How to reverse a ruling?

[waptdragon3]

i have a player who claims that because of the wording of of the flavor of Trap Sense ("an intuitive sense"), that a rogue is entitled to a search check anytime they get within 5ft of a trap, similar to an elf and secret doors. I pointed out how silly that was, since barbarians also have trap sense and how that bit was simply flavor, his response being "well then barbarians would get the search check as well, and you always take into account the flavor of the abilities". It was in the middle of session, so i made a quick call and said "sure whatever". This was a couple months ago.
I was reading through the elf's racial abilities for an npc and noticed that the elf's thing explicitly states that you are allowed a spot check. Should i reverse my ruling, or should i just leave it be for consistencies sake? they havent run into anymore traps since then, but im planning an indiana jones type campaign where autosearching would kinda break it. thank you for answering

[Telonius]

So, first off, your player was mistaken about what the ability actually does. It grants a bonus to Reflex Saves, specifically in the cases of traps. It doesn't do anything else, because it doesn't say that it does anything else.

That said, Trap Sense is one of the least useful features on a Rogue, for a couple of reasons. First, most (not all, but most) Rogues are going to be built prioritizing Dexterity, and they already get a good Reflex save. It's going to be relatively rare that you would fail a Reflex save whether or not you have Trap Sense. Second, it's a situational ability. Unless the DM is really trap-happy, it's not going to come up all that often.

Since you already made the ruling, I'd say let it stand for that campaign. Make it clear that you're allowing it as a houserule, and that it's not how the ability is supposed to work as-written. If it makes the Rogue feel more useful, why not? It's not as though it's going to completely overpower the class.

I would also suggest keeping close tabs on the player. This may be a "Give them an inch, they take a mile" situation, or it might not. Fortunately he's asking for something that's a non-issue (as far as game balance goes), but next time he might try to twist something more substantial.

For the "Indiana Jones" thing, autosearching also turns into a non-issue. When they realize they're in the Temple of Doom, the Rogue is going to start searching everything before they move anyway. I'd ask for the Rogue's Search bonus, add it to 10, and set that as the "passive" search result. Give the player the option to actively search something if they want to, or if they have reason to be suspicious of anything in particular.

[waptdragon3]

So, first off, your player was mistaken about what the ability actually does. It grants a bonus to Reflex Saves, specifically in the cases of traps. It doesn't do anything else, because it doesn't say that it does anything else.

That said, Trap Sense is one of the least useful features on a Rogue, for a couple of reasons. First, most (not all, but most) Rogues are going to be built prioritizing Dexterity, and they already get a good Reflex save. It's going to be relatively rare that you would fail a Reflex save whether or not you have Trap Sense. Second, it's a situational ability. Unless the DM is really trap-happy, it's not going to come up all that often.
the player knew about the reflex bonus, he was just claiming it had an additional effect. You are right though, i think the rogue has failed a reflex save all of like 3 times in the past couple sessions, doing so only because of a natural one.


Since you already made the ruling, I'd say let it stand for that campaign. Make it clear that you're allowing it as a houserule, and that it's not how the ability is supposed to work as-written. If it makes the Rogue feel more useful, why not? It's not as though it's going to completely overpower the class.

I would also suggest keeping close tabs on the player. This may be a "Give them an inch, they take a mile" situation, or it might not. Fortunately he's asking for something that's a non-issue (as far as game balance goes), but next time he might try to twist something more substantial.

For the "Indiana Jones" thing, autosearching also turns into a non-issue. When they realize they're in the Temple of Doom, the Rogue is going to start searching everything before they move anyway. I'd ask for the Rogue's Search bonus, add it to 10, and set that as the "passive" search result. Give the player the option to actively search something if they want to, or if they have reason to be suspicious of anything in particular.
i didnt actually consider this, but yeah. once they realize there's traps around, they're just going to be spamming those search checks anyways. as far as the 'give an inch, take a mile' thing, he's been playing 3.X much longer than me (i only started back in september), so i tend to listen to his input before i make rulings (less so now, more so when the campaign started). most of his input lines up with what im already leaning towards, but i have been cautious about not just taking him directly at his word since he has a very liberal interpretation of certain rules.

[gijoemike]

One thing I would do at the start of the next session is tell your players. "I was reading the elf secret doors ability and it has a phrase about automatically checking for doors. Then I re-read the trap sense ability. It doesn't have it. So the rule is rogues and barbarians don't get to auto search for traps. But the trap sense power is next to worthless and may never come up. So I am house ruling that it does let you auto search so the ability actually gives you something."

Or something along those lines. Stress the point about phrases in the rule text.

[AnimeTheCat]

Is your rule decision making any problems? Is it causing issues between players or too much overlap between characters? Is it needlessly limiting how you can challenge the party?

If it's not negatively impacting your game, whatever. Don't worry about it. Rule #1 is to have fun. If everyone is having fun, who cares what any of the other silly rules in the books have to say.

[King of Nowhere]

it happened to me several times that i would misunderstand a rule, use it for a few sessions. in all those cases, we always kept the rule as good for the rest of the campaign. unless those rules were absolutely bonkers, consistency is better

[Nizaris]

If the player also plays Pathfinder, they may have mixed it with the Trap Spotter trait which entitles them to an automatic Perception check when within 10ft of a trap. I wouldn't reverse the ruling, but instead give the other players the option to take a basic trait from the Pathfinder rules since the Rogue ended up with one (Barbarian could choose to take Trap Spotter or another one). I'd still make it clear that the free Spot check is not RAW for Trapsense.

[HeraldOfExius]

In a strange case of having two things named the same thing, there is an epic feat named Trap Sense (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#trapSense) that, well, entitles rogues to Search checks whenever they get within 5ft of a trap. If nothing else, this strongly implies that the intent is not for a rogue's normal features to do this, since clearly this is such an overwhelming display of ability that it must be withheld from anyone below level 21. Yeah, it's extremely underwhelming like most epic feats (and I don't think anybody would complain if it was just turned into a normal feat that only required having trapfinding), but it's definitely its own thing, even if it's also named "Trap Sense."

That being said, I agree that there probably won't be much of an issue with leaving the ruling alone. If you really want to reverse it, then the automatic check being called out for the elf ability and the entire Trap Sense [Epic] feat should be solid evidence that a rogue's Trap Sense does not do that.

[Fizban]

The Search skill makes it quite clear that searching takes time- rather a lot of time actually, in fact the amount of time it takes means that basically any amount of searching a room or looting of bodies will total 2-3 minutes even if they're rolling only once for everything. Choosing when and where to Search and for how long is part of being an adventurer. Being able to roll for free just for getting close is a significant increase in power.

That is, if you/your game actually cares. If you don't bother tracking spell durations, rolling for random encounters, etc, and just assume that the party always has time to search and loot and fight everything they want however they want, then this addiitional ability doesn't really change anything.

But if you do want those things to matter, then reverse the ruling. You made a quick ruling to keep the game going (as the DMG and most people would advise you to do), then you looked it up later and found that the player was incorrect. Phrase it however politely you want, but they were wrong, and since you were planning on using trap stuff under the normal rules, they can't argue that it "doesn't matter."

If the player claims that this ruling would change how they initially built their character, let them change to an Elf, or get the ability at some cost you would find appropriate. But I doubt it.


The only caveat is that since there is likely only the one character with Trapfinding, this ruling, and its ramifcations on any upcoming trap stuff, only affects them. If the problem is that the "Rogue" doesn't actually want to be in charge of thinking about Search checks and Trapfinding, you may want to make further changes to allow another player/PC to do so.