Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
Its not a trap because it hangs a freaking sign on it in glowing neon lights that say "Bad idea ahead!" I mean, maybe its a trap in the sense that some people just have to push the button labeled "self destruct: do not touch", but thats not the game's fault.

If you go ahead with it anyway, thats on you. Some people like making bad decisions in games to see what happens. You dont have to pick it if you are averse to unnecessary risk.

Also, there is no rule anywhere, at all, that says that passing a skill check can only ever result in a good outcome. If the thing youre trying to do is transparently dumb then being stopped by your own incompetence before you get to the actually dangerous part is a perfectly plausible and acceptable thing to have happen.
Right, but here's the thing, if you have high Int it doesn't look like a risky option, because you have placed investment in the thing it tells you it is going to require. It says "this is a difficult test of that stat you have a good score in, you can try it because of that investment you made".

It's only a bad decision because of information you didn't have when you made it, to whit that there's a Wis test as well that also requires a second stat to be very high.

If both pieces of information were present in advance, then you would be able to raise this argument.

But they aren't. You can't find out it was a bad decision until after you've made it, and it's a bad decision not because of the fiction, but because the mechanics make it difficult to succeed for reasons not available before you started trying.