The Dragon’s Fire Puzzles
Welcome to the Temple of the Dragon Cult! Your players will be starting fires, leaping lava and solving fire puzzles to defeat the Dragon Cult and save the Kingdom. With luck, skill and wit, your players may even steal treasure from a dragon.
The puzzles and challenges on this page are snack-sized so you can throw them into your D&D game. I hope you enjoy and if there’s any trouble... stop, drop and roll a d20!
Escaping a dragon by riding a mining cart through a lava dungeon? Hell yeah.
Riddle: The Dragon’s Door
You approach the mysterious Temple of the Dragon Cult. A heavy door blocks the entrance. A dragon’s head has been carved into the stone, it’s mouth open. These cryptic words are carved into the stone:
“Feed me I flourish, Water me I perish.”
Solution:
The answer to the riddle is fire - Players must feed the door something flammable. Paper, wood or cloth from their inventory. Here is a website with plenty more fire riddles.
As you place the item into the dragon's mouth, it erupts into a fearsome blaze. The ancient door begins to glow and, with a deep, resonating groan, slides open to reveal the path ahead.
Silly Fire Puzzle: Out of the Frying Pan
You stand at the entrance of a 100 ft. long hallway with blackened stone walls and a floor made of cast iron. As you step forward, the floor grows warmer.
Progressing down the hall, the heat intensifies until it burns your feet! Pushing forward, sweat begins to pour. You notice the door at the end of the hallway is rising… or is the floor sinking?
If players keep progressing slowly…
The heat becomes overwhelming. Is this what it’s like to be cooked alive? With every step the cast-iron floor bends under your weight, slowly revealing what lies ahead and below - a roaring inferno!
If players keep progressing forward they are injured by the heat and might even fall into the terrible flames below!
How will you get past this cast iron hallway of doom?!
Solution:
The floor is a massive 100 foot long foot diving board - so bounce! Jump with all your weight and you’ll be able to bounce to the exit!
Other solutions may include using abilities like climbing and flight or getting creative with spells and ropes.
We at Dungeon Snacks believe a great puzzle can be solved with cheating!
Math Puzzle: Equilibrium
You enter a very creepy room where the Cult of the Gold Dragon worships. In the room you find a locked door and four candelabras with colorful flames. Each candelabra is balanced perfectly except the fourth one which is tilted to the left. How will you balance the candelabra and open the locked door?
Solution:
Each color represents a number that must be balanced with the other side of the candelabra.
Red = 6
Blue = 3
Yellow = 2
Green = 1
To balance the last candelabra, make the colors on the right equal 2. This should be two greens.
Alternate solutions:
Blowing out the candle and it will balance (0=0)
Lighting it with Yellow is a very cheap solution which you gotta respect for it’s simplicity. You may disallow this if you want to make your players think more.
If your players enjoy this puzzle, you can add more logic and math puzzles!
Shape Puzzle: Matchematics
Caution: This is another math puzzle! Nothing is scarier than math!
You reach a table with matches laid out on it. They look like equations written in wood! To escape this room you must move one match to solve each equation.
Solutions:
5+7=2 becomes 9-7=2
8+3-4=0 becomes 6+3-9=0
6-2=7 becomes 5+2=7
4-1=5 becomes 4-1=3
6+4=4 becomes 0+4=4
8-1=2 becomes 9-7=2
9+3=5 becomes 8-3=5
Notes to the DM:
There are many answers for these puzzles so be flexible with players.
Often you can just turn an equals sign into this symbol ≠
For extra fun use real matches. When players solve a puzzle, burn it!
Abstract Thinking Puzzle: The Roasting Room
You approach a door that is too hot to touch! If you open the door, the room inside is unbearably hot. You find a knob on the wall with strange symbols surrounding the it. How will you lower the heat?
Solution:
The strange shapes are valued by how many lines they have. A triangle would be 3 and an octagon is 8. Currently the knob is pointing at a 3 sided shape which makes the heat 3/10.
Players must turn the knob towards the one sided shape (line) to reduce the heat. The door will cool and the room can be entered.
If players turn the knob up too high, the door will begin to melt and may actually cause damage or explode. If players enter the room when it’s too hot, they will take fire damage.
Print or draw these shapes on a piece of paper. If players turn the heat up and enter the room or leave the door open, it will cause fire damage.
Physical Challenge: Lava Bridge
You reach a river of lava. An ancient rope bridge stretches across the roiling magma. How will you get across?
As players walk across the bridge, a series of challenges happen.
First the bridge creaks and sways. It’s ancient ropes are tied onto beams of rotted wood. These may be reinforced to improve the strength of the bridge.
One of the early planks of wood breaks as you step on it. Players may fall and get struck in the bridge.
As they walk, one of the ropes snaps! The bridge rocks violently.
With any loud noise a stalactite falls off the ceiling and breaks through part of the bridge.
A geyser of lava bursts up and licks the bottom of the bridge. Ropes begin burning. Players must extinguish the fire or the bridge will break in half.
Finally the last ropes break and the bridge swings down into the lava! Players will have to hold on as the bridge crashes into the cliff. Now the bottom is on fire and they’ll have to climb fast.
A terrible little monster looks down at the struggling party and laughs! The monster gnaws at the last ropes.
Each of these challenges may be resolved or prevented in many ways! I encourage you to make the players feel like their life is in danger and they got out by the skin of their teeth.
If a player falls off the bridge, they may have a chance to grab a dangling rope. If you’re a particularly cruel DM, that rope will snap too!
Ideas for your Fire Dungeon:
Monsters: Dragon Cultists: Along the way players may fight a Dragon Cult to stop them from completing the ceremony to awaken an evil dragon.
Goal: Steal from the Dragon: You may include an encounter with a dragon where players must compete in a game of riddles, steal from the gold horde and possibly even fight the dragon!
Battle the Dragon: Players may have learned some knowledge about dragon’s weaknesses during their encounter with the Cultists. If you’re setting up a battle with a dragon, you’d better make it epic. This is D&D after all.
Escape the Dragon’s Fire Temple: Perhaps you kill the dragon and walk out. More likely, players barely escape in a mine cart or hot air balloon! Perhaps they release a powerful spell that freezes that whole dungeon and creates an ice dragon! Or they set off the volcano which destroys the whole continent. Get weird with it!
How to make your own fire puzzle:
A good D&D puzzles uses creative thinking, teamwork and player skills and items. To make my own DnD puzzles start by listing unique properties. For example, fire is:
Hot
Bright
Fuel dependent
Oxygen dependent
Fire exhibits various flame shapes and colors
Different fires have different temperatures
Smoke production: Fire produces smoke
Combustion products: It releases gases and ash
Spreading ability: Fire can spread quickly
Fire can cook food and boil water
Boiling water can start a steam engine.
Once I created this list, I imagine obstacles that could be played with. A great DnD puzzle makes players say “Oh I got it!” or “Ahh I coulda got that.” It never feels unfair.
You can always steal puzzles from video games, movies and sites like mine. There is something fun about tweaking a great puzzle and seeing players enjoy it in your game.
19 More Fire Puzzle Ideas:
Now we want to apply those features of fire into puzzles. You may integrate machines, logic and math puzzles, locked doors, treasure, traps and even monsters!
Lavish Lock: You need to melt gold to forge a fancy key in this lavish Dungeon Snacks puzzle.
Matchstick Animals: Make animals by moving matches - my players loved this puzzle. Video here. Be sure to use real matches!
Pressure plates puzzle - Step on the wrong colored plates and fire blasts out of holes in the wall. The symbols on the plates can relate to your homebrew game story or even include parts of your players backstory!
Candle Puzzle 2 - Here’s a classic puzzle where you must measure 45 minutes using a two 60 minute candles.
Candle Puzzle 3 - Here’s a tricky candle blowing puzzle (#7 on this page)
Smoke Cipher: You need to decipher a message hidden in the patterns of smoke produced by a nearby fire to obtain the code to unlock the door. You may want to use Morse Code and include a cypher key for players to use.
Freeze the temple - Release a spell or an elemental creature that makes hell freeze over!
Make a Hot Air Balloon Fly - Start a fire
Heat Lock: The door is locked, and you need to find a way to generate enough heat to unlock it, perhaps by lighting a fire or using a magnifying glass to focus sunlight.
Light Combination Lock: The door has a series of buttons with symbols, and you must arrange them to match the pattern of flames in a nearby torch.
Fuel Key: You discover that the door lock requires a specific fuel source to open it, and you must search for the correct fuel and ignite it.
Oxygen Code: The door has a keypad with numbers, and you must enter a code that corresponds to the atomic number of oxygen (8) to unlock it.
Flame Shape Riddle: A series of torches with different flame shapes are positioned around the room. You must figure out the correct sequence to unlock the door.
Temperature Dial: The door lock is a large dial, and you must adjust it to a specific temperature by using nearby heat sources or cooling methods to open it.
Combustion Gas Puzzle: You must collect and mix specific gases to create a reaction that will unlock the door, requiring you to understand the products of combustion.
Spreading Flames Challenge: The door is locked behind a wall of fire, and you must find a way to control or redirect the flames to create a safe path to unlock the door.
Boil off the water: Turn up the heat to boil away water that is blocking your path.
The Floor is Lava: Hop on the rocks to get across the lava, beware! Some sink! Making sure your path avoids the deadly lava geysers.
Volcanic Crisis: Lava is slowly flooding towards a town, players must dig ditches and divert water to save the people!
Find your next snack-sized puzzle:
The Crooked Carnival
Every game at this carnival is rigged. To win, you’ll have to cheat as well.
Color Key
Use your knowledge of colors to please a giant talking crystal.
Knight’s Path
Move like a chess piece to escape this checkered dungeon.
Infinite Boulder
Escape a ghoulish boulder with the power of a funeral!
Balancing Act
You’ll have to put the same weight on two buttons. But one is across a chasm!
Water DnD Puzzles
A page full of wet puzzles, the perfect counter to this page!
