Buffing Trap DCs

[Barachiel Shina]

With these high levels of play I am DMing now, traps and magic traps in particular, have become way too easy to detect and bypass.

Mechanical traps have built in rules to increase the DC as high as you want, but it's the magic traps I have issues finding ways to increase the DC for Perception/Disable Device.

I know of a couple of spells that directly help:

Improve Trap
Undetectable Trap

Both are very helpful, although Undetectable Trap's DC increase doesn't work on characters with Trapfinding, sadly.

So since I cannot find other ways to increase Magic Trap DCs, I figure finding ways to make them very hard to detect via magic would also help. Undetectable Trap helps in this, but I was wondering if Magic Aura would also work?

The spell specifies an item or person, but couldn't I build a Magic Aura effect into a Magic Trap like you can build an Alarm trigger or visual magic (like True Seeing) to hide its aura?

Thanks for any clarifications and/or advice.

[dragonhunterq]

In my campaigns magic traps are undetectable by magic as standard. My players know that upfront so it comes as no surprise that they'll need something other than detect magic and a high perception.

[Cevah]

Who cares if they know its a trap. Question is, can they bypass or defeat the trap?

At mid levels, fly and dimension door can bypass many traps.

Traps with the "off" switch deep within the trap is harder to remotly turn off.

Symbols often make great traps.

Another thing is to consider the role of the trap:
Either it is supposed to kill you, or slow you down. At high levels, killing is difficult.

If you don't depend on traps, then you won't be annoyed when they are mere speed bumps. Another use for traps is for supplying small amounts of treasure. If you disassemble the trap, you find a stash, or can use the magic it was supposed to use on you.

Some of the best traps actually summon monsters. They scale better, and often parties don't worry about bypassing/disabling them.

/cevah

[Barachiel Shina]

Yeah but if they find a trap, a simple Disable Device check (which gets extremely easy to beat later) turns it off and bypasses it.

I can't find any rulings on exactly what it is a PC needs to do in order to make the check, or even what distance they can locate such a trap and how they find one.

Paizo needs a hardcover on Dungeon Building, with an entire chapter on new Trap rules and expansions to offer.

[Lucy_Valentine]

Why is it bad if the PCs spot the traps?

If traps are an old-school hard-skill thing, with players describing their trapfinding technique, then they don't really need DCs or skills. And that's a fine approach if people enjoy it, but that's not what you're doing.

You're using DCs, which means you're rolling to spot things. If trap DCs are so high the PCs never spot them, then traps just become damage/bad effects that happen, not really interactive or engaging. If the players never spot the trap, they never make a decision, so where's the interest?

Similarly, if traps just require a perception check and DD check, then they're just dice rolls and a skill point opportunity cost, again, not really fun or engaging. Dice roll dice roll no decision is not an interesting thing to add to a game.

The potentially fun part of traps is not when they go off, it's what you do after you spot them if you can't just say "I use disable device". If the players pass perception and get given the sensory information their character has access to then they get to engage with that information as a puzzle of sorts. The trap isn't just a resource tax, it's a puzzle to think about. DD gets relegated from "understanding traps and physically having the skill to disarm them" to "physically having the skill", but the player has to understand the trap. Boom, engagement. Unless of course that bores your players, in which case, why bother with traps at all?

Additionally, if the "trap" is obvious, but happens in a time and place with other things going on, it becomes a lot more interesting. EG the PCs can plainly see which squares are actually pit traps, but that means they now have to fight around the obstacles whilst under fire from the archers on the balcony above. Oh, and there's also swinging log traps that might knock you into the pits, and which are a little harder to spot. Yay, complex interactive scenario with tactical options!

Ultimately the number of options to bypass them keeps going up, and that means keeping traps interesting gets harder and harder. But just bumping up the DCs doesn't fix that.

[RealAlchemy]

Put a deathtrap ooze or two out there every once in a while to mess with the party if they are always finding and disabling your traps. For higher level play drop a template or two on it.

Another fun trick is the relatively easy to spot concealed pit trap with a reverse gravity trap on the far side and some type of ooze/slime/pudding waiting in the landing zone for lunch to arrive.