Summary

• Including clever D&D puzzles in your game can be incredibly satisfying as players crack the code and find solutions.
• Letting players solve puzzles in unique ways or come up with silly solutions can be just as fun as sticking to traditional methods.
• Diverse puzzle ideas, such as ghost ships, freezing tunnels, and brewing potions, can be adapted to suit your players and add variety to your campaigns.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons has something for everyone, fro🐻m those just starting to experts. You can battle monsters, plunge through dungeons, or simply hang out at the local tavern. No matter what your players enjoy in a session, it's always good to have variety.

It can be tempting to stick to combat and role-play encounters, but it can be incredibl💃y satisfying to include a few clever D&D puzzles as well. Observing your players eagerly discussing your clues and eventually cracking the code to a mystery is always a joy. Fortunately, there are many unique puzzles to include in your games, some easy, some more challenging. Here are a few of them.

Updated on April 17, 2025, by Branden Lizardi: Drawing inspiration from the adventures of old, if there's one thing an old school D&D module loves, it's a red herring. Supernatural artifacts, strange corridors, or mysterious runes scatter the landscape, only to... do nothing. While we won't be THAT unsatisfying, we've added another puzzle that utilizes that same methodology but in a more entertaining way. Enjoy!

The Countdown To Nothing

Sixty Seconds Of Panic

This puzzle, which might not even be considered a puzzle by some, is far simpler than it seems. The players become trapped in a room. The walls are covered in small holes or vents, with exactly ten levers or buttons on the left and right walls. On the opposite wall is a sealed doorway and a timer (hourglass, clock, whatever you think fits best), along with a cryptic but nonsensical message. Once the party is locked inside, the timer starts ticking down, giving them about 60 to 30 seconds before reaching zero. Using combat rules, each player has ten to five turn🃏s to try and solve the puzzle.

Having an exact number of levers or butt♕ons is important. This makes the puzzle sound intelligently designed and the intended focus of the puzzle's mechanics. Consider labeling each button with a letter, implying that the answer is a passcode.

Their first inclination will be to try and find the right combinations, frantically deciphering the riddle and trying certain buttons. The truth is, however, that none of the buttons/levers do anything. As soon as the timer hits zero, the door opens, and they can move on. This harmless subversion of expectation𒀰s will cause them to fret over nothing and have a good laugh about it afterwards.

Flaming Lanterns

Set Colored Lanterns In The Correct Order Before It's Too Late

This D&D Dungeon puzzle involves a classic locked door scenario. To unlock the way forward, the party must place five (or more if you want to increase the difficulty) lanterns on the magical podiums in the correct order. Each lantern burns a different color and also burns brighter when placed on the correct podium.

The door will only unlock when the lanterns are in the correct color order, but the players cannot simply brute-force this puzzle with trial and error. Each time they submit an incorrect guess, the room will shake, and the lanterns will flicker. Too many wrong guesses will cause the room to collapse, meaning the players must retreat and find another way through the dungeon. If you are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:running a cozier campaign and want to be more merciful, perhaps the code will be ꦕreset after a certain number of guesses rather than destroying the puzzle rꦗoom.

Levers And Wires

Follow Long Winding Wires To Avoid Pulling The Wrong Lever

The party is caught in a large laboratory that has gone into lockdown. The players must pull the correct lever to unlock the magical security systems. Unfortunately, the eccentric scientist of the laboratory can't recall which lever out of the countless ones around the lab is the right one. The simple solution is t✤o follow the long cable from the magical security system to the appropriate lever, but unfortunately, t♒his still won't be straightforward.

Throughout the laboratory, many winding wires are going off in different directions, tangled up, and slipping in and out of view. You can showcase this on a map of the facility, drawing these seemingly endless wires on the map for the players to look at. The players must attempt to follow the wires, avoiding losing track of them as they spiral one way and another the next. They must be careful while searching, as the laboratory went into lockdown for a reason. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Many dangerously tough monsters are on the loose out of their experiment chambers, and they may 🧜even be moving the cables around to mess with the party.

Lines In The Sand

Recreate Drawings With Continuous Lines In The Sand

In this team-focused DnD puzzle, the party is transported to a sweltering, mysterious desert with giant, heavy slabs on their backs. A deity above them has summoned them to this desert for their amuse🤪ment. Satisfy the deity by playing their game, and they will be shown the way out of the 💙desert.

Their captor wants them to recreate a series of images in the sand. The slabs on their backs create a line in the sand whenever the adventurers move. This line cannot be broken, which makes it quite tricky to recreate each drawing accurately. The party must work together to create the drawings properly, using continuous lines.

To add to the difficulty, they also cannot retrace their steps, perhaps because the sand disappears beneath them, leaving a nasty fall to avoid. Having physically interactive puzzles is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a great way to enhancꦆe the D&D experience, so why not have the players use paper and pen to solve this puzzle? If they can manage to draw each prompt, they will be free to go. By the end of this puzzle, ꦬyou should have a few fun drawings to share, too.

The Minefield

The Party Is Stuck In A Real Minesweeper Scenario

When the party accidentally stumbles into a minefield, all hope seems lost. That is, until they find a magical artifact on the ground that might be able to help them. The device can sense how many mines are nearby and telepathically warn the party of that number. Unfortunately, this does not entirely help them escape. The players know how many mines are nearby but not their direction.

This puzzle becomes a game of Minesweeper. The magical artifact gives them enough vague clues to help them, but they will need to use a lot of deduction to determine a safe path through the field. One wrong move will trigger a fiery explosion that will cause a lot of damage. This 𓆏is a very tense puzzle for your players to navigate, but if they are carefu🐼l, they'll live to tell the tale.

Multicolored Door Handles

Combining Colors To Open A Door

One of the easiest ways to incorporate a challenge into your latest session is by putting locked doors in the way of your players and their objectives. It isn’t just a matter of grabbing a lockpick. A magical spell ensures they cannot progress without solving a puzzle first. In this example, the players come across a door with multiple handles. Each one is a different color.

Above the door is a phrase that hints towards a specific color. Yet there isn’t a door handle in that particular color. For example, the etching might state, “Everyone will be green with envy if you unlock this door.” The players will hopefully soon realize that they will need to pull the blue and yellow handles simultaneously, as these primary colors combine to create green. If the players🤡 pull the wrong handles, they may receive a shock or summon a monster they must fight before attempting the puzzle again.

Rock Beats Scissors

Pitting Monsters Against One Another In The Right Order To Clear The Path

Lost in a dungeon full of D&D puzzle rooms, the party finds themselves in a branching pathway with multiple routes they can take. Unfortunately, each path is blocked by a monster far too overpowered for them to handle at their current level. Each monster has a distinct weakness that another monster can take advantage of very quickly. For example, a fire-based beast might be easy for a water-based creature to extinguish. It is up to the players to lure each monster towards another, to pit them against each other, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:as if in a mini tournament.

If they struggle to come to this solution, a survival guidebook in the first chamber could hint at each monster’s weakness. Like a game of rock, paper, and scissors, each monster can be easily defeated if facing the correct rival. The players must figure out the correct pairings and let the battles begin. They will also want to find the proper order, as they do not want🍎 a monster to be defeated before it can eliminate a threat they are most qualified to defeat.

Brute Force

An Elaborate Series Of Puzzles With A Surprisingly Simple Solution

Locked treasure chests make for good D&D puzzles 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:for both beginner DMs and experienced DMs. This particular puzzle plays with the idea that sometimes a simple solution is often the best approach, and players can frequently overthink the puzzles they encounter. The party finds an elaborately locked chest that even some of the best intelligence/arcana checks cannot figure out the solution for. Even if they solve one puzzle, the chest remains locked, and a new puzzle or r൲iddle appears for them to solve next.

After solving or getting stumped by puzzle after puzzle, one player might attempt to swing at the box with their weapon and try to break their way into it. Surprisingly, despite all the magical barriers and puzzles protecting the chest, simply smashing it to pieces is enough to get inside.

For a fun role-playing twist, you could add that each time the attacker strikes the chest, their intelligence stat increases temporarily. This leads to them being able to solve the more complicated problem almost immediately. This puzzle rewards pure brute force for once.

A Timely Entrance

Finding A Secret Door That Only Appears At A Certain Time Of Day

The party has heard about a long-forgotten ancient society with a nearby lair. Unfortunately, the entrance to this location is seemingly impossible to find. Even if they see hints of where the entrance should be, the party cannot locate it. This is because the solution to this puzzle is not about discovering where the entrance is… but learning when to find it!

The entrance only appears at a specific time of day, such as sunset or when the moon is at its highest point. The moonlight may make the entrance finally appear. The party will need to figure out that they must wait for this specific time of day to be able to get inside.

If this is too simple, other conditions could also be needed for the door to appear. For example, perhaps a tree is blocking the sunset light from hitting the secret doorway’s location. The party must prune the leaves to ensure a direct line of sight. Alternatively, a circle of rocks might also need to be realigned correctly. Once all the conditions are correctly met, the entrance appears before the group.

Never-Ending Army

Waves Of Enemies That Won't Stop Until The Party Figures Out Another Solution

The party finds themselves in a large arena or a vast chamber in a dungeon when an avalanche of endless waves of monsters, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:such as shadowy demons or beasts, disrupts the eerie quiet. It seems like this might lead to an inevitable TPK, but when the players make their first attacks, each enemy they hit is defeated with a single strike, no matter how much damage they do. Yet, the waves of monsters keep filling the room. They could stay here fighting these enemies forever or investigate and figure out another way to end thi𝐆s swarm.

They may need to lure enemies to die in specific locations on the map, or perhaps there is a hidden switch they 🅺need to find♋ to shut the gates where the enemies are spawning from. The party best act fast, as the room will start to fill rapidly with the bodies of the monsters they defeat.

Of course, this could be another solution to this combat-driven puzzle, as they could use the growing pile of bodies to reach an exit up high. Combat might not be what you think of when coming up with D&D puzzle ideas, but i🌸t can add a lot of exciting tension to the experience.