Making traps fun :/

[vampire2948]

Hey,

I recently ran the v3.5 edition of Tomb of Horrors for a player controlling a party of four. There will be no spoilers in this post, please keep them out of the rest of the thread too, or in spoiler tags.

He chose for his party:
Wizard
Cleric
Raptoran Factotum
Warblade

The others were of races that I cannot remember, but they were all human variants iirc. One of them was the Aquatic Human.


Anyway. We've not yet finished the dungeon, only completed a few rooms, but so far - Traps have been extremely tedious and boring.
The Factotum isn't really optimized well around trapfinding. He has a +2 competence item, a +5 from his stat, and then max ranks in search and disable device. Resulting in a +19. [He's level 9.]

This makes most of the search DCs on the traps a sure-thing, or at least 75-90% likely for some of the more troublesome ones, but those are mostly magical. So his Wizard with a feat that grants him always-on Detect Magic easily picks those up.

I ended up making one of the items you find within the dungeon cursed, they were goggles, so it makes sense for their curse to lower your search checks slightly. Just so that he'd occasionally miss a trap. We were both getting rather bored with 'I check the square for traps' 'You find a trap' 'I disarm the trap', next square, repeat.



So - How does one make traps interesting without making them utterly ridiculous? Puzzle-based traps are a possibility. But either my group really hates puzzles, or I make them too complicated to hold their interests - Or, In fear of that, I go to the other extreme and make them easily solvable.


Thanks,
Vampire2948,

[Icewalker]

They must have really nerfed the Tomb in 3.5. I've only ever played it 1e, and I think half the traps are like flat out undiscoverable.

Also, if I recall correctly, the dungeon starts to mix it up a lot. You get a lot of interesting challenges, near none of which are the sort of thing you can just stop and disarm the trap on first.

[veven]

I dunno how willing you are to change up the Tomb of Horrors but the dungeonscape book has some awesome traps that are really fun and the whole group can contribute to their defeat. I can't remember the exact name for this new type of trap and am away from my books but they are in dungeonscape for sure.

[Weezer]

The thing with Tomb of Horrors is that to make it fun (using the Dwarf Fortress definition of fun here) you need to make the players roleplay their searches. For example the rogue opens a door and sees a bed room and he wants to find traps, so the player describes how his character gets on his knees and examines the floor for pressure plates etc. Then you roll secretly for him, and give him results based on what he describes. If he doesn't say he searches the closet, then he might not find the trap in the closet or something like that. Also describe what he finds and make him try to figure out a solution, instead of saying "you find a poison arrow trap with a 5 ft wide pressure plate" tell him that he finds a loose flagstone that has wear patterns indicating it moves up and down, with conveniently placed holes in the wall just above it. Try to make the whole thing challenging and interesting, more than a mere dice rolling expedition.

Another way is to up all search DCs, the designers didn't really take into account how high search can get when someone focuses on it, they DCs are more in the range for characters not specced out for a trap focused dungeon.

[Frozen_Feet]

Traps can't be obvious, and they have to be more than immediate threats if you want them to be interesting. Coincidentally, 3.5 skill system and trap rules don't really support such complex traps.

First about the traps being obvious: you have to create uncertainty on whether there are traps and what they do. You have to give the info to your players in small snippets, leaving it for them to figure how all those things are connected.

Example: there's a pressure plate which has to be stepped on, or otherwise arrows will fly from the walls. When the players first succeed in searching for something, they find the pressure plate, but not what it does! If they fail, the won't find anything, and may or may not trigger the trap by accident. This leaves room for them to draw entirely wrong conclusions about how the trap works, which is important to kick their brains in gear.

Second, about being more than an immediate threat: The trap has to pose challenge besides just causing something nasty. Example: a switch that has to be kept down to open a door. Making the trap dangerless for a while is trivial; keeping it so by disarming it completely is not. Even after the party has passed by the trap, there's still the lingering threat that someone will release the trigger, leaving the party trapped.

[vampire2948]

Thanks. Those ideas are interesting, and possibly a fix. Not sure how well my group would feel about it though.

[Legendairy]

Another way which is semi tedious out the gate but saves time later one is: Figure out how many traps and secret doors ETC. they will encounter and have them roll the checks early on for all, then if they want to do specific searches like it was mentioned before have them role play it. but also they can still move through the dungeon at a relatively quick pace cause the traps are already found or not. It not then they trigger it if they do succeed then when they get to the trap or door then you can describe the scene.

So let them know they dont have to check every single square that is a given, adventuring parties move slow from square to square checking the areas it comes with the job. then when it comes time just say "you find a hole in the wall you wouldnt have noticed had you not been looking out for it, inside the hole you see the tips of what seems to be darts, upon further searching you also find a pressure plat on the floor that seems to trigger a mechanism that fires the darts." With that they have found the trap if not then its the opposite "you step on it it hurts blah blah blah." Point is they are secure in knowing they made the rolls for better or worse and you wont just let them stumble onto something.

EDIT: This will allow you once you start to keep the pace up, remember to re do rolls or to not get too far ahead incase of levels or gear that will boost the skill or just add to whatever they rolled previously. Well thats just MHO.

[mohdri]

Traps can't be obvious, and they have to be more than immediate threats if you want them to be interesting. Coincidentally, 3.5 skill system and trap rules don't really support such complex traps.
I would agree with the first sentence when talking about normal DMG traps. I wholeheartedly disagree with the second sentance.

I dunno how willing you are to change up the Tomb of Horrors but the dungeonscape book has some awesome traps that are really fun and the whole group can contribute to their defeat. I can't remember the exact name for this new type of trap and am away from my books but they are in dungeonscape for sure. Originally appearing in Secrets of Xen'Drik and latter Dungeonscape, "Encounter Traps" are complex traps that are very much supported by the 3.5 rules. They give options for just about every type of character (a meleer using sunder and high AC's, casters with dispel, trapsmiths with Disable Divice). They are, as the name implies, encounters unto themselves, and with rules taking them to any CR you want.

[vampire2948]

I would agree with the first sentence when talking about normal DMG traps. I wholeheartedly disagree with the second sentance.
Originally appearing in Secrets of Xen'Drik and latter Dungeonscape, "Encounter Traps" are complex traps that are very much supported by the 3.5 rules. They give options for just about every type of character (a meleer using sunder and high AC's, casters with dispel, trapsmiths with Disable Divice). They are, as the name implies, encounters unto themselves, and with rules taking them to any CR you want.

That does sound interesting. Why didn't I think to grab my copy of Dungeonscape! /facepalm

*grabs Dungeonscape* *read read read*