So, I learned something today. I had forgotten that disabling traps can take more than 1 round!
So, that leads to a question. If it takes 2d4 rounds to Disable a complex trap (DC 25+), what happens if the Disabler is interrupted during that time? Say, by being attacked, or suddenly having to make a reflex save?
Should the Disabler be considered flat-footed (or denied Dex) during the disable attempt?
What about taking penalties to the Disable check for damage taken during the attempt?
What about a mook running up during the attempt and triggering the trap while the Disabler is working on it (my personal favorite!).
RAW he can keep disabling without penalties, but I will also say that if he has a +30 perception I doubt anyone is sneaking up on him while he is disabling a trap. The party will also be there so holding off any mooks is not a problem for most groups.
You know, I've seen two sides of this argument so far. That of GM Fiat, and Player Entitlement. To be fair, if you just want to disable every trap ever conceived by your GM, then tell him this. He'll probably be alright with it as long as that is your player expectation. If it isn't your player expectation, and you are honestly afraid of traps TPK-ing the party, then perhaps the GM is too antagonistic. But this all comes down to Player VS GM either way. That's not how things are supposed to work.
My stance in this, is cooperative challenge. The GM should feel that his story is a masterpiece, and the players should feel their characters are living, breathing heroes. It should work both ways. Not one way.
Here's my answer to this question.... Percentage. If you're rogue is disabling every trap in the Gamemastery Guide, your Adventure Path, your homebrew game, or what-have-you. Then make the DCs ever so slightly higher. Can your rogue disable something at a baseline of DC 40 without rolling? Then, make the DC 45. That's only a small percentage of failure for a standard trap. Want to make him feel like his character just went through the ringer just once? Design a dungeon with variant trap setups. Disabling the trap in room 1 turns on and keeps on the trap in room 4. The entire place turns into a logic puzzle that, yes, he can make all the DCs, but he has to figure out in character which traps to leave active, and which to turn off. If you need an idea for it, Lights Out is a good example of a lever setup.
And, before anyone tries to defend "I made this character to do this, so yes, I should always succeed." or brings up the "Oh, in that case you should just make every monster impossible to hit." I have done these things, but in interesting ways. If my party fighter and barbarian specializes in DPR and is hitting for something like 80 dmg per round, then I'm going to make a wizard villain who has tapped into a wellspring of power. This villain only has 10 AC, but he regenerates 75 hp per round. Sure,...
If the GM is going to say "nothing you do matters" then he should say it up front so the players does not waste resources. It would be like me arbitrarily raising SR. As for "always", you should add more context. If he can legally beat the DC he should bypass the trap. That is not the same as always hitting a monster's AC because there are ways to increase AC, and add miss chance legally.
I never thought traps were all that relevant to the game anyway, standalone they're horribly boring. They're either resolved by an attack roll followed by one sentence of description, or some skills rolls, and one sentence of description.My guess then is you've never utilized the true potential of kobolds. I ran a level 7 party of 4 through a kobold warren filled with traps and it was almost a TPK. When they came out, there were 2. Every single room and hall was a death trap. The kobolds had dug out small tunnels between rooms that were a cake-walk for them to run through, but too burdensome for the party. When the halfing thought to run in and chase them down he found himself falling through a false floor made of ice that he was about 50lbs of weapons and armor too heavy for. He landed in freezing waters that washed out to the sea, he was not rescued. Bye-bye trapfinder. The players insisted that they continue through to recover the white dragon egg that they so desperately needed (I don't really remember why). The remaining players never fought a kobold. Not one. Only an adult white dragon they managed to defeat by luring it into a trap. The dragon managed to take one player with him, though.
I've also had a "trap" that would sink a city into an underground prison if the rogue couldn't disarm it in time. He had to instruct groups of professionals on the matter and send them out to various parts of the city to get it done in time. Meanwhile the rest of the party was underground trying to stop a prison riot and under threat of being crushed by the city above.
The Tucker's kobold scenario. That is not really a trap issue, but good use of the enviroment. Traps really are not relevant.
And was your city idea really a trap or an obstacle? If it can't be solved by disable device it is not a trap by the game rules.
Yes, Tucker's kobold. I can never remember the name of it, but use it often. There's a reason traps are listed in the environments section. Traps are traps, if they're environmental and a disable device check is applicable, which it was, it's no less a trap. Every room had a mechanical trap and those were the only obstacles that widdled away at their resources. I don't remember exactly how he ran it, but that's how I did.
And the city was a trap. It did require disable device. It was a series of explosives rigged around the city, but he couldn't get to all of them in time, so he had to teach others to do it with him.
Did I hear Kobold? I hope they're not, Werewolf kobolds!
Did I hear Kobold? I hope they're not, Werewolf kobolds!
Heh, gives me an idea for Weredragon Kobolds.
Yes, Tucker's kobold. I can never remember the name of it, but use it often. There's a reason traps are listed in the environments section. Traps are traps, if they're environmental and a disable device check is applicable, which it was, it's no less a trap. Every room had a mechanical trap and those were the only obstacles that widdled away at their resources. I don't remember exactly how he ran it, but that's how I did.
And the city was a trap. It did require disable device. It was a series of explosives rigged around the city, but he couldn't get to all of them in time, so he had to teach others to do it with him.
I see it was a series of traps. Nice idea.
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Here let me summarize what I'm getting out of your post.
Quick! Use fiat until the challenge goes the way you want it to. Make up insane levels regeneration, that'll show a damage dealer to kill things before you want them dead. Chance of success should only be on your terms, and failure should always be an option no matter how many resources a player has invested in doing something well (and ignore the fact that this makes investing in doing something well a bad idea, since it makes you look like jerk).
Did I get that right?
Not at all. In a boss fight, at the end of a chapter, I want the party to be completely drained of consumable resources, at least at half hp, and have a sense of victory over the BBEG instead of dropping what should be a BOSS FIGHT in 1 or 2 rounds. If you read my entire post you would see that I said I do this sparingly. Once every four levels or so.
If the GM is going to say "nothing you do matters" then he should say it up front so the players does not waste resources. It would be like me arbitrarily raising SR. As for "always", you should add more context. If he can legally beat the DC he should bypass the trap. That is not the same as always hitting a monster's AC because there are ways to increase AC, and add miss chance legally.
I never said that. To be fair, with current DPR, and Regen on that particular boss, it would have taken at least 7 rounds to kill that particular wizard. That is assuming the wizard cast no hindering spells on the party. In the end, that combat took 15 rounds. It used up every potion the party had, a couple of other miscellaneous disposables, and that boss was able to drop most of the party to half health. Except the Barbarian who had dropped to 0hp once during the fight. He ended with about 20hp after the boss was killed. This particular wizard was actually posing as an expert who wanted to learn more about a temple, in truth he wanted to take the temple over and then destroy the nearby town because his ex-wife lived there and took their children with her.
tl;dr - I prefer to challenge my players at the end of story arcs and chapters and they LOVE IT. They love feeling like the villain actually posed a REAL threat. That the person that set up this scenario or dungeon was trying to KILL people. My group actually gets bored if combat is too easy, or traps only do 2d6 damage.
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The challenge with making traps relevant is not how to challenge the PC mechanically, but rather how to make them enjoyable and add to the game rather than detract from it.
Making them challenging mechanically is simple: just up the DC. Take a clue from 4th edition and make the DC = [player's bonus +11] (well, don't really do it unless you actually like the 4th edition experience) and . If you need or want an explanation for DCs that are higher than standard, you can wax lyrical about how the trap was designed by your setting's equivalent of Archimedes. If you like ancient world gruesomness, you can put the trap designer's skeleton inside the dungeon because the people who built it killed him to ensure that he could not show anyone how to defeat his traps.
If you want to make disabling relevant in combat, you can try a similar approach: up the consequences for ignoring the trap until it makes sense for the PC to spend his actions disabling it. This trap kills everyone (no save, no range limit, no way to avoid it) in three rounds unless disabled. I don't recommend it because unless the character is designed to be otherwise useless in combat, using this tactic to make trap skills "relevant" will prevent the player from enjoying using the combat abilities he designed to be fun.
Here are some IMO better ways to make trap skills relevant and interesting.
1. Create new story options that are only possible because the character has trap skills. For example, there are three ways into the Temple of the Evil Death Cult: Disguising everyone and bluffing your way in, kicking in the door and hacking and slashing, or braving the ancient tunnels through the trap infested mausoleum of the ancient priests.
If you make the traps sufficiently scary (and at least one trap should also serve as an alarm making this the equivalent of kicking in a really long, trapped door if the PCs don't disable it), then the PC's trap skills open an option that wouldn't otherwise be open to them. Even if the PC takes ten on every trap and disables it in a few seconds of game play, you can still say, "Trapfinder McSkillmonkey is the most amazing trapfinder ever and enables you to pass the trapped mausoleum of certain death without incident." That is shining, just like the blaster wizard who drops a 60 damage fireball at level 8 and destroys an entire encounter by himself. The result never needs to be in question in order for the PC to shine, it just needs to be apparent what would have happened without him. If you enjoy the trap mechanics, you can boost the DC on one or two of them to make them mechanically interesting too but that's not necessary for the PC to shine.
2. Incorporate traps into encounters--just not in the 3.5e spell turret style where the PC has to give up on the cool combat stuff he can do in order to prevent the traps from murdering everyone else while they do their cool combat stuff. Instead, make the traps something that impacts the fight and offers opportunities for creativity without forcing them to be disarmed in combat.
The great thing about this option is that you don't need the traps to be mechanically difficult in order for it to work. If the PC spots them automatically, it's actually better for the game because once it is identified, it can be used. For example, a simple DC 20 pit trap can create bottlenecks and lead to PCs jumping over it or pushing monsters into it. If the trapfinder PC notices it on his turn and warns the party, he gets the chance to shine because they might have fallen in if he hadn't warned them. It never needs to go off in order to impact the encounter.
Things can get more interesting if the NPCs use the trap as an obstacle. For a lower level example, perhaps some goblins are taking cover behind the pit and shooting the PCs with bows, confident that the PCs can't get to them without falling into the pit. Now the PCs can avoid the trap because of the trapfinder's warning but have to either jump, fly or teleport across the pit or settle into their backup combat mode and used ranged attacks. The trapfinder's presence gives them another option: jam the trapdoors atop the pit and charge goblins.
Even more interestingly, you could enable disable device to do things other than just render the trap inert. For example, perhaps the trapfinder spots a magical summoning trap trigger by seeing the barely visible traces of arcane sigils on the flagstones. He can warn the party not to set it off. Bad guys can hide behind it just like the goblins hid behind the pit. But if you let the trapfinder make a higher DC roll to change the targeting of the trap rather than just disable it, he has a nifty tactical option and a chance to shine. "And then he turned the trap against its creators" is a lot cooler than "so he blew a few actions and kept us from being screwed." And once again, you don't need to arbitrarily boost DCs in order to make it work. In fact, if the DC is too high, it's not really an option so you're better off designing the encounter with the assumption that the PC will be able to do that. If success is highly likely then your estimate of the encounter's challenge can be more accurate.
This is something I learned in 2nd edition. Imagine a trap large enough or the mechanisms so large (such as those built by a huge sized humanoid) that no normal sized person could manipulate the mechanisms to disable said device on their own. let the guy shine and lead the party through a complex and daring gauntlet of traps that alone would be impossible, but because he has his allies with him they can help.
Can your rogue disable something at a baseline of DC 40 without rolling? Then, make the DC 45. That's only a small percentage of failure for a standard trap.
He has a skill of 30. He can disable DC 40 automatically by taking 10. DC45 = 70% chance of failure if he rolls, or 100% chance of failure if he's taking 10.
I'd suggest making traps vary in how long they take to disarm based on one or more disable device rolls, and putting them in time-critical situations.
Use the traps as distractions. While the rogue's busily disarming the trap, have something else come up. Say, a regular patrol comes through the area. He can now keep disarming the trap (make it something nasty enough to affect an area and make combat difficult) or stop what he's doing and help the party.
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I say add a psychological aspect to the traps.
'Corridor with sconces' sets off an immediate warning bell.
To this end, I created an NPC in my campaign setting, a professional kobold trapsmith, who's services don't come too highly priced.
The party went through a dungeon involving him one time discovering the following traps...
1.) Multiple 'taunt' chests, where he left notes indicating he'd already been by to take the contents.
2.) Pieces of mysterious colored wood in three chests. The first was blue and entirely safe. The second was red, and entirely safe. The third was green, and coated in contact poison. None of them served any purpose.
3.) His secret room, accessible only by swimming through a narrow underground chamber filled entirely with water had a mysterious level on the wall saying 'Do not pull.' The lever wasn't a trap, but what it did was open up a grate allowing piranha swarms into the underwater gallery.
4.) He trapped a lesser trap's override control.
Other Krez 'originals' include the gaper trap, exploding coin and the harmless arrow.
The gaper trap is a barely perceptible pressure plate trap position ten feet back from certain doors or chests. The door or chest has an obvious trap on it, resulting in the thief moving forward to deal with it, while presumably his companions stand back, engage the time-based pressure plates, and suffer for it.
The exploding coin is a precision designed explosive shaped and coated in gold, which is hidden in a chest of coins. As psychologically, most adventurers just shovel loot into receptacles, the coin is designed to explode when violently jostled. Picking it up won't trigger it, but dropping it will, and its expressly designed to blow through areas such as haversacks, sacks and bags of holding.
The harmless arrow is a self-triggering trap. The idea being that an obvious tripwire is tied up to an equally obvious arrow trap. As the arrow can be avoided since its obvious, the unfortunate is expected to cut the tripwire and watch the arrow sail by 'harmlessly.' This takes advantage of the unfortunate's propensity to not check the wall behind him. The tripwire cut, the arrow shoots out, hitting a pressure plate in the wall behind the false trap, activating the actual trap, which results in a margonel hidden in the ceiling firing down at the tripwire position.
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If you use traps they do need to be a challenge, since neither guaranteed success nor guaranteed failure is very much fun.
Guaranteed failure usually isn't fun, but there's nothing wrong with guaranteed success, particularly if you have to work to get there and work through it. The Pathfinder combat and CR system is set up so that in 90% of battles, success is guaranteed. The fact that you would have to try really really hard in order to actually lose the party to most of the battles does not keep them from being fun. Playing them out to the foreordained conclusion is fun. And that would still be true if all of your attack rolls were guaranteed to hit. (The Descent board game has several mechanics that can allow your attacks to automatically hit--none of them have made the game less fun).
The problem is that Pathfinder and D&D trap mechanics simply aren't very fun by themselves. It's one roll with very little tactics or strategy beyond how you can stack the bonuses, whether you take 10 or not, etc. An extremely simple part of the game can still be fun if it is minor--one trap every now and then. It can be fund if your high skill enables you to handwave what would otherwise be tedious--"every inch of the hallway is trapped; you disable them all because you have +30 and though they would stop most thieves, they are child's play to you." And they can also be fun when they are integrated into a battle and your search gives you additional information--"with your +30, you easily spot the pit the goblins are hiding behind, ten feet before you get there"--and your disable device gives you additional options--"you think with a disable device check, you might be able to break the trap so that it triggers on the undead as well." None of those depend upon a significant chance of failure. In fact, the last two benefit from automatic success. A pit that the players don't spot is a "gotcha! take some damage and climb out." A pit that the players do spot enables them to make a heroic choice to try to jump over it. Likewise, if there's a 50/50 or worse chance of success when meddling with the trap to make it hurt the undead as well, it will often be better to just make another full attack than to try. On the other hand, if you are very likely to succeed (or success is automatic), then that kind of thing is worth trying more often.
A lot of people seem to think that the game stops being fun when you usually or automatically succeed on individual checks. It doesn't.
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I have a 5th level seeker oracle who is a dedicated trapfinder. Right out of the gates he was running into DC 30 perception checks to spot about half of the traps. This meant that most of the time he failed and we just triggered traps. Now, with his eyes of the eagle, we consistently spot traps and my oracle is busy doing his scouting-disabling thing.
However, we have had traps or obstacles that required disable Device (or dispel magic). As an example, one mini-boss encounter had an ice elemental surrounded by about 8 runes (one for each school of magic). The runes were disablable but getting within a certain (about 19 feet) triggered the ice elementals presence. There was a regular trap on the door we entered but it was magical and I failed to spot it to then try to disable. Once the elemental activated, the door sealed shut. Then the runes began to glow.
Now we are in combat with glowing runes summoning monsters, casting spells, empowering the elemental, etc.
My seeker ran about attempting to disable and even burning hands one (which worked but not knowing why or how, the second burning hands did nothing to anything). The traps were simple. The time it took to disable them in combat was not. Over half went off.
Another thing to consider is like of sight for perception checks to spot traps. If a trap trigger and even trap itself is placed out of sight, high up on a ceiling, is in a dark room shrouded with fog, under a floor covered with caltrops or swarms or dead bodies, the circumstance bonuses to spot it can increase and in some cases a trap may not be spotable from a given area. The DC can remain beatable but player decisions make up more of the chance to detect than the actual skill. In fact, this requires its own skill. Sort of actual experience regarding trapped situations.
Another example is using a distraction technique (if he gets good at sensing trapped situations and dealing with them). Using a large obvious obstacle, with a clear answer that is suspicious and perhaps a simple but obvious trap on the other side of the obstacle, the player will likely want to be first to cross the obstacle in order to deal with the obvious trap at the other side. However, the say, pit of lava, he is crossing on the room-provided rope actually sends fumes or smoke obscuring what supports the rope. A trap! This trap is triggered by weight. But without flying up to inspect the source of the ropes presence and/or clearing away the gas (which doesn't have to be toxic or even blinding) he is more likely to trigger the trap as he seeks to disable the obvious one on the other side (it may make him think that it is the only trap).
Extra points if the 'trap' at the end of the room is actually a mimic mimicking a trap or treasure chest. Kudos given if the pit of lava is just a somewhat shallow spiked pit filled with toxic gas and the bodies of previous adventurers and their treasure but it's covered by a sliding floor which can only be opened by triggering the trap of climbing the rope to cross. ;)
You could also make it so the trapmaster could trigger the traps INTO enemies. With a +10 DC (or +5, or +0, depends on how you want to run it), instead of merely preventing the sawblades from making you six inches shorter in the worst way possible, you could send them towards your enemies. This way the trapmaster is still master of traps and kicking ass with it, and he's getting to do something cool, and he's getting to be in the spotlight. Just my two cp.
This is insane, I actually agree with Anzyr about something!
Me too.
OP, read Grimtooth. Put some fun traps in, that sure, he'll disarm. Let everyone have a laugh about how that trap would have killed them. This makes him feel useful, gives the rest of the party something to laugh about and is a little fun for you.
This is insane, I actually agree with Anzyr about something!Me too.
OP, read Grimtooth. Put some fun traps in, that sure, he'll disarm. Let everyone have a laugh about how that trap would have killed them. This makes him feel useful, gives the rest of the party something to laugh about and is a little fun for you.
Now let's sing Kumbaya and solve all of the problems. We totally can.
Hugfest!
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I've had some success with traps that are in combat, like a pit trap triggered by a lever. The rogue may be aware of it, but doesn't have the time to disable it, and until he gets within 10' doesn't see it. So if the barbarian goes charging in, the evil tyrant flips a lever and oops barbarian falls down the hole.
Hugfest!
We need a buddy cop movie. It'll be great.
Hugfest!We need a buddy cop movie. It'll be great.
Sure, I'll be the laid back grizzled seen it all veteran, and you can be the sharp young "by the book" rookie.