Is There Any Point to Traps?

[Skysaber]

Ok, here's the situation. You've got a fairly ordinary building in a fairly ordinary town filled with fairly ordinary minions who are going about their fairly ordinary daily lives...

...and one of your party members decided that it would be fun to massively offend the local thieves guild.

So, laying aside for the moment the options of moving everything to its own demiplane, or throwing ice assassins of solars everywhere, is there any way at all to achieve a modicum of safety for those buildings and/or minions using non-beneficial traps?

The question, really, is "Is there any point to using traps as they were intended?" As a way to deter thieves and robbers from breaking in, stealing things and killing people?

[Psyren]

The benefit of traps is that they are an automated process - like all automated processes, it's all about the designing them for the right expected use cases. And like all automated processes, once you know how to circumvent them they have a hard time adapting. For this reason, some of the best traps are the ones that alert something intelligent that can adapt to the presence of intruders or other danger.

That's the more general answer to your question - for specifics, would need to know what was done to offend the thieves' guild, what they're likely to do in return etc.

[eversilentone]

Ok, here's the situation. You've got a fairly ordinary building in a fairly ordinary town filled with fairly ordinary minions who are going about their fairly ordinary daily lives...

...and one of your party members decided that it would be fun to massively offend the local thieves guild.

So, laying aside for the moment the options of moving everything to its own demiplane, or throwing ice assassins of solars everywhere, is there any way at all to achieve a modicum of safety for those buildings and/or minions using non-beneficial traps?

The question, really, is "Is there any point to using traps as they were intended?" As a way to deter thieves and robbers from breaking in, stealing things and killing people?


Even if traps are easy to disable, if there is a time constraint (guard patrol, combat, imminent getaway, etc) and/or in sufficient number then they can be a real issue. Although that only holds if they're worth disabling in the first place, and can significantly increase the cost in materials/labour/time. If you're talking about strictly mechanical traps then they usually boil down to simple damage (sometimes with poison). Magical traps can be much more varied and much more likely to succeed against a thieves guild who we might presume are predominantly Rogues and/or capable of disabling stuff with relative ease; target Will saves, debuff Int, lots of "fake traps" - slow things down and invite them to take the hits or find a weak spot (sometimes on another occasion). I think non-lethal traps are most likely to go detected but left alone - things which move the physical space, like elevating the floor to create a slope, for example. This can ultimately manoeuvre people into positions where the lethal traps are unavoidable.

Also, it might be worth considering what constitutes a trap. Area of effect spells that persist in a location are not necessarily detectable, same with illusions. Without going too deep into this particular rabbit hole - they know that you have traps (and you can make sure they do), and you know they know, meaning you can tailor your preparations to what you know about them.

And all of this can go both ways, so it could be PCs protecting a base just as NPCs defending a lair.

[Quertus]

There is incredible value to traps: you tell your loyal minions the cost of adding in automated defenses, and force them to validate that their value makes them worth that expense.

The value of traps is not, generally, in their efficacy, but in their value as a deterrent: you don't want traps to deal with thieves/assassins/loiterers, you want them to prevent people from approaching you in that fashion in the first place.

Fear assassins? Spend some minimal amount to discourage them (a large wall, and a courtyard to put your facilities beyond ranged sneak attacks, maybe)… and invite the clergy of the god of secrets and the all-seeing good of truth to their new chapel, located within your facilities.

Fear loiterers? Add timed walls/benches to tip people off… and summon a fiendish mimic to eat repeat offenders. Him and some locks will probably work for thieves, too.

Do something cheap and obvious, so that people know that you care. And something decisive, for the fools who try anyway.

[Psyren]

Also, not using traps because the thieves' guild has members that can beat them, is like saying you don't bother with passwords or a personal firewall because they won't stop a skilled hacker. Even if that's true, it's still better than doing nothing (as long as you don't get a false sense of security from it.)

[Kurald Galain]

How about having the thieves add traps to the party's house instead?

[Goaty14]

Instead of just trying to hunker down and attempting to brace for retribution, are you able to try and talk any sense into the offending party member? Getting him/her to at least apologize for their great misdeed could at least stem the oncoming tide of wrath.

[Telonius]

Ok, here's the situation. You've got a fairly ordinary building in a fairly ordinary town filled with fairly ordinary minions who are going about their fairly ordinary daily lives...

...and one of your party members decided that it would be fun to massively offend the local thieves guild.

So, laying aside for the moment the options of moving everything to its own demiplane, or throwing ice assassins of solars everywhere, is there any way at all to achieve a modicum of safety for those buildings and/or minions using non-beneficial traps?

The question, really, is "Is there any point to using traps as they were intended?" As a way to deter thieves and robbers from breaking in, stealing things and killing people?

For stealing things? Yes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/cursedItems.htm#stoneofWeightLoadstone). Plant a few of these on various high-value items around the city, and watch the hilarity ensue.

Some of the other, more "regular" cursed objects are pretty great as well.

Humiliation can be an effective tool, too. An Invisibility trap that aims for the target's clothes. A hallway guarded by skunks. A trap that's disarmed by doing the "I'm a Little Teapot" song, that also simultaneously projects an image of this to the center of the town square.

[AvatarVecna]

Traps are like magic items: they are a way of tying up a whole lot of material wealth into a more compact volume/weight, in a way that the material wealth's new form has a built-in defense mechanism. Monsters who spend their money on magic items have a better chance of surviving PCs (since they turned their money into buffs), but if the PCs beat them, the PCs get easily transportable magic items. Traps are a lot more "transportable" for somebody who can disarm them and carry the equivalent of a section of hallway - the rogue isn't stuffing a disarmed trap into a back of holding, but a decent-sized dragon can just pick it up once its separated. Traps are a way of making wealth harmful to PCs, but in a way that PCs can't just steal the wealth that was left lying around (at least not without significant time and effort).

[nijineko]

I will ignore the specific situational case for the moment in favor of a general overview:

Is there any point to traps? History says, 'YES'.

Why were traps used? Historically speaking traps were used to catch food, especially food that was bigger and/or meaner and/or tougher than the hunter.

And then when fellow humans proved more troublesome than animals, traps were re-purposed and weaponized.

What is the most basic trap still in use today? (hint, you have one on your house, maybe even your bedroom.)

It's a lock.

Is that a trap, you ask? Yes, it is a TIME trap. It causes a delay which allows one a short time to do something or to hopefully catch someone at something.

While some traps (gates, locks, passcodes, fences, etc) are intended to DELAY, and others (guards, dogs, barbed wire, razor wire, towers/turrets) are intended primarily to DETER and secondarily to DAMAGE, traps are still used to this day.

Why?

To keep something or someone in or out.

In a fantasy setting there are many more options for traps (which are traditionally used in the fashion that the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Japanese, and many others did) including fantastical ones (monsters, psionics, magic, etc), but the main purpose is still the same: To delay, to deter, and to damage (or even kill).

However, traps interfere with daily life, and you don't want to hurt your own, or be too inconvenienced. So there comes a balance between security and safety, and freedom and ease of getting your jobs (and life) taken care of.

This sort of philosophy should determine where traps are placed, and what kinds of traps are placed. But keep in mind that the more people who know how to safely get past, the easier it is for outsiders to learn how to bypass it. Or the more samples of people who safely can get by it that outsiders can observe, the more chances they have of figuring out the logic behind any given trap (in the case of cleverly worded psionic/magical traps and sensors).

Keep in mind that traps can also be beneficial. For example, a trap that cures (or teleports) certain targets who escape down a certain escape route could be quite handy in a pinch. Or if you have money, one that teleports all your minions (and only your minions) to safety once a trespasser trips the trap (no hostages or info leaks that way), among other possible variants.

Just a few thoughts on traps in general from an avid trap user.

[Fizban]

The question, really, is "Is there any point to using traps as they were intended?" As a way to deter thieves and robbers from breaking in, stealing things and killing people?
Note that, unless you've decided to use arbitrary NPC levels, the majority of the thieves guild will be just like everyone else: 1st level NPC classes. No trapfinding. No ability to find traps above DC 20, only the most dedicated specialist can do locks of DC 30, and none at 40. Adamantine blades are +3,000gp, nearly all of a 4th level NPC's gear.

If the party is a high enough level compared to the notable NPCs of a place to consider ticking them off, then they should be a high enough level that those notable NPCs really are the only people they have to worry about. Only in a sufficiently large city are there more than a handful of rogues that can actually deal with expensive traps and locks.

[Skysaber]

That's the more general answer to your question - for specifics, would need to know what was done to offend the thieves' guild, what they're likely to do in return etc.

One of the party members has the Merchantile Background feat, and has been getting great value out of buying and selling our loot at a discount. However, the DM insists on a certain amount of roleplaying, so visiting that player's extended family who run the small-time merchant guild we have been doing business through is part of selling off loot, and gaining the occasional discount on purchased items.

So basically all of the party's money is flowing through what amounts to an NPC trading house.

And on one of these trips the party's barbarian had to prove to everyone how important he is by doing what he could to insult, humiliate and debase what amounts to the local mob boss.

We all are pretty convinced that mob boss is going to do what is possible to return the favor, and since we are in town only once in a blue moon, when it's time to cash in, that revenge is most likely going to strike at us via our pocketbooks - getting the extended family who run that merchantile house dead, dead, dead, their facilities burned, their employees scattered and their valuables looted.

DM has already told us that, should that happen, we lose the value of that feat (as well as any loot sold through them that had not already been processed into coin in our purses).

Striking at the mob boss wouldn't help, as he is in hiding, sufficiently paranoid to have taken several magical steps towards his own protection, and even if we could his extended family would simply take over - and if we succeeded in taking out one mob, the others would take notice. Paying the guy off also would not work, as the barbarian's insults were mortal. He likes to threaten to kill people in what he thinks are imaginative ways.

So de-escalating is not going to be simple, if it is possible at all.

The local town all of this is running through is fairly low level (the reason our barbarian felt so free in insulting and humiliating a mob boss), so they really aren't going to strike at us directly. So all signs point at them striking at the merchantile family instead of us. We don't expect to be dealing with elite, optimized rogues. But anything unguarded is likely to be stolen or destroyed.

Our merchantile friends feel really put upon by our barbarian's actions, and would like for us to take some responsibility for fixing this. Relocating them is not really an option, as it takes years for them to get established in a new location, form contacts, sources and lines of supply, and contracts and all of that. So we'd be denied our discount until then.

We owe our allies some protection, especially since our barbarian caused the whole problem in the first place. But obviously we can't stay here in person to defend them, as being travelling adventurers represents our entire income stream. We'd be forced to essentially retire.

Guards? Unreliable at best, considering the thieves can bribe them. The town guard have got to pretend to go about their duties, but they are at least slightly corrupt and infiltrated. Ditto the local count.

There are several other trading guilds who will be watching how this goes down. So authorities can't be too obviously on the take and let the thieves get away with too much, or else everyone pulls up stakes and moves to someplace safer, leaving the local count and his town even worse off financially than we would be. But nobody (least of all us players) knows what that line is, exactly.

Both our allies and the thieves have already been called before the count separately and instructed to keep things private.

That's actually to our advantage, as our people can simply use other guilds as much as possible. A porter's guild handles shipping, they can just keep using that. Our allies can shop, go to restaurants, etc, and so long as they keep it to shops and restaurants run by other guilds things should be fine, as the thieves don't want to accumulate more enemies, offending other guilds and the count at the same time. There is even a carriage service run by another guild that offers door to door service. All of that costs extra money, but a trivial amount by the party's perspective. A hundred gold should cover the extra costs over most of the year, and look swanky at the same time.

So we've got daily life covered, for the most part. In some ways their lives will even improve.

No, the problem is how do we protect our allies properties? Nobody else wants a stake in our fight, so no convincing churches or other guilds to move into our buildings. That leaves us alone in the dead of night when merchants must sleep and thieves might come calling.

Hiring more people would be all but impossible to do without being infiltrated by thieves. The size of this trading house was small, run mostly by the extended family, and they already have jobs. So answers requiring more people are frought with difficulty.

Our assumption is that the thieves' attacks will be targeted at the business, and the owning family's homes, so the observers will note "Oh, it's just them. They deserved it."

My opinion is that the authorities desperately don't want to be involved, and will seize any excuse not to be. So when help comes it will be slow, and reluctant, but in large enough force to hopefully cow any opposition.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late, I know), power levels are low, but we can afford to spend a fair amount (anything less than one-third of our income, before costs get worse than losing access to that feat). Guards are unreliable, authorities do not want to be involved, the merchant family are not adventurers and don't want to be - so amount to sitting targets. So we'll want to automate their defenses as much as possible.

We've got a druid who has access to Stone Shape. So we were going to sentence the barbarian to hauling rocks, and get everybody moved out of their flimsy wooden houses and such into a walled family compound of all stone buildings and such. Just so a random toss of a flask of alchemist's fire wasn't going to murder anybody in their sleep when they wake to find the doors blocked from the outside. Ditto the trading house is going to be converted to stone and modestly fortified.

One of the party members has a trick allowing him to craft nonmagical stuff for free. Then somebody asked if traps could be any use. And frankly, I really don't know. So I asked.

Could you defend the contents of a store or warehouse after hours using traps?

Could you keep families of noncombatants safe using traps?

I don't know. So I am asking.

[Afghanistan]

Guards? Unreliable at best, considering the thieves can bribe them. The town guard have got to pretend to go about their duties, but they are at least slightly corrupt and infiltrated. Ditto the local count.

Have you considered commissioning a Golem for your friend? Shield Guardians and Runic Guardians should help protect him nicely assuming these aren't super high level assassins and rogues. Another approach, might be taking down the Thieves Guild through internal politics. Surely there is some member in their hierarchy not satisfied with simply being a mook? :smallconfused:

We need more information on your circumstances, but that said, I do not believe traps will be the answer to your problems.

[daremetoidareyo]

I really got into potential kobold psychology because of this question.

They aren't notorious for tons of traps. Maybe that's just the internet exposure to Tucker's kobolds, or write-ins to Dragon magazine, but it's a thing. But let's Ponder why it is a thing.

Kobolds live in fear of other sentient species that kill them. It governs their cost benefit analyses of leaving all easy routes trapped enough to ward off attack. And it must be effective if they still proliferate.

So how would you design traps to that end? Their visibility is a warning. It causes doubt and fear. They secondary traps should be way more intense, nearby, and

Probably with easy to spot/set traps to check every day, place in close proximity to to the first traps and potentially very lethal or painfully numerous, with alternating trigger mechanisms. Intense pain and permanent disbursement should be included here. These should be accessible from secret passages or structural advantages that allow for minimum time spent in the cause way.

Tier 3 should be manned response traps designed around decimation of an invading force.

And then an evacuation plan is necessary. So a dramatic tier 4 trap that buys hours of time, (think engineered cave in) against that which threatens the entire tribe.

That's trapping for clan survival. It also means that the techniques change if no evacuation plan is possible. It also means that these non evacuation kobolds probably are capable of staying safe or have fewer sentient predators.

And if this is how they operate, that meansvthey have cultural structures that modify behavior of society members towards maintaining those traps and posong as little risk to the tribe as possible.

[wilphe]

I would suggest gifting your antagonist the barbarian's head on a plate and tell him to roll a new character that isn't an idiot.

Or tip them off when he will be alone and vulnerable and make sure you are all somewhere else when it goes down

Basically take cues from Joe Pesci's fate in Goodfellas and Casino

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Among other things, use Phantom Trap (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/phantomTrap.htm) on everything. There's no save and no way to disarm the trap, so they absolutely know it's dangerous to go through that door and can't stop it.

Or just guard them for a week, then get bored and "leave". When they make their move a week later, the party rogue you left behind Sneak Attacks everyone. It's up to you whether he leaves their bodies piled up on the mob bosses' front step or if he knocks them out, strips them naked, and ties them to the fountain at the center of town. Whichever you think will make it easier to convince the mob boss it's not worth it.

As part of the eventual peace negotiations, get the Barbarian exiled from the town. He can guard your horses etc at the gate, but not enter to a place where he could cause a problem.

[Telok]

1. Find local thieves guild hideout.
2. Dig a deep and unclimbable pit in front of it.
3. Throw naked barbarian down into the pit.
4. Send apology note to crime boss.

[Quertus]

I would suggest gifting your antagonist the barbarian's head on a plate and tell him to roll a new character that isn't an idiot.

Or tip them off when he will be alone and vulnerable and make sure you are all somewhere else when it goes down

Basically take cues from Joe Pesci's fate in Goodfellas and Casino


1. Find local thieves guild hideout.
2. Dig a deep and unclimbable pit in front of it.
3. Throw naked barbarian down into the pit.
4. Send apology note to crime boss.

Along these lines, I was going to suggest having the crime boss wake up with the Barbarian's severed head in his bed. Should simultaneously cover "we're sorry" and "don't **** with us".

I have several characters who would accomplish that feat for a fraction of the price of installing traps.

[Goaty14]

Among other things, use Phantom Trap (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/phantomTrap.htm) on everything. There's no save and no way to disarm the trap, so they absolutely know it's dangerous to go through that door and can't stop it.

Seconding this, and the idea from this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?552506-3-5-Leomund-s-(Phantom)-Trap) that you can easily stick a bunch of traps together.

Otherwise, turning the buildings your guild operates in to stone is a good shout (though I should note that if your DM loves to go book-diving and 3.0 is allowed, Stonebreaker Acid (A&EG) or Delver Slime (SS) could both pose a threat). Think of if striking back is an option given your party's capabilities - perhaps your druid could prove they could infest the mob's houses with insects, or if the party rogue could disguise themselves and work their way up the ranks?

[tiercel]

The best kind of trap is a trap of thinking, e.g. an ambush. Physical traps may be a component.

If you’re already thinking about new construction, plan perhaps on there being at least one entirely new building. Start referring, and getting all your allies referring, to it as “the secure facility” or similar. Don’t outright say, but let it be implicit, that it will be your allies’ vault/safe room. Go ahead and put some secure doors, locks, standard (pit/blade/whatever) traps near/around the entrance as if beginning to secure it....

...and build yourself a honeypot.

The real trap isn’t the outward defenses, which thieves will know how to penetrate and figure are just there to buy your allies time. The trap really springs when the thieves penetrate the honeypot building, eager for the steal and/or kill, and the building... entraps them. Like an animal snare. (And of course, your allies and wealth aren’t inside — but your party is nearby after having apparently left town.)

And that’s the real trap: you gave the thieves the appearance of a challenge they feel plays to their strengths (sneak, bypass traps, steal, murder) when in fact, you were setting up an encounter to your advantage as PCs (kick in the door, roll for initiative, straight-up fight).

...or, of course you could just serve them up your barbarian on a platter, because you’re going to have to do something about that character at some point anyway.

[Beldar]

Traps (and you asked about mechanical traps, so that's what I mean whenever I say Traps here) and their search and disable DC's are designed in this game to be defeatable by the levels of Rogues that can expect to encounter them.
That's a game-balance thing.
So you have to unbalance them to get them to be really effective.

This can be done in a few ways.

The simplest way, is to design your own, instead of "buying off the shelf". The DMG gives rules for this on page 74.
Consider a basic trap from their sample list, such as a Basic Arrow Trap, CR 1.
Drop the Disable DC from 20 to anything under 15, and you can raise the search DC to the next category "30 or higher", while keeping it at the same CR, and the same price. If he can't find the trap, he can't try to disable it, so you now have a much more effective trap.
Undefeatable? Of course not, but more bang for your buck.
And you can raise it's average damage by 7 per CR. Or its attack bonus.
You can see how it goes.
A Fusillade of Darts trap, from their sample list, is a good one to bump up in similar ways.

Note that you will want to buy the trap in the unpoisoned version, then poison it later - it's usually cheaper. And you can freely use sleep and paralyze poisons without worrying about hitting family members.

Let's call this approach "Tweaked traps" - off-the-shelf stuff either just slightly optimized or extremely optimized, as your DM allows.
It can become reminiscent of some of the stuff you read about in GrimTooth's Traps - really nifty stuff, but hamstrung by the fact that it is still defeatable by a skill check.

So we take it even further from "off-the-shelf".
Consider the 3 parts of a trap - Trigger, Mechanism, and Target.
Often, they are in the same spot - like the pressure plate (trigger) causing the hidden crossbow (mechanism) to fire and hit the target next to it.
But the target does not have to be next to it.

With Scything Blade traps the target does need to be adjacent to the mechanism. But not with ranged traps - arrows, javelins, fusillade of darts, etc. Someone can hit the tripwire in one place, activating the mechanism in a second place and hitting a target in a third place.

Keeping this in mind allows some nifty things, such as:

Traps as Weapons.
Imagine for a moment the local mob boss, accompanied by some thugs, does the cliche thing of walking right in the front door of the shop, in order to get in some crucial bragging and taunting (it must be crucial, right? given how much effort some put into it), before taking the folks out and beating them while burning the shop to the ground. The mob boss knows he can do this because the PC party is away at the time, so the shop is undefended except by the level 1 commoner who runs it - no defense at all, really.
Except, this shop-keeper is armed with a trap...or several.
As the Mob boss really gets going in lovingly detail describing the evil he is going to do to the shopkeeper and his powerlessness to prevent it, the shopkeeper reaches under the counter, and pulls a lever, having waited until the mob boss was standing in the right spot.
In this case, the trigger is not a tripwire, pressure plate, etc, and is not by either the mechanism nor the target zone. The trigger is the lever, which activates a mechanism such as a Hail of Needles (CR3) built into a cabinet, chest, wall, ceiling, etc (or maybe one in each - several traps linked to the same trigger), which then affect a target zone in a third place - the spot where the mob boss and his thugs are standing.
The Hail of Needles trap, straight from the DMG page 71, has +20 to hit and does 2d4 damage.
A Javelin Trap (CR2) has +16 to hit and does 1D6+4 damage
Either of these can effectively turn a level 1 commoner into a real threat for just about anybody, for one shot.
So make that shot count.
Link several traps so the damage is enough to drop your targets.
Or tweak the traps - for example, drop the Hail of Needles Search DC and Disable DC from 22 to 14 each, thereby giving you 2 more CR to 'spend' on, say, increasing the average damage by 14.
Or make the trap automatically reset so multiple shots are possible (not the best choice, since they are likely to figure out that moving would be a good thing for them, but still can be useful - for example if there is no place they can stand that hasn't got traps pointed at it, all triggerable by levers next to the shopkeeper).

One of the nifty aspects of this approach is that the trap mechanism and trigger never need to be adjacent to an enemy Rogue, so there is nothing for a Rogue to make his skill check against: Searching for a trap where there isn't one must fail, even though you happen to be standing in the target zone of a trap that's way over there (logically anyway, if your DM wants to imagine that the ability to search for traps amounts to a "Spidey sense" kind of thing, then all bets are off.).

Other triggers
Noticing and defeating triggering mechanisms is where the opponents - enemy Rogues - excel. Buffing Skill checks is easy, so you can expect them to succeed by default.
So deny them a roll.
A tripwire or pressure plate trigger can be found by being adjacent to it and looking.
Not so, for an animated skeleton locked in a closet (one "way over there"), watching through a peephole for what he has been told to watch for, before pulling a lever to trigger a trap.

You can also get this effect by buying a simple guard dog and training it to step on this spot here (the trigger) whenever someone who doesn't live there enters the house at night.
The instructions can get quite specific if you use Speak With Animals during his training.

Are dogs too easy to defeat? Just throw in a steak for it and go about your business you say?
Fine, train a cat, or a hamster, rabbit, or whatever.
Any of them can trip a trigger under specified conditions.
An owl can do this even for traps pointed at the outside of the house - target the spot under a window where someone would have to stand to try to get in for-instance. The owl pecks a trigger under the eaves, never having to get in harms way. People have pets that do more complex tricks than this.

Worried about trapping your place of business and possibly hurting thereby some family or customers?
That brings us to our next section

Traps as mechanisms.
Traps take some mechanical action when triggered.
That mechanical action does not have to be sticking something pointy and poisoned into someone.
It can be, for instance, retracting half the supports from underneath the floor boards, making the floor creak whenever, and whereever, it gets stepped on.
In medieval times, floors that creaked on purpose were called Nightingale Floors and were built so you'd have some warning if someone was trying to sneak in and rob you or kill you.
These squeaky floors can be a big help to you all in noting that there is trouble, whether family members or the animals youve trained.
And you don't have to limit it to floors. Look around and see other ways a Rogue could sneak across the room - say along counter tops or swinging from torch sconces or chandeliers - make them all squeak.

So, when the shopkeeper and family go to bed at night, he pulls the lever to remove supports and make everything squeak.
This is especially useful since any Rogue that scoped out the target during the day while masquerading as a customer *knows* the floors don't squeak, since he'd personally walked along them.

Another useful mechanism the shopkeeper triggers at night is the "Master Arming Lever".
This enables the various traps around the house, by removing whatever wedge, cover, support, etc was blocking it during the day and making it inactive.
So a scout, during the day, would have seen children playing tag by going in one window and out another etc (you will arrange that - teach the kids that it is a fun game and make it be the quickest way for them to get around) so he *knows* that the windows are not trapped.
But at night, once the Master Arming Level is pulled, they are indeed trapped. Does one Master Arming lever sound too vulnerable? Substitute one per trap, or by groups, or whatever. Obviously, your Master Arming Levers are in your most secure location, probably in a room with no windows where you go to bed at night - and disguised to look innocent.

While traps as weapons can be abusive, traps as mechanisms can be even more so, given plenty of creativity.
For example, in the old movie Murder by Death, the house had duplicates of every room, and these duplicate rooms were swapped around to keep the detectives guessing. You could do similarly.
An old fashioned merchant's scale had two bowls on a bar with a pivot in the center so as one bowl goes down, the other is pushed up by the same amount. They used this to see if two weights were equal - put a known weight on one side, then add what you're selling (grain, incense, whatever) to the other side until the bowls are at the same height and the weights therefore are equal.

But a similar mechanism ("trap" in the loosest sense of the word), could, say, have a bedroom on each end of the bar (a very strong bar) and raise or lower them as needed, and with a ratcheting mechanism to hold it still.
Why?
Picture a Rogue or assassin sneaking in at night to kill the shopkeeper that lives there. The assassin finds the bedroom door at the back of the living room, just as it was described to him, he opens the door, sneaks in, and finds the bed empty but rumpled, as if someone just got up, and an empty sword sheath hanging next to it.
He is likely to assume that the shopkeeper heard him coming, got up, drew his sword, and is now stalking through the house looking for the assassin.
The equation has changed. If he goes looking around the house further and does not find the shopkeeper, he may assume he fled out into the woods or something.
In fact the shopkeeper flips a coin every night to see which room to sleep in, so that both have a "lived in" look, then, if the coin toss says sleep in room A, he goes into room B and rumples the bed, takes the sword, then goes to room A and triggers the "trap" that lowers it into a 10' deep pit and slides a solid cover over it.
In the morning, he opens his closet, revealing the small capstan that he uses to winch his room back to ground level - the only way to do it.

That is just one example of the fun, silly, and potent things that "defensive architecture" can do.
And all by mechanisms simpler than some traps use.


A final note - your local mob boss was personally insulted. His mob members, as they take losses from traps, are going to have morale problems.
A thieves' guild is not where you look if you want to find loyal, trustworthy, self-sacrificing folks.
Yet those and similar qualities are what's needed if you want folks to make sacrifices for someone else (take losses and damage to avenge the mob boss).
Of course there are complications beyond this simple generalization, but, in general, it fits, exceptions aside.

A thieves' guild IS the place to look if you want to find people who are "in it for themselves", "put number one first" andf so on. These are the people who are looking to get ahead the easy way and at someone else's expense.
So mob members, disgruntled at taking losses, are likely to, shall we say, trigger a change in leadership (ie, gank the boss some dark night and take his place) whenever they think the time is right.

So, in sum, traps can be effective, though you have to play tricks (make them yourselves, and ideally throw in some feats to make them cheaper) or the price will break you.

Still, it's a fun picture to imagine a couple mob members, trapped at the bottom of a pit trap (which they *knew* wasn't there because they saw people walk across it many times during the day) triggered under them by a guard dog, wailing to be let out as the family members toss in oil and alchemists fire (a fireproof pit of course - wouldn't want to burn the house down).
If they toss from the side, the way you throw a balled-up paper into a trash can across the room, they can't even be shot at by the soon-to-be dead rogues.

[Segev]

On the direct topic of the thread, I found recently that the traps offered by the PFSRD (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/traps) off the shelf look pretty nice, and probably aren't too hard to craft or purchase. They would translate directly to 3.5, too, if you're using that edition instead.

But a more serious problem is that anything that happens off-screen is very subject to DM fiat. I don't know how "fair play" the DM is, and him not being "fair play" isn't even a criticism. It's a lot of work to fairly run NPC assassins through a death-trapped manor, especially when you have the added mental burden of questioning whether your DMly knowledge of the layout is influencing the assassins' choices and routes. Abstracting it is difficult to do fairly, and worse, you might not have the NPC assailants statted yet, so you'll be tempted to weight them for or against getting through the PCs' plans based on what you, the DM, think is "best."

To a degree, if he's at least trying to be "fair," expending sufficient resources on the subject likely will make a difference. Anything that makes it possible to recall the PCs at a moment's notice so they can pop in and make it a fight on-camera will help considerably.


Now, for the root of the problem... what level is the party? I'm going to make suggestions based on no knowledge of this, and thus some will almost certainly be too high level. But....

Find out the mob boss's own loved ones' locations, and send them nice gift-baskets. Include thinly-veiled apologies for the rudeness of the barbarian, and comments that you'd like to get along. If you have a rogue, use thieves' cant to encode a message that you don't want to have to threaten, but that tit for tat WILL occur disproportionately. If you lack that means, hire one to help you with it. Hire, not threaten, and make sure to grab them from a town over or something. Failing that, don't bother encoding it...but it'd be nice if you could, so any family the boss has who are innocents won't get scared.

Do similarly to the mob boss's seconds and the likely agents of assassination. Make it very clear that responding to the barbarian's insults will mean war, and that the barbarian was just talking...for now. Work those Intimidation checks via writing, or even in person if you can catch any of them out and about. Or find where they're hiding.

Don't go for the kill. What you want to do is reassure the mob boss that the barbarian isn't going to be allowed to follow through...unless the mob boss pisses off the party.

As a means of finding the mob's interests to threaten, find the businesses in their protection rackets, and paint little graffiti of the barbarian on their doors. Or leave folded notes with the image of him under their doors. Something like that that will get back to the mob boss as a message, "We can wreck your business if you hurt ours."

But the big thing is to do your best to make the threat you pose personal. And clearly predicated on them doing anything to you or yours. "Leave us and ours alone, and nothing more need come of this." The reason you do NOT want to go for the kill is because, as you said, his extended family will take over. But while he's alive, he doesn't want to die. So make him fear you, and that you can and will come for him if he hurts anything you care about. Sure, his death won't kill the mob...but it will kill him.


If you've got a lot of wealth and/or questing to throw around, hunt down a thing that will give you a wish. The moment you get word that the mob's struck, wish that all they did is undone. Or, better yet, wish that the barbarian never made the insults, and that only your party and the mob boss remembers the timeline of events that led out from them. Now, the mob boss wakes up the day after his big revenge to find that the revenge was undone, that his men don't even remember doing it, and he's being looked at really oddly.

[Jay R]

Traps are often intended to distract people from the real threat. A tumbling pile of debris, fairly easy to dodge, masks the sound of the approaching real threat. Or a giant rock rolling down a corridor makes people dive into a side passage without checking it out carefully.

In Sourcery, one of the Discworld books, there's a sequence of traps protecting a treasure vault:
1. A "Kick Me" sign placed on your back, followed by a large boot on a lever.
2. An extended hand connected to an electrode.
3. A feather duster that extended at armpit height.
4. A bucket of white wash dumped on you.
5. The entire roof, a huge block of stone four feet thick, dropped on you, with words carved into it. "Laugh This One Off."

[Kelb_Panthera]

You said there were other gangs in the area that would get nervous if you steam-rolled this one, right? Then the solution is obvious to my mind; give 'em something bigger to worry about. Kick off a gang war.

Whack a few of their guys in a time and place that's believable and make it look like it was a rival faction. Do this a few times. Then rinse and repeat with the faction your barb offended as the culprits to really stir up the pot.

Your little trading house will quickly become an afterthought as chaos reigns in the streets, alleys, and shadows of the city.

Fair warning: expect collateral damage.

[Skysaber]

In general, the tone of replies seems to be, "Do anything but rely on traps for security." Which, well... I guess that does answer the core question, and that answer appears to be a resounding "No!"

My DM, shocked at the price of nonmagical traps (1,800gp for a CR1 PIT TRAP? Really?) even offered us a work around where they could be had for free, and not even mentioning that got any response other than a resounding "Solve this any way you can - except by using traps."

So, really, my question has been answered, I guess.

Pity. I had resolved with my group some defensive architecture. We were going with all-stone buildings, tile roofs, no exposed timber inside or out. We had plans to get ourselves a scroll of Wall of Iron with Invisible metamagic applied, to get that special material that is basically iron as clear as glass, and buy another scroll of Fabricate to have windows. Iron shutters and doors had been discussed, with iron grates over the chimneys. So we felt we were doing pretty good with the 'restrict access' and 'make them work for it' aspects.

Our Wizard (me) has a minor item of spell-storing, up to 3rd level, into which I was going to load Improved Arcane Lock spells, so the families in each dwelling could open and close their own doors and windows, but no one else could. Not without destroying the iron doors/shutters first, at least - which we felt would at least take some time and make some noise.

But all of that is merely delaying tactics without something to finish them off. The families can't do it, and the town guard most likely won't. We'll need some kind of finisher, or else just like a sea snail, they could lick their way through the tough outer shell to get at the fresh meat inside. One way we were thinking of doing this was having the front door not be Arcane Locked, just normally locked, to sort of lure them in the 'easy way' and let them into rooms we could then trap.

While we aren't exactly facing the Three Stooges, the threats we are preparing against aren't world breakers, either. We're only 5th level, and the thieves of this town are only first or second.

And I'd thought, "Well, if traps could be useful anywhere, it would be here. So why not ask the experts?"

But it sounds like buying them a few pairs of war dogs would be a more successful idea.

[Quertus]

In general, the tone of replies seems to be, "Do anything but rely on traps for security." Which, well... I guess that does answer the core question, and that answer appears to be a resounding "No!"

But it sounds like buying them a few pairs of war dogs would be a more successful idea.

Is it surprising that canine protection sounds better than boobytrapping your homes and workplaces?

[JustIgnoreMe]

What is the most basic trap still in use today? (hint, you have one on your house, maybe even your bedroom.)

It's a lock.

... they don’t use snares any more in your country? Snares are thousands of years older than locks.

[nijineko]

... they don’t use snares any more in your country? Snares are thousands of years older than locks.

We don't use snares on our front doors. I was not picking the oldest example of a trap, I was picking an example that is in common use in the modern day even by people who are not hunters (the majority of people in my country no longer hunt, even for sport, anymore...).

But out in the wild, yes, we do still use snares for hunting, and in developed areas, minor snares for pest control.

[Nifft]

The question, really, is "Is there any point to using traps as they were intended?" As a way to deter thieves and robbers from breaking in, stealing things and killing people?

Traps don't exist to deter thieves -- they exist to protect the Thief niche.

Because traps exist, your party must contain a character with Trapfinding.

Because of the Thief lobby, all dungeons must contain traps.

(It's a racket and appropriately enough it's run by the Thieves Guild.)

[Grek]

There's a difference between deterring burglary and keeping rogues out. And there's a difference between dungeon traps and the sort that you'd use in your house.

Consider this noise maker door trap. Search DC 0, Disarm DC 25, manual reset, touch trigger, hidden lock bypass. A good lock as an extra on the same door and nice stout wood. Call it 300gp total, 200 of which is the trap.

Looking at the door, it very obviously has an alarm which will go off if you open the door incorrectly. The correct method to enter the door is to unlock it using one key, then unlock it a second time using a second key - if you use just the first, it won't open and if you use just the second it sets off an alarm. Detecting the correct way to open the lock requires a DC 25 check, and there's a second DC 25 check to disable the alarm. Actually opening either lock requires a DC 30 check.

In a dungeon, this does basically nothing. You'd take one look at it and either shake the rogue at it or avoid it entirely. But in town, that's a modern-day quality home security system.

[sorcererlover]

No there isn't. I've seen a DM who said watching PCs overcome his traps is the greatest joy her derives from the game. But all the other DMs I played with only put in traps if an adventure module specifically says so. Most DMs rather put in monsters than traps.

The in-game fluff for traps is basically constructs or undead that mundanes can afford. Because they're automated and they guard something for its entire life.

I think the worst trap I was in was Black Lotus Extract smeared on loot followed by an ambush.

[Kelb_Panthera]

No there isn't. I've seen a DM who said watching PCs overcome his traps is the greatest joy her derives from the game. But all the other DMs I played with only put in traps if an adventure module specifically says so. Most DMs rather put in monsters than traps.

The in-game fluff for traps is basically constructs or undead that mundanes can afford. Because they're automated and they guard something for its entire life.

I think the worst trap I was in was Black Lotus Extract smeared on loot followed by an ambush.

Traps serve two purposes: area denial and resource drain.

When you find the first trap, you presume there are others nearby and you either avoid the area or start moving at a crawl looking for them. Either way, they've served a useful strategic function. If you just choose to bull through and damn the consequences (good luck) then you get to patch up afterward, using daily resources or charges off of wands/staves.

If you then apply a little time pressure, suddenly traps matter a -lot- more than they otherwise might.

[sorcererlover]

Traps serve two purposes: area denial and resource drain.

When you find the first trap, you presume there are others nearby and you either avoid the area or start moving at a crawl looking for them. Either way, they've served a useful strategic function. If you just choose to bull through and damn the consequences (good luck) then you get to patch up afterward, using daily resources or charges off of wands/staves.

If you then apply a little time pressure, suddenly traps matter a -lot- more than they otherwise might.

All but one DM I played with would rather drain our resources with monsters than traps.

[Nifft]

The most fun encounters I've run which included traps were where the traps had obvious locations, had encounter-wide effects, and were discovered during a combat with monsters rather than instead of a combat.

The traps were basically environmental effects which the PCs could change, but the PCs would need to expend actions to do that, and therefore the traps were about the interesting mid-combat resource allocation choices and not just "oh you found it, great now throw the hobbit at it and see what he rolls".

[Jay R]

From my Rules for DMs (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?592257-Rules-for-DMs):
4. a. The purpose of a death trap is not death; it is to make the players feel clever. Don't build one to cause death, and more importantly, don't build one to make them feel stupid

[Kelb_Panthera]

All but one DM I played with would rather drain our resources with monsters than traps.

They're not mutually exclusive. Putting down traps just before or alongside actual foes can put the PCs on the back foot before you even roll initiative. Heck, foes can be part of the trap. Auto-resetting summon monster trap or even just an alarm near intelligent defenders can completely change the normal encounter dynamic.

[sorcererlover]

They're not mutually exclusive. Putting down traps just before or alongside actual foes can put the PCs on the back foot before you even roll initiative. Heck, foes can be part of the trap. Auto-resetting summon monster trap or even just an alarm near intelligent defenders can completely change the normal encounter dynamic.

Traps give CR. That CR could be used for more monsters. So you're always sacrificing monsters for traps.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Traps give CR. That CR could be used for more monsters. So you're always sacrificing monsters for traps.

Traps add to encounter level (EL) without shifting the action economy. You can only add so many foes to an encounter without it causing significant slow-down at the table. Even if you can control that by using simple creatures (:smallyuk:) there comes a certain point where the enemy is acting several times for every action the party gets and that can get overwhelming quite quickly.

Also, I repeat "summon monster trap." The trap -is- more monsters. If you make it moderately difficult to find, the party can go through a shocking number of foes before they clear the encounter or are forced to flee.

Then there're encounter traps. Go full Indiana Jones on the party. Just be sure there's something in it for everybody to do; repeating, growing-dc strength checks for the beat-sticks to hold the walls back, a few repeating spells that need to be countered by the wizard/cleric, and the actual trigger mechanism for the rogue to use disable device on. Obviously, you'll want to tinker with the details to fit the party to a certain extent but the point remains: you can have an entire encounter involving the whole party with -no- creatures other than themselves in it.