How do you do Trapfinding

[TheCrowing1432]

Trapfinding is the unique abilty to look for and disable traps, something thats been one of the cornerstones of DND since 1st, and yet only a small amount of classes actually get it.


The question is, how does trapfinding actually work?

Does the rogue have to manually search every single 5 foot square? That does not sound fun.

Does the DM tell the rogue to make a search check (similar to how elves find secret doors)? This seems a little more reasonable.


Or is there some other option?

How do you guys do it?

[Curmudgeon]

It takes a full-round action to search a 5' volume (cube), or 20x that long to "take 20", but that's in-game time, not player time. You just tell the DM whether you're using "take 10" or "take 20", and the DM tells you the results (you either find things or you don't). If you're using "take 20", figure a meal break after every stretch of dungeon to be searched.

[Psyren]

In Pathfinder, Search got folded along with Spot and Listen into one skill (Perception.) This had two effects:

1) Searching actively for stimulus (including traps) is a move action. Thus you can look for traps and move up to your speed at the same time (i.e. two move actions down a corridor.)

2) Because you're effectively "Spotting" traps, it means your only limit to finding something is your line of sight. It also potentially means you can spot traps in multiple squares at a time. So a Pathfinder rogue can do things like this. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0855.html)

Finally, in Pathfinder the "Trapfinding" ability was changed. Now it'd be more accurately described as "Trap-disabling". Basically, anyone can find any type of trap in Pathfinder if their skill is high enough; what the "trapfinding" ability does now, is allow only those classes that have it (e.g. rogues) to bypass a magical trap using only their Disable Device skill. Classes who do not have this will have to bypass magical traps by other means, such as dispel magic or trying to trigger them remotely.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

In my group, the trapfinding class feature doesn't exist, anyone who can make the check can find traps. Any time a character would get the Trapfinding class feature, they instead get a +2/+2 skill feat of their choosing, such as Stealthy or Alertness. Any time a class feature would enable a character to find a particular type of traps, they instead get a +2 to search checks for that type of trap.

The party is always searching. They each roll one check, and that's the result they use for the next trap or secret door until they have an encounter.

[Chronos]

You don't have to search every 5' square. You only need to search the ones that have traps in them. Yes, I know that sounds flippant, but after you play a rogue for a while, you develop an intuition for where traps are likely to be, and so you only search those places.

[Honest Tiefling]

I've been meaning to test out a house rule of stealing passive Sense Motive/Perception from 4th edition to cut down on the Sense Motive spam and the trap finding spam. I wonder if anyone has had any luck with that.