I hate "gotcha" traps. The one time the rogue forgets the boilerplate "I search the door for traps", that's the time you fall into a pit of acid. It's lame, it only rewards chanting "I search for traps" over and over again throughout the dungeon. I like it when the traps are part of another encounter.
One of my favorite encounters takes place in a 10x10 room. At the start of each round, you roll 4d10. Each die indicates in which row or column an energy wall pops up. These deal flame, ice, lightning, or poison damage, and they appear in a new position at the top of each round. The room should have random boxes and statues and other things you can climb to help jump over each wall. Each energy wall has a control panel so that you can disarm the thing and get a clear shot at the monsters. There's a good chance a wall will pop up between you and the cleric, or you and the monster, at just the wrong time.
My favorite trap-room as of late is from this adventure called
Crucible of the Gods. It's a situation where there is no "safe" place to stand, the encounter is an exercise in managing risk.
The room is rectangular, and has six 10 x 10 protrusions along the north and south walls, each labeled with a roman numeral. The room has four pit traps spread out in it, and there's a giant brass golem which is attacking you. (if you note where he moves, it gives clues about the pit traps).
The center part of the room (everything except the 10x10 protrusions) gets blasted by these flame jets in the ceiling. You can avoid the flame jets by ducking into one of the 10x10 cubbies.
But right after the flame jets fire, a crushing-ceiling trap slams down in a randomly-determined cubby. It deals a shitload of damage.
So the dance here is that you can take the constant light flame damage by staying in the center, or you can gamble by hiding in one of the cubbies. There's a 5/6 chance it'll miss you, and a 1/6 chance it'll flatten you like a pancake.
The other complication is that each of the crushing ceiling traps has a skull mounted on the outside -- which fires a death ray at the closet adventurer. Three hits from the death ray will kill you. Each skull only has 1 hit point, but you'd have to decide if it's worth attacking because there's only a 1/6 chance (each round) of that skull being active again.
There's a trap door in the back of each cubby. Two of the cubbies have the magic torches the party is looking for, the other four cubbies have duds. A nearby tapestry is actually a clue about which cubbies have the solution. There's a brazier on the far side of the room, and if you light it with the correct torches, the exit appears. If you light it with one of the wrong torches, it explodes as a fireball centered on you.
Really insidious room! I mean, there's five different things to worry about in there - excluding the puzzle. When we finished that encounter, the players were all out of breath. feckin awesome.
Poll