It's a Tarp! (Spheres in Review)

[SangoProduction]

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Preamble: Never really saw the appeal to it. Then I tried to make a survivalist type character, and traps are useful for those… and they last for rounds without multiple talents. The character wasn’t a specialist so I had to give up on the idea. But I see its potential for a specialist and so I’m taking a deeper look.

Post-Review Analysis:
Gosh darn, this sphere seems to be intended to support every other sphere. But it’s such a pain in the axe to use and fit into any other build. Although I think it’s more that every other sphere can support it rather than the other way around.
Darts got absolutely shafted for options in this sphere. But damned if they aren’t the best alchemy delivery device this side of Waterdeep. Granted. Most alchemical items target touch already. But darts go out to close range by default without range increments.
Snares are where the real meat and potatoes of the sphere are. And yes. Most of those talents are sub par, and snares are less easily triggered. But there are good options.

Flex Talents: Disarming Trap vs things you want disarmed.
Foam Trap vs tight groups / swarms
Noose vs spell casters that speak
Ghost Touch Trap vs… take a guess.

Spoiler: Base Sphere

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Skills: Gains up to HD skill points in Craft (traps). Craft (traps) will substitute BAB in most calculations related to the sphere, including save DC. When I mention a skill, or skill check, it will be in reference to this.

Placing Traps: DC 5 skill check to place it as a full-round action. The trap lasts for a number of rounds equal to your check - 5. It is placed in one 5-ft square, plus one more each of 5 levels… which probably simply means it’s an expansion of the effective area it can target rather than an additional trap.
Expensive components may be drawn as part of the action of placing a trap by default.

Detecting Traps: Perception DC 10 + skill modifier to “locate the trap.” Which probably includes noticing it in the first place. Anyone you warn, or who sees you gains +5 to perception to notice the trap, +5 to AC, and +5 to reflex saves against the trap. So it’s not viable mid-combat.

Triggering Traps: You only ever trigger your own traps if you want to. A Dart Trap triggers when a creature enters a close range line in front of it. A snare triggers on someone entering the trap’s square. They may only trigger once by default.

Destroying perceived traps: Hardness = skill ranks. AC = 10 + ranks. HP = 5 + 5 per 2 ranks.

Darts
When placed, targets a close range line, as described above. When triggered, make a ranged attack against each creature in the line until one is hit. Use ranks + int mod instead of BAB + dex mod. On hit, it deals (1 + 1/2 ranks)d6 damage.
It may forgo damage to apply alchemical items and such.
You may also apply injury poisons after it is set, or as part of setting it, if you forgo damage.
Both options for forgoing damage targets touch instead of AC.

This seems to have intentional synergy with the alchemy sphere, including an impressive expected hit rate if you forgo the damage. Essentially full BAB + likely SAD stat vs touch.
Touch is intended for wizards with like 12 or 14 dex.

Snares
On entering the snare’s square, the target makes a reflex save to avoid it. A successful save doesn’t trigger the trap, and allows them to not trigger it in the future. May be rigged with an alchemical item or inhaled poison, without seeming to impact the snare’s effect. Alchemical items target an intersection chosen when set. Poisons center on the triggering creature.

Tripwire (snare)
A failed save on this snare causes them to fall prone, and not trigger the trap again. May trigger multiple times, with duration reducing by 5 rounds each time it does so.

Spoiler: Trap Talents

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Trap Launcher / Trap Wielder (G-S)
These enable traps to be used in combat without massive preplanning or debuffs to their efficacy. Trap wielder is much more versatile, but its snares may only be in melee. Launcher lets you use snares at range, as part of a deadly shot. (And that was probably to prevent you from applying this (snipe) talent to simply a wielded dart trap.)

Trapper’s Recovery (G-S)
So long as you don’t miss twice in a row, this does potentially let you indefinitely regain martial focus and use 2 traps per turn. Nice. Takes 3 talents to get this rolling, but still.

Warning (G-S)
Allies don’t trigger your traps. Nice. Now you just manipulate the battlefield as you please.

Aerial Trigger (<G>)
Grants surprising verticality to the traps. Necessary for such a speciality, but still. Trip and Entangle is specifically less disruptive than normal.

Dirty Traps (G)
For clarity: I rate this only as though you were specialized enough in dirty trick to even consider it. Dirty trick can apply really good debuffs for a good while. And getting to now apply it at range, in addition to other effects (if you expend martial focus)? That’s neat.

Rapid Placement (G)
Expend martial focus to reduce set up time to 1 standard action. Which you can then use with combined traps to place 2 traps on the start of your next turn.

Crowd Pleaser (G)
Immediate action intimidate or free action boast. Not bad. Does it overcome the conditions to make the boast? If it does, it’s pretty good. Regardless, intimidate is nice.

Expert Eye / Trap Finder ([G])
If you lack a trap finder, this is nice.

Aimed Dart (M-G)
Medium range is pretty impressive. Adding a (snipe talent) is neat. And at no real cost to use.

Scatter Trap (M)
More trap area. Easier trigger. Nice. Aside from more easily getting triggered, it doesn't actually improve the effectiveness. If I am reading this right.

Stop Drop And Control (M)
Neat. Lets you do something other than simply getting out of danger with the withdraw action. Also useful with Fool’s Retreat. But you generally don’t really want to be in a situation where you would want to withdraw. But… maybe.

Opportunist (M)
Traps cause them to provoke from you. Which is… a bit of damage. You don’t normally get to AoO with ranged attacks. Sentinel might even be able to make that AoO worth something.But I don’t see this as incredible value.

Trapped Shield (M)
Immediate action to punish melee attackers that miss.

Alchemical Trap Master (M)
Lets you use conventional, rather than only Spheres alchemy on this. It’s fine. I guess.

Razor Wire (N-M)
Lets tripwire also deal cantrip damage as a dart. But loses its alchemical functionality. Not sure I like the trade. Even if I liked the tripwire. Which I don’t. Except for the Flavor of being a hunter.

Fool’s Retreat (N-M)
Enter a stance to allow you to pull enemies with a withdraw action. Obviously so that they will run into your traps. Best of luck, I guess. That’s the set up actions, the movement to get up to them. And then full round action to maybe possibly get them to follow you through your traps. It’s got other obvious uses. But… eh. I don’t like it. Way, way too situational.

Sneaky Trapper (N-M)
Creatures must be within 30ft of you to even have a chance to notice you setting up traps… Which… is neat. I think. Mostly trying to overcome a built in drawback of not being useful in combat, and I think Trap Wielder probably does it better.

Combined Traps (u)
2 action steps to double the traps you have in that one action. The only time where it doesn’t obviate itself is if you can set it as a standard action, and willing to wait until your next turn for it to happen. Which is incredibly specific.

False Trigger (u)
The first trigger doesn’t actually fire. Which could be used to try and line up 2 people for a dart. But that seems unreliable. If you’re using it as a DM, however, then it might allow you to bypass the tank, and hit the wizard.

Persistent Trap (F)
Largely flavor. But assuming you have no ranks and no int, and took 10, the first talent of this would allow the trap to last for 50 minutes. Each +6 adds an hour duration. Or in other words, it would take a +43 check to last 8 hours. Which is somewhat out of reach. But for most other purposes, if there are any, it’s more than sufficient

Also, that’s why they let you take it a second time. Now you’ll only need +3 to have it last 8 hours, and +19 to last 24.

Remote Trigger (u)
I can’t come up with a practical D&D use for a Remote Trigger like this. Save for getting to force a second save as an immediate action. Obviously in real life this is really useful to remotely trigger gadgets.

Trap Door (u)
My initial thought was that it was a clunkier creation sphere wall. Which does just feel a tiny bit odd being nonmagical. But then it was revealed it takes a minute to set up by default. So I’m really having difficulty figuring out the situations in which you could, let alone would, use this.

Trapsmith (F)
Ignoring self resetting magical traps.. Crafting for gold is inefficient use of time. Crafting for useful items? Well, outside of said resetting traps, I don’t know of literally any magical traps. You’ll have to determine that for yourself.

Spoiler: Dart Talent

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Spoiler: Damage talents

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These are notable in that you have to forgo damage to access alchemical items, and thus touch attacks at full “BAB.” But these should be rated as though that wasn’t a desirable option.

Barbed Dart (M-G)
1 bleed per 2 levels. Ew. That is useless.
(Though realistically? The other 2 options only add an average of literally 1 per 2 levels. One time. This does that multiple times, literally every time, rather than as an average. For bonus bookkeeping!)
You see why they needed to be rated separately?

Deadly Dart (M-G)
Lethal D8s slashing. Less things are immune / resistant to slashing than nonlethal. And healing isn’t effectively doubled when using nonlethal.

Blunt Dart (M-G)
Nonlethal D8s. It’s useful for not killing people. Yay.

Others
Net (G)
Entangled, but still able to move. Nothing incredible, but it has an indefinite duration, which means it will keep applying the penalties until they waste their actions to attempt to get rid of it. Can be made a touch attack or keep the damage. Which is good flexibility. Also a snare talent. So yay flexibility.

Flash Trap (N-M)
Although you gain the snare of the same name, giving up your action to give the enemy a 25% chance of messing up some actions for 1 turn. And then 5% for a few rounds there after…? Yeah. No.

Spoiler: Snare Talents

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Disarming Traps (<G-S>)
Disarms on failed reflex save. And counts as a disarm maneuver for Duelist sphere. That’s pretty good, if you’re against enemies that care about disarm. Devastating for quite a few humanoids.

Net (G)
Nice, simple entangle and unable to move.

Noose (<G>)
50% spell failure for verbal components. Yay.

Foam Spray (<G>)
AoE net. But much less durable. Exclusively useful when wielding against tight groups of enemies.

Skunk Smoke (M-G)
Persistent Sickened area, and incidental concealment.

Scratching Post (M, F)
Probably more annoying than useful. But it’s a friendly AoE that lasts for several minutes, which applies an attack debuff on a failed will save each round.

Flash Trap (M)
Blind in an area, and dazzle for a few rounds there after. It’s not a net positive trade of your action on average until you nab at least 3 people in the blind. And it’s pretty difficult to wield. But it’s got potential.

Bear Trap (N-M)
Net trap. But instead of entangling… it does 1 bleed damage. And I guess it counts as an attack action for duelist sphere. But still. That’s pretty pointless.

Bamboozling Trap (N)
It’s Feint. That’s really bloody useless.

Alarm Trap (N, F)
Requires extended duration to be at all useful. And the range is really rather useless for anything but camp setup. But I guess you could make a perception check out beyond that range to hear it.
The only other use I could think of is to make sure no other groups enter the dungeon without your knowledge. But if you’ve got 1-10 minutes to set up the alarm, you probably don’t need to waste your time, and just finish the dungeon instead. And again, the range is pretty bad.

Terrain Trap (N)
Could not care

Tricky Traps (N-)
A 1 round penalty. Ew. Even if you wanted the blind, why not go for the AoE option?
The flexibility of choosing which debuff you want isn’t worth the horrible efficacy.

Brutal Traps (N-)
You might mildly inconvenience someone. Oh no. At least you don’t make a CM check.

Techno Trigger (u)
Not bothering to go through other stuff to see if there’s something worth using this with, especially with the tech sphere update coming out soon.

Spoiler: Legendary Talents

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Thaumic Sink (<S+>)
Personalized anti magic field for at least 1 and a half minutes? As a martial? By the end of your level 15 dungeon, you’ll have more holes in you from your own needles than… know what, I’ll let that one just stand.

Ghost-Touch Trap (<S>)
When you need it, you really need it. Also may effectively grant your alchemical items ghost touch, which… I mean. I don’t think is even normally possible.

Temporal Snare (G)
It’s got multiple uses. It can save allies by putting them in stasis. It can stop enemies from chasing you, or attacking (or anything else). It can let you rob a store blind (at level 15…. So… take that as you will).

Penetrating Trap (N-M)
Damage is the least useful part of this sphere. But it is still a part. I wouldn't personally spend a talent supporting it, when you can trade out the damage for something more useful and not affected by DR.

All Part Of The Plan (N)
Spontaneous traps. Neat. But requires flat-foot, or denied dex. Which can be done with feint… and then they must move. And then you must spend martial focus. And after all that, they still need to fail the save in order for it to go off.

A Better Mouse Trap (u)
You get to summon an indefinite number of swarms… I don’t like it. I don’t know if swarms can even overlap. It’s just more bookkeeping.

[AsuraKyoko]

A Trap sphere user in one of the games I run gets pretty good mileage out of Stop Drop and Control + Fool's Retreat. It allows them to skirmish pretty well, doing ambushes and disrupting enemies. Including Sneaky Trapper means that the enemy won't automatically be aware of your trap, and thus much more likely to set it off.

In general, Fool's Retreat has been useful for disrupting enemy formations, pulling individual enemies back to somewhere they can be ganged up on and killed quickly. Naturally, the usefulness of this is situational, being more effective against humanoid enemies than monsters, but it's done some solid work overall.

[SangoProduction]

A Trap sphere user in one of the games I run gets pretty good mileage out of Stop Drop and Control + Fool's Retreat. It allows them to skirmish pretty well, doing ambushes and disrupting enemies. Including Sneaky Trapper means that the enemy won't automatically be aware of your trap, and thus much more likely to set it off.

In general, Fool's Retreat has been useful for disrupting enemy formations, pulling individual enemies back to somewhere they can be ganged up on and killed quickly. Naturally, the usefulness of this is situational, being more effective against humanoid enemies than monsters, but it's done some solid work overall.

I may just be forgetting something obvious, but can you go into more detail about how monsters were less effective targets?
Faster enemies can maneuver around your traps, if they see them. So that could be what you mean. Not sure.

[AsuraKyoko]

I may just be forgetting something obvious, but can you go into more detail about how monsters were less effective targets?
Faster enemies can maneuver around your traps, if they see them. So that could be what you mean. Not sure.

It wasn't anything innate about the monsters, and had more to do with the fact that humanoid enemies tend to care more about formation and teamwork, due to a stronger division of combat roles (at least in my experience). Along those same lines, monsters are more likely to be encountered as single enemies than humanoids, which tend to work better as groups (again, in my experience).

[SangoProduction]

It wasn't anything innate about the monsters, and had more to do with the fact that humanoid enemies tend to care more about formation and teamwork, due to a stronger division of combat roles (at least in my experience). Along those same lines, monsters are more likely to be encountered as single enemies than humanoids, which tend to work better as groups (again, in my experience).

Ah. OK, fair enough.