or colored purple (fire or water?). I didn't want the maze to be too easy.

[@lilithvampyre1716]

My favorite puzzle to throw at players actually comes from Resident Evil 4. Or at least, the poem is. "In front of you is a large stone door. There are 4 holes in it that look like they can hold something. On the door is an inscription: Bread begins the meal of life, Meat allows us to savor the time at hand, one more Drink before the glass breaks, Returning us to Dust from whence we came." The solution for this in my games is that each hole needs to hold a certain type of item. From left to right, the players are to put Bread, any kind of meat, something that can be drank, and finally, some dust.

[@cosmonaut999]

I'm curious how often that slows down players; it seems insanely obvious to me

[@carlh7714]

I don't have a lot of experience with puzzles. As a player, my favorite was when a DM split the party into two rooms with a barrier we could see through, but nothing material could pass. We had to arrange the statues in the rooms to match, including using a scroll of Enlarge/Reduce on one, but we had to figure out which side it needed to be used on. My favorite as the DM was using a piece of the environment I had previously described 5 times or so as the key to a basic puzzle on a door. The player who solved it liked it to, as I basically rewarded him for paying attention to the description of the castle they were in.

[@AuntLoopy123]

Hints and repetition is the key.

[@DazraelArianos]

One of my favorite dungeons I've made was built by a Warlock of the great old one who went insane and, like his own mind, the tower has too much in it for what's possible. It uses various noneuclidian geometry to create a maze of reality bending puzzles.

[@carold.8782]

The most fun puzzle we got played by was a locked room scenario. We found a room, the rogue was scouting and darted in without thinking. The door closed, leaving the party outside. The only thing in the room was a lever and a voice started to count down, "Ten, nine, eight, seven....". Our rogue tried the lever and restarted the count down. We were trying to open the lock or break down this massive door, while she reset the count down over and over. Finally, when we were partway through, she gave up and let the countdown continue. When it hit zero, the door opened! All that stress and frantic puzzle solving and it was simple and there was no danger! It was a great memorable puzzle!

[@unacceptablefailurerate6453]

Actually had a DM run almost that exact same puzzle, except instead of a vocal count down there was a floating hourglass iirc and they kept turning the hourglass. I think the room kept losing light as it ran out, the circle of darkness closing in, and it reset when they just flipped it over? It's been many years so I can't remember exactly, but of course just waiting it out lead to the doors opening.

[@ohexenwahno5652]

I'm planning an even more stressful version of this puzzle. I made an underwater dungeon and one of the room is going to close on them like this and start filling up with water. The lever in the middle will drain it, but the door will only open when there's enough pressure from the water. I'm throwing in a combat encounter as well so they have to juggle between combat and handling the lever.

[@JoRoq1]

We once had a puzzle we had to solve to get into the next room in a dungeon. The center of the room we were in had a raised dais with a pile of over 2 dozen tiles on it. Each tile had unique emblem on it. One of the walls in the room was decorated with a mural that had all the same emblems at various heights along the length. We eventually settled on the strategy of using the combination of Polymorphing one character into an octopus and Animate Objects to place each tile over the matching emblem, which successfully caused the mural wall to split open and allow us access to that next room. Afterwards, the DM told us all we had to do was place the tiles on the floor touching the wall underneath the matching emblem. But at least our sorceror now had an ample supply of items for to use Animate Objects on later.

[@zbamf]

I am running a side quest in my groups campaign to give our DM a small break and the puzzle I made locked the party in a dimensional room that was on the fritz, it was located in the fire plane so the party was taking 1d4 fire dmg every minute or two. there was writing on the door out that said show me only wealth and you may pass, across from the door was a large statue of a skull looking at the door, also in the room was pedestals with red herrings like a gold bar, a spherical stone, a goblet with jewels and an empty pedestal. Covering all the words except wealth would allow the party to exit. my whole party exclaimed after they wasted their time on the red herrings and solved the puzzle, YOU LORD OF THE RINGSD US!

[@Marpaws]

1:14 puzzles can be puzzling. *Monty looks about to lose his shit* You guys are great. And hilarious.

[@strider2175]

One of the places I get ideas for puzzles are actually some of the people that solve puzzles on YT. I don't try for the really crazy puzzles, but ideas like sequential discovery really makes for satisfying puzzles.

[@andrewdennison8108]

What was off to the right side of the camera? Monty was thoroughly distracted during much of this. in particular, during the Challenge the Players and characters segment where Kelly was speaking, Monty absolutely could not stop looking at something off to his right (viewers left). Is this a puzzle for us to solve? I rolled 14 investigation.

[@Joker-yw9hl]

I rolled a 12 so I'm pretty sure it's just a tick that he has during recording

[@tslfrontman]

My Magnum Opus is often used for hot-starts, breaking into the dungeon, while "pre-heating" player communication. A *"lockpicking map"* team game; a printed maze of 1-inch lines and multiple, easily-seen paths. 1 Player draws a path with their eyes closed; their party says/shouts which directions to go or stop. They have to figure out their own method. 7Mins(!) violin-tension later and they finally made it into that first room, all cooperating and **communicating** 🥲 The same puzzle backwards took 6m 😂 still with shouting. Absolutely steal this idea, especially if your players drink beer.

[@ohexenwahno5652]

One that I liked in my previous dungeon was a door at the end of a hallway lit with torches. On the door, it said: "I open for those who follow the path of darkness." The solution was simply to put out the torches.

[@davidvincent5701]

I saw yesterday a video of a 3d printed clock that has a center piece that rotates in a circle and flip's end over end. It was very geary and ornate. I thought it would be great for a party to find and assemble the core components and assemble the clock because it's a mechanical key to a locked tomb.

[@davidmeier2164]

Had my players solve a 5 piece tower of Hanoi puzzle to open a door while in the middle of a combat encounter. It was interesting watching them take turns solving the puzzle and yelling what the next move is while fighting off golems. Watching them try and decide in the heat of it if it's more important to solve the puzzle or win the fight was a ton of fun.

[@michaelramon2411]

The video game Sunless Sea has something like a 10 tower Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Though the player doesn't have to do any direct thinking, the meter that is filled by clicking "keep working on it" takes like 10,000 clicks, if not more. ...This is a not-so-subtle hint that you should leave the area, go to another part of the dungeon, find the item "stick of dynamite" and blow the door open. Which is, in fact, the intended solution.

[@Xylos144]

One method to test "the character" and mot the player is to give the player either a different puzzle based on their character's intelligence give them the same puzzle but more hints. So you hand the int level 20 wizard "what is 2+2" and you hand your barbarian a recipe for orange chicken written in Mandarin. Or for the same-puzzle route, where the extra hints make things obvious - and the opposite of what no hints gestures vaguely at - and watch the fun diegetic arguments unfold.

[@Rallykat]

Loved this, I think a solid thing to also keep in mind is that, just like combat encounters, remember the number of players. Your puzzle might be cool and even have a collaborative element, but if you have a larger group and the puzzle only requires input from two of them, you may want to at least make sure that you're keeping things moving. Players should respect that not every moment is about them, but no one likes to feel unincluded for a long time. When you buy the board game/at home variant of puzzle rooms or Cold Case Files type games, the game itself may say it's for 3+ people but only actually has enough manipulatables to keep just those 3 people occupied at once.

[@stevemarston2936]

Just a thought, but you could combine PC checks with player challenge. To use the sudoku example, any characters who want to attempt to solve it make an intelligence check, and the DM uses that to determine the difficulty of the sudoku given to the player. Players have to solve the one given to them for their character to succeed.

[@Dooger414]

Just started watching you dudes after a couple months playing a family D&D session with my cousins. Been fun adding some info from your videos to our sessions!

[@aqacefan]

One of my favorites is still picking the correct flesh golem in White Plume Mountain.

[@professorgrimm4602]

When I need a quick puzzle, I usually result to a puzzle from a Professor Layton game xD

[@DangerDurians]

A holy relic or powerful magic item could believably be protected by the “plug two holes” puzzle

[@ganymedemlem6119]

Workers of the world, unite! 🛠✊

[@professorgrimm4602]

@@DangerDurians some of the puzzles from Professor Layton still haunt me to this day xD

[@professorgrimm4602]

@@ganymedemlem6119 🛠✊

[@dutch6857]

Layton for the win!

[@solar4planeta923]

Great job, Dudes! Thanks for this topic which can be a really rewarding aspect of a D&D game. One of my favorite series of modules, The Prophecy of Brie series, was published in Polyhedron in the 80's, and I had to wait for my kids to grow up and start playing D&D to actually run it. So. . . 30 years later I finally got my chance, and it was amazing, even to the horrible puns in the wizard's tower. It starts out with a prophecy which the players keep as a handout, and becomes more pertinent as the campaign progresses. There were some challenging points, but if you leave multiple clues it seems to work out well. Missing a clue typically resulted in a tougher or unnecessary combat encounter, not instant death.

[@joshuadiamond9374]

I built a “slide the boulder” maze using gelatinous cubes and narrow hallways. The cubes, which had blind sight and were blind beyond, had to be lured (aka slid) in to different positions to allow safe passage. There were ways to get trapped, and situations where you might have to split the party to advance. Cue one of my PCs with Animate Dead. She noted how I described the stairs descending into the room as having been littered with bones, but the floors and walls of the room it’s self being unusually clean. She used her stair-skeletons to lure the Cubes, and it still required a lot of thoughtfulness and deliberate coordination of the team. They never had to split the party. I thought it was really clever.

[@tomboy_kisser]

8:38 "suh-duko" had me crackin' up WAIT 8:46 you just said it again lmao 8:53 STOP, I CAN'T TAKE MUCH MORE

[@shaynemross]

Just got done writing some puzzles for my party’s last session a week ago and found this information to be so encouraging and informative. Thank you guys!

[@azrik6084]

I never force the players to solve my puzzles, but more often than not it is in their best interest. For instance solving the puzzle might reveal treasure or disarm traps in the area up ahead making it the safer route, but not the required one.

[@RylanStorm]

I made a really clever puzzle for my season finale. It was great. Put about 3 hours into designing it. One of my players just vibed with it and solved it in under 30 seconds. I was gutted, he was ecstatic, the other 3 players were just amazed. Be prepared for this. Also, it's totally fine to build puzzles which can easily be solved by a skill on the character sheet. It makes that player feel good about the skill they took. But be aware of this and don't spend too long on creating the actual puzzle.

[@RylanStorm]

Here it is Google draconic font. Or DnD 5e Dwarven Font. Then, using the font, I wrote four words; SHADOW EARTH FIRE LIGHT I described 4 clear orbs in front of a dragon statue and gave them the handout describing it as the engraving under the statue. When the players asked about the inscription I said "You don't understand the language but you seem to recall it from a tome you own" There's actually a conversion chart in the PHB. Each time the players touched the orbs coloured light appeared inside in this order, red, gold, black, green, blue. When they set the orbs to black (shadow), green (earth) red (fire) gold (light), left to right, the puzzle is solved. If at any point all 4 orbs are the same colour, the dragon statue would breathe on them to match the colour. Eg necrotic for black, lightning for blue, acid for green.

[@Damekage]

One of my all time favorite puzzles involves a mirror on one wall of the room. With like objects that can be moved around. The solution is to move the objects in the room are a mirror image of each other.

[@utkarshgaur1942]

Fav puzzle created was definitely an escape room. All-wizard one-shot. Four keys, four elements, ticking clock, elemental spell effects and even a surprise Private Sanctum. They beat it with only a few minutes to spare. It was such a rush.

[@maddierichards8267]

I used a puzzle for my party to fix an icecream machine. I was expecting someone to whip out a spell but they decided to open it up and I made the puzzle up in the spot 😬 they loved it

[@rcschmidt668]

Read the thumb and knew there had to be a mention of the QoT riddle, and it was there at 22:33! Wonderful ideas!

[@AM-hf9kk]

My favorite puzzle advice: ALWAYS HAVE A BYPASS. I designed what I thought would be a fairly easy button pressing puzzle based on lore I had repeated multiple times through the session. I had pieces of that lore be keys to other puzzles, such as the "silent hall" where you take psychic echo damage except when you speak the names of the gods, and the "hall of the gods" where the only safe paths spell the name of two gods to which the dungeon was dedicated. (Thank you Indiana Jones) There were plaques in each area giving clues and a giant mural in the entranceway showing daily life with the influence of the gods. The final puzzle was essentially a bank vault with "press the logo for each god in the order their names appear above the engraved door, then press the center icon." My players basically said "this is too hard" and walked away from it. Thankfully I had already designed a secondary door with options to smash it or pick the lock. The DCs for each option were very difficult, but doable. Now I design EVERY encounter with multiple solutions.

[@austonwetherald2066]

If you want an easy math based puzzle, use the elephant fountain puzzle from Die Hard With A Vengence, they never actually solve it on screen, and it only requires simple arithmetic and sound logic. The movie uses a 3 gallon jug and a 5 gallon jug to get 4 gallons, but you can use 4 and 7 to get 6, or 5 and 9 to get 8. You can further hide this puzzle by multiplying all values by the same multiple of 10.

[@ryanhilliker375]

Idk how you do it, but all your content is always super useful and really quite well put together. Thank you guys for the reliable quality, and expertise:)

[@Tomyironmane]

"steal portal levels" you say. Back in my Barracks D&D 3.5 game, I joked about doing that. "You wake up on a bed in a strange featureless room. A disembodied voice says, 'Welcome to Aperture Alchemy. We hope you've enjoyed your...'" was as far as I got before one of the other Marines went "AAAAAAA thecakeisalie! thecakeisalie! thecakeisalie!!!!"

[@SalaarRabbani2001]

Your videos always come at the best times... I was literally just about to start puzzle design for my players next dungeon!

[@mattdeelight]

I have a bunch of fighters in my dungeon so just gave them an easy puzzle to get 4 keys. However the keys were in glass balls with pure energy inside so if they broke then there would be an explosion. Such a fun puzzle and no one had to act smart out of character

[@RyuuKageDesu]

I like small hint clues to hand to the players, that I can give multiple sessions ahead of time, and creating puzzles with multiple solutions.

[@analyticsystem4094]

I’m running my first campaign soon and I thought of a cool puzzle idea to include in an ancient city that will lead to an important plot piece. In the city, they find a large carving on a wall of two people holding the sun over the temple; with the text “The dawn of Sandaira (the name of the city) will lead to the True Treasure” The solution of the puzzle is fairly simple but takes some thinking, the carving of the sun is really a button that will open the door and lead the party to some treasure and some important plot stuff.

[@mikecarson7769]

yes, good point about the red herrings and about other things to avoid. puzzles can be so much fun as parts of exploration or solving problems toward advancing the campaign

[@karsten69]

Gate of wisdom, a door that only opens when the correct answer is given. "To ventute forth beyond this door, you must answer this riddle of yore, don't worry, the answer is easy. How do you divide 100 silver among 3 people?"

[@AlleyFang]

easy?

[@karsten69]

@@AlleyFang I'm amazed someone got it so fast. my players spent an hour.

[@AlleyFang]

in their defense, I'm not playing a character in dnd right now, im listening to the guy who kept repeating "there are several empty cups" talk about puzzle, I'm in the right mindset to pick apart your exact words :P

[@karsten69]

@@AlleyFang I did swipe it from a story I read, but I had no idea it would work for an hour, I thought at most 10 minutes.

[@AuntLoopy123]

Since I'm not your PC, and might want to use it, please provide the answer? Because I'm stumped.

[@ronzaebarron2195]

I have a puzzle coming in my mining dungeon where there is an elevator that is missing 4 pieces guarded by a sleeping troll. They have to 1. find the pieces in the area without making to much noise 2. Put them in the right order or trying to use it will cause noise and wake up the troll for an encounter lol - nothing to serious but good enough to make them think carefully

[@Deadly0Night]

I love it when a riddle door is actually a portal of some kind. go ahead, dimension door into the stone behind the wall.

[@Ybarchov21]

Something to note: While Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has puzzles you can use, they are heavily inspired by actual puzzle competitions where people look at the clues given, try to decode it, and then use the decode to get the answer. Most of these puzzles for competitions also have visual aids because they don't work in an abstract medium...yet they are added without the aids in the book. For people who are heavily into puzzles, they will get them easily. For the layman playing DnD, they are going to hop onto the struggle bus. There's a lot of cool concepts in those puzzles that you can take out and use, but if you copy one of the puzzles make sure you help the player out a lot. Also the game It Takes Two, which was recently released, has a LOT of great co-op puzzles. It's worth playing and borrowing from.

[@kylewhite8656]

Another fountain of inspiration I have found is escape rooms. My family loves going to these and I think they have a lot of good that can be taken from them. Especially if you do a room where you are separated from half your party making you describe things to the other half

[@devin5201]

When you said the three gods example it gave me an idea, classic elemental temples thing where along the way they get nice and acquainted with which god has which element and on the final temple there's something like three statues, one to each god or whatevs with the inscription reading something like "Only those who give a fitting offering may pass." I refuse to believe that any group could fail that when the final bosses of every story arc has been called something like "Champion of such and such"

[@enddorb]

My go to for a puzzle that is meant to be mixed with a combat encounter is the tower of hanoi; they can make 2 moves as an action, and waves of enemies come in. It's fun, if simple

[@AnemeKun]

So great to finish watching the Q and A and then immediately get to see the result of one of the answers 😋

[@BrochaGoode]

I really enjoy ‘fixing’ puzzles because they give the player space to improvise. A broken draw bridge. A missing weight from an elevator system. My favourite one I’ve run was a huge broke circuit breaker - four players had to figure out how to connect one side to another over a 3 meter gap. It meant they could think of connecting swords using their smithing tools, or fixing the connection which allows one circuit breaker to move, or casting web between the two sides. I didn’t have a set answer, and it meant they didn’t feel railroaded

[@mikec64]

This is really solid guidance! It's really hard to think of puzzles that make sense in the world, and this is a really helpful way to invent all kinds of (broken) things.

[@stw7120]

Regarding spells: from 3e's Book of Challenges(a puzzle guide): "This book requires significant adaptability on the players’ part. A key component of that is their spell selection. Walking into these atypical environs armed with nothing but fireballs and lightning bolts may make for frequent trips to the local purveyor of raise dead spells. Whether prepared or set into magic items, the spells that follow are must-haves for dealing with the brain-bending challenges in this book. You shouldn’t be disappointed when players use these spells to thwart the challenges herein. Instead, you should take magnanimous pride that your players are sharp enough to use resources so efficiently."

[@Dagnar1478]

My favorite way to design puzzles is make a short bullet list of basic premises i either make up or find online and then rather than come up with intricate conclusions, i present the premise to the party and then take their first or second logical conclusion and usually lets the puzzle last for at least a few minutes rather than instantly solved or never solved

[@kristopherhayes327]

YES, I NEEDED THIS! Puzzles are so fun but difficult to write. this helped a lot!

[@MrBiloxifireman]

Best puzzle was the drinks 🍸 and how your players fell for It on a live stream. I'm not good at puzzles and the idea of doing them on a live play would be brutal.

[@3nertia]

Could you please tell me more about this drink puzzle?

[@MrBiloxifireman]

@@3nertia Watch there 1st live play season. Look at there play list. It's a great season with good players who know how to play the game and a fantastic DM

[@3nertia]

@@MrBiloxifireman Eh, thanks but I'm kind of burnt out on *watching* people play heh

[@carold.8782]

Could you give a quick run down on the drink puzzle? I'm not likely to have time to go chase it down in a live play video - unless someone would kindly link to the video (and the time stamp). Thanks!

[@audiorage82407]

@@carold.8782 Episode 22, Down the Hatch, around 2:32:00 Spoilers . . . . . . PCs had to choose the correct drink from a lineup in order to open a secret door. There was a riddle which gave the correct answer (“nothing”, or the empty glass) and the PCs all incorrectly drank from flasks which wound up being secretly filled with sleeping potions. They paid dearly for this failure.

[@marcosmiotti7399]

I love your videos, guys! Thank you so much! Regards from Brazil.

[@robbechristiaens6384]

Wally DM has an amazing channel filled with puzzles and puzzle ideas. I recommend!

[@avo284]

Lay out 3 random items for example. Dragon scale Orcs toe Crabs claw The room has a table with 3 shelves each 1 holds one of the 3 items on the other side is a door design above it is a few runes that say something like "He who overthinks, often fails the obvious" The way you solve this is Is just push/open the door. Watch your players try to use all these useless items to open a unlocked door

[@AuntLoopy123]

I love this, too!

[@remingtonwright6796]

There's a crystal-encased beholder eye in the intricate door mechanism that is putting out an anti-magic cone. Theoretically, you could misty step or dimension door from the other side, but not from this side.

[@CallenExile]

Puzzles are encounters. Encounters are for depleating resources. If my players want to cast 2-3 Dimension Doors to bypass a door, I'm all for it.

[@wendigo1619]

I remember my wife made a puzzle when DMing our game, my barbarian had to push shite around with strength checks God Of War style while the other guy did a riddle like quardination on a set of tracks... it was fun

[@ganymedemlem6119]

Watching this sounded to me like where I include a puzzle I should make the solution require creativity on the part of the player and play to the character's strengths.

[@jasonhosler9990]

I've also found that it is good to have two or more viable solutions to a given puzzle, as it reduces the likelihood of getting srump due to one clue or missed info.

[@rileysheriff1221]

I know this is an old video and you’re not likely to revisit but if you guys did I would love a walkthrough constructing a puzzle. So as you go through your tips you implement them into a puzzle room that you’re creating along the way. My favourite and best puzzle I’ve put in front of my players ended up being for a single player after the others all got trapped and separated, they had to revive a generator using magic and items within a workshop setting, I found it really fun to implement red herrings in this situation too as they could just be small contraptions someone might find in a workshop, fun to interact with but overall just a distraction.

[@cherrymaxguns]

“Soduko” 🤣🤣🤣

[@mattdewey9846]

My favorite puzzle I did was a book that wouldn't open with three riddles on the cover. The answers were darkness, silence and lantern. And those were the required conditions for the book to open.

[@stars1941]

Solid advice and clear layout, thanks! This will be very helpful to share out or use myself!

[@lxThunderxl]

I actually just finished creating the puzzle for one of my upcoming games. I struggled a lot to find something I could deem reasonable for unlocking a vault which was used by highly intelligent people to store away important things. Firstly because my #1 rule for puzzles (for my own games at least, everyone can do what they think is fun for their table): a puzzle may never block progress. I think of them as a way for the party to gain extra rewards. Naturally this means that puzzles also can't be too simple to solve because they should feel like they were rewarded by coming up with clever ideas as well as playing out their characters. And if you can just guess the solution or know it because it's so apparent, it just doesn't feel rewarding. Secondly the puzzle is located in a dungeon thats rather interconnected, so depending on which turns they take, they mind find the puzzle very early on. And I wanted to give some additional incentive to exploring more of said dungeon. So I ended up with a puzzle whose solution is soley based on finding hints in the important rooms. They might not find every clue, because of failed skilled checks or combat encounters in the rooms running risk of destroying hints. But there are a lot of little hints to help you figure out the mechanism which unlocks the vault. And they might not actually need most of them if even one sparks the correct idea. I am really curious how well they are gonna do on this, because I have mostly used riddles or actual puzzles on very few occasions to give them minor rewards, but I myself am actually content with this locking mechanism being realistic for its environment

[@chrism4919]

That’s why I like playing rogues, as character and player, there’s no awkwardness when I solve the puzzle 🧩 My DM will be all excited about a puzzle he’s giving us, which I think he lowers the difficulty of the puzzle for the other players but I have a bad habit of blurting out the answer as soon as he finishes the riddle or describing the mechanics of the puzzle. And everyone just sums it up to the rogue knowing his way around these issues.

[@KayFabeMedia]

I made a puzzle room with a piano, inspired by Batman the animated series. There is a piano, and a sheet that says '"Play dead or die. Do (Red D) it wrong and you'll be (red E) flat. If you're sharp(red A), you will live another day (red d).' If they play the chords, D flat, E flat, A Sharp, and D Sharp, in that order the door opens. If they play the wrong notes, depending if its a flat or a sharp, they have to dodge either a crushing pillar or a sharp blade.

[@AuntLoopy123]

That's great IF they know musical notation, what chords are, and the difference between flats and sharps. So, my niece would know, but I don't know about the rest of my players. I know I don't.

[@gregshimmin5334]

Superb advice as always Dudes. Thanks for making us better

[@ljmiller96]

IMHO every problem the players must solve is a puzzle. FREX: How to get inside the stronghold when there are 40 guards divided among 3 shifts covering the walls and stout metal gates etc etc etc?

[@anders630]

Challenging the player vs the character is tricky ... there is a similar issue with persuasion where the player in question tend to matter more than charisma or skill proficiency just like your example with the suduko savvy barbarian player.

[@A_Casual_NPC]

I was just talking about this with my DM, sending it to him right now.

[@khristianseaward5454]

Starting up a new campaign and this is super useful since I am playing with many new players and wanna get some good puzzles in there without discouraging them. Thanks Dudes, your videos are fun and super helpful

[@COMBATKYLE4]

creating great puzzles: 1: make them as easy as possible, kindergarten level at most 2: watch your party fumble and overanalyse it 3: after an hour, give up and let whatever they come up with solve the puzzle to get on with the rest of the session

[@Lionrhod212]

Great video. I'm not familiar to any of the video games you mentioned, but I have been a longtime fan of Nancy Drew Mystery Games. One of my favorites of those, Ghost Dogs of Moon lake featured a puzzle that was a poem that had to be deciphered, along with 3 dog statuettes that had to be moved into the correct position to open a secret door. Another puzzle featured translating a symbolic code --and of course you had to find the page that broke the code first. Sadly later ND games actually used Sudoku and Word Find puzzles, and most of the fan base erupted in horror over those. The nice thing about the DOGS game was that the answers were all there, you just had to delve and then think a bit.

[@ajuc005]

My last puzzle to enter an old dwarve mine: there's a metal door with 3 rods sticking out, There are small holes below each rod that are a little dirty. There are also symbols of a pencil, a fork and a sword above each rod, each inside a small engraved cube. If they inspect the holes roll for perception and tell them there's smoke residue on the upper part of each hole. With good metallurgy or history or dwarven lore rolls they can get the information that these symbols are used for different metals: pencils are made out of lead, forks out of silver and swords out of steel. With very good perception they can notice that the most smoke residue is in the hole under the rod near the symbol of a sword. If they start heating the rods at some point there will be small "cha-chunk" sound inside the doors (passive perception). But doors won't open unless all three rods are at the desired temperature at the same time. Solution: you need to heat up the rods to the temperature used to work each metal - lead for pencil, silver for fork and steel for sword.

[@jerayneous]

Google probably already knows this but I’ve been searching for a good resource on puzzles for weeks. Thank you for making this video.

[@Reestar-jv5jh]

The best puzzles are made when you set up every piece of information into places the players will find and have to decipher. Then throw away 1d6 pieces of the puzzle and grab the popcorn

[@ChristnThms]

One of the things I think of when designing a puzzle, is that each of the characters in the party should have something to contribute that the others aren't likely to offer. The real challenge in this is something like a DEX Fighter, when there is likely a Rogue, Monk or Ranger that can do anything the Fighter can do, and more (with regards to non-combat). Casters like Wizards and Bards offer the opposite challenge, the fact that they're likely to have a spell that they can use to be better at something than the character that was supposed to be good at it (like the Knock spell). I kind of feel like it is a cheap trick to include things like anti-magic zones. One way to minimize the use of magic is to interrupt a long rest with the puzzle challenge... when the party will be as low on slots as possible. In many ways, a puzzle is more difficult for the DM than for the players.

[@AuntLoopy123]

I keep copies of my PC's character sheets, so if I were to do this, I would pick an ability that only one has, and I would give it to them first thing in the morning, so that they haven't used the ability, yet So, the bard would need to cast Bardic Inspiration, the Cleric would need to turn undead, or maybe disguise self, since she's Trickery domain. The monk would need to use a Ki point ability. It doesn't have to be combat, but the combat, itself, could be the puzzle, as their individual doors won't open, until they each use their class abilities, instead of just hack and slash fighting. Racial abilities would work, too. If you get their sheets, and list all the options each one has, and tailor the encounter toward that, and then just check off each time they do one of their special abilities, they get through the puzzle. In fact, the combat could end, and the enemies collapse, as soon as the last one uses his special ability, that applies only to him.

[@marinasanford8799]

I had a set of interlocked puzzle keys I brought to the table once. Everyone had to roll a constitution save, and anyone who rolled a success was given 10 seconds to handle it per point above the difficulty. If they handled it too long, the metal would heat up to the point of them having to drop it, and there was a chance the guards would hear it as they dropped to the ground. Still a party favourite to this day.

[@AtotheWESOME]

The starting area in the Spellhold dungeon in Baldurs Gate 2 has some fik puzzles. One has a puzzle where certain items has to be placed in specific chests based on a riddle in the chests. Ive used it a couple of times and it was well recieved

[@AuntLoopy123]

I like the riddle/chest puzzle. Simple, but enough to get them thinking and feel good about themselves.

[@GeorgeAlone2277]

I made a puzzle where there was a coffin off to the side with the words "the dead may rest" and when the players stepped on a threshold within the room (towards some treasure chests) skeletons would spawn, causing a combat encounter, and a lever that opens the door. if they didn't solve it correctly the door would just lead to the entrance of the same room until they solved it. A really simple puzzle that causes trial and error with a relatively easy but repeatable combat situation.

[@StarlasAiko]

The best and most infuriatingly enjoyable puzzles of the "it was unlocked to begin with" nature. " After a few moments poking with your picks and feeling the tumblers, you can hear and feel the lock click....The door does not open." "You pull the lever on the wall. The rattling and clacking of crude gears can be heard echoing through the rock walls from an indeterminable distance."..."The hallway is blocked by an open pit, too large to jump across and filled with spikes, above which rotating blades are whirring."