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The lesson of all this is that traps are best when used by creative GMs, and not simply "find, bypass, move on with no trouble". XD

Actually, I think the lesson learned is that DM's who get pissed because they don't get to kill the party with the plethora of traps that makes up his campaign, get kicked off the table and replaced. ;)

I had the same issue once. It didn't bother me that much, because I usually run sandbox games, yet I found it little annoying that they've been casting detect magic all the time and I had it enough when wizard did it in castle's toilet room (what did he expected to find there?!). So I came up with a trap that is triggered whenever that spell was being cast (it was sensitive to keywords) and which activated a huge, stone globe that came down through narrow corridor, destroying everything on its path. When I told them how it was activated, they have stopped spamming detect magic. We still laugh about it and that ball got pretty famous.

So, this is more like an anecdote than a solution, but you should't worry so much about players detecting some of your traps and hazards. Non-magical traps can be just as effective or even more so (collapsing walls, pits... all of this can be very dangerous), but I believe that you have a different problem, which is pretty common amongst new GMs.
You need different approach. When you design complicated dungeon, you should give your players as much freedom as you can. Don't force them to visit every room, don't force them to fight every creature there and finally don't force them to fall in every trap of yours. It's not a puppets theatre. Create many passages (some of them can be well hidden and let PCs skip dangerous parts), rooms, corridors and let them be discovered. Make player choices meaningful and finally; if they walked through your dungeon like a breeze, skipping most of your hazards, then don't make thier lives harder just because they have outsmarted you. They've done it a clever way so they deserve a reward for that, not a punishment.

You and your players are part of the same team, working together towards the same goal, which is called "Fun". Give them more freedom, focus more on designing world around them, rather than the story that you've forced them to be part of. It is much easier this way :)

In this campaign, the toilet room would have been trapped too!

Too many traps make players paranoid so we trudged along doing what we had to do to keep the party alive before the next trap hit. As I said in another post, before we replaced this GM I was intent on casting permanency on Arcane Sight at the appropriate level to protect us from the arcane traps that littered every room, corridor, cave, barn, chest, etc in this campaign.

I assume you have talked to the GM about laying off the traps. Every GM goes through that phase, I can be smug about it because I did it a long time ago in a place far far away.

I was horrible, and oh so much worse when a couple of my traps were published. An amazing amount of utter Drek was published then just like now.

Have you considered insisting on City adventures until the GM eases up?

GM. "A dying man staggers up to you, clutching a bloody map to his chest..."

Dwarf. "Another round of drinks Barkeep, and mind the trap on that cask of Porter."

Cleric. "There you are sir, all better now. Oh no, you keep that piece of paper, we are on hiatus."

Wizard, casting Cantrips, "There you are sir all cleaned and mended, couldn't have you going out looking like that. No, really, just go."

The GM has been replaced.

Cities didn't help either since they were just as trapped and convoluted as every other place we encountered. WE discussed the traps, buildings and everything else but it fell on deaf ears.

The traps were the tip of the iceberg. Constant arguments at the table because of an absolute lack or rules knowledge (with a year to learn the system and design his campaign). GM designed creatures that made no sense and were designed improperly rather than using the 5 manuals worth of creatures. Cave systems and buildings where every single room was 60 ft wide by 80 to 100 ft long even though that would be impossibly absurd. Stopping hours early because no material was ready (after a full year to write a campaign) and many more issues that were making people threaten to leave the table that played with us for a long time.

We suggested that he run one of the many modules that are readily available, but he insisted on "writing his own" which was a disaster. Honestly, the players should not have to explain to the GM how every feat, skill and thing they are doing at the table works and that was what happened every single session, often with players blowing up because of the wasted time and having to repeat over and over what the rules are. A basic understanding of the rules is the least we can expect and that didn't happen. Add to it the absurdity of the "campaign" whose sole purpose appeared to be to highlight a ridiculous amount of traps and killing as many players as possible per session and no one at the table was able to enjoy our weekly game. In the end we responded by power building to be able to keep everyone alive.

We gave the GM a fair chance and put up with the campaign for months. Repetitive discussions about the same rules over and over without an inkling of comprehension and after a few blowups by players at the table and it was time call it quits and move on. Now we are happily running Hell's Rebels with a DM and players who know the rules and all is well at our table again.

a bunch of stuff

To be honest, if we made it to high enough level, I was going to cast permanency on arcane sight because the number and frequency of arcane traps (as well as regular traps) was simply ridiculous in this campaign. We would not have been abusing the system if the DM was not abusing the table with traps everywhere we went, every door we opened and every chest we touched. It was beyond absurd so we responded in the absurd as well.

But he said that he didn't overuse magic traps.

Texas_ogre wrote:

They are 3rd to 5th level. Do I over use magic traps no not really .In fact their have just encounters their first 2 of them in the dungeon they are in now. I want to be fair but they are always pinging . It takes away a lot of the story and to be honest my enjoyment from the game. Paizo really needs to remove a lot of the OP spells or at least give them better rights ups that make sense like a dc check first the spell caster .I haven't played since DnD 2.o but pathfinder has huge holes you can drive a truck through

;)

LOL. If only! In one stretch of hallway near the end of this campaign, we had 60 ft of trip plates, pit traps and 2 separate glyphs triggering magic traps. Yes that's 4 traps in a hallway with a couple of 90 degree turns. We were always worried if the rogue rolled poorly on a trap check because we knew something was coming if detect magic didn't pick up a magic trap. This was the antithesis of fun.

.... trapped barns... @_@

We went to a temple of Sarenrae and a large portion of the place was trapped by the priests. This is where the 3 fire traps were encountered in one session. So apparently even priests who value honesty and redemption are trap setting fools in their places of worship.

I know this is an older thread, but had to point some things out.

This was our DM. He was not new to pathfinder when he started running - he had been playing for over a year with us and had requested to DM and run his own campaign after we finished RotRL at the time he started playing with us.

We did not start out abusing detect magic and searching for traps, but quickly learned that it was absolutely necessary. There is nothing else you can do when you literally cannot open a door, walk down a hallway, enter a room or open an object to search without triggering a trap. I wish this was an exaggeration, but it isn't. Better than 1/2 the traps were always magic so it became self preservation to use detect magic or the group would TPK just from traps without ever encountering a creature.

As an example, in just one session we entered a room which triggered a 6D6 fireball, then a few rooms later opened a cabinet with brought down a 5D6 Flame Strike and killed 2 players followed by another fireball spell a few rooms later. This was all before the party even reached 3rd level. Throw in pit traps, needle traps, spikes coming out of walls as well as floors and any other ridiculous trap you can think of and that is exactly how we spent every last session of play while he was running - slowly moving down hallways, dodging traps and healing after they did their damage.

We wasted more spell slots on dispel magic and taking care of traps and then healing up from them than anything else and no, it was not fun for the group at all. We had people who were ready to leave the table that had been playing with us for years because of the DM and constant debates over rules that he never bothered to learn and the constant trap nonsense. Add to that the fact that he then decided to make every door, wall, casket or just about anything we ran into 1 ft thick stone or lined with one inch of metal (thanks to a suggestion in this thread) and things just got beyond ridiculous and ventured into the absurd.

And for those who argue "rule 0", that only applies to DM's who know the rules in the first place and use it for a valid reason rather than to cover up for not knowing the game and trying to kill players every single session, which is what was happening every week. We never felt that there was a purpose or story to the game, just the DM trying to kill players with trap after trap after trap no matter if we were in a cave, a building, a barn or anyplace else. The game was not about a story, but about the players trying to survive a constant assault by the DM.

We have since started a new campaign with a new DM and no longer feel a need to run detect magic as a constant because it's simply not necessary.

Both myself and my son received certificates at the con as well and they do not work. Same error as the OP is reporting. How do we get this fixed?