Hello!

I've lurked here many years and thought I might finally post something. I've been running a homebrew campaign for a few months and thought that I would share one of my puzzles with you guys. The setting is in a cave with a wizard who is trying to drain magic energy from a captured dragon to power a gigantic stone golem. To foreshadow the final boss fight I thought to put in a puzzle involving statues and runes.

Note that I did make the statues' requirements solveable by my party, so if it doesn't work for you then make it up!

Hope you guys like it!

The Description

You enter into a long hall about 30 feet across. To your right is the cave wall dotted by flickering torches that cast shadows from five statues placed incrementally along the path. The floor is made up of tiles about 10 feet by 10 feet, with the statues placed every other tile in the direct center. To your left is a chasm with no apparent bottom. As you walk onto the tiled area each statue glows a brilliant blue, then the color seems to concentrate on a certain area of the statue and forms a rune.

Describe each statue as the players ask. The tiles serve no purpose except to make them think there might be pressure plates and for the final statue. The payoff (or trap aspect) of the puzzle comes to fruition in the next room, after the PCs have gone through the entire hall of statues. A successful "disarm" of the statue results in the rune flashing and fading. Walking past the statue without "disarming" it results in the statue flashing a brilliant red and the rune to turn red. The players will probably freak out at this point and wait for the bad thing to happen immediately, but the payoff comes later.

The Puzzle

Everything on the statues is made of stone. The players kept asking if they could read the book or take the bow away.

Statue 1: The first statue you come across is of a robed figure extending a wand to his right. On his belt is a book with a glowing rune.

Intended Solution: One of the PCs must cast any spell that would expend a spell slot on the statue

What my players did: Tried SO MANY CANTRIPS on various parts of the body and on the part of the ceiling. I made the statue flash each time a spell was cast but the rune stayed. Eventually my sorcerer used a sorcery point to cast twinned spell with a cantrip and I gave it to him.

Statue 2: The second statue is a grisly looking figure, well armored and holding a greatsword above his shoulder as though ready to swing it in a wide arc. Slightly to the left of center on his chest is a glowing rune.

Intended Solution: One of the PCs must be injured. The extent of the injury does not matter, 1 HP or 100 HP makes no difference

What my players did: They stabbed the statue everywhere. So much so that they ended up injuring themselves, which met the requirement

Statue 3: The third statue is a slightly crouched figure, shrouded in a cloak, his feet up on tip toe and his left hand wielding a dagger. There is a glowing rune on each of the heels of his feet.

Intended Solution: Each PC must sneak past the statue DC13 (I want to reward them for understanding the puzzle but still have a decent chance of failure). It is possible for all of the PCs to fail this or for only a few, but only a maximum of two failures will count in the next chamber

What my players did: They decided to sneak up on the statue and mimic assassinating the statue, which in itself is more clever so I gave it to them.

The fourth statue is of a tall figure holding a bow, the string loose and the arm reaching back to a quiver to grab another arrow. His eyes are turned to the wall across the small chasm. On his quiver is a glowing rune.

Intended Solution: A PC must make a ranged attack on the distant target that the statue is looking at. I don't put a DC restriction on it because my ranger has almost 100 arrows and I don't want him to roll a bunch of times since he can just repeat the action

What my players did: Pretty much exactly as described. I had my ranger roll a d4 to see how many arrows he expended trying to hit the target.

The fifth statue is a brawny figure with a large hammer in contact with the ground in front of him. On the hammer is a glowing rune.

Intended Solution: Must place something of enough weight (20 lbs) on the tile that the hammer is contacting and LEAVE IT THERE. There will be an audible or visible depression in the tile once the weight is high enough

What my players did: I made sure that there was nothing particularly heavy nearby, but my ranger had the idea to climb down the chasm area and I let him find a nice heavy rock there. The bard and sorcerer had to hoist him up on the rope while he tried to not drop the rock.

The Next Room, AKA the payoff

A grand circular chamber greets your eyes (120 foot diameter). Another, larger statue stands tall in the center. In a circle, around the perimeter of the room, is each of the five runic symbols from the statues of the previous room. [description of how many are glowing depends on how many statues they "disarmed"]

I wanted to make a easy-medium encounter for my three level 4 PCs if they had managed to disarm all the statues, so I gave them a stone golem with 80HP, AC 12, 1d6 2 bludgeoning, 4 to hit, and resistance to physical damage (the ranger is the one doing most of the damage in my game. If you have a majority of spellcasters I recommend making it resistant to magic damage).

As follows are the buffs gained by the Stone Guardian from each of the five statues. Whenever the buff is enacted the corresponding rune will flash. If you want a more lethal encounter then feel free to choose your own buffs.

Statue one buff: Stone Guardian Casts Stinking Cloud at the beginning of the fight as a surprise round (I chose stinking cloud because the statues would not be affected by the cloud)

Statue two buff: Stone Guardian multi-attacks every other turn

Statue three buff: [# of failed sneak attempts, max 2] smaller statues step out of the shadows and get sneak attacks on their first turn of combat (2d6 2). They die in one hit and lose their sneak attack after the first round, dealing only 1d6 2 for the remainder of combat.

Statue four buff: All attacks made from more than 30 feet away have disadvantage

Statue five buff: Stone Guardian casts slow on every PC whenever the DM feels it appropriate.

What would I change?

I was a little sad that none of the buffs ended up being used, though I believe that to be my fault in the puzzle design since the PCs had as much time as they wanted to progress past each statue with no consequence for failure. To make this puzzle better I would add some form of time constraint. Maybe gas is coming up from the chasm and they only have so many "tries" before the room is flooded and they need to proceed to the next area. Maybe something was chasing them and they don't have a lot of time to figure out how to get past before this thing catches up. Some form of incentive to pass by the statues is needed.

Overall, there was no frustration when trying to solve the statues. I believe that in a higher pressure scenario they would have stumbled more and the following encounter with the Stone Guardian would have been much more epic, but because they were able to spend as much time as they wanted in the puzzle area they kind of breezed through that one.