Replacing Trapfinding

[Hal]

Let's say you're one of those people who think that Trapfinding places an artificial restriction on searching for traps. It's easy to just wave your DM hand and say, "Everyone can search for DC 20+ traps!" The question is, what do you do for classes who had that as a class feature?

I was thinking something along the lines of giving them Skill Focus (Search) and/or (Disable Device). Other options might be to give them another shot of Trap Sense or give them Skill Focus (Craft (Trapmaking)).

What are some thoughts? Are there any standard rules that I've missed for this? Anyone do anything like this for their games already?

[playswithfire]

Some existing variants that could be adapted
Barbarian variant: Trapkiller (Dungeonscape): Lose trapsense, gain trapfinding. Use survival to find traps, attack rolls to disable. So apply in reverse to give trapsense, maybe let them use a skill other than search to find traps.

Drow racial substitution level: Rogue 1: "Poison Use" - poison use, lose trapfinding

Or you could just give them a boost to Search, reduce the time it takes them to disable a trap or just give them a bonus feat.

[monty]

There are a number of ACFs that replace trapfinding with something else, I think.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Class Feature equivalents, from every source out at the time. According to his list, Trapfinding is equal to Trap Sense, and the Track Feat+Swift Tracker is equal to Trapfinding+Disable Device.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I've always replaced Trapfinding with a free +2/+2 skill feat, i.e. Alertness, Stealthy, Nimble Fingers, Persuasive, etc. Classes that normally get Trapfinding are always skill-based classes, and many would spend a feat on one of those anyway.

[Kizara]

I'd rather have a better system for traps, searching for them and them.

The current one SOMEWHAT simulates things well, but it certinally doesn't play too well.


As for the rogue skill, I wouldn't remove that. It may seem arbitrary, but it makes sense if you think about it.
The search skill is mainly concerned with finding things like needles in a haystack or a book in a library. The Trapfinding ability represents the expertise to apply this generic ability to traps and the experience and intuition to understand how they work. It is an iconic feature of the class and shouldn't be removed out of hand.