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Saph
2011-01-14, 02:45 PM
So our Pathfinder group has recently been playing through the Tomb of Horrors, and I've been noticing something.

Namely, that trap-focused adventures are really, REALLY boring.

Only one person can act: In the typical combat everyone gets to contribute. Even if only one person can act at a time, the PCs can cooperate, and since the battlefield's constantly changing, everyone has a reason to pay attention. Traps are different. They're basically solo encounters: only one person can interact with them at a time. To make things worse, that person is usually the same person.

This gets to be a problem real fast when you have a decent-sized group. Our group has six players and whenever a trap came up, five of the players had to sit around and do nothing while the rogue handled everything.
The mechanic for dealing with traps isn't interesting: Traps are done on a binary basis. Either you succeed on your Remove Traps/Disable Device/Thievery check, or you don't. There's none of the variety you get in a combat or social encounter.
The consequences of failure aren't interesting: D&D traps basically function as a HP tax. If you get hit by them, it just means you have to spend X amount of healing resources.
They slow down gameplay: Once players run into the first couple of traps, they'll generally have the rogue start searching everything. And I mean everything. At length. And the more dangerous the traps are, the worse it gets. In our game, after the rogue missed the first trap because of a low roll, he started taking 20 on every square.

It creates a sort of paralysing effect where players want to explore, but can't move beyond the cleared zone until it's been searched. And once again, it's generally the case that only one character can effectively search, either by having Trapfinding or having the best perception score. So again, everyone else just has to sit around and watch.
I know it's traditional for D&D parties to have a skillmonkey/trapfinder role, but I'm really wondering why the early editions did it in the first place. What's the point of having a job and a party role that only one person can fill?

Benly
2011-01-14, 02:50 PM
Well, as I recall a lot of the Tomb of Horror traps were designed to be disabled not by rolling Disable Device but by the players actually coming up with a workable plan of how to deal with this problem with the resources at hand. In that regard, once they were spotted they were more of a puzzle than a skill check.

As for spotting them, I tend to houserule that rogues automatically search for traps when they get close enough, because HAHA SWINGING GUILLOTINE IN THE FACE isn't all that much fun really.

Lapak
2011-01-14, 02:52 PM
I know it's traditional for D&D parties to have a skillmonkey/trapfinder role, but I'm really wondering why the early editions did it in the first place. What's the point of having a job and a party role that only one person can fill?
In the early editions, trap disarming was not always as easy a skill check. Some traps were explicitly something that you couldn't disarm but could avoid; others had a specific method of disarming and it was expected that the players rather than the characters would work out what needed to be done. Only once you'd worked out what needed to happen would the differing levels of character ability come into play - the fighter might be the one to figure out that you need to pin the trigger-stone in place, but the thief is the one with the hands steady enough to do it. The same was true of trap (and secret door, and etc.) detection - there was sometimes the chance of finding something randomly, but a more reliable method was to say exactly where and how you were looking.

Which is to say that trap modules like Tomb of Horrors were explicitly meant to test player skill and attention to detail rather than character skill.

DarkEternal
2011-01-14, 02:55 PM
For the exact same reason that in the times of yore, there was only one class that could hit really hard, one class that could heal you and one class that could blast stuff from far away. It's what they do.

Me, I like traps when they are properly dosed. I didn't really play Tomb of Horrors, so I can't really comment on that, but a well placed trap can bring a lot of confusion in a party, and I particularly favor mechanical traps when compared to magical ones.

For instance, in one of our last mini campaigns(high level campaign, they were level 14 or something at the time), the party walked on top of a floor which was actually a mechanical trap, released by pulling a level, which the villain of said encounter did. Basically, what it did was open the floor beneath them. The ranger was the only one that saved. The rest dropped in, some odd 5-6 feet, really not deep, in black water which was basically a substance which nullified all spells, arcane and divine, meaning all magic.

Oh, and also there was a gargantuan dire shark swimming in there.


It was fun watching then scraping to escape and being afraid for their survival.

However, I can see how it would be boring it it happened all the time, but really, I can see that happening whenever you put something where only one character shines(aka, if you make all fights the sort where enemies don't have spell resistance or something meaning all magic users can thrive and martial combatants can twiddle their fingers), but if you mix it up so that everyone can have ago, toss in a golem every now and then, an antimagic field here and there, it brings the variety everyone needs. Same thing with traps.

Redrat2k6
2011-01-14, 02:55 PM
@Saph

I agree.

I would like to see trap mechanics match Indiana Jones movies, where the binary system would help make it easier or provide more options to overcome the trap.

*such as running away from giant boulders*
*yelling at women to stick their hands in bugs*
*slowly pulling said women up from a giant lava pit*

etc.

Arbane
2011-01-14, 03:11 PM
]
I know it's traditional for D&D parties to have a skillmonkey/trapfinder role, but I'm really wondering why the early editions did it in the first place. What's the point of having a job and a party role that only one person can fill?

OD&D didn't have skills AT ALL, so the DM as supposed to give players a fair bit of slack when they tried to disarm/bypass traps via Rube Goldberg methods. ("Okay, we lay the ladder over the pit horizontally, and walk or crawl across one-at-a-time...")

Fhaolan
2011-01-14, 03:19 PM
Yeah, when Tomb of Endless Traps was put together, there wasn't a 'disable traps' mechanic. Instead the players were expected to figure out how to do it.

Which is pretty much how I run games still. I put puzzle/traps in to entertain the players, not the characters. If the players like working out the solution to traps, traps tend to show up more often. If the players just want to roll against a 'disable traps' skill, then traps don't show up very often.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-14, 03:28 PM
In 4E the trap focus has shifted from these sort of "one man" or "gotcha" traps (e.g. pit traps, poisoned darts) to "Trap Encounters" (e.g. fighting in a room with pendulum blades; rolling boulders). IMHO, this is the best way to handle traps in a game where Skills are used for trap removal - they let the Rogue try to shut down or avoid the trap while everyone else is dealing with the effects of an active trap.

In non-skill games (e.g. OD&D) each trap is actually a Player Puzzle. Those are as fun as your group finds Player Puzzles - me, I never liked them 'cause I was bad at them :smalltongue:

Yora
2011-01-14, 03:33 PM
This sounds as if the dungeon was actually playable back then.
But who thought it would be a good idea to make an adaptation for 3rd ed that replaces everything with a Disable Trap DC?

Rockphed
2011-01-14, 04:00 PM
This sounds as if the dungeon was actually playable back then.
But who thought it would be a good idea to make an adaptation for 3rd ed that replaces everything with a Disable Trap DC?

Probably the same people who thought that removing the down-sides for magic AND upping the power thereof would be a good idea. And the same people who thought that the monk, whose entire thing is being hard to hit by getting really fast should have the ability to hit a whole bunch in a single round if he stands still. 3.x was full of bad design decisions, and you wonder at one more?

Kurald Galain
2011-01-14, 04:04 PM
Well, I'm not really a fan of the Tomb of Horrors, but the point is that if you start taking 20 on each square, you're playing it overly rational - and most games do get boring when you play them overly rational.

Benly
2011-01-14, 04:06 PM
Well, I'm not really a fan of the Tomb of Horrors, but the point is that if you start taking 20 on each square, you're playing it overly rational - and most games do get boring when you play them overly rational.

This is why every party needs at least one low-Wis high-Cha to declare himself leader and throw caution to the wind.

WarKitty
2011-01-14, 04:16 PM
This is why every party needs at least one low-Wis high-Cha to declare himself leader and throw caution to the wind.

In our games this usually leads to the would-be leader being stuck out front on the end of a 10-foot pole.

Occasional Sage
2011-01-14, 04:26 PM
This sounds as if the dungeon was actually playable back then.
But who thought it would be a good idea to make an adaptation for 3rd ed that replaces everything with a Disable Trap DC?

ToH was amazing and horrible, back in the day. I want the person responsible for the conversion to play them, one after the other.

With any luck, they will suicide in shame. Notreally. Just hyperbolically.

kc0bbq
2011-01-14, 04:40 PM
In 4E the trap focus has shifted from these sort of "one man" or "gotcha" traps (e.g. pit traps, poisoned darts) to "Trap Encounters" (e.g. fighting in a room with pendulum blades; rolling boulders). IMHO, this is the best way to handle traps in a game where Skills are used for trap removal - they let the Rogue try to shut down or avoid the trap while everyone else is dealing with the effects of an active trap.

I really like how 4Es traps work and try to set up my 3.xE traps in the same manner. 3E Tomb of Horror just doesn't work. There's an answer to every gygaxian meat grinder effect you find in the old tournament modules. They're just not fun.

4E brings back some of the Rube Goldberg feel, and some of the published encounters with a trap as only part of a larger encounter can be really amusing.

The problem is that it can be hard to reinterpret 3E ToH without massively rewriting the traps. Some are merely off switches for the PCs life, and everyone goes into the thing paranoid these days. That's one of the charms of the 4E ToH sequel. You're encouraged to let the players who have been through the original to really play up the reputation of the place.

In its day, though, and in the right place (convention tournament), ToH was exciting. It was fun to get just one room deeper to find out how you the next party member was going to die and swapping stories about it.

It still works for my core group, but we're the people you hear chanting "TPK! TPK! TPK!" at RPGA events waiting to be assigned a GM.

Skorj
2011-01-14, 04:51 PM
Really, the best way to play ToH is:
With the original trap designs (no DCs)
With one-off characters (perhaps even more than one per player)
Without telling the players that it's ToH


ToH isn't all that fun if you get too paranoid about it, it's far better in a tourney environment where it's a victory if there's one survivor, and there's some time pressure.

The modules reputation doesn't enhance the gaming, IMO - if you have players who have never played it, better IMo to just warn them it will be difficult, but let them form their own impressions.

grimbold
2011-01-14, 04:56 PM
Well, as I recall a lot of the Tomb of Horror traps were designed to be disabled not by rolling Disable Device but by the players actually coming up with a workable plan of how to deal with this problem with the resources at hand. In that regard, once they were spotted they were more of a puzzle than a skill check.

As for spotting them, I tend to houserule that rogues automatically search for traps when they get close enough, because HAHA SWINGING GUILLOTINE IN THE FACE isn't all that much fun really.

exactly this
the best traps require part participation to work out, the reason there is a trap finder skill monkey is because it makes sense for people guarding thousands of gp to protect it with whatever they can, and its not only rogues who can sense traps
if your really bored with traps you can do what i often do and allow anybody to find traps with a dc over 20 if they get a high enough roll

Saph
2011-01-14, 05:03 PM
Really, I'm starting to wonder what the point is of using trap-heavy environments at all. Whenever I'm designing my own adventures, I use dungeons sparingly and pretty much never use traps.

I'm just not sure what traps add that sentient enemies can't provide on their own. If you look at most fantasy stories, traps are pretty rare - when Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli, and Gandalf are going through Moria, 'checking for traps' is not high on their priority list.

Psyren
2011-01-14, 05:05 PM
I would like some middle ground; reward the player who picked the trapmonkey class by letting them see possible solutions to the trap encounter, but still require the participation of the others to get through it one piece, instead of a flat skill roll.

For instance, the Rogue can see which pressure plates to get the party to stand on, or where the wizard should throw fire his ray of frost to jam the gears, or when the cleric should take out the rock he cast Darkness on to block the shaft of light trigger for the collapsing bridge etc.

Kurald Galain
2011-01-14, 05:11 PM
I would like some middle ground; reward the player who picked the trapmonkey class by letting them see possible solutions to the trap encounter,

This is circular reasoning, though: the only reason why anyone would play a trapmonkey is the expectation that there might be traps; so if there are only traps because someone is playing a trapmonkey, well, that doesn't help. "Trapmonkey" is not an archetype.

Tvtyrant
2011-01-14, 05:16 PM
This is circular reasoning, though: the only reason why anyone would play a trapmonkey is the expectation that there might be traps; so if there are only traps because someone is playing a trapmonkey, well, that doesn't help. "Trapmonkey" is not an archetype.

I respectfully disagree; I have several members who won't play anything but Rogue types, and they whine if they don't get traps to undue.

Lapak
2011-01-14, 05:22 PM
Really, I'm starting to wonder what the point is of using trap-heavy environments at all. Whenever I'm designing my own adventures, I use dungeons sparingly and pretty much never use traps.

I'm just not sure what traps add that sentient enemies can't provide on their own. If you look at most fantasy stories, traps are pretty rare - when Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli, and Gandalf are going through Moria, 'checking for traps' is not high on their priority list.In LotR, traps are rare. In fiction generally, not as much. Indiana Jones was mentioned earlier, and is a good example; the opener to Raiders had him navigating a trap-rich environment, and The Last Crusade ended with a trap-solving sequence. And that's what traps add that sentient opponents don't: an opportunity for the players to think their way through a problem in their own time. Combat (and even diplomacy) requires immediate response - traps are a pace-breaker that lets the party stop and try to work out the smart thing to do.

Unless you go with the "DC X to notice it before it goes off, DC Y to disarm it" model, which is just a skill-points tax on at least one party member, in which case they are quite pointless.

Traps can also do other things than just hurting the party directly. A trap floor that dumps the party into the dungeons of a castle and closes above them might not even do any hit point damage, but it changes the landscape for the PCs in a way they might have wanted to avoid. If they do notice it, they can bypass that problem or even figure out how to force it to stay open and suddenly they have a new path open to them. Moving walls, falling portcullises, and retracting ladders can all do similar things.

Telasi
2011-01-14, 05:22 PM
This is why every party needs at least one low-Wis high-Cha to declare himself leader and throw caution to the wind.

Funny, in my 4e group it tends to be my high-Wis low-Cha characters who get chosen to lead. It's odd.

Make the traps a puzzle. Let the disable device roll give them a clue, but make them actually figure out a way to disable the thing with what they have. I'm going to be doing this when I run my current PF campaign. This is the only way I can think of to make traps more interesting for everyone (and in general, for that matter).

EccentricCircle
2011-01-14, 05:26 PM
I never used to use traps much at all for precisely the reasons outlined above.
the simple to disarm, easy to avoid or bypass traps of the DMG don't have the kind of exciting feel of the Indiana Jonesian Deathtraps you see in the movies.
for anyone who feels this way I would seriously recomend the Encounter trap rules presented in Dungeonscape. ( with a few additional traps in secrets of Xen'drik, some taken straight from Temple of Doom.)
by treating traps in the same way a combat works it encourages all of the players to become involved and creates a much more interesting and cinematic experience, traps become much more of a puzzle, and much more of a challenge.
there are rules for designing your own traps and when used in concert with the complex skill checks rules ( the 3.5 precursosr to 4e's skill challenges) you can create some very interesting death traps.

I now use death traps far far too often, but it is well worth it for the moments when the party decide to climb up through the hole the giant roling boulder fell through and find the giant hoppers full of boulders waiting in reserve...

shadow_archmagi
2011-01-14, 05:27 PM
In our games this usually leads to the would-be leader being stuck out front on the end of a 10-foot pole.

Clearly the player's CHA wasn't high enough.

I once had a 3 WIS 18 CHA bard in a party. Yes, he rolled 4 1's.

The game tragically fell apart very quickly, but I remember one incident:

1. Players find hidden treasure trove
2. Pirates arrive to claim whats theirs
3. Party defeats them
4. Party argues over what to do
5. Richard steps forward "BURY THEM UP TO THEIR NECKS IN SAAAAAAAAAAAND!"
6. Party agrees to his plan and carries it out

Saph
2011-01-14, 05:34 PM
In LotR, traps are rare. In fiction generally, not as much. Indiana Jones was mentioned earlier, and is a good example.

The main example, yeah. Indy is 20th-century, though.

I'm trying to think of a non-D&D fantasy setting which makes heavy use of traps, and I'm coming up blank.

1. Tolkien - almost no traps.
2. Narnia - almost no traps.
3. Wheel of Time - no major traps I can think of.
4. Raymond Feist - very few.
5. David Gemmell - generally none.

And so on. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if there's anything apart from D&D which treats traps as an essential part of a fantasy adventure.

Kurald Galain
2011-01-14, 05:39 PM
I'm trying to think of a non-D&D fantasy setting which makes heavy use of traps, and I'm coming up blank.
Road Runner cartoons :smalltongue:

The thing is, Indiana Jones (and Alan Quatermain, National Treasure, or even The Goonies) are all about exploring an ancient location that's either abandoned, or filled with nasties. This genre has traps. This genre does not, however, have much in common with fantasy. It's true that zero fantasy novels I can think of have significant traps - but there are also very very few that have dungeons to explore.

Delwugor
2011-01-14, 05:42 PM
Really, I'm starting to wonder what the point is of using trap-heavy environments at all. Whenever I'm designing my own adventures, I use dungeons sparingly and pretty much never use traps.

I'm just not sure what traps add that sentient enemies can't provide on their own. If you look at most fantasy stories, traps are pretty rare - when Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli, and Gandalf are going through Moria, 'checking for traps' is not high on their priority list.
Agreed on all points. A trap here or there is fine but they must be such that they add excitement and drama heavy challenge.
I also sparingly use traditional dungeons and only one or two traps in them. Those traps are usually dangerous, but not always lethal, and always unique.
I have also found that traps which interfere with the party's progress tend to have alot of affect on the players. For example a trap which teleports the characters to different locations with other teleport traps, they spend their time back and forth jumping between traps until they figure it out.

Psyren
2011-01-14, 05:49 PM
"Trapmonkey" is not an archetype.

I never said it was? :smallconfused:

By "trapmonkey" I simply mean a skill-based class with the Trapfinding feature. Such classes usually pay for this ability via a number of weaknesses, most commonly their frailty in a stand-up fight. And yet rogues (and their ilk) are extremely popular classes in all RPGs. Since they are going to see play anyway, why deny them one of their advantages? Not providing traps for a trap-player is like denying access to costly material components for a spellcaster. Sure they can function without them, but you're taking away something they would have paid for.

Lapak
2011-01-14, 05:49 PM
The main example, yeah. Indy is 20th-century, though.

I'm trying to think of a non-D&D fantasy setting which makes heavy use of traps, and I'm coming up blank.

1. Tolkien - almost no traps.
2. Narnia - almost no traps.
3. Wheel of Time - no major traps I can think of.
4. Raymond Feist - very few.
5. David Gemmell - generally none.

And so on. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if there's anything apart from D&D which treats traps as an essential part of a fantasy adventure.Fair point. Nothing in classic fantasy leaps immediately to mind; of course, RPGs and stories are different in what they need to drive the story forward.

(On reflection, a fantasy series with a fair scattering of traps-as-major-plot-points did come to mind, but it's rather post-D&D: the Harry Potter series.)

Yora
2011-01-14, 05:58 PM
The charm about the traps in Indiana Jones is, that triggering the trap is the beginning of interacting with the trap, not the ending.
He found all the pressure plates on the floor and on the pedestal. But he had to go around the poison arrow trap and failed at disarming the pedestal trap. But when he triggered the pedestal, he didn't simply get shot by an arrow that he failed after the trap had done its work. Instead he got forced to run away from the giant rock. He also encountered the trap he found before, but had to decide to try the slow way around again, or "risk the Reflex saves" and run straight through it. Then he had to make a jump across the pit and slip under the closing door. And then the trap was over.
But in 3rd Ed, traps are almost always instantaneous effects you can't interact with in any way. They just lower your hp without any way for the players to make any decision about their actions.

ericgrau
2011-01-14, 06:15 PM
1. Only one person can act:...the rogue handled everything.
2. The mechanic for dealing with traps isn't interesting:
3. The consequences of failure aren't interesting: ..you have to spend X amount of healing resources.
4. They slow down gameplay: they'll generally have the rogue start searching everything.... he started taking 20 on every square.

5. I know it's traditional for D&D parties to have a skillmonkey/trapfinder role, but I'm really wondering why the early editions did it in the first place.
1. See remaining comments
2. Try to think of what's going on with the trap. The players don't find a trap, they find a trigger or a dart hole or etc. A search check alone shouldn't tell them exactly what it is. Once you get into details that leaves an opening for players to think of creative solutions. For that matter only so much of the mechanism may be in reach to "disable" and they might need to use random objects or etc. instead. Or maybe all they see is a dark hole in the statue's mouth and there's no way of telling what it's for, regardless of search mod, without testing. For that matter 1/3-1/2 of traps, including just about all the mundane ones without complex mechanisms, are a DC 20 so nearly everyone can find those without even rolling. For the rest detect magic or other methods might help.
3. Really? I thought ToH killed people without a save. For debilitating effects it's often best to create time pressure: room collapsing, monsters coming, etc. Then you might not have time to apply bandaids and the party may be fighting off with another problem while the rogue takes the multiple rounds it takes to disable most traps until you can escape to safety.
4. That's fine, the rogue or other players should declare they're taking a 20 on the whole room, it takes 2 minutes per square. Then you mark down the time elapsed and tell them what they find. Figure out the entire room at once this way instead of square by square. It shouldn't take long in real life. Like #3 time pressure can make this harder.

5. In 1e the thief handled traps. IIRC he rolled a % on a table.

Skorj
2011-01-14, 06:34 PM
IMO, the fun challenges are what my group calls "practical problem traps". For example, you need to cross a river of lava, and there's an AMF above it - how do you get across? That kind of thing can involve any or all party members, and a rogue can be particularly useful without ever rolling a disarm check.

The only "traps" with actual triggers I use are one of these:
Practical problems like the above that can be avoided if you find the trap mechanism (that is, find the trick the residents use to bypass it).
Traps that, when triggered, produce an immediate practical problem, like the giant boulder in Indy.
Traps that are part of a combat with live enemies, and serve to make that combat more interesting.
Traps that are simply required for versimillitude, where the party will know IC to check for traps here if they've been paying attention at all, and take maybe 30 seconds to resolve.


I haven't used a "detect the trap or take damage" style trap in isolation since before 3.0 came out. Those don't seem interesting

Tiki Snakes
2011-01-14, 06:41 PM
Road Runner cartoons :smalltongue:

The thing is, Indiana Jones (and Alan Quatermain, National Treasure, or even The Goonies) are all about exploring an ancient location that's either abandoned, or filled with nasties. This genre has traps. This genre does not, however, have much in common with fantasy. It's true that zero fantasy novels I can think of have significant traps - but there are also very very few that have dungeons to explore.

That's a pretty good point, actually.

Ragitsu
2011-01-14, 06:45 PM
{Scrubbed}

Calmar
2011-01-14, 06:46 PM
Having made my first D&D experiences with Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, I was used to have a rogue make a Search check for an entire room, or let her take 20 if there is enough time. This makes trap-solving a fairly speedy action.

Jack_Simth
2011-01-14, 07:06 PM
Traps in isolation... generally are boring, yes. Regardless of system, they're either a resource tax (Be that HP, skill points, feats, or something else) or a player puzzle. A resource tax is rather uninteresting, and a player puzzle is only good for people who like player puzzles (I'm not one of them).

Simple hazards less so (I think someone mentioned a river of lava). Yes, there's a trap there. It's a river of lava you need to cross. Oh, you only have enough Fly spells left for yourself, and you need to get the entire party across? This could be interesting....

What's really fun, though, are traps in combination with critters. For 3.5, you might have a Chain Lightning trap in a room full of Flesh Golems, a [Mass] Inflict X Wounds trap in a room full of undead, a Fireball trap in a room full of Iron Golems, or some such. The trap is obvious - the critters keep deliberately setting it off, as it heals them. It hurts you, however. If the party Rogue can make the rolls to locate the source of the trap, and then the disable device to shut it down (two standard actions... if he rolls well), then the encounter is much, much simpler. If he can't, the party has problems. So the rest of the party is holding off the beasties while the party rogue fixes the thing that keeps blasting them.... oh yes, and it's quite a logical arrangement for a BBEG to set up for his guardians. His guardians recognize him, and don't do anything when he goes by. He finds a way to be essentially immune to the trap in question (be that a magic ring that he wears which suppresses the trap, being immune to it himself, or something else), and it helps maintain his minions. Alternately, there might be a few covered pit traps in the BBEG's throne room. Anyone charging the BBEG needs to make a few reflex saves.

TheWhisper
2011-01-14, 07:36 PM
For instance, in one of our last mini campaigns...the party walked on top of a floor which was actually a mechanical trap...what it did was open the floor beneath them. The ranger was the only one that saved. The rest dropped in, some odd 5-6 feet, really not deep, in black water which was basically a substance which nullified all spells, arcane and divine, meaning all magic.

Oh, and also there was a gargantuan dire shark swimming in there.

Wow.

Your players sure weren't very observant.

If I had been playing at the time, I would have rejoiced. For you just gave me the ultimate weapon.

You gave me water that cancels all magic. Enough for a gargantuan dire shark to swim in. Assuming that's 100 feet by 100 feet by 100 feet (can't get away with less if the shark is gargantuan), that's about 28 million liters of the stuff.

I mean, screw the rest of the adventure. Nothing else later on could be as valuable as this. Just send for as many flasks and barrels as you can get your hands on.

Can you imagine anything so precious? It's magebane-in-a-bottle. But it's also an unimpeachable defense against magical attacks, just get used to fighting wet. Get the gnomes to invent a pump sprayer, and have an area-effect dispel that always works. Melt magical creatures, undead, and other nasties. Slip it into that cleric's drink. Or pour a whole bunch in the well, then invade the temple of darkness and face nothing but fighters-without-bonus-feats.

Eventually, you would have to cry uncle and use some sort of GM fiat to nerf the stuff or whisk it out of my hands.

Which would be admitting defeat, because then you would blatantly show your double standard; "It's okay for villains to have this to use against you, but not okay for you to have for use against them".

This is why the wise GM avoids introducing unobtainium into the campaign. Any time you write "nullifies all", "invulnerable to", "always causes", then you are asking for trouble.

Greenish
2011-01-14, 07:57 PM
Get the gnomes to invent a pump sprayer, and have an area-effect dispel that always works.I think Dungeonscape or CAdv. already has those. Can be fixed to weapons and shields, too.

[Edit]: Though why none of the level 14-or-so characters was flying or airwalking in unknown territory I will never know.

Lapak
2011-01-14, 08:14 PM
Wow.

Your players sure weren't very observant.

If I had been playing at the time, I would have rejoiced. For you just gave me the ultimate weapon.
*snip*
This is why the wise GM avoids introducing unobtainium into the campaign. Any time you write "nullifies all", "invulnerable to", "always causes", then you are asking for trouble.Unless it's the tank that's significant, or a ley-line convergence on that point, or the water evaporates, or loses its potency after being exposed to sunlight, or any of ten thousand other reasons why you can't just cart the water away.

You can't bottle the Fountain of Youth; people who want to use it have to go find it! :smalltongue:

Cheesy74
2011-01-14, 08:16 PM
I'd say it's all about how you play the traps. I make it extremely hard to disable traps but give my players lots of clues and concessions to let them make it past the traps. Rather than rolling Disable Device checks, they usually end up coming up with a creative solution, like pulling a taut rope over the spike pit or using Spider Climb to wall-walk past the first hall of pits. It becomes a more interesting mental exercise and puzzle, and everyone jumps to contribute because it's not just the rogue using Disable Device or the wizard casting spells to get past. Maybe I'm a wussy DM, but I remove the boring "make the check or get hit with a scythe when you walk past" traps while I'm at it. If they can't be solved by intellect and creativity rather than dice rolls, they don't go in my game.

Of course, this is the 3.5 Tomb of Horrors, so all that may not apply to Pathfinder.

ffone
2011-01-14, 08:24 PM
Amen to the original post. It was a well written out listing of all the problems I've seen with traps, and the reason when I DM I virtually never use them.

It's even worse in PBP games, b/c they're generally slower. If the rogue isn't a fast closer, they basically kill the game. They are also bad in PBP b/c the DM must often make inference about how PCs move, etc. from qualitative written descriptions - the 'trap paranoia' basically kills roleplaying; people are afraid to describe their character doing anything beyond the necessary minimum.

DarkEternal
2011-01-14, 08:55 PM
Wow.

Your players sure weren't very observant.

If I had been playing at the time, I would have rejoiced. For you just gave me the ultimate weapon.

You gave me water that cancels all magic. Enough for a gargantuan dire shark to swim in. Assuming that's 100 feet by 100 feet by 100 feet (can't get away with less if the shark is gargantuan), that's about 28 million liters of the stuff.

I mean, screw the rest of the adventure. Nothing else later on could be as valuable as this. Just send for as many flasks and barrels as you can get your hands on.

Can you imagine anything so precious? It's magebane-in-a-bottle. But it's also an unimpeachable defense against magical attacks, just get used to fighting wet. Get the gnomes to invent a pump sprayer, and have an area-effect dispel that always works. Melt magical creatures, undead, and other nasties. Slip it into that cleric's drink. Or pour a whole bunch in the well, then invade the temple of darkness and face nothing but fighters-without-bonus-feats.

Eventually, you would have to cry uncle and use some sort of GM fiat to nerf the stuff or whisk it out of my hands.

Which would be admitting defeat, because then you would blatantly show your double standard; "It's okay for villains to have this to use against you, but not okay for you to have for use against them".

This is why the wise GM avoids introducing unobtainium into the campaign. Any time you write "nullifies all", "invulnerable to", "always causes", then you are asking for trouble.

It was not just the water that was the important thing, but rather just the catalyst through which the magic...or anti magic worked. It worked in this specific location, for one, and yeah, it would have worked outside of that location as well. But for a very limited amount of time, a few hours at best.

I was very well aware of the game breaking shenanigans that could follow with this, so I was quite specific when designing it. The characters knew in this specific scenario that they were walking into a trap, but the circumstances made it so that they really had no choice what so ever.

Benly
2011-01-14, 08:59 PM
It was not just the water that was the important thing, but rather just the catalyst through which the magic...or anti magic worked. It worked in this specific location, for one, and yeah, it would have worked outside of that location as well. But for a very limited amount of time, a few hours at best.

I was very well aware of the game breaking shenanigans that could follow with this, so I was quite specific when designing it. The characters knew in this specific scenario that they were walking into a trap, but the circumstances made it so that they really had no choice what so ever.

Sounds like "fun". (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/9/)

Shatteredtower
2011-01-14, 09:45 PM
Tomb of Horrors works best when everyone wants to look around. It's for the group that wants to immerse themselves in the wonder they are visiting, rather than another fight.

It works best for those that have the patience for description and a willingness to get involved with it. It's for people that want to know what every design, colour, and riddle could signify, rather than just search and disable.

It is not for people that just want to rush from one encounter to the next. That's not to say it's too good for them. It's just unlikely to be to their taste.

Akal Saris
2011-01-15, 12:19 AM
My PCs had a very fun and memorable time with the 3.5 version, but I ran it as a 2-person game, with a ftr/rogue and a cleric. So the two of them were constantly engaged in the dungeon, and there weren't any issues with PC boredom.

However, when a 3rd player showed up for a session, his barbarian basically sat around waiting for a monster to pop out of an unlocked door after it, the hallway, and the ceiling are all checked for traps, illusions, and secret doors, which sounds like your group's experience. My own solution to that was to have rival NPCs enter the dungeon periodically to 'spice it up' with interaction and combat, but it certainly distracted from the 'normal' ToH experience.

WarKitty
2011-01-15, 01:05 AM
One of my favorite trap games was when I ran an all commoners game. I had a warrior, an adept, and an expert. Level 2, no trapfinding among the lot of them and little disable device. So I gave them fun traps and puzzles that required ingenuity to disable. Great fun there. My more regular games end up being "I roll to see if I can disable it."

icefractal
2011-01-15, 03:10 AM
I like the idea of OD&D-style "figure out the solution yourself" type traps. But in practice, the most practical solutions are often boring ones. Such as triggering everything from a distance by sending barrels / minions / summons ahead of you. Or smashing the area into small bits from a distance. Or blocking it entirely with an extra-large tower shield or even portable wall.

At low-levels, it works a bit better. A lot of the really safe methods have a real trade off in bulkiness or expense. But once you reach even mid-level, and have things like Bags of Holding, then most traps are either:
A) Logical, defeated in an effective but dull way.
B) Have a surprise component you can't find, so they may as well just be "wandering damage" (or else lead to even more dull triple-checking).
C) Operate in arbitrary ways and/or made of unobtanium, so it's pretty much a crapshoot what will work.

The last time I played a "trap heavy" adventure, I had to start "forgetting" to use my own abilities that could bypass them all safely and easily. That's not really a great match for "challenging the player".

ffone
2011-01-15, 05:35 AM
It was not just the water that was the important thing, but rather just the catalyst through which the magic...or anti magic worked. It worked in this specific location, for one, and yeah, it would have worked outside of that location as well. But for a very limited amount of time, a few hours at best.

I was very well aware of the game breaking shenanigans that could follow with this, so I was quite specific when designing it. The characters knew in this specific scenario that they were walking into a trap, but the circumstances made it so that they really had no choice what so ever.

That's exactly the double standard the other guy was referring to, just with a token explanation (this is a special sacred site where the water is uber).

ffone
2011-01-15, 05:38 AM
The charm about the traps in Indiana Jones is, that triggering the trap is the beginning of interacting with the trap, not the ending.
He found all the pressure plates on the floor and on the pedestal. But he had to go around the poison arrow trap and failed at disarming the pedestal trap. But when he triggered the pedestal, he didn't simply get shot by an arrow that he failed after the trap had done its work. Instead he got forced to run away from the giant rock. He also encountered the trap he found before, but had to decide to try the slow way around again, or "risk the Reflex saves" and run straight through it. Then he had to make a jump across the pit and slip under the closing door. And then the trap was over.
But in 3rd Ed, traps are almost always instantaneous effects you can't interact with in any way. They just lower your hp without any way for the players to make any decision about their actions.

That's a neat insight. (The triggering is the beginning, not the end.)

I like using enemies with silent Alarm spells cast here and there. The PCs often never realize they tripped it (so it doesn't make them paranoid), and it can actually speed up things rather than slowing them down (by giving the enemies an in-character justification to come to where the PCs are and commence an ambush fight.0

ffone
2011-01-15, 05:44 AM
I never said it was? :smallconfused:

By "trapmonkey" I simply mean a skill-based class with the Trapfinding feature. Such classes usually pay for this ability via a number of weaknesses, most commonly their frailty in a stand-up fight. And yet rogues (and their ilk) are extremely popular classes in all RPGs. Since they are going to see play anyway, why deny them one of their advantages? Not providing traps for a trap-player is like denying access to costly material components for a spellcaster. Sure they can function without them, but you're taking away something they would have paid for.

One compromise I've done when DMing is to think of a few ways for the player to feel good about having Trapfinding that don't slow down the RPG:

- Tend to go with traps that *aren't* surprises: like the golden idol in Indiana Jones, so-good-it's-gotta-be-trapped. The reason is that if players think they can eyeball traps without declaring a Search check for every 5' of movement 24-7, the game moves faster.

- A small number of these, but with a risk/reward enough to satisfy the player. Again, 'golden idols' are good this way.

- Many other uses for Search, like rifling through an enemy's bookshelves for clues. Ditto Disable Device and Open Locks. There's a high correlation between PCs who have Trapfinding and these skills, so if they get plenty of use of those skills, they won't feel cheated of their archetype/role.

DarkEternal
2011-01-15, 08:11 AM
That's exactly the double standard the other guy was referring to, just with a token explanation (this is a special sacred site where the water is uber).

And yet, the players liked it. It was a personal side story to one of the characters and there was blackmail involved.

"Token" explanations are everything in DnD, or what you call "fluff", because it wasn't then chaos would rule throughout the entire game with every single thing being exploitable. You don't like it? Fine, don't need to play at my table, easy as that, or even better, take over, I'd rather be a PC anyway. I'm sure some DM's have a higher level of adaptability, b ut I don't and frankly, I don't mind it that way.

elonin
2011-01-15, 08:57 AM
Someone commented about the lack of traps in tolkien. Does the magical gate in Minus Morgal that Frodo beats by using the phial of Galadrial count? Was not in the movie. Didn't do damage but tripped an alarm, but still counts as an alarm IMO.

One thing that I've noticed is that a lot of traps in rp are just set down randomly with no coherent intent. If the traps were designed to funnel the attackers into a murder spot that would be better but this is almost never seen. There was a goblin complex in a episode of dungeon in which the tunnels were all 4' high and narrow. When entering the complex there was a wall with arrow slits on the inside of the structure so that guards can see the people coming in and thus could turn off the traps. And the traps and bolted from the inside doors force the party into a area with murder holes on sides and ceiling.

Back to the OP don't forget that casters can help with magical traps and by summoning to set off etc traps.

some guy
2011-01-15, 09:49 AM
How about creating a system where you get bonusses if you explain how you disable the trap? For example, if the rogue finds a hole in the wall and disables it by filling the hole the rogue gets a +5 bonus to his disable device roll; it's the right way but he/she might still accidently set off the trap.

This way, all players can participate in thinking about a sollution but the rogue still has some benefit with ranks in disable device.

agentnone
2011-01-15, 10:39 AM
When I ran it for my D&D group, my guys had 72 in-game hours to beat the dungeon before all sorts of nastyness appeared on the material plane. By giving them a time limit, they can't take their sweet-ass time searching every 5-foot square. They have to think quick and hope to survive. And heaven forbid they rest. It made the sessions go by quick and kept slowed gameplay to a minimum. Plan on using the same method when I runmy group through the Return.

Shatteredtower
2011-01-15, 10:54 AM
I should point out to Saph that few of the sources she cited involve heroes seeking to acquire recommended wealth by level, either. Neither are they more relevant to the game than the works of Fritz Leiber or Robert E. Howard, both of whom employed the occasional trap in their work. This isn't new either. Scheherazade mentioned a trapped book, for example, and more than a few tombs and buried treaures have sought to back up curses with physical dangers.

Now imagine the security devices we'd employ if our society didn't generally frown on killing or crippling intruders.

Barlen
2011-01-15, 11:21 AM
The biggest problem with security in real life is it inconveniences those it protects. Too much security and you make life unlivable or you can't get your job done.
Even in fantasy the residents (of any trap filled dungeon) still need to live and work. ToH (and Indiana Jones for that matter) gets around that by being a tomb (the residents don't actually live). In LotR's Moria it was an ancient Dwarven City. You wouldn't expect too many traps inside because the dwarves would need to work and live and move around. You would still guard, conceal, and otherwise protect the entrance in someway.

In D&D you should still see this in evidence. A kobold dungeon might have a guard set to disable the trap on the other side of the room when his tribe member are going back and forth. He would sound the alarm when intruders tried to come through. He could also actively try and prevent them from disabling the trap in question.

elonin
2011-01-15, 11:30 AM
When I ran it for my D&D group, my guys had 72 in-game hours to beat the dungeon before all sorts of nastyness appeared on the material plane. By giving them a time limit, they can't take their sweet-ass time searching every 5-foot square. They have to think quick and hope to survive. And heaven forbid they rest. It made the sessions go by quick and kept slowed gameplay to a minimum. Plan on using the same method when I runmy group through the Return.

Most of the time random encounters would be enough to move the party along. And as a player of rogues there are a few times when getting animals/summons to set off traps is a valid option leaving a few traps for the rogue.

Gnaeus
2011-01-15, 11:50 AM
In non-skill games (e.g. OD&D) each trap is actually a Player Puzzle. Those are as fun as your group finds Player Puzzles - me, I never liked them 'cause I was bad at them :smalltongue:

Agreed. In my current game, my DM thinks that Puzzle/riddle/trap involves a math problem. They are usually unpassable without solving the problem (or fatal or debilitating, like the level drain or disintegrate puzzles, but you can't just take another route and do something else). The first time it happened, the party put their heads together and solved it. We, the players, are OK at math, but not great, and none of us enjoy it. By the end of the "temple of the ancient god of prime numbers" we were pretty darn sick of them and we showed our frustration by despoiling the temple. Sometimes, we just cant solve them, at which point we beat our heads against the table for a couple of hours and then the DM shows us how to solve it. A couple of math traps later, we found a door that could only be opened by a sphinx who would only help if you solved his riddle, and the riddle was, of course, a giant math problem. I have reached the point where I would rather my character be eaten by dragons than solve another puzzle involving prime numbers.

That is a pretty specific example, but to be more general, what is a straightforward player puzzle to the DM may not be to the players. Trying to guess what the DM is thinking or to use player skills that the DM has and you lack is less than fun.

The Big Dice
2011-01-15, 11:59 AM
I dislike traps almost as much as I dislike random encounters.

The thing with traps is always, what purpose do they serve? In real life, they seem to either function as a sort of static guardian, keeping people out of (or sometimes making sure they don't leave) a specific area. Or, they are a means of capturing food animals.

And I'd say that you certainly don't want to trap an area where your people, and especially the children of your people, are going to travel through. Because every trap you place is a chance of wounding one of your own, or worse, killing them.

The only place I can see any use for traps without them being either contrived or just out of place, is in an ancient tomb. The Egyptians used traps in the pyramids, and having them in place to prevent people from disturbing the remains of ancient rules and from taking their grave goods is about the only thematically appropriate place for having your classic trap filled dungeon.

Which makes the Tomb of Horrors and Grimtooth's Dungeon of doom, as well as tribute like the Tomb of Iuchiban, fairly good in their presentation and content.

But where things fall flat, especially in modern games, is in the execution in play.

That's because modern games are structured differently from vintage ones. this primer (http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/quick-primer-for-old-school-gaming/3159558) explains the difference in play style between old school and modern RPGs much better than I can. But it boils down to the difference between rolling some dice and asking if you found a trap, compared to describing your character's actions to find a trap.

All that said, I still don't like traps. Characters have much better and more interresting things to do than watch the group Rogue roll Search and Disable Device checks for hours.

Did I mention that I detest the class name "Rogue" too?

randomhero00
2011-01-15, 12:02 PM
I agree OP. I hate traps. When I DM I only use them once in a blue moon and that's just to keep em paranoid. And even then, they're usually more alarm type traps. Rather than, possible instant death traps or ability damage.

Now puzzle room traps I consider different, but still don't over use them.

Shatteredtower
2011-01-15, 12:07 PM
The biggest problem with security in real life is it inconveniences those it protects. Too much security and you make life unlivable or you can't get your job done.

Absolutely. Any traps in a high traffic area should therefore play to the strength of defenders. They should either have no effect due to resistance or immunity, or they should provide some bonus for the defender (rather than actively harm intruders). If players can turn this to their advantage with a creative idea, so much the better.

Thrawn183
2011-01-15, 12:09 PM
I like traps in the sense of Jabba's pit in RotJ. Just replace Luke with an entire party of PC's, probably only some of which will end up in the pit while the rest take on the villain.

Actually RotJ had a lot of traps in it.

Benly
2011-01-15, 12:38 PM
The only place I can see any use for traps without them being either contrived or just out of place, is in an ancient tomb. The Egyptians used traps in the pyramids, and having them in place to prevent people from disturbing the remains of ancient rules and from taking their grave goods is about the only thematically appropriate place for having your classic trap filled dungeon.

In a module I'm GMing currently, there's a fairly trap-heavy area in the form of a duergar mining complex where the disused and abandoned areas are trapped to prevent undesirables from wandering in from the Underdark (or from the surface, as the PCs have). There are no traps in the active areas, but the PCs don't actually know which parts the duergar consider off-limits.

Darrin
2011-01-15, 12:47 PM
I like traps in the sense of Jabba's pit in RotJ. Just replace Luke with an entire party of PC's, probably only some of which will end up in the pit while the rest take on the villain.

Actually RotJ had a lot of traps in it.

This is not how traps generally work in D&D. In Raiders of the Lost Ark or Return of the Jedi, the traps set up an action sequence that the hero has to interact with, be it a giant stone boulder or a rancor. Traps in D&D are usually just a HP tax: you blow a roll or forget to check, and it costs X amount of HP.

The fix is something like Encounter Traps, first presented in Secrets of Xen'drik and then later Dungeonscape. The trap should be interactive, it acts on a particular count in the initiative, and gives the PCs an opportunity to actively avoid, disable, or use their skills/wits.

I found this article on Bad Traps Syndrome (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/90/bad-trap-syndrome/) particularly illuminating. This is how traps should be handled: there are no hidden traps. Tell the PCs up front that they're dealing with a trap. It's their job to figure out how it works and get around it.

Shatteredtower
2011-01-15, 12:59 PM
Traps are about presentation. They should have a reason for being there and they should present an opportunity. One guardian and a "thousand" switches behind a glassteel wall or murder hole is an encounter, but you'd have to bend 3e Disable Device rules to play it as a trap encounter. You should probably do that anyway; as written, any trap that employs a magical sensor to locate targets should be triggered before you could spot, let alone disable, it.

Geyser traps are good. Anticipating the risk is easy, as is negating heat damage. Did players account for bludgeoning damage as well, and the nauseating smell? Excellent. Did they make a point of cleaning themselves afterward?

As for the risk to kids, there are those who take survival of the fittest way too far. Rapid breeders can afford that sort of view.

"Little Timmy got crushed by the deadfall? Good. Now the rest of you know what to look out for."

AugustNights
2011-01-15, 01:06 PM
It is my opinion that anything in D&D can boil down to simple numbers grinding if the players and DM aren't creative enough.

A trap is a disable device check/spell/creative solution.
A monster is an attack roll/spell/creative solution.
Rp is a social skill check/spell/creative solution.

I have to admit the most fun game I've ever played in 3.X was the Tomb of horrors. It was me and two other players. We started with a whole bunch of characters, and eagerly awaited their obvious doom, none of us had read the manual before hand, and even with a trap monkey we had fun. The barbarian got bored of waiting and decided to start smashing random things, on another occasion a venomous viper killed our rogue, and the giant skeleton thing had finished off our barbarian, leaving me the Cleric to try and escape so that I may find more reinforcements, out smarting the traps was done much more often with creative problem solving and role-playing rather than "roll-playing." For the record, Summon Undead is possibly one of the best 'trapfinding' skills I've encountered.

Geddoe
2011-01-15, 02:02 PM
I'm trying to think of a non-D&D fantasy setting which makes heavy use of traps, and I'm coming up blank.

1. Tolkien - almost no traps.
2. Narnia - almost no traps.
3. Wheel of Time - no major traps I can think of.
4. Raymond Feist - very few.
5. David Gemmell - generally none.

And so on. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if there's anything apart from D&D which treats traps as an essential part of a fantasy adventure.

Haven't read Gemmel or Feist, but traps don't really make a whole lot of sense in Wheel of Time because the characters are mostly just in the wild(which protect nothing really) or in major population centers and castles(which are too bothersome to the inhabitants to trap). Only real traps are wards with the OP, which are generally tough to avoid.

The Prince of Demons book in the Renshai Chronicles had traps, but they were exploring the abandoned house of Loki and it was very boring for every one of the characters that wasn't the more thieflike character. He spent over half an hour at every thing that even looked like it might conceivably be trapped. As an example, in the front yard was a pit trap, that led to Hel. The idea was Loki would not care, since he can come and go from Hel as he pleases, but any intruder would be stuck there.

Jay R
2011-01-15, 03:21 PM
But who thought it would be a good idea to make an adaptation for 3rd ed that replaces everything with a Disable Trap DC?

What they actually decided was that if they updated it, people would buy it. This appears to be good reasoning.

Jack_Simth
2011-01-15, 03:33 PM
What they actually decided was that if they updated it, people would buy it. This appears to be good reasoning.
The 3.5 updated to The Tomb of Horrors was distributed as a free PDF. If you're referring to 3.5 itself, then it's because players were getting miffed at 'unavoidable gotcha' traps.

Worira
2011-01-15, 04:42 PM
Did I mention that I detest the class name "Rogue" too?

Personally, I only play Mavericks.

jebob
2011-01-15, 05:00 PM
Wow.

Your players sure weren't very observant.

If I had been playing at the time, I would have rejoiced. For you just gave me the ultimate weapon.

I was disappointed you didn't mention the shark!
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Everyone%20Else/images-4/Great-White-Shark-3.jpg

Saph
2011-01-15, 07:18 PM
So the conclusion I'm coming to is that there are three good ways to use traps:

Alarm traps - They make sense (people use them in real life), they're cheap and easy, and they have an interesting consequence of failure (enemies will be alerted to the PCs, accelerating encounters).

Traps used simultaneously with monsters - Spiked pits in the BBEG's chamber, chain lightning in a room of flesh golems, lava in the red dragon's cave, etc. They make the environment more interesting and have an effect on the battle. Outside of the battle they can be bypassed easily.

Traps as an interactive encounter - Indiana-Jones-style traps where the trap is basically an encounter in itself, with multiple options and threats.

Any more that anyone can think of?

Shatteredtower
2011-01-15, 07:32 PM
Traps that can redirect.

The chute that siphons a party to a different path. The bridge that will collapse under x amount of weight, but gives players time to get clear. The ward that will relocate a coveted item if not first disabled.

Someone called traps a hp tax earlier. That is only valid if the trap doesn't grant xp.

bondpirate
2011-01-15, 10:15 PM
Did I mention that I detest the class name "Rogue" too?

I bet not as much as the dreaded "Rouge" class.

Malbordeus
2011-01-17, 09:06 AM
loltraps. best use of traps ever. :P

Logalmier
2011-01-17, 11:05 AM
Sort of going on the 'Traps as an interactive encounter' idea: riddles. Answer the sphinxes question or be eaten. Arrange all the clocks in the room to a certain setting, before time runs out. Solve the power diagram to open the door, before the spiked ceiling comes down on you. That sort of thing.

Titanium Fox
2011-01-17, 11:15 AM
We had a DM once who made the traps invincible to disable device rolls. Some magic ones too. We missed the first one, which was an orb of annihilation with a will save to not want to touch it. We lost 3/9 to that.

Then there was a room with swords on the walls, a drain in the center of a sloped floor, and a door on the other side. Players had to figure out how to get across without being used for a game of "will it blend." lost another one there. Now we're at 5.

There were a few more I'm forgetting, but there was one where there was a long hall, with four falling guillotines that automatically reset. The ranger shot an arrow to drop them, and someone tripped over one when it was raising, and got chopped in half. 3. (We lost one to one of the other traps I can't remember.) He does it again, two get through. Third goes through and runs one square too far, chopped in half and falls to the ground on a fifth that comes up from the floor. 2. The last one who died was a poison fetishist basically. x3. So the last one makes it through, trips over the one coming up, and breaks all the poisons, taking like 66 d 6 con damage. DEAD. 1 left, the Cleric. He trips over the last one as well and his arms get chopped off. He can ONLY cast light at this point. He was still the only one that made it.

Now that's an example of a fun trap dungeon. We all loved it to death (except for one guy, but he was focusing too hard on trying to thwart the DM.) Turned out it was all a mind maze, and we all woke up later, so no harm really done. If you use traps less like an HP tax, and more like a puzzle to conquer, it can be really, really fun.

Jack_Simth
2011-01-17, 01:11 PM
Sort of going on the 'Traps as an interactive encounter' idea: riddles. Answer the sphinxes question or be eaten. Arrange all the clocks in the room to a certain setting, before time runs out. Solve the power diagram to open the door, before the spiked ceiling comes down on you. That sort of thing.
Ah, Puzzle traps.

Those *can* be fun, for the right group, or used very sparingly.

However, in a game where you've got one DM and (usually) 3 or more players, they can pose a problem: Not everyone likes puzzles, and not everyone is good at puzzles. Oh yes, and some people use 'monkey traps' which are used for no other reason than to delay people and/or get them to do something specific to get zapped (e.g., a color based riddle on the wall, promising the key to the door if they reach their hand into the hole ringed with the correct color. There is no key, each and every one of the sixteen holes does something nasty to anyone reaching in. The solution is to simply pick the lock on the door).

So it's entirely possible you'll have one guy who likes puzzles, and sits there for an hour trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, it's also entirely possible you'll have the rest of the party going 'huh?' and wandering off to do other things for that hour, as they don't know how to approach it.

Additionally, there's a very high propensity among DM's for making puzzle traps single-solution. Which can lead to situations like:
DM: OK, you come to a [fancy description] door, which has writing above it, saying Shout it out! What's Black and White and Red All Over?
Player 1: I shout "A Newspaper!" at the door.
DM: Nothing happens.
Player 2: I shout "A Sunburned Zebra!" at the door.
DM: Nothing happens.
Player 3: I shout "A Skunk with a bad case of the Measles!" at the door.
DM: Nothing happens.
Player 4: I shout "A Wombat with Lesions!" at the door.
DM: Nothing happens.
[Repeat the above a few times with different answers, each being less sensible]
[long pause]
Player 1: I cast Detect Magic!
DM: Roll Spellcraft, please. [checks result] You detect an aura of abjuration.
Player 2: I pull out my adamantine Greataxe and hit the door, power attacking for ten. [rolls dice] Soak 46 damage, door!
DM: Take [rolls dice, reads result] damage as the door zaps you with electricity. The door is undamaged.
Player 3: I cast Disintegrate on the door.
DM: The door reflects the spell back at you. Roll fort...
Player 4: I search the door for traps! [rolls Search and Disable Device]
DM: You discover it's not a trap per-se, and cannot be disabled in that manner.
...and so on. It was actually a variation on "Speak, friend, and enter." They were suppose to shout "What's Black and White and Red All Over!" back at the door. But nobody figured it out, and it was one of the 'single solution' puzzle traps.

TheWhisper
2011-01-17, 01:51 PM
It was not just the water that was the important thing, but rather just the catalyst through which the magic...or anti magic worked. It worked in this specific location, for one, and yeah, it would have worked outside of that location as well. But for a very limited amount of time, a few hours at best.

So you skipped right to...


you would have to cry uncle and use some sort of GM fiat to nerf the stuff or whisk it out of my hands.

...preemptively.

In other words, you admitted defeat before you even began. You had to give yourself a Nice Thing that the players couldn't have in order to challenge them.

When I said...


the wise GM avoids introducing unobtainium into the campaign

... I didn't just mean "so the players can't get it". I meant also that anything which is too unbalancing for the PCs to have, is also too unbalancing to use against the PCs. Sauce for the PC is sauce for the NPC.

It would be easy enough to design a trap like this without resorting to unobtanium.

1. Zone of silence. No spells with verbal components.
2. Treading water. Require difficult concentration checks.
3. Anti-magic water. Has a spell resistance that must be overcome, instead of cancelling all magic outright.

All of these work to restrict spellcasting, and are in some ways superior, because they strain spells resource without making the mage characters utterly useless.

In the 3rd case, the PCs could take the water. But with fixed SR score, it would be worth less (still a lot), and be less and less useful against higher-level foes.

In general, if the PCs can use it, it can be used against them. If it can be used against them, they can use it. It's not unthinkable to break this rule as a GM, but it is graceless and heavy-handed, and reduces the elusive fun factor.

Jack_Simth
2011-01-17, 02:01 PM
Well, considering the trap rules (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/traps.htm) (such as they are) permit crafting auto-reset periodic traps, you could just get a constant AMF (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/antimagicField.htm) in the pool by way of a trap of it. It's CR 7 for just a ten foot radius, so you'll need several of them to make it work, but going that route:
1) Is established in the rules.
2) Gives a reason from the get-go why it's an immobile effect
3) Gives you a guideline for how much XP to give out (Dire Shark is CR 9, four CR 7 AMF traps, and a CR 2 Covered pit Trap - getting out of the trap, once in, defeats all of them - that's a hefty dose of XP, even for tenth level characters right there)
4) Gives the PC's a way to make one if they really, really need to (

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 02:21 PM
So the conclusion I'm coming to is that there are three good ways to use traps:

Alarm traps - They make sense (people use them in real life), they're cheap and easy, and they have an interesting consequence of failure (enemies will be alerted to the PCs, accelerating encounters).

Traps used simultaneously with monsters - Spiked pits in the BBEG's chamber, chain lightning in a room of flesh golems, lava in the red dragon's cave, etc. They make the environment more interesting and have an effect on the battle. Outside of the battle they can be bypassed easily.

Traps as an interactive encounter - Indiana-Jones-style traps where the trap is basically an encounter in itself, with multiple options and threats.

Any more that anyone can think of?
One thing to remember is that you don't want the Rogue to suddenly become useless as a trap-disabler because every trap now needs to be solved some way aside from "Disable Device."

For 3.X games that use the above, it's probably best to either tell the Players beforehand that "Disable Device" isn't going to be used so don't take it - or to make sure there's some element of the "trap" that can be disabled with "Disable Device."

The way 4E usually does this is by introducing a hidden control panel (Perception check to find) which, if disabled with Thievery, shuts down the whole trap. So, rather than having to dodge blades for the length of the corridor while fighting Ghosts, the Party can fight the Ghosts normally - all thanks to the Rogue.

The Big Dice
2011-01-17, 03:24 PM
One thing to remember is that you don't want the Rogue to suddenly become useless as a trap-disabler because every trap now needs to be solved some way aside from "Disable Device."
I prefer the idea of removing dice from the trap encounter almost completely. At what point did Indiana Jones roll a Disable Device check? Rolling dice makes traps as pointless as some games make social encounters. If it can be beaten by a few rolls of the dice, be it a trap or a skill challenge or whatever, to me it's closer to a board game like HeroQuest than it is to an RPG.

That is, playing a role is a secondary concern to playing the game. And that's not necessarily a bad thing if that's how you like to play. BUt how much cooler is it for the GM to describe the scene and the players to pick up on the cues that theres a trap in the area without having to roll the dice?

I'm fairly sure that if you watch that opening sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark, all the clues you need to spot that you're in danger are there on the screen. And I'd say that the benchmark to try and reach.

Not that I'm comparing my ability as a GM to Spielberg's as a director. But it is good to reach for the stars now and then.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 03:36 PM
I prefer the idea of removing dice from the trap encounter almost completely. At what point did Indiana Jones roll a Disable Device check? Rolling dice makes traps as pointless as some games make social encounters. If it can be beaten by a few rolls of the dice, be it a trap or a skill challenge or whatever, to me it's closer to a board game like HeroQuest than it is to an RPG.
One could use the same logic for any faecet of an RPG :smalltongue:

Why roll combat checks to hit people? When did Aragorn roll to hit someone in LotR?

Why roll social skill checks to convince people? When did King Henry roll to inspire his soldiers in his St. Crispin Day speech?

IMHO, you should only roll in a game if it's important to the purpose of a game. In D&D, traps have been part of the system from Day 1. In WotC D&D, disarming traps has moved from a Player Challenge to a Character Challenge. You can go back to TSR D&D style traps, but know that you're going to be invalidating a part of the WotC D&D system design when you do so - and tell your Players accordingly.

Lapak
2011-01-17, 04:05 PM
... I didn't just mean "so the players can't get it". I meant also that anything which is too unbalancing for the PCs to have, is also too unbalancing to use against the PCs. Sauce for the PC is sauce for the NPC.

*snip*

In general, if the PCs can use it, it can be used against them. If it can be used against them, they can use it. It's not unthinkable to break this rule as a GM, but it is graceless and heavy-handed, and reduces the elusive fun factor.I disagree with you, for a couple of reasons.

1. The PCs are the only characters present in every encounter.
Something that can make for an interesting challenge in a single encounter - a flat 'no-magic zone,' to take the example given - can remove an entire aspect of the game or become uninteresting if it's true in every encounter. Another example that's similar might help: having a single fight on a narrow bridge over a pool of lava might be memorable and exciting as the PCs try to knock their enemies off and/or avoid this fate themselves, but that doesn't mean that you have to give the PCs the ability to transmute the battlefield into bridge-over-lava whenever it's convenient for them. If they want to move into the lava-lair and somehow convince all their enemies to come to them, fine, but they can't just pick it up and cart such an advantage around with them!

2. Challenges the PCs have no answer for can enhance the fun factor instead of reducing it.
In fact, they can be the very definition of the plot. The villain has an army of evil dragons that will not under any circumstances ally themselves with the PCs; this does not mean that there have to be good dragons interested in an alliance with the PCs - this means that they have to figure out an entirely different counter to the problem. Claiming the One Ring and using its power was not a solution to the problem of Sauron; a weak character just attracts attention and a strong one becomes an evil NPC.

It's far from graceless; I'd call it much more graceless to assume that every option is available to anyone, or that every threat can be used in any environment.

Saph
2011-01-17, 04:22 PM
One thing to remember is that you don't want the Rogue to suddenly become useless as a trap-disabler because every trap now needs to be solved some way aside from "Disable Device."

This is the reasoning our Tomb of Horrors DM uses. The adventure HAS to have traps, because D&D has always had traps. The traps HAVE to be be dealt with primarily by the Rogue, because Rogues are supposed to be the ones who disable traps. No-one ELSE is allowed to disable traps, because that makes the Rogue useless. And this leads to the extremely unfun result in the OP.

Personally, the way I deal with it in my games is by not making traps a major part of the campaign. As several posters have mentioned, there really isn't much reason to make heavy use of deathtraps unless the game involves exploring ancient tombs and ruins, and while it's true that lots of D&D games involve that sort of thing, not all do.

Lapak
2011-01-17, 04:28 PM
IMHO, you should only roll in a game if it's important to the purpose of a game. In D&D, traps have been part of the system from Day 1. In WotC D&D, disarming traps has moved from a Player Challenge to a Character Challenge. You can go back to TSR D&D style traps, but know that you're going to be invalidating a part of the WotC D&D system design when you do so - and tell your Players accordingly.On the other hand, by reverting to AD&D-style 'traps the players have to figure out', you free up valuable skill points so that the skill-types can actually be good at other things. That's at least two skills' worth of points that could go into Bluff or Forgery or Jump or something else that would otherwise not get used. :smallsmile:

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 04:42 PM
This is the reasoning our Tomb of Horrors DM uses. The adventure HAS to have traps, because D&D has always had traps. The traps HAVE to be be dealt with primarily by the Rogue, because Rogues are supposed to be the ones who disable traps. No-one ELSE is allowed to disable traps, because that makes the Rogue useless. And this leads to the extremely unfun result in the OP.
I call this The Decker Problem.

The solution is as I've presented above - make traps that everyone can (and must) deal with. Of course, still make traps where a Rogue doing their job makes them much easier to deal with; he just can't handle them all on his own.


Personally, the way I deal with it in my games is by not making traps a major part of the campaign. As several posters have mentioned, there really isn't much reason to make heavy use of deathtraps unless the game involves exploring ancient tombs and ruins, and while it's true that lots of D&D games involve that sort of thing, not all do.
Sure, but be sure to tell people you're doing that in advance.

It's only fair to tell people rolling Rogues not to invest points in Disable Device and to allow them to use a Class Variant that swaps out Trapfinding for something useful.

Saph
2011-01-17, 04:52 PM
The solution is as I've presented above - make traps that everyone can (and must) deal with. Of course, still make traps where a Rogue doing their job makes them much easier to deal with; he just can't handle them all on his own.

I'm not sure I like this solution much. It sounds like our DM's attitude of "It's D&D, it MUST have rogues disarming traps!" - which is exactly what I'm finding frustrating.

Thing is, I've seen lots of campaigns without traps, and I don't remember players complaining about it. Trapfinding/trap disabling is really a pretty minor part of a character.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 05:07 PM
I'm not sure I like this solution much. It sounds like our DM's attitude of "It's D&D, it MUST have rogues disarming traps!" - which is exactly what I'm finding frustrating.

Thing is, I've seen lots of campaigns without traps, and I don't remember players complaining about it. Trapfinding/trap disabling is really a pretty minor part of a character.
Well, traps are kind of part of the D&D mythos. I mean, look at Gygax's modules - dude loved traps :smalltongue:

That said, my advice was aimed at a way of making traps fun for everyone - not just the Rogue, and not just the not-Rogues. You can totally run campaigns without traps but - as D&D assumes traps - not having any can result in the same sort of "violated expectations" that any unannounced houserule produces.

Personally, I've found traps difficult to do well, and generally more trouble than they're worth. Fortunately, in 4E there are few trap-specific Character Build choices which means I don't need to watch out for Players trying to make trap-finders :smallbiggrin:

TheWhisper
2011-01-17, 05:12 PM
I disagree with you, for a couple of reasons.

1. The PCs are the only characters present in every encounter.
Something that can make for an interesting challenge in a single encounter - a flat 'no-magic zone,' to take the example given - can remove an entire aspect of the game or become uninteresting if it's true in every encounter. Another example that's similar might help: having a single fight on a narrow bridge over a pool of lava might be memorable and exciting as the PCs try to knock their enemies off and/or avoid this fate themselves, but that doesn't mean that you have to give the PCs the ability to transmute the battlefield into bridge-over-lava whenever it's convenient for them. If they want to move into the lava-lair and somehow convince all their enemies to come to them, fine, but they can't just pick it up and cart such an advantage around with them!

Good example.

Having something available to the PCs doesn't mean they can necessarily carry it around in their haversack.

It simply means that one doesn't specially ignore the rules to give NPCs game-breaking stuff, and then construct a transparent rationale to prevent the PCs from taking it and breaking the game with your game-breaking thing.

Why?

Obviously, because sauce for the PC is sauce for the NPC, but also because it damages the suspension of disbelief. It calls attention to the man behind the curtain. It is a visible wire on a falling stuntman, a stagehand running out in full view of the audience to remove an inconvenient prop.

Verisimilitude is why.


2. Challenges the PCs have no answer for can enhance the fun factor instead of reducing it.


I believe there is a large different between a challenge the PCs have no answer for, and a challenge there is no answer for.

Just because there are artifact magic items in the game doesn't mean 10th level PCs can construct them. But epic characters can reasonably expect that they should be able to find ways to do this, just as other legendary figures have.

If there is a spell called Mordenkainen's Disjunction, then players can reasonably expect that they, too, will someday be able to research their own spells and teach them to others.

If there is a horde of evil dragons invading the land, there does not have to be such a thing as a good dragon... but the credibility of players will be strained indeed if they cannot persuade the local kingdoms to raise armies to defend their own homes.

And if an NPC gets unbeatable anti-magic water, then the players will wonder why they can't take it and use it, and of course they will know that the real answer is "I cannot think of ways to challenge you without breaking the rules I made for you."

And if a villain can find or create a special magic location that has some unbeatable effect, then the PCs will start expecting that they might be able to find or create such things.

Or at least use them in place.

(With a tank of antimagic water that I couldn't move, I could still:

-Safely destroy or store dangerous magics.
-Create an unimpeachable shield against scrying and teleportation by submerging a boxed room.
-Imprison a demon lord if I could catch one.

... and so on. )

Saph
2011-01-17, 05:18 PM
That said, my advice was aimed at a way of making traps fun for everyone - not just the Rogue, and not just the not-Rogues. You can totally run campaigns without traps but - as D&D assumes traps - not having any can result in the same sort of "violated expectations" that any unannounced houserule produces.

I'm not at all sure it would. Red Hand of Doom has something like one major trap in the whole 20-session campaign, and I've yet to see a single person review the module with the comment "not enough traps". Certainly when I ran it nobody could care less. In fact, I think the campaign was decidedly improved by the lack of traps.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 05:25 PM
I'm not at all sure it would. Red Hand of Doom has something like one major trap in the whole 20-session campaign, and I've yet to see a single person review the module with the comment "not enough traps". Certainly when I ran it nobody could care less. In fact, I think the campaign was decidedly improved by the lack of traps.
...I'm not arguing that you need traps to run a fun campaign of D&D.

I am saying that D&D is written with the idea of traps being present in mind. I'm pretty sure it's hard to argue this point since AFAIK every edition of D&D has included explicit references to using traps in campaigns.

It's totally OK to not use traps in a campaign but in the event you have a Player who shows up looking to be a trap-finding Rogue it would be polite to tell him that your campaign doesn't have traps :smallsmile:

Skorj
2011-01-17, 05:27 PM
So the conclusion I'm coming to is that there are three good ways to use traps:

Alarm traps - They make sense (people use them in real life), they're cheap and easy, and they have an interesting consequence of failure (enemies will be alerted to the PCs, accelerating encounters).

Traps used simultaneously with monsters - Spiked pits in the BBEG's chamber, chain lightning in a room of flesh golems, lava in the red dragon's cave, etc. They make the environment more interesting and have an effect on the battle. Outside of the battle they can be bypassed easily.

Traps as an interactive encounter - Indiana-Jones-style traps where the trap is basically an encounter in itself, with multiple options and threats.

Any more that anyone can think of?

All of these leave room for Disable Device checks, BTW. Really, it's the search check that needs to go away. Discovering that there is a trap at all should be a spot check (not rogue specific, rolled by the DM or just Take 10 assumed), or just common sense. Disabling or bypassing a trap should be possible with either a clever solution from a player, or a die roll. Rogues can be good at those things without giving the party nothing to do, and the players can be clever at those things without giving the rogue nothing to do. It's the dreaded "we check this square for traps" action that needs to go away - make that part of disable device, if needed.

One more for your list is the "already sprung" varient of the interactive encounter trap. The trap is already in the "danger mode" when the party gets to it, instead of being triggered by the party: an open and obvious spiked pit blocks the way, a river of lava with the drawbridge raised on the other side, etc (for that matter, the clearly marked minefields you see in RL around some military installations). For traps where people live these make the most sense (after alarm traps) - there may be some way the residents use to get past, and the party can either search for that, or instead focus on bypassing the obstacle, depending on its strengths.

Saph
2011-01-17, 05:30 PM
It's totally OK to not use traps in a campaign but in the event you have a Player who shows up looking to be a trap-finding Rogue it would be polite to tell him that your campaign doesn't have traps.

Sure. But in all my years of gaming I've seen maybe two players with a desire to play a trap-finder. They're pretty darn rare.

I think the main reason you get traps in D&D is more through tradition than because they're a particularly fun mechanic. Designers include traps because they assume there are going to be trapfinders, players include trapfinders because they assume there are going to be traps. I'm just starting to suspect that if you cut out traps as a standard part of the game, most people wouldn't miss them much.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 05:32 PM
Sure. But in all my years of gaming I've seen maybe two players with a desire to play a trap-finder. They're pretty darn rare.

I think the main reason you get traps in D&D is more through tradition than because they're a particularly fun mechanic. Designers include traps because they assume there are going to be trapfinders, players include trapfinders because they assume there are going to be traps. I'm just starting to suspect that if you cut out traps as a standard part of the game, most people wouldn't miss them much.
Oh certainly.

That said, my Players have been enjoying the 4E Trap Encounters I've been using - following my own guidelines of course :smallwink:. And there is something to be said for the expression Players have when the Fighter walks into his first Pit Trap :smalltongue:

Zombimode
2011-01-17, 05:34 PM
One aspect that I believe wasnt mentioned so far:

TSR D&D, at least the version I know (which is the latest and last version translated to german of 2e) handled traps as both a player challenge and a character challenge. The part if detecting traps was on the shoulders of the characters. The most easy and efficiant way to detect traps was a thief with points in this skill (which was called "find traps"), but other methods (both divine and arcane spells as well as magic items) were available. Contrary to what the OP descibes, searching everything for traps didnt slow down the game. The players only had to declare that they would use some method of detecting traps. Whenever they would come across one, the GM would determine if their messures were successful (eg. roll the find traps check for the thief).

Then, disarming, overcoming or avoiding the trap was pretty much up to the creativity of the players.
Frankly, I found this rather elegant.

To those people who say that traps are an D&D invention:

First, PnP and especially D&D didnt tried to bring Lords of the Rings or Narnia to the players basements. The underlying genre was in fact another: Sword and Sorcery. While also fantasy the premises of Sword and Sorcery are very different than say Lord of the Rings, and much more similar to the premises of D&D.

Bottom line: rather then comparing D&D to those big epic fantasy novels, compare it to Conan or other Sword and Sorcery stories. And Conan HAD to face traps.

Another example for non-D&D fantasy fiction with traps: game books.
For many of them traps are an essential part of the desing. Hell, on of the most well known game books is even called "Deathtrap Dungeon".

Lapak
2011-01-17, 05:36 PM
Or at least use them in place.

(With a tank of antimagic water that I couldn't move, I could still:

-Safely destroy or store dangerous magics.
-Create an unimpeachable shield against scrying and teleportation by submerging a boxed room.
-Imprison a demon lord if I could catch one.

... and so on. )Oh, indeed. I don't think anyone suggested that the PCs wouldn't be able to take advantage of the trap in-place. Again, if they're willing to bring the problem to the solution, more power to them.

I think this is a good conversation we've got going - I've certainly got more to say, as I don't agree with everything in your response - but not necessarily on-topic for the thread. Perhaps we should start a new one?

a_humble_lich
2011-01-17, 05:40 PM
I'm confused with the talk of how things were different in AD&D. In both 1st and 2nd ed. one of the special abilities thieves got was "Find/Remove Traps." I remember getting rid of traps was definitely something that was part of the thief's job, because nobody else had that ability.

Starbuck_II
2011-01-17, 05:56 PM
All of these leave room for Disable Device checks, BTW. Really, it's the search check that needs to go away. Discovering that there is a trap at all should be a spot check (not rogue specific, rolled by the DM or just Take 10 assumed), or just common sense. Disabling or bypassing a trap should be possible with either a clever solution from a player, or a die roll. Rogues can be good at those things without giving the party nothing to do, and the players can be clever at those things without giving the rogue nothing to do. It's the dreaded "we check this square for traps" action that needs to go away - make that part of disable device, if needed.


I like that idea. Rogues can undo traps without needing to find mechanism, only using cleverness is an there an accident/ worry about setting it off.


I'm confused with the talk of how things were different in AD&D. In both 1st and 2nd ed. one of the special abilities thieves got was "Find/Remove Traps." I remember getting rid of traps was definitely something that was part of the thief's job, because nobody else had that ability.

Actually if you checked the old books everyone had a 10% chance, Thieves just got a higher chance.
Also DMs used rule zero to disable a trap without a roll if you explain your method successfully.

Kurald Galain
2011-01-17, 06:15 PM
I'm not sure I like this solution much. It sounds like our DM's attitude of "It's D&D, it MUST have rogues disarming traps!" - which is exactly what I'm finding frustrating.

I don't think I've ever been in a campaign like that. We always had either no traps, or no rogue, or somebody else who liked doing it better.

RagnaroksChosen
2011-01-17, 08:27 PM
First let me start by saying that i have not looked through the 3.x or 4th(if there is one) tomb of horrors. I have extensivly run the 2nd ed one in both 3.5(before i knew there was a module)and 2nd ed.

Saph where you letting the rogue disable the puzzle traps with a disable device check?
I don't know how the module handles it, but i know in our group we have two "types" of traps... Puzzle traps and regular traps. Regular traps are the kinds you typicaly find in the dmg and splat books.
Puzzle traps are like the Orb/sphere room in Tomb of horrors. Or traps that require multiple participents, logic traps exct.

I have a player that pritty much plays just rogues and he hasn't once complained about to not enough traps for him to use disable device...

I know it may not be raw.

An old GM used to make us explain how we where searching an area before we would roll, and then he would adjust the dc based on what we described.
The dc's could go up and down, so it kept us on our toes as well. Granted my old group liked 2nd ed style dungions with a meat shield up front poking the ground for traps.

JustinA
2011-01-18, 01:03 AM
All of these leave room for Disable Device checks, BTW. Really, it's the search check that needs to go away. Discovering that there is a trap at all should be a spot check (not rogue specific, rolled by the DM or just Take 10 assumed), or just common sense.

The Search check isn't necessarily a problem. The way it worked pre-Search check is that if the players thought to look in the right place they usually had a 100% chance of finding whatever was there. Search checks, when properly employed, just give them a chance for failure even if they do look in the right place.

A few suggestions for Search checks:

(1) Enforce consequences for failed searches. (If you just say "I search the room" you'd better hope that you either succeed on your check or that there's nothing dangerous to find.)

(2) Give bonuses for specificity, particularly if the specificity is suited to the particular trap.

In terms of using traps effectively, the important thing to remember is that traps should be interesting whether you find them or not. A few ways to do that:

(1) Focus on the mechanisms of traps and how those mechanisms can be disabled. Flavorful descriptions make combat more interesting; the same is true of traps.

(2) Re-institute the old standard of "traps only trigger on a roll of 1 on 1d4" so that the scout isn't automatically the person who gets zinged.

(3) The "counting" technique from Tomb of Horrors (in which you start counting backward from 10 and the players are forced to make quick decisions before the count is exhausted) can be a good way to change up gameplay using traps.

(4) Trap-laden complexes should have a pseudo-logic all their own. The complex itself becomes a meta-puzzle. ("What does it mean when we see the green rune?")

(5) Have traps in which generically saying "I disable it" isn't automatically the best solution. For example, in the Tomb of Horrors there's a pit trap with a secret door at the bottom of it. You found the pit trap and jammed it shut? Great. You just bypassed a superior entrance to the tomb.

(6) Similarly, you can have mechanisms that reward you if manipulated one way or punish you if manipulated another. Simply disabling such devices can avoid the punishment, but also voids the reward. (Nothing's better than getting the PCs to willingly engage a known trap.)

(7) Provide viable, non-disabling options for bypassing traps.

(8) Include monsters and/or complex environments in which the traps are only one part of the equation (or may even be used by the monsters and the rest of the environment to their advantage).

As a very simple example, here's the Forsaken Prison as it appears in my remix of the Tomb of Horrors (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/creations.html#tomb-horrors):


This chamber is a 15’ by 15’ shaft 100’ deep, carved out of solid granite. Characters teleporting to this area from the Arch of Mist (Area 5) materialize at the top of the shaft and automatically plummet to the bottom of the shaft, taking 10d6 points of falling damage.

FIRST LEVER: At the bottom of the shaft is a lever built into the wall. The lever is marked with Acererak’s sigil. Pulling the lever causes the floor – which is a trap door – to drop away, opening up another 100’ shaft. Characters falling down the second shaft take 10d6 points of falling damage. The character who pulled the lever may make a Reflex saving throw (DC 15) to grab onto the lever, rather than falling down the pit.

TRAP DOOR: The trap door here is illusion protected and also requires a Search check (DC 25) to detect. There is no way to determine that the lever is the triggering mechanism, but the trap door itself can be prevented from opening with a successful Disable Device check (DC 25). After 1d10 rounds, the trap door resets itself and can only be opened by pulling the first lever (which is now on the other side of the trap door of solid stone).

SECOND LEVER: At the bottom of the second shaft is another lever built into the wall. This lever – in all ways – appears to be identical to the first lever above. Pulling this lever, however, opens a secret door in the ceiling of the shaft leading to a crawl space (see below).

FLOOR: The floor of the second shaft is also a trap door, illusion protected and requiring a Search check (DC 25) to detect. And there is also another 100’ shaft below this trap door. But there is not, in fact, any triggering mechanism which opens this trap door.

WALLS: The walls are carved straight out of the rock face and smoothed. Scaling them requires a Climb check (DC 30).

SECRET DOOR: To find the secret door in the ceiling of the shaft before opening it requires a Search check (DC 25). The door is a solid slab of granite about 2’ thick (360 hp, hardness 8) and can only be opened by pulling the second lever. After 1d10 rounds, the secret door will close itself and can only be opened again by pulling the second lever.

CRAWL SPACE: The crawl space beyond the secret door is very narrow. See Area 3 for a complete description.

There are lots of possible solutions here: Tie yourself off with a rope and then pull the lever. Walk away. Use a fly spell (either to negate the falls or reach the hidden crawl space above). And so forth. But "I disable the trap" doesn't get you anywhere or accomplish anything.

olthar
2011-01-18, 01:40 AM
First, the #$%#$#% tomb of horrors that was shifted into 3.x was done in the same tradition as turning roleplaying into a role of the dice. If you play in a campaign that all conversation involves "I roll a diplomacy check, fine, then I bluff, that didn't work? I'll roll an intimidate check" then the tomb of horrors as altered is for you.

Since (I believe) most people don't take all of the roleplaying out of the game and instead will talk to npcs and stuff like that (maybe with an occasional skill check), then like roleplaying, the Tomb of Horrors should be played out. Yes, they gave every trap a DC that can be rolled, but in reality they were meant to be figured out as a puzzle. It was supposed to be a dungeon that got everyone talking and thinking rather than rolling dice to kill monsters. Obviously, you can allow people to roll past a trap (or to get help on a trap) if it is one you didn't like, but otherwise rolling through each trap is just as empty as rolling through each npc conversation.

Also:


I'm trying to think of a non-D&D fantasy setting which makes heavy use of traps, and I'm coming up blank.

1. Tolkien - almost no traps.
2. Narnia - almost no traps.
3. Wheel of Time - no major traps I can think of.
4. Raymond Feist - very few.
5. David Gemmell - generally none.

Feist has very few?
The entire book of silverthorn is built around a trap.
Darkness at Sethanon involves Pug and Thomas going through a long list of traps ending win a giant time trap.
The Riftwar Legacy series had a lot of traps (though two of those books were based on computer games).
Kings Buccaneer is a story built about stopping the pantathians from creating human traps (oh, and Nakor gets through a bunch).
Rage of a Demon King uses as a major plot point turning all of Krondor into a giant trap.
Shards of a Broken Crown explicitly mentions a number of traps.

In fact, it is safe to say that if Nakor or Jimmy/James is involved in the story, then there will be at least one trap that they encounter or create.
Feist is an author who has basically done everything you can do with a trap and then some. That being said, Feist's world is based off of a D&D like game system, so I wouldn't necessarily call it a non-D&D fantasy setting.

Here are a few:
David Eddings - uses traps in both major series
C.J. Cherryh - sprinkles traps here and there
Mercedes Lackey - used traps often in her early writing career
Tanya Huff - uses traps in a number of her series
Many authors who have written an Arthur stories that involve Nimue in her enchanter form (rather than strict lady of the lake)

Traps are more common in fiction than you think, but they don't get much major play as the main goal of a story. Even Harry Potter had lots of traps (staircases with trick steps, doors that didn't open, etc.) but they didn't get much mention other than that they existed. Any fantasy series that has a thief for a main character is guaranteed to have a lot of traps.

Are they often the main focus of a book? No, but that doesn't mean that can't be. I'd say they are probably the main focus of a book about as often as they are the main focus of a D&D campaign.

Malbordeus
2011-01-19, 08:39 AM
theres a fair number in dragonlance too.

personally i like to use a "human" element to my traps. either a creature as a power source (magic jar+shadow traps) or have something watching from a hidden position to flick a switch. other than that, the only traps that really make sense to me are chests and symbol magic. :/ which admitedly I love. but realisticly are far too expensive to overuse.

Aharon
2011-01-19, 09:54 AM
Disclaimer: I haven't read the whole thread, so somebody might have already brought it up.

I like using summoning/calling traps. There was one in the City of the Spider Queen adventure, and I think the idea is sound. It has several advantages
- makes sense for inhabited areas, traps can be set not to be triggered by race X.
- Rogue makes his checks: No harm done, rogue content, trap avoided
- Rogue doesn't make his checks: scripted encounter with potential lethality dependent on your whims (i.e., on the CR of the creature summoned).

I also have to admit that I once had a villain use the "I prepared explosive runes today" route on his important documents. It's fun for me as the DM, as I can set up the HP tax to be high enough to be potentially lethal. At their current level, the players can afford Raise Dead et al. anyway, so why not make the traps actually dangerous?

Kurald Galain
2011-01-19, 10:07 AM
Feist has very few?
You're using a different definition of the word "trap", though. In the context of this thread, we're not talking about "ambush", "peril" or "hazardous situation", but the kind of door-, room- or chest-traps that rogues can disarm in D&D dungeons. Those are never a major part of Feist's books.

true_shinken
2011-01-19, 10:07 AM
First, the #$%#$#% tomb of horrors that was shifted into 3.x was done in the same tradition as turning roleplaying into a role of the dice. If you play in a campaign that all conversation involves "I roll a diplomacy check, fine, then I bluff, that didn't work? I'll roll an intimidate check" then the tomb of horrors as altered is for you.
Social skills don't work like that. Period.

olthar
2011-01-22, 01:54 AM
Social skills don't work like that. Period.

In most games. I played once (one session that is) with a group where the DM actually allowed people to use social skills on other players (e.g. player 1: I think we should go through the forest of incredibly horrible deaths. player 2: I think that is a poor idea given its name and our level. player 1: Well I disagree and I rolled a 19 on my diplomacy. (me palm->face))

My point was more that 3.x altered the game so that rolling dice could literally solve any problem with the game. The Tomb of Horrors was built to demonstrate a concept, that the game (at the time 1st edition) wasn't only about rolling dice. In a well run 1st edition ToH it is possible for a player to almost never pick up dice because they can intuit the traps etc. (though there is some combat).

Feist response: First, so is the Tomb of Horrors. Some of the "traps" in the tomb of horrors are cursed objects or reactionary issues rather than static traps like pits and rockfalls.
It is difficult to make a trap a main concept of a book because traps don't actively strive against main characters. By that definition Acerarak is the main part of the ToH and the traps are just in the way.

Silverthorn has a chapter devoted to Jimmy going through a trapped building.
Darkness at Sethanon also has a large section of Pug and Thomas going through traps in the city of forever culminating in the aforementioned trap at the garden. The traps are kind of glossed over (partially by them becoming insubstantial because the traps were annoying).
Jimmy beats a few traps in the assassins keep in Krondor the Assassins and he takes out at least two in Krondor the betrayal.
In Shards of a Broken Crown Jimmy's son has a long discussion about picking the lock and disarming the trap to enter the Abby at Sarth. The discussion was about how Jimmy had done it when he was younger (presumably in one of the Krondor books that remains unpublished).

Those are only the ones I can think of offhand, but I know there are more. Feist is particularly fond of traps, but building a book around them like the Tomb of Horrors is difficult. For one, the traps don't actively act against you, for another they don't really make for interesting reading. Authors frequently use traps when the characters are doing something similar to what the PCs in the Tomb of Horrors are doing, invading an undead wizard's stronghold. Authors just tend to have one or two because readers would get bored going through the numbers that the Tomb of Horrors throws at you. Static traps like that can build suspense, but only to a point. There are only so many times you can write "he found a trip wire" or "they avoided the pit" before readers throw the book away.

true_shinken
2011-01-22, 10:37 AM
My point was more that 3.x altered the game so that rolling dice could literally solve any problem with the game.
It didn't, because that's not RAW. Diplomacy can't be used on player characters, for starters. Even with NPCs, there are limits to what it can do. Yes, Diplomacy is very powerful and broken, but people who think like that usually try to give orders to those they encounter - and diplomacy is not about that. It's not about convincing people (that's Bluff). It's about making them like you. And you can disagree with someone you like. Actually, in your example, a Diplomacy check (if you had a houserule that allows you to use Diplomacy on player characters) would make you more likely to not accept the course of action. A helpful character tries to protect the character he is helpful towards - and here, protection is not going to the forest.
Like I said, social skills don't work like that.

About traps on books - the second Year of Rogue Dragons book has a trap sequence. It's all shades of awesome. There is this trap, in the dark, a Rogue who circumvents it and then is attacked by ogres and must run through a trap gauntlet in the dark while bleeding to death.

druid91
2011-01-22, 01:29 PM
Really, I'm starting to wonder what the point is of using trap-heavy environments at all. Whenever I'm designing my own adventures, I use dungeons sparingly and pretty much never use traps.

I'm just not sure what traps add that sentient enemies can't provide on their own. If you look at most fantasy stories, traps are pretty rare - when Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli, and Gandalf are going through Moria, 'checking for traps' is not high on their priority list.

Do you use forests? swamps? plains? Mountains?

Traps can happen.

Personally I like the master trapsmith PrC. A mook is walking along then *click*

BOOM!!

true_shinken
2011-01-22, 01:37 PM
Do you use forests? swamps? plains? Mountains?

Traps can happen.

Personally I like the master trapsmith PrC. A mook is walking along then *click*

BOOM!!

One of my players thought of building a Factotum/Master Trapsmith with lots of skill tricks. He wanted to be similar to Usopp from One Piece - a capable normal guy, but needs a lot of tricks to be on par with the monsters he is with.
Unfortunately he dropped the concept. It would have been awesome.