- Type: Investigation Puzzle
- Location: Temple or Dungeon
- Difficulty: Moderate
The Puzzle:
This D&D puzzle is a play on King Arthur’s ‘sword in the stone’ and ‘Thor’s unliftable hammer’.
Players hear about a legend of a hammer set upon a rock that cannot be lifted by even the strongest of warriors. Many have tried and failed and the reward (DM’s choice) that goes with lifting the hammer goes unclaimed.
PCs have no trouble finding the hammer sitting inside a temple or cave. If they climb upon the rock and try to lift it no amount of strength will suffice. So what’s going on?
Puzzle solution:
The rock and hammer are actually one solid piece of metal. So anyone who climbs upon the rock to lift the hammer will fail, because you can’t lift yourself. The metal rock only looks like a rock because – over the course of many years – it has collected an inch of dust and grime.
To lift the hammer players must lift the entire rock as well. Not an easy feat because the whole thing is made out of metal. Doing so reveals a staircase leading down to the true treasure room.
Puzzle clues:
- Casting detect magic on the rock reveals nothing. Because the reason PCs can’t lift it is ordinary physics.
- Players who successfully investigate how the hammer is buried in the stone discover it’s a solid piece of metal.
- Players who douse the stone in water reveal it’s metal surface.