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View Full Version : Craft (trapmaking) and issues.



Xhosant
2013-05-16, 12:30 PM
So, the big issue with trapmaking is that it goes above and beyond the typical. 2 simple issues which i have noticed are the following:

1) Does the crafting process scale correctly? I mean, the time described in crafting descriptions makes sense for a sword or a bed, but i figure (and i haven't done the math) that the time needed to:
a) spill oil or other flammable material on both sides of the door (wine in a wine cellar, e.g.,
b) tie one side of a rope to the inner side of the door and
c) tie the other around the stopper of a flask of Alchemist's fire, or a torch, so that opening the door ignites the oil
is NOT supposed to be measured in weeks (as the crafting system does).

2) Time and cost is entirely based on CR. What about a "non-combat trap"? E.g., a door that, upon opening, ignites the torches of the next room. This is definitely the domain of trap-making, but how do you give a combat rating to something that is irrelevant to combat?

If anyone finds a way around these, or if they have something else to point out, please mention it.

Slipperychicken
2013-05-16, 01:03 PM
how do you give a combat rating to something that is irrelevant to combat?


Think of the most impressive and spectacular way for the PCs to accidentally kill themselves with it.

prufock
2013-05-16, 01:07 PM
1) Does the crafting process scale correctly? I mean, the time described in crafting descriptions makes sense for a sword or a bed, but i figure (and i haven't done the math) that the time needed to:
a) spill oil or other flammable material on both sides of the door (wine in a wine cellar, e.g.,
b) tie one side of a rope to the inner side of the door and
c) tie the other around the stopper of a flask of Alchemist's fire, or a torch, so that opening the door ignites the oil
is NOT supposed to be measured in weeks (as the crafting system does).

2) Time and cost is entirely based on CR. What about a "non-combat trap"? E.g., a door that, upon opening, ignites the torches of the next room. This is definitely the domain of trap-making, but how do you give a combat rating to something that is irrelevant to combat?

The time to craft with the craft skill is based on cost. What you're creating here is a relatively low-cost (since I assume you're buying, not manufacturing the components) jury-rigged trap.

1000 gp - 100 (attached touch trigger) - 500 (no reset) - 100 or more (low DC search) - 100 or more (low DC disable) - 100 or more (low attack/save DC) = 100 gp or less trap. Let's say 99 gp. At 3300 cp per day, that's a high check (3300/20=165).

A better way to think of these things is to forward-engineer them instead of reverse-engineer them. Let's say you're level 1, 4 ranks in craft, skill focus, and +3 int. Your total bonus is +10, for an average check of 20.

The min DC for traps is 20, so if you succeed at your check, your max value for the day is 400 cp = 4 gp. Now create a trap that is worth 4 gp. If you want to get reaaaaallly fiddly with it, divide the 4 gp by the amount of time you spend working on it.

Point is, you can craft the trap quickly, but it will have low DCs, and be a low CR trap. Which isn't off the mark. A jury-rigged alchemist's fire bomb should have a low DC compared to a complex mechanical trap.


2) Time and cost is entirely based on CR. What about a "non-combat trap"? E.g., a door that, upon opening, ignites the torches of the next room. This is definitely the domain of trap-making, but how do you give a combat rating to something that is irrelevant to combat?
Unattended, nonmagical items don't usually get a save, so you lower the save DC vs the spell as low as possible, subtracting the appropriate cost modifier.

If you lower the DCs, attack bonuses, etc enough, you can get a trap that costs 0, and can therefore literally take 0 days. For a trap created in less than one day, you may want to use that.

Xhosant
2013-05-16, 02:24 PM
Think of the most impressive and spectacular way for the PCs to accidentally kill themselves with it.

Kudos!


[...]your max value for the day is 400 cp = 4 gp. Now create a trap that is worth 4 gp.

What if i have a really small amount of time on the field to create the trap? Like, 2 hours at best?


If you lower the DCs, attack bonuses, etc enough, you can get a trap that costs 0, and can therefore literally take 0 days. For a trap created in less than one day, you may want to use that.

Your quoting here is confusing me :/ Although this is a good solution for the simple-trap question, you're quoting the non-combat one. And a system as described would be costly and time-consuming (especially if you want it to be presentable).

So, we rule that if a cheap trap's cost minus the materials at hand costs 0 gp, it can be made very very fast?

prufock
2013-05-17, 07:01 AM
What if i have a really small amount of time on the field to create the trap? Like, 2 hours at best?
A "day" of work in D&D is 8 hours, so if you want to get that specific - to follow with my original example - 400 cp * number of hours / 8. So for 2 hours, you'd get a 100 cp value trap. Then construct your trap using the cost modifiers to get down to 100 cp (1 gp). It won't be an incredibly effective trap, but it's crafted quickly and still works, provided you make your check. It just has a low DCs and attack rolls.

Of course if your craft check is better than the +10 in my level 1 example, you could get a higher value trap OR craft it more quickly by applying the optional +10 to the DC to craft.


Your quoting here is confusing me :/ Although this is a good solution for the simple-trap question, you're quoting the non-combat one.
Sorry, I'll try to be clearer. I was under the assumption that your "torch-lighting" trap was magical in nature. The PCs open the door, the torches magically light (via light, produce flame, continual flame, or some similar spell). In this case, the spell is not affecting the PCs, it's affecting the torches, which don't get a save, so you can lower the save DC of the trap as much as you want. Lowering the save DCs makes it cheaper and thus quicker to craft. The search and disable device checks still affect the PCs, of course, in case they want to bypass it.

In reading it again, however, it might be that you were suggesting a mechanical/chemical means of lighting the torches (ie, opening a door pulls a string that lights a tindertwig or timing cord, which then lights the torches). In this case, I would still say much the same applies. There is no save to this trap, so lower the save as much as you wish to make it cheaper (minimum 0, I guess).

Such a thing barely qualifies as a "trap," though. Granted it's a contingent device, but unless the torches are meant to catch the PCs on fire or alert others to their presence, there's no need to make this an expensive construction.


So, we rule that if a cheap trap's cost minus the materials at hand costs 0 gp, it can be made very very fast?
That's the gist, and the way I've run it before. Quickly-constructed traps are cheap and fast to make, but less effective. Of course, there should be some minimum time required, since a literal cost of 0 would basically mean crafting a trap instantaneously. A trap value of 0 should probably be considered 1 cp, since that's the lowest cash denomination, and can do so very fast. If your average check is a 20, meaning you can create 400 cp value trap in a day, you should be able to create 400 traps worth 1 cp in a day. A single trap takes you 1.2 minutes (equal to 72 seconds or 12 rounds). A little over a minute to set up a jury-rigged trap sounds fine to me. You can't pay a third of a copper piece, so you pay 1 and can make up to 3 traps.

This is assuming, of course, you allow less than one day crafting time and all this dividing, which isn't really RAW, but a reasonable extrapolation of the craft skill. IE it should never take a whole day to create a club.

Funny thing - you can use the rules to even construct a negative-cost trap, if I remember correctly. But yeah, don't do that.

I hope this makes more sense this time and is helpful!

Deophaun
2013-05-17, 07:31 AM
So, we rule that if a cheap trap's cost minus the materials at hand costs 0 gp, it can be made very very fast?
Except, crafting is related to price, not to cost, and there is a difference. What is the price for your improvised trap? N/A. Why? Because it's not something you're going to find on the market, and it's not something that you can bring to a merchant and sell, nor is it something that someone pay you to create. This means that Craft (trapmaking) doesn't have rules for it. This is where Rule 0 comes into play.

If a player wants to use Craft (trapmaking) for an improvised trap, he should use it to produce components ahead of time: tripwires, pressure plates, detonators, etc, and use those to set the DCs of his improvised devices. Otherwise, in the field you're more likely going to use Disguise to create an improvised pit trap, Survival to make a snare, and Disable Device for a door that catches on fire when someone tries to open it. Craft (trapmaking) occurs in the workshop.

Scow2
2013-05-17, 09:10 AM
Read Dungeonscape (I think?) for rules for using Craft(Trapmaking) to make cheap, improvised traps.

The ones spelled out in the DMG and PHB are assumed to be quality blends of complex, semiprecision-machined mechanical parts, intense labor, high-quality materials, and possibly even magic. Such as (Covered) Pit traps several dozen feet deep with smoothed walls, and a surface being either a thin layer of a collapse-under-weight material designed to perfectly blend in with the floor around it. Or complex hinge-triggered mechanisms to load, aim, and fire arrows/needles at anyone standing in front of it, or have scything blades sweep across an area reliably and on time.

prufock
2013-05-17, 09:41 AM
Except, crafting is related to price, not to cost, and there is a difference. What is the price for your improvised trap? N/A. Why? Because it's not something you're going to find on the market, and it's not something that you can bring to a merchant and sell, nor is it something that someone pay you to create.
What? The trapmaking rules have a section on trap cost (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#mechanicalTrapCost), and it has nothing to do with whether you can buy or sell it at the market. It's 1000 gp plus modifiers.


Read Dungeonscape (I think?) for rules for using Craft(Trapmaking) to make cheap, improvised traps.
All I could find in this regard in DS was the Trapsmith PrC's "Booby Traps" ability, which allows him to set up quick improvised traps with better DCs than the trap rules I outlined above would allow. This is fine, but it's a PrC, so not available to everyone. It's cool to check out, though, for a trap-building character. The DC of your improvised traps is your check result for saves, and half that for search/disable. Checks can be boosted pretty darn high, meaning your traps are nearly unavoidable.

Deophaun
2013-05-17, 11:54 AM
What? The trapmaking rules have a section on trap cost (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#mechanicalTrapCost), and it has nothing to do with whether you can buy or sell it at the market. It's 1000 gp plus modifiers.
You need to read what I wrote. Slowly, this time.

Xhosant
2013-05-17, 01:41 PM
A single trap takes you 1.2 minutes (equal to 72 seconds or 12 rounds). A little over a minute to set up a jury-rigged trap sounds fine to me.

Same here.


Funny thing - you can use the rules to even construct a negative-cost trap, if I remember correctly. But yeah, don't do that.

Build it along another trap to save time and money! Who needs reality's fabric intact?


[...] Disable Device for a door that catches on fire when someone tries to open it.

This is a rather... epic... way for a door to fail to function XD


Read Dungeonscape (I think?) for rules for using Craft(Trapmaking) to make cheap, improvised traps.

That's useful, thanks.