Alternate Game feedback

Can I get a someone who likes puzzles to help me test out some for my alternate campaign? I'm trying to create a couple from scratch and want them to be difficult but not insane. It's 5 total: one switch puzzle, a logic puzzle, a lateral thinking puzzle, a riddle, and a combat puzzle. I've finished the first two so far.

Sure how would you like to test?

I was just gonna post them on here today once I got to my computer to copy and paste.

So the first puzzle is a lever puzzle. One movement puzzle consisting of 7 levers, required to get to the next room. Each lever will interact with a light on the archway, and once all the lights are on, the archway will activate a magical portal. The lever in the middle will flip all the other levers to their opposites. Each lever on the top and bottom rows will flip the ones to the left and right of it. The levers on the left and right of the middle row allow one light to be changed, but also flip the opposite lever. The middle lever will only turn on whenever it’s flipped manually. The lights that are on are 1, 4, and 6.

One logic puzzle: Theyra, Jopolus, Menna, and Wexyr have just started learning the art of war. Each one has achieved prodigal proficiency in one aspect of combat, but their equipment is unorthodox for their styles. Figure out the class, combat aspect, and equipment of each person. The classes are fighter, barbarian, wizard, and bard. The weapons are glass eye, bottle, wet cloth, and a stone hand. Clues 1. Wexyr beats his foes through sheer terror when he removes his artificial eye to fight them. 2. The bard can’t stand when things break 3. Theyra is not a bard 4. The wizard focuses her spells through her weapon like a magnifying glass 5. The fighter utilizes damp cloth like a whip. 6. Menna hates glass. 7. Jopolus prefers to use his magic to fight. 8. The bard always gives a round of applause. 9. The barbarian wins through intimidation more than power. 10. Menna is a fighter.

One lateral thinking puzzle – Assume there are a million people on the planet. What would be the numerical result if you multiplied the number of fingers on every person’s left hand? If you can’t guess the number, then try to guess how long the number would be.

And one riddle–The most common of soldiers will be found where rival armies meet. He can lead the charge, or hold the line, but he’ll never retreat.

Finally, I wanted to make a combat encounter puzzle, but seeing as I haven't had a huge amount of experience with them, I just googled ideas and borrowed one someone else donated to the internet. Seeing the puzzle gave me a lot of good ideas, but seeing as my session is tomorrow, I don't have a huge amount of time to figure them out so I took the puzzle as it was and was going to present it to them. The party is confronted by five brothers, who introduce themselves as "The Stygian Boys." Their names are- Midnight Blue Snake-Eyes Mr. V Lucky Decimator The brothers are all naked and unarmed. All of them have tattoos with a hourglass/sundial theme, and they each have at least one tattoo depicting a near-copy of Da Vinci's "Vatruvian man" imposed over the 12-sided face of a sundial (clock). The Stygians demand a ridiculous toll (surrender of a limb); when they don't receive it they attack. They have absurd defenses AND damage reduction, and the party cannot hope to beat them. (An easy DC for a religion check reveals the Styx sometimes grants invulnerability to infants. A moderate DC reveals the ritual always requires a weak point to be left on the body) (A moderate Perception check reveals the "Vatruvian man" tattoos may have some vital clue. A Hard Perception check reveals the NAMES of the five Stygians may also have some clue.) If they fail the checks, they can try either skill again once per round by spending a standard action. What they need to figure out is each stygian's name alludes to a number; each number indicates a position on a clock-face, and each position correlates with a body part of the "Vatruvian man." (Midnight=12=head, Decimator=10=r.hand, Snake Eyes=2=L.hand, Mr. V = 5=L.foot, Lucky = R. foot) By "targeting" the correct body part, the PC's now have normal defenses to overcome. Once the correct body part is hit once, the Stygian loses his high defenses, damage reduction, and most of his HP. What do you guys think about these puzzles?

Marco G. said: So the first puzzle is a lever puzzle. One movement puzzle consisting of 7 levers, required to get to the next room. Each lever will interact with a light on the archway, and once all the lights are on, the archway will activate a magical portal. The lever in the middle will flip all the other levers to their opposites. Each lever on the top and bottom rows will flip the ones to the left and right of it. The levers on the left and right of the middle row allow one light to be changed, but also flip the opposite lever. The middle lever will only turn on whenever it’s flipped manually. The lights that are on are 1, 4, and 6. I think you should accompany this with a visual. A diagram with levers in the position that you want and a make the levers tokesn that you can add a status effect to when the light is on or off. Marco G. said: One logic puzzle: Theyra, Jopolus, Menna, and Wexyr have just started learning the art of war. Each one has achieved prodigal proficiency in one aspect of combat, but their equipment is unorthodox for their styles. Figure out the class, combat aspect, and equipment of each person. The classes are fighter, barbarian, wizard, and bard. The weapons are glass eye, bottle, wet cloth, and a stone hand. Clues 1. Wexyr beats his foes through sheer terror when he removes his artificial eye to fight them. 2. The bard can’t stand when things break 3. Theyra is not a bard 4. The wizard focuses her spells through her weapon like a magnifying glass 5. The fighter utilizes damp cloth like a whip. 6. Menna hates glass. 7. Jopolus prefers to use his magic to fight. 8. The bard always gives a round of applause. 9. The barbarian wins through intimidation more than power. 10. Menna is a fighter. This one is cool, but don't let it hold up the game too long if they aren't guessing quickly. If they start to get antsy then let them roll to be able to gain "insight" or intelligence into the right way of solving it. Might as well give intelligence a purpose. Marco G. said: One lateral thinking puzzle – Assume there are a million people on the planet. What would be the numerical result if you multiplied the number of fingers on every person’s left hand? If you can’t guess the number, then try to guess how long the number would be. I'm not sure I understand this one or why it would be asked in an adventure setting. Who will propose it? Marco G. said: And one riddle–The most common of soldiers will be found where rival armies meet. He can lead the charge, or hold the line, but he’ll never retreat. You should add "Who am I?" to the end or somethiong with a qeustion mark. Is the answer a dead soldier? a Marco G. said: The party is confronted by five brothers, who introduce themselves as "The Stygian Boys." Their names are- Midnight Blue Snake-Eyes Mr. V Lucky Decimator The brothers are all naked and unarmed. All of them have tattoos with a hourglass/sundial theme, and they each have at least one tattoo depicting a near-copy of Da Vinci's "Vatruvian man" imposed over the 12-sided face of a sundial (clock). The Stygians demand a ridiculous toll (surrender of a limb); when they don't receive it they attack. They have absurd defenses AND damage reduction, and the party cannot hope to beat them. (An easy DC for a religion check reveals the Styx sometimes grants invulnerability to infants. A moderate DC reveals the ritual always requires a weak point to be left on the body) (A moderate Perception check reveals the "Vatruvian man" tattoos may have some vital clue. A Hard Perception check reveals the NAMES of the five Stygians may also have some clue.) If they fail the checks, they can try either skill again once per round by spending a standard action. What they need to figure out is each stygian's name alludes to a number; each number indicates a position on a clock-face, and each position correlates with a body part of the "Vatruvian man." (Midnight=12=head, Decimator=10=r.hand, Snake Eyes=2=L.hand, Mr. V = 5=L.foot, Lucky = R. foot) By "targeting" the correct body part, the PC's now have normal defenses to overcome. Once the correct body part is hit once, the Stygian loses his high defenses, damage reduction, and most of his HP. What do you guys think about these puzzles? Why would they be confronted by these guys? IT should be logical and not just dropped into the story. After that, they will become curious about the Stygians and probably want to investigate it more. So make sure you are ready to answer more questions if they investigate. I think this may be a frustrating encounter for them because there's no way they would guess that so they'll have to be taking a beating and achieving nothing until they roll to get the information they need. I don't really understand why Lucky = R foot and so on. However I think the look of these 5 brothers and names it awesome. Also last but not least I'll say that most of your puzzles didn't have any consequences when they guessed wrong. There should always be some consequence however small to add urgency to the solving of the puzzles. Very great job and I'm sure it will be a blast!

Oh there were consequences. I'm loathe to outright present death as a consequence to my players, but I made it clear to them that combat was going to be grueling. There's been more than a few of them that have had to roll on the lingering injuries chart, and this one was no exception. They're trying to bring down a cult of people who are worshipers of a god of darkness, and whose goal is nothing less than the enslavement and corruption of all the free people. They've been having a hard time locating clues as to the inner workings of the cult, a hidden base, or really anything in general due to them rolling poorly. So I introduced a high ranking member of the cult who is actually looking to help the heroes, but not make it obvious. Her MO involves playing mind games with her prey, which is why she posed a number of puzzles. The lateral thinking puzzle was simply sheer mathematics, and a concept that I figured they could understand simply enough. While they didn't get the answer right, they understood the point of an outside the box quest like that. I definitely did provide a visual aide for the lever puzzle, and the logic puzzle as well, though both were taken care of in short order. The riddle stumped our rogue, and the answer is actually a pawn. Finally, the reason the last encounter was included is because I reworked the standard cosmology into something that fit more in my elemental pantheon. Under the purview of the god of darkness which they serve are many of the evil planes, such as gehenna, the nine hells, and the river Styx as well. They were made aware of this before, back during our first and second sessions. They actually figured out the puzzle easily enough, though the fighter took a hefty beating before they got the steam rolling enough to start picking these guys off. I ended the session with only one failure, who simply rolled internal injuries on the lingering injuries chart. Harmless. Next session, I should have all my players available, and we can get to the rewards, which she promised to answer one question for each successful puzzle solved. All in all, the puzzles were a success. Next time I'm going to out more thought into them to flesh them out further. And I'm going to make sure to create my own combat puzzle instead of just copying from the Internet. Like I said, I just wanted do get an example of how these kinds of things are done.

Well it sounds like it went really well.

Yeah it was a fun session. Puzzles are delightful, though I wish I was the kind of person who could come up with things like riddles and such easily, instead of simply parroting back what I've heard.

Well it turns out my player dropped because he missed the second to last session because of an injury while moving, and the last session because of national Guard training. He said he'd also miss the next few, so at that point he usually loses interest in a character and loses the will to play it. On the plus side, he did say he enjoyed my campaign and thought I did a great job so...silver linings. Guess it's time to search for a new party member.