OOTS #1220 - The Discussion Thread

[Worldsong]

I don't know. Your theory surely makes the story move onward, and in that it makes sense.

But as a trap...
Let's take as an example what the order did in DCF: a trapped door (even if they were not sure it was trapped, anyway let's assume they use the same modus operandi) triggered on purpose by the meat shield. Maybe with the justification "Come on, we're plenty of healing potions."

The meat shield walks in and the trap doesn't do anything (apparently, but creates a portal secretly). Doing nothing (apparently) would be a great hint to the party that the trap did something secretly.

Instead if the trap adds a damage effect for good measure, the party will think that the damage was the purpose of the trap and will ignore the possibility of it doing something else secretly.

I've got two ideas for that.

The first one is that having the meatshield try to intentionally trigger the trap (only to find that it does nothing because the line just marks where two different locations are linked by means of portal) would still require noticing the line first. If the odds are low of any intruders spotting the trap that's possibly even better than a portal which disguises itself as an explosive trap.

The second idea is that even if you notice the line but it doesn't appear to do anything when you step over it that might tip you off that it does something secretly but that would still leave you guessing what exactly the secret effect is, especially if you can't manage to disarm or sabotage it.

An important part of this would be that Serini might have been a high-level rogue but she would still have to work with ultimately limited resources. Weighing all her options she went for an approach which both fits the mindset of a rogue and which would require a high-level rogue to bypass (and there's probably many other tricks and challenges on the way, so bypassing the portal doesn't mean you've beaten the dungeon). And I believe it's been stated before that the Stickworld tends towards low-average levels (the imp at least was impressed by Vaarsuvius's level as a Wizard).

I did miss that. Okay, maybe Roy can't see it, but he also has no spot. He does say he can't see the first one, the second one he could reroll a spot check, though and maybe he did see the second one. Regardless, Oona has spot and RC may have the aforementioned detect traps spell.

Also, I was under the impression that anyone can do a spot check, it's just you need ranks in spot to have more than a hail Mary's chance of seeing anything.

In 3.5 Spot checks don't detect traps which are meant to be hidden (so most of them). You need Trapfinding, which is a type of Search check which is unique to rogues (below Weapon Proficiency and Sneak Attack).

Find Traps allows a cleric to mimic a rogue's Trapfinding ability but it doesn't guarantee success, and most likely is not as good as a rogue of the same level (due to them investing skill points into the Search skill). On top of that finding the trap doesn't necessarily allow the cleric to disarm it.

Disarming a trap, similar to finding one, is a unique feature for Rogues where they use a Disable Device check. With magic traps dispel magic can temporarily suppress the trap, although you'd need to roll high enough (bottom of the page.).

EDIT: Correction, you don't need to be a rogue to find simple traps but given that this is an endgame level dungeon this almost definitely falls under the category of a high-level trap which requires a rogue's Trapfinding ability.

In addition, Search is an INT-based skill, which given that clerics are WIS-based means that even if they use Find Traps they don't have a very high ability modifier to help them out. In contrast, I've always found it pretty convenient to have some INT as a rogue given that INT is good for skills and rogues are meant to be skill monkeys.

Maybe this is kind of an anti trap? It does not do anything (or deal some damage) if you fall for it. It does nothing if you disable or dispell it.
But Harley activated the real function by trying to bypass it. And this real function is to open a portal.

This would explain a lot.
- nobody (TE) notice any kind of spell effect, since usually, there is no effect (or some kind of effect you would expect from a trap) No plane shift or other kind of travel.
- the color of the floor changed after 'bypassing' the trap. This seems to be more likely if the dungeon leads to another pane/dimension/location NOW.
- even if TE could notice the runes (I'm not sure they can) they might just burn a dispell on it in order to render it inactive. This is especially likely if the trap has some kind of visible effect (like damage) when activated normally.

Hmmm... That would be interesting although at the same time I feel like Haley might have caught that. As it is she seems to believe that it's a trap which is triggered upon stepping over it (resetting itself immediately after). Of course it could be that she's good enough to detect and activate it but not good enough to understand its exact workings... do we know how Haley compares to Serini at this point?