Symbol Spells

[Diarmuid]

I'm a bit confused as to how to adjudicate the various Symbol of... spells.

They specifically say that the symbols have to be visible and legible, for example:


To be effective, a symbol of death must always be placed in plain sight and in a prominent location. Covering or hiding the rune renders the symbol of death ineffective, unless a creature removes the covering, in which case the symbol of death works normally.

But then, it goes on later to say the following:


Note: Magic traps such as symbol of death are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of death and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 33 for symbol of death.

If the PC's encounter one, and you were to describe the room as "A big temple, with a large rune on the floor in front of the altar" then the PC's are going to go into super paranoia mode around the rune an it'll likely never get triggered, but if you dont mention it, then I feel you're perhaps "tricking" them.

Always been an odd mechanic to me. How do you all handle Symbols?

[BIGMamaSloth]

I would treat it that the party sees a big rune on the floor but the rogue has to make his search check to identify it to be a magic symbol of death and a trap. I would also say that a sufficient knowledge arcana check would "find" the rune.

[Anderlith]

Write the rune in big bold lines (In invisible ink!!!!)

[rweird]

If they see the big rune on the alter, if it is within 60 ft of them, they would trigger it by reading it if it has the right activation, the people that approach the alter say something like 'praise [dark power the temple is dedicated to]' in some forgotten language, that is the password that stops them from activating the symbol.

[Bakkan]

It hasn't come up yet in my campaigns, but I read the "in plain sight" part of the description to essentially mean "having line of sight to most of the immediately surrounding area." The rune itself is (nearly) invisible until activated.