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In my home-spun campaign, players are about to discover the ruins of an ancient city. Long ago, there was a civilization with an advanced level of technology, which is now dead. I'm thinking of pitting them against the remnants of this civilization: their automated traps, fail-safes, etc. and perhaps some of them really survived ;)

What are some examples of "high-technology" traps and monsters in the D&D universe? I'm thinking clockwork/steampunk/magictech flavor. I was looking in the monster manual of 4.0, and found few creatures that fit this description. Golems maybe, and a couple of automatons. I was thinking of "hand writing" a few basic monsters by just changing the flavor of their attacks, but I'd prefer if there was some existing lore I could use.

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Take a look at the Eberron Campaign Setting

Eberron explores the corollary of Clarke's third law (any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) - that is to say it asserts that sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. It has a rich story that you can repurpose large swaths of.

Reflavor things, simply

A Whirling Blade Swarm is already a thing, but it's up to you how it came to be, and what drives it. Need a mechanical spider? Use a spider, and add the word "Mechanical" to its name.

Utilize Warforged

The Warforged are an Eberron player race that are, essentially, sentient robots. There's a wonderful backstory for how they came to be, but that's all you need to know if all you care about is the technological aspect.

There are 17 natively Warforged NPCs listed in the DDI compendium, ranging from minion to elite and levels 4-19.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I forgot about warforged! That's a wonderful idea. I think I will just find a bunch of monsters that could be reinterpreted as technical, and maybe change some damage types around to fit the flavor. \$\endgroup\$
    – dorfy
    Jan 13, 2015 at 23:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ @dorfy It's generally a good idea to wait a day or two to accept an answer - or at least a few hours! - since some people take the accepted mark as a signal that you're done and not interested in other answers. That means people with the capacity to provide a better answer sometimes won't, and you miss out. (The accepted mark ideally shouldn't have this effect - everyone should be happy to still post new answers for future readers, or on the chance you decide theirs is better and switch the checkmark - but it does.) \$\endgroup\$ Jan 13, 2015 at 23:41
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    \$\begingroup\$ Especially when (like here) what you really want is a variety of diverse answers, so that you can use all of them! \$\endgroup\$
    – webbcode
    Jan 14, 2015 at 1:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ point taken. unaccepted. \$\endgroup\$
    – dorfy
    Jan 14, 2015 at 2:18
  • \$\begingroup\$ @dorfy this is only tangentially related, but take a look at the Bazaar of the Bizarre: Thingamajigs of the Barrier Peaks article in D410, for some absolutely hilarious flavor text and some sci-fi items. \$\endgroup\$
    – webbcode
    Jan 15, 2015 at 18:21
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An example of DnD crossing into the sci-fi is an old module. S3 - The Barrier Peaks - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_to_the_Barrier_Peaks

Perhaps this will help you form the scenario better?

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