Traps for Players

[shamgar001]

I'm about to run a battle that my players will participate in. One thing I wanted to try was allow the PC's to prepare for the battle by placing traps/hazards/helpful things. My thought is that they will have a budget that they can spend on a mix of items. I can't find anything in the rulebooks to use here, so this is what I've come up with:


Caltrops

Any creature that moves into a square containing caltrops takes damage. A standard action can be spent to remove them.
Mantlets

Provide superior cover, and can be moved around.
Magic Crossbows

Pretty much the same as the level 1 trap.
Magic Mines

I'd probably use to stats for a blastpatch.
Entangling Vines

Act as difficult terrain and attempt to immobilize enemies that cross them.


Any thoughts on this, or idea for options I could add?

[Snowbody]

Caltrops are listed as a result of a power of the kobold trapsmith in one of the dragon magazines. Chance to spot with perception. They attack vs. reflex and do damage and inflict Slowed (save ends).

They should also be able to dig pits, concealed or not (obviously the PCs will try to use forced movement to send enemies into the pits).

Other ideas: Punji sticks, pavises, pikes embedded in the ground, a stockade fence, trenches, use of water supply to flood area or create hazards, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abatis ,

[Drglenn]

Oooh, that gives me an idea for a tower-based game campaign: 4-6 pcs defending a point against a horde of monsters. The PCs are given an allowance at the start of a wave to buy traps, cohorts etc and get more allowance between waves based on what they kill.
Basicly Orcs Must Die the RPG.
The main problems I can see would be pricing up everything and streamlining the game so that it doesn't take hours to go through one round.

Also Caltrops are an item in Mordakainen's Magnificent Emporium:
Price: 10 gp
Weight: 1 lb
Description: You can drop these pyramid-shaped metal spikes into a square adjacent to you (or gather them back up) as a standard action. Any creature moving on the caltrops must either treat the square as difficult terrain or become slowed (save ends). Creatures that are running can use only the latter option.

[Ashdate]

I'm about to run a battle that my players will participate in. One thing I wanted to try was allow the PC's to prepare for the battle by placing traps/hazards/helpful things. My thought is that they will have a budget that they can spend on a mix of items. I can't find anything in the rulebooks to use here, so this is what I've come up with:

You could easily treat "traps" as magical items; there are even guidelines and sample traps in the DMG1 and 2; one shot traps (i.e. "fire once") could be treated as a magic item consumable of the appropriate level, whereas "permanent" traps (i.e. self resetting ones) could be treated as a magic item of the appropriate level. For example, a "Magic Crossbow Turret" (Level 3 Blaster, self-reseting) from the DMG could be "built" for 150g, whereas a Glyph of Warding (Level 7 Warder, one shot trap) from the DMG could be "built" for 100g.

That should make it easier to help "budget" for traps. It could be fun! Give them a map beforehand and a list of traps they could build/spend on, X amount of gold, and see how it plays out!

[shamgar001]

I did look at the sample traps in the DMG. The problem is that this encounter will be for a level 3 party, so I want to restrict the traps to levels 1-3.

I can use the magic crossbow turret from the DMK, although I'd want to make the turrets operate one at a time. I could do something similar with the spear gauntlet, but refluff it to be something like a fire mine.

A pair of crossbows is a level 3 trap, so as a magic item, it would be worth 680gp, but since they'll only be buying one at a time, I guess they would be 320gp each. Likewise, 5 spears is a level 2 trap, so 104gp for each? Would they divide that easily?

The tricky part after that is including more mundane things like the mantlets and caltrops, only I want to make them worthwhile to use.

[Ashdate]

I did look at the sample traps in the DMG. The problem is that this encounter will be for a level 3 party, so I want to restrict the traps to levels 1-3.

You should be able to scale traps up/down pretty easily. Traps are roughly 5 + level to hit AC, and 3 + level to hit a non-AC defense. You can use page 42 values for rough damage expressions (or look at what similar traps of that level deal, accounting for attacks that deal their damage only "once").

You could change the "Spear Gauntlet" to 104 gp each, but that kind of breaks the purpose of the trap (to semi-randomly attack a group of enemies). Remember, they're all supposed to trigger off a single pressure plate! Allowing them to be placed separately in key locations (and with separate triggers) would make them more powerful than the level indicates. Plus, it's a one-use trap, so I would treat it as a "consumable" (and thus, give it a lower cost).

One word of caution however, while I think of it: traps are meant to attack PC values, not monster values. At low levels, this won't be a big issue, but they tend to have slightly higher hit points than PCs (eventually getting a lot more hit points than PCs as their levels rise). If this is well-received and you decide to bust "PC" traps out at higher levels, think about increasing their damage.

[angroy]

If you want ideas, there's quite a lot here. http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/4e_Traps_and_Hazards

Disadvantages are that they don't have prices, but you could go with the magical item approach sugested by ashdate, but there's the bigger problem that I honestly made at least half of them, and I've not really played D&D much. But I've got lots of free time and enthusiasm to compensate. Speaking of which, any changes anyone want to make to improve them, please do.

[Adoendithas]

You can also check in the back of the DMG, under Custom Monster Stats. It includes a nice to-hit bonus formula, as well as reproducing the table from p42.

[shamgar001]

I think I have the stats down for most of the traps I'll be offering. The next think I want to work on is devices that can be used as aids to allies rather than traps for enemies. The two such devices I have in mind are mantlets (portable shields) and braziers.

Rather than just have the mantlets be a source of superior cover, I was thinking they could absorb all attacks that come across them, having high reflex and AC and hit points. Alternatively, it might be more interesting to have magical "warding torches" that give a defensive boost to allies within their radius.

The braziers would normally be just a place where archers could light their arrows on fire. Alternatively, they could allow allies to use a minor action to add a magical enhancement to their ammunition (i.e. an extra 2 damage to the attack or something).

I can probably come up with ideas easily enough; the problem is figuring out how to value them in relation to everything else and not overpower them.