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Here is the Design and Development piece from WotC regarding traps:
Traps have been a part of the Dungeons & Dragons game since its earliest days, fiendish perils that stood right alongside monsters as primary hazards to adventurer life and limb. Some adventures, like the classic Tomb of Horrors, featured traps as the chief threat to life and appendage. Unfortunately, they've rarely had a positive effect on the game. In the early days, DMs all too often felt compelled to demonstrate their cleverness and punish players for making "wrong" choices -- even a choice as simple and random as which passage to explore. Old-school players in the hands of such a DM responded by changing their characters' approach to dungeon exploration. The "right" way to play the game was to slowly and laboriously search each 10-foot square of dungeon before you set foot on it, or to use magic that made traps completely pointless. Neither option was much fun.
By the time 3rd Edition rolled around, traps had become a much smaller part of the game, something you might run across once or twice in an adventure -- and rarely very satisfying when you did. Who wants to roll an endless series of mostly pointless Search checks? If the players decided to simply explore the dungeon and search for the "fun" and got whacked by a trap instead, they felt like they'd been sandbagged by the DM.
Consequently, we thought about simply "disappearing" traps from the game, but then we decided to take a shot at fixing them first. Making traps work right certainly offered some significant upside. Traps are a good way to showcase skills. They're a good way to introduce puzzle-solving into the occasional encounter. They're an excellent way to complicate an otherwise bland combat encounter and add a highly interesting hazard that players can exploit -- or must avoid. And sometimes it simply makes sense in the context of the story that the builders of a dungeon might have built a trap to guard something.
The first thing we did was spend more time and attention on traps as components of existing combat encounters, or as multi-component encounters in and of themselves. The Encounter Trap system described in the Eberron sourcebook Secrets of Xen'drik offered a great starting point. By treating a trap like a group of monsters with different components operating on different initiative scores, a trap became a real encounter rather than random damage. Most traps work best when they "replace" a monster in a combat encounter, or serve as a hazard equally threatening to both sides. We think that our ideal encounter consists of some of the PCs battling monsters while some PCs deal with a trap or similar hazard. Meanwhile, everyone on both sides of the battle must contend with some sort of interesting terrain element (although the advantage probably lies with the monsters there -- after all, this is their home). In this way, traps become an integral component of an encounter, rather than an afterthought or something a bored DM springs on unsuspecting PCs between fights.
The second significant change to traps in the game is changing the way we look at searching and exploring. Rather than requiring the players to announce when and where they were searching, we decided to assume that all characters are searching everything all the time. In other words, players don't need to say "I'm searching for secret doors," or "I'm searching for traps." Instead, characters have a passive Perception score that represents their Take-10 result for searching. When something hidden is in the area, the DM compares the passive Perception scores of the PCs with the DCs of the various hidden things in the area. In the case of hidden creatures, the DC is the result of their Stealth check. For things like hidden traps, hazards, or secret doors, the DC is usually static.
While Perception is usually the most important skill when it comes to sussing out a trap, it's not the only skill useful in determining the danger of traps. Based on the nature of the trap, skills such as Arcana, Dungeoneering, or even Nature can give a PC the ability to learn of the existence of a trap, figure out its workings, or even find a way to counter it.
Lastly, we wanted to expand the ways in which you could counter a trap. Much like figuring out that sometimes you wanted other skills to allow a character to recognize a trap's threat, we made an effort to design traps that could be countered with an interesting skill uses. Sometimes we're pointing out what should be obvious, such as that an Acrobatics check can be used to jump over a pit; other times we're going to expand the uses of some skills with opportunistic exceptions, like granting a skill check that gives the characters insight on how a trap acts and ascertain something about its attack pattern.
Don't fret, rogue fans. That class and other characters trained in Thievery are still the party's best hope to shut down traps quickly and well. The goal was to make traps something that could be countered when a party lacks a rogue or the rogue is down for the count, not to mention make traps more dynamic and fun. In doing this, we quickly came to the realization that canny players, in a flash of inspiration, can come up with interesting solutions to counter even the most detailed traps. Instead of trying to anticipate these flashes though design, we give you, the DM, the ability to react to player insight with a host of tools and general DCs that allow you to say "Yes, you can do that, and here's how." We think this is a better approach than shutting down good ideas from the players for interesting story and challenge resolution, simply because you lack the tools to interpret their actions. After all, you should have the ability to make the changes on the fly that reward interesting ideas and good play. This is one of the components of every Dungeons & Dragons game that allow each session to be a fun and unique experience. Traps, like all things in the game, should embrace that design philosophy.
So in a 4e version of Tomb of Horrors; My character can simply just run amok into a trapped laden tomb and I don't have to worry about death because (a) Saving throws are out (b) It's not fun when a stupid/foolish/clumsy character dies.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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So in a 4e version of Tomb of Horrors; My character can simply just run amok into a trapped laden tomb and I don't have to worry about death because (a) Saving throws are out (b) It's not fun when a stupid/foolish/clumsy character dies.
I don't think that's what they're saying at all.
These principles aren't new; there was a very nice couple of Design & Development articles a couple years back on trap designs as encounters, which the Dungeonscape book brought to the fore.
In a current version of "Tomb of Horrors", you can still use Spot (or Perception), and Disable Device skills. You can still foil traps by logical means (Back in the early 1980's, Robert Plamodon's book "Through Dungeons Deeply" had a hilarious example of how his own overly-cautious characters remove treasure from trap-infested vaults.)
Current design favors that kind of in-character play.
I am indeed morbidly curious, though, as to how saving throws will be incorporated into a trap's "attack". I'm concerned that it may be more likely that the entire party falls victim to a trap's "attack".
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So in a 4e version of Tomb of Horrors; My character can simply just run amok into a trapped laden tomb and I don't have to worry about death because (a) Saving throws are out (b) It's not fun when a stupid/foolish/clumsy character dies.
Well, we do not know if this passive perception works if you are using your "normal" movement or if the designers add a "dungeon-movement" which incorporates looking for danger.
The article does not mention if passive perception is "on" even if the PCs flee or are in Combat.On one hand I find the idea of passive perception intriguing. But on the other hand I think that you have too search for traps as most are cleverly disguised. So, if the designers do not lower the neccessary search/perception DC significantly or all Classes get Perception as Class Skill, only the Rogue will be able to find most traps.
I do not think, that the 3.5 Trap Rules are "unfun"
As a DM I love Traps even in 3.5. I do not place Traps randomly but only in places where I think that it makes sense. A Trap in a main corridor, ferquented by a lot of monsters in a dungeon is just silly. A Trap at the Door that leads to the Lichs' treasure chamber makes sense.
I also use the rules presented in Necromancers D20 Grimtooth Traps book. I separate the Trigger (e.g. pressure plate) from the effect (Trapdoor with 30ft chasm). There might be more than one Trigger for an effect and there might be more than one effect. So disarming Traps is not just one dice roll, but involves at least 4 rolls ( 2 for finding the Trigger and the Effect and 2 for disarming trigger and effect). As a DM I do not hinder Player creativity to disarm Traps. I can always give bonusses if the ideas are good.
So, all in all, I do not think that 3.5 Traps are unfun.
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Part of the "unfun" effect are the rules for search - 1 square per round.
Most people ignore this but there it is. Imagine moving through a dungeon at 1 square per round.
Then, no matter how elaborate the trap, a single roll disarms the whole thing.
If traps are an integral part of the game then their mechanics should be more engaging.
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What they view as "unfun" AFAICT are traps that take a character out of the game for an extended period of time - instant death, paralysis, petrification. These effects are being either diminished...
This is one of my gripes with removing "save or die" effects from the game.
On the Metagame side the players know that the trap will not kill them due to a botched save (it might still kill them because of hp damage).But this IMO takes the fear of Traps away. A high level PC with full hp just opens the door without bothring to check for traps. It is only hp damage and he can heal himself anyway...
But that is just me being old fashioned.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I already let characters with Trapsense have a constant functioning 'take 10' roll going on. Idea taken from the boards, to give credit where it's due.
as to making traps 'fun' if the trap has a description of how it works, I'll add circumstance bonuses/penalities to the disarm roll depending on what the player comes up with. I'm glad their codifying rules, but again, do we really need a new edition for this?
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Part of the "unfun" effect are the rules for search - 1 square per round.
Most people ignore this but there it is. Imagine moving through a dungeon at 1 square per round.
Then, no matter how elaborate the trap, a single roll disarms the whole thing.
If traps are an integral part of the game then their mechanics should be more engaging.
Sure, a party could search all squares they cross. But it comes down to the DM to carefully and logically place traps. If the PCs know, that the chance for randomly placed traps is not very high, they will only search in likely places.
And yes, disarming a complex trap with just one roll should not be possible. But this can easily be fixed.
Just let the rogue roll more than once to disarm all parts of the trap. A simple trap needs only one roll, but a complex trap more than 3.
I really like the sound of this: 1 point for 4e.
I get the feeling that all the new rules are about characters not relying on a single role to live or die and prolonging each encounter with a monster/trap/obstacle so as to ensure that someone is effected, but none are killed.
How does this speed up the game? Where is the sense of accomplishment if players aren't punished or rewarded for their actions. Sound like the game has been designed by a bunch of soccer mom's who want to make sure everyon gets a trophy.
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I have been pretty down on 4E, but this article on traps is not too terrible. I like the way this will speed the game up by assuming the players are always searching for traps. It has always sucked as party cleric to enter a room full of chests or doors and having to wait while the rogue checks them all.
One thing that 4E seems to be doing right is an emphasis on streamlining some of the more mundane tasks of the game. Of course passive scanning for traps could just be houseruled in under 3.5. And as of the start of my next DMing adventure I think it will be...
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I liked what I read above, I have always liked traps but they way they read and the way they play are totally different. The water room trap in my head is great, the character franticly try to get out as the room fills with water. But in play it just "Rolling search check, crap move roll my search check crap." Not nearly as fun so any change should help I think.
A friend of mine dislikes D&D because he hates having "a die roll tell me my sword missed". He's a skilled SCA fighter (A knight and viscount) who teaches martial arts in his spare time, so he hates reducing combat to die rolls.
The problem that I've seen with 3.5 traps is that they are often reduced to comparing character skills versus the needed rolls. If you "take 20" to spot them (and you have the skill needed), you spot the trap. If your Disarm roll does the job, you disarm it. It's about as exciting as washing dishes.
When I DM, I ask my players what their routine procedures are, digging for details: Which surfaces are checked first? How far apart are the PCs? This avoids argument when they find a trap (Or when they fail to find a trap). If they're not "taking 20", they often "take 10 + one": A routine check, followed by a double-check.
If their routine would safely spot the trap, they spot it. If not, they'll have to depend on their die rolls. Unclear situations may give bonuses or penalties to the rolls.
Once they find something, I try to give specific details, instead of depending on rolls to run the trap itself. For example: "You find a fine wire stretching across the hallway," could herald a deathtrap or a simple alarm. Their actions afterward determine what happens. Appropriate decisions give bonuses to the disarming rogue, while poor ones give penalties.
It's similar to running a diplomatic encounter. Appropriate tactics can give great bonuses, while poor tactics give daunting penalties. The key to everything is CHOICE. Player choices need to be important. If they're completely at the mercy of the dice or character build decisions, traps are no fun (just like encounters).
This isn't a matter of rules: This is a matter of rule implementation. Somehow, I doubt that 4.0 will change that greatly.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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A friend of mine dislikes D&D because he hates having "a die roll tell me my sword missed". He's a skilled SCA fighter (A knight and viscount) who teaches martial arts in his spare time, so he hates reducing combat to die rolls.
I take it, then, that His Excellency disapproves of practically every wargame and most role-playing.
The only games I can think of where combat is actually a player skill are top Secret hand-to-hand combat table, the Lost Worlds booklets, and the combat cards in Blood and Steel by Mayfair Games. (And in the latter, good play only gives you a sizable Attack modifier; the dice can still be capricious.)
Die rolls represent "x-factors" that the players and DM don't want to address. Physical combat seems to be one of those situations where most people around the table wouldn't want to explain all of the real-time tactics and countermeasures.
(But then, most of the people around the table aren't viscounts.)
THL Christian d'Hiver
Calontir, recently from Northshield
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The question is...
Do you want traps to work like they do in the Indiana Jones movies, interactive and exciting, or do you want them to be "roll a saving throw/take x damage?"
I really like the encounter traps system. Thief characters, in the games I have run, have usually wanted to "role play" their encounters with traps. Prior editions, 1st being the ultimate example, weren't conducive to this kind of behavior. You could do it, but you had to wing it. I like having materials which provide DMs with tools to make traps fun.
As for "Save or Die," I outgrew needing to out-smart and punish my players a long time ago.
Heck even, Grimtooths Traps (which was fun to read) is better represented --IMHO-- by an encounter trap system.
Christian
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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For once i agree with Crosswiredmind, the current trap rules are quite far from optimal. Many of the points raised in the quoted article actually hit home. Lets say i have a Slay Living trap somewhere in the dungeon of my 9th level party (as evidenced in The Champions Belt in Age of Worms), and the group, like any number of non-terminally paranoid humanoids walks by the trigger. Should i ask for a (rather high) save-or-die here, simply for not checking each tile?
I reckon its what the enemy would do, and it may be somewhat negligent not to check for traps, but a "save or die" out of the blue, and without the context to back it up will rub most any player the wrong way. Traps should be more engaging, and as one of my previous posters stated more "Indiana Jones" and less "Minefield"
The only games I can think of where combat is actually a player skill are top Secret hand-to-hand combat table, the Lost Worlds booklets, and the combat cards in Blood and Steel by Mayfair Games. (And in the latter, good play only gives you a sizable Attack modifier; the dice can still be capricious.)
Die rolls represent "x-factors" that the players and DM don't want to address. Physical combat seems to be one of those situations where most people around the table wouldn't want to explain all of the real-time tactics and countermeasures.
He generally prefers games that don't feature medieval-style combat, so the battles visualized in his mind's eye aren't contradicted by the dice.
Yr. Obedient Servant,
Wulfhere Forloren, KSCA
P.S.: Good stock, those Northshield types. Our Baron and Baroness (Ivan and Ianuk) hail from your neck of the woods.
Again, this stuff could've (and was beginning to) been implemented in 3.5E and did not warrant an entire new edition.
With so many changes in 4th Edition, I still don't understand why some can't at least consider the possibility that 3E was just one huge 4E playtest.
What I hated about the article was when he said they were going to DITCH traps altogether.
Way to go WotC. If you can't fix it in 5 minutes for the new edition, ditch it! That's probably why so many sacred cows were slaughtered in the first place.
--------------------------------------------
IN WOTC'S R&D DEPARTMENT CONFERENCE
"Alignment? Umm, quick guys. Gimme something!"
Silence, followed by arguments over what Chaotic Neutral really should do in certain situations, followed by an argument on the Paladin's Code and Lawful Good, followed by,"Alright, that's it. We can't figure it out. Alignment is gone!"
Sad.
I think this could be really good for the game, but it could also be really terrible, depending on how it works out in the final rules.
Personally I find the task of searching one square at a time to be really tedious. Allowing players to announce that they're looking out for traps as they move, say at 1/2 speed, (taking 10) sounds good to me. This can get really sticky, though, if the traps Search/Perception DC is better than their ranks + 10, though thats no different than a monster with a DR thats better than anyone in the party can muster (DR/10 and Cold Iron, arrrr!). Here's how I see it...
The party is moving through the dungeon, keeping an eye out for signs of traps. The party rogue, having the most experience with such things, spots what looks like a trigger. They stop, back up, and let the rogue go to work. Now, you can make him roll a search to find the actual trap, or you can say that he found it with the first check (taking 10 while walking). Now he's got to disarm it, so theres still a chance he'll set it off, or that it'll be too hard to disarm, meaning they would have to bypass is somehow. Plenty of opportunity for die rolls, creative thinking, and problems solving there. I like that.
Now, lets say that Taking 10 isn't good enough. They hit the trap, explosions/pit fall/spinning head chopper. Maybe even death. Now they know that they need to be more careful. Walk a little slower, and really look at what lies ahead. Theres a couple things you could do here; you could ask them to be specific about what they're looking for and where, and hand out small bonuses to their Search checks against the kinds of traps they're looking out for, and perhaps a negative modifier for traps that they would be more likely to miss now (for instance, searching for floor triggers would leave you more open to something on the ceiling). If the traps Search DC is a just a little bit better than their ranks + 10, this would work nicely. You could also reeeealy slow them down and have them Take 20. Any spells they have active are going to run down a lot quicker this way, and if theres a time constraint, this is going to really set them back.
Otherwise, they could just hustle through the dungeon and make a rolled Search check every so often. This would also be the case if they were fleeing for their lives down uncharted catacombs.
Now, the reason I like this is that it takes a lot of guesswork out for players. Not all dungeon designs have logical trap placement. Making players roll for every 5 feet they move eats up a lot of time and gets old real fast, which leads to recklessly charging through the dungeon just to be done with it, which leads to more trap deaths, which leads to pissed off or bored players. Same thing for making players guess which of these 40 squares has a trap on it. Thats how I see it, anyway.
As far as treating traps as creatures in an encounter... meh, doesn't really do much for me. Traps have a CR already, so I don't really get the difference there. It also reminds me of a trick Doom mappers used to pull off. Say you want to have this wall that shoots rockets or fireballs, but there really isn't anything like that already in the game. They would make a room with a wall that wasn't solid from one side, so that stuff goes out but nothing comes in. Take a monster that shoots fireballs/rockets/chickens and lock it in place behind that wall. You'd walk in the hallway and have fireballs shooting out of this wall, with no way to kill the damn thing. Thats all I can think of when they say that traps will be monsters: every time you find a trap, its actually a false wall with some kind of creature behind it, throwing stuff at you and trying to stab you. Its like the Cask of Amontillado gone terribly, terribly wrong...
What I hated about the article was when he said they were going to DITCH traps altogether.
I'm sorry but are you actually complaining that the designers talked about something, and then decided to do what you want?
Are you actually upset that the designers are thinking about the game's design? That they are actually justifying everything they put into D&D 4's mechanics, not just lumping things into the new edition because they were in the previous one? That's how they should be doing things.
People have been demanding on these boards that the designers explain themselves. Well, they have explained the way they were thinking about traps and I think it was a very good explanation. They talked about how traps could be fun, instead of slowing the game down to a crawl, and they designed traps in 4th edition to be that way. Good for them.
I want every single mechanic in D&D to have a purpose and also be fun. Everything! If you can't explain to me in less than five minutes why a mechanic improves the game and is ALSO fun, then it shouldn't be in there! Practically every mechanic in 3rd can be explained in less than five minutes, with a good example of how it could be fun.
Alignment can be explained, but that explanation never includes a good example of why it makes the game fun. Without alignment, players can act however they want, and the DM can react to them in a logical fashion without there being a instant "evil person who can die" detection spell.
You want to play a Paladin? Great, here's the code of honor you agreed to follow when you took your vows. Break it, and I'll send your fellow knights after you and you'll eventually lose your holy powers for betraying your god. None of that has anything to do with your 'alignment', it's role playing.
Sound like the game has been designed by a bunch of soccer mom's who want to make sure everyon gets a trophy.
Sweet! I knew 26+ years of playing D&D would someday net me a trophy! Hi Mom! I'm going to Disneyland!!!
- Chris Shadowens
The problem with alignment really is that it was (according to notes and comments I've seen, at least) MEANT to be a tool, an aid to role-play for the DM and player, but 60% of the time it seems to be used as a Crutch
[Snipped for space, but i agree with all of it.]"Sorry, but you just lost your Paladin powers for looking at that nymph - I know what you were thinking, you sleazebag!")...
Yep, you've pretty much summed up why the mechanic of alignment never made any sense to me. As a guide, sure it made sense that way, but as a hard and fast rule system? That never worked.
You eneded up never being able to run a mystery game, because the bloody mage, cleric, or worst of all, paladain could spot the evil master mind from 50 paces. Detect evil, chaos, etc, became ways to circumvent role playing, instead of mechanical aids. I mean, it's not hard to tell that demon is evil right?
The worst case of abusing the system I saw was the paladain who would attack every evil creature he saw, regardless of who they were, and thus eneded up cut a path of destruction through the first human city and justified himself as being a 'servant of good', no matter how much blood he spilled. All because the paladain class needed a way to tell who they could smite.
And I love the last bit. I pity the player who has that DM :)
Razz is pretty much just upset for the sake of being upset. That seems to be going around a lot.
As for the Tomb of Horrors, if you were to convert all the traps in there to 4E traps, go ahead and run around in there without trying: you'll still end up dead.
These kinds of traps ARE technically in 3rd Edition...slightly. They are called encounter traps and they are in Secrets of Xen'drik as well as Dungeonscape. They are basically traps that do more than just shoot you when you failed to search a 5-foot section of the floor, and can be remedied in other ways than a Disable Device check (meaning, just in case you didnt have a rogue, you can still try to tackle them).
Some traps can also be spotted with skills other than Perception (magical traps might be able to be noticed via Arcana, for example).
4E traps seem to allow more flexible party builds, more interesting implementation, and do more than just sucker punch you when you least suspect it.
The problem with alignment really is that it was (according to notes and comments I've seen, at least) MEANT to be a tool, an aid to role-play for the DM and player, but 60% of the time it seems to be used as a Crutch (usually by players, as in: "Oh, yeah, well, I'm Chaotic Neutral so I can do whatever I want. Screw you, Paladin!" or "I'm sorry, I'm Lawful Neutral. I'm turning the lot of you over to the authorities for not helping that old lady cross the street, since the notice I just read says all citizens are obligated to assist the elderly."), and 30% as a Straightjacket ("I'm sorry, but you're CHAOTIC Good - no way you'd support a Lawful ruler - you join the rebellion or change alignment and suffer the consequences, bucko!" or "Sorry, but you just lost your Paladin powers for looking at that nymph - I know what you were thinking, you sleazebag!")...Alignment can be explained, but that explanation never includes a good example of why it makes the game fun. Without alignment, players can act however they want, and the DM can react to them in a logical fashion without there being a instant "evil person who can die" detection spell.
You want to play a Paladin? Great, here's the code of honor you agreed to follow when you took your vows. Break it, and I'll send your fellow knights after you and you'll eventually lose your holy powers for betraying your god. None of that has anything to do with your 'alignment', it's role playing.
I always viewed alignment as some kind of very basic idea for what a character might do in a given situation, but many others seem to follow it word-for-word, or believe that every alignment always acts in a specific way, leading to the straightjacket complaints.
I dont mind alignment mostly going away, as every other game out there but Rifts gets along just fine without it. The only problem is I wonder how/if they will have planes with heavy alignments affect you, or if protection from evil/good spells will work.Ah well, wait and see.
What I hated about the article was when he said they were going to DITCH traps altogether.
Way to go WotC. If you can't fix it in 5 minutes for the new edition, ditch it! That's probably why so many sacred cows were slaughtered in the first place.
I'm with Razz here. Whatever the rules come to be regarding traps (and anything else in 4E) the fact that it was initially on the chopping block is ridiculous. I don't think traps are that difficult to deal with, don't slow the game down so much as to be unplayable, any more so than they were in the old days. Sure, an entire dungeon filled with traps every 5' slows the game down but that's with any edition.
As I recall, when 2E was being rolled out it wasn't spitting in the face of 1E, just saying that we've had a long time to look at things and thought a smoothing out was in order. My take on 4E, and it's a very limited-exposure-take as I've purposely avoided nearly all coverage for 4E thusfar, is that they've looked at all the work done with 3.0/3.5 and said it's completely unfun and unplayable, so here's something new. Maybe that thought is skewed from the few anti-4E posts I've read but I get a few updates here and there from my gaming group (who seem glued to EN's boards) and that's what I can gather thusfar. I'm not pro- or anti-4E. I'm pro-D&D and it's been fun for all the iterations I've been playing since 1981 so I find I take some offense when I feel those handling the product dump on its building blocks.
- Chris Shadowens
Razz is pretty much just upset for the sake of being upset. I'm sure that since they've been working on the game in some stage for 2 years, that its obvious they determined which elements of D&D work the best, scrapped it, then spent the rest of the time high-fiving eachother. There is NO way they could have possibly thought about a way to make it work and avoid all the griping some things bring before saying "lets change it this way".
As for the Tomb of Horrors, if you were to convert all the traps in there to 4E traps, go ahead and run around in there without trying: you'll still end up dead.These kinds of traps ARE technically in 3rd Edition...slightly. They are called encounter traps and they are in Secrets of Xen'drik as well as Dungeonscape. They are basically traps that do more than just shoot you when you failed to search a 5-foot section of the floor, and can be remedied in other ways than a Disable Device check (meaning, just in case you didnt have a rogue, you can still try to tackle them).
Some traps can also be spotted with skills other than Perception (magical traps might be able to be noticed via Arcana, for example).
4E traps seem to allow more flexible party builds, more interesting implementation, and do more than just sucker punch you when you least suspect it.
Hmmmm, interesting. Passive constant searching sounds interesting as is more PC involved traps.
There is along thread over on enworld here. But basically, it seems as if traps in 4ed are different. Gone are the stanard pit traps, or flying arrow traps. Traps aren't just variations on fire and forget. Ther are more dynamic and fluid and an encounter all by themselves.
Apparently, traps like these were presented in Secrets of Xendrik. Here's an example as posted on enworld by Rechan from SoX.
Description A 40ft by 40ft room with two entrances. Just inside one entrance is a pleasure plate that activates the trap. Once the trap is activated, a spear shoots up from each 5ft square of the floor each round. (Each spear emerges from a slightly different spot each round, so that creatures cannot simply stand between the spikes.)
Search DC 17: Type Mechanical.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trigger Location: Init +1
Effect Melee +4 Spear (1d8+1/x3) (each square each round).
Duration 5 rounds.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Destruction AC 12, hardness 5, 10 HP (each square)
Disarm Disable Device DC 17 (each square): Disable Device 19 (Disadvantage: central disarm, location on the wall opposite the pressure plate).
So they are changing traps significantly, and now the trap is something the entire party needs to deal with, and not just the rogue. Just spotting the trap isn't enough, and once it is set off, you have some time to react, rather than just "You take damage", and the whole party needs to deal with it.
Sounds like a good change to me, and I am solidly looking forward to it. I never liked how traps worked in 3.5, I am glad they are changing them in 4th, and hope they follow and improve on the standard set in Secrets of Xendrik.
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There is along thread over on enworld here. Gone are the stanard pit traps, or flying arrow traps.
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Sounds like a good change to me, and I am solidly looking forward to it. I never liked how traps worked in 3.5, I am glad they are changing them in 4th, and hope they follow and improve on the standard set in Secrets of Xendrik.
DUDE! My middle name was pit trap! Ah... oh, perhaps I should add something constructive and hand in my troll card. Okay.
All in all, this whole traps need to be different thing is a non point to me. The current traps system doesn't bother me a lot, and the encounter traps are something I've been using for years (albeit, with just normal traps in a room with monsters).
How I did it was I gave players the chance to notice how the monster's missed a spot. A good hider could easily watch monsters or inhabitants of the dungeon walk around a spot, and judge where the trap was and how to walk around it themselves. This new method almost seems like it's too easy, in that you walk in, the trap is there, you might see it, if yes then you dodge, if no then a spear may hit you. Almost like a monster that'll die on his own. I'll have to see it in a game to understand it I believe.
It doesnt really surprise me. I've never really liked traps all that much, especially traps that arent anywhere close to areas where a PC will likely search for it. In Hall of Harsh Reflections, there are four spots on the floor with pit traps. What player is going to stop in the middle of a fight and examine the floor in four completely different places.
Plus, if they didnt happen to bring rope or a grappling hook, they are pretty much stuck there for the fight, which can be pretty disastrous.
Traps almost seem like a penalty for something you didnt do. They randomly punish you if you arent so paranoid as that guy in The Gamers who decided to ultimately search every inch as he crawls about. The problem is, sometimes even paranoia isnt good enough: the Search DC might be too high anyway, in which case it falls to DM fiat as to whether you find it or not. Finally, if you do find a trap, you will get pinged if you roll badly on the Disable Device check.
Basically, a punch in the nuts.
I'm all for Trapfinding becoming a feat that anyone can take (and rogues get for free), and I'm also glad that traps can be handled in different ways, allowing players to actually think creatively about how to tackle it (I'm sure 4E haters will somehow disagree with that).
I'm sorry but are you actually complaining that the designers talked about something, and then decided to do what you want?Are you actually upset that the designers are thinking about the game's design? That they are actually justifying everything they put into D&D 4's mechanics, not just lumping things into the new edition because they were in the previous one? That's how they should be doing things.
People have been demanding on these boards that the designers explain themselves. Well, they have explained the way they were thinking about traps and I think it was a very good explanation. They talked about how traps could be fun, instead of slowing the game down to a crawl, and they designed traps in 4th edition to be that way. Good for them.
I want every single mechanic in D&D to have a purpose and also be fun. Everything! If you can't explain to me in less than five minutes why a mechanic improves the game and is ALSO fun, then it shouldn't be in there! Practically every mechanic in 3rd can be explained in less than five minutes, with a good example of how it could be fun.
Alignment can be explained, but that explanation never includes a good example of why it makes the game fun. Without alignment, players can act however they want, and the DM can react to them in a logical fashion without there being a instant "evil person who can die" detection spell.
You want to play a Paladin? Great, here's the code of honor you agreed to follow when you took your vows. Break it, and I'll send your fellow knights after you and you'll eventually lose your holy powers for betraying your god. None of that has anything to do with your 'alignment', it's role playing.
It's not that they're talking about it, it's that they don't know what they're talking about. Arguing over if a unicorn should be a Good creature or not? I mean, come on.
Who is still on the staff of WotC that's been around since TSR? Barely any. Half of what you're hearing in 4E would've never came to pass if they were still around. Heck, 4E probably wouldn't have been announced.
The thing is, the game is called Dungeons&Dragons. What do you expect to find in Dungeons? Traps. People like traps. A world without traps? So every tomb, pyramid, ziggurat, 50-level dungeon, castle, tower...is completely unguarded and teeming with hordes of monsters as the only guardians? That just, doesn't make any sense.
Traps are iconic in the game, and to think they were just going to "ditch it" like the rest of the "sacred cows" instead of making it "work" and more "playable and fun", as you've stated, is downright lazy and, well, totally American.
It's simple. Don't ditch alignment, make it work so that it's fun. Instead, they cut half of it out, make the game a more morally "gray" place, and destroyed the fact that the D&D Mythology has always had Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, and Neutrality as principle forces behind the multiverse.
Magic. Don't ditch the schools of magic, make it work so they're cooler and more fun. I'm fine with that. They didn't, they just ditched it.
Gnomes. Make them work. Make them more fun and bring them in. Don't ditch them and give them a half-ass makeover in a Monster Manual.
I can go on about the stuff they change that simply wasn't thought out at all. It has been "If they can't get it to work in 5 minutes, throw it out." with them.
My entire problem with 4th Edition is they're not tailoring it for their loyal customers and fans, the "grognards" they call us, since we're the ones faithfully buying their books and we're the ones that market this game to other people (because we all know how bad WotC's marketing and advertisement for D&D has been). Seriously, how many people do you know say "I saw an ad or commericial and thought I'd give it a try?". Never. It's always been someone else introducing the game to them. They're tailoring the game for the feebleminded, the lazy, the power gamers, and the munchkins. Kids and hardcore MMORPG players.
That is not a direction D&D should ever go, and it has for the sake of profit. The problem is, D&D is a niche market no matter how you spin it. It's never going to compete, the sales will only be good on initial release and will die down in a year or two. The same "target audience" they hope to bring in are the same people who will be angry about reading hundreds of pages of material to play a game, no matter how much you condense that material (since 4E is just a huge condensed game now) and will either play for a few months or still not bother with it at all. They're a fickle market. It's back to the much more visually stunning and interactive World of Warcraft they go.
The funny thing is, their "target audience" is affected by the fact that the D&D name itself STILL has negative connotations applied whenever it's mentioned: gamers either don't know what it is, was told it's Satanic (this has been dying out rapidly, but still present), or it's just way too "geeky" to get into (this has been the main reason their "target audience" never just decides to play D&D, you have to actually convince them like a car salesman).
My friend pointed out the ironic thing about D&D. It started as a tactical war-based miniatures game...evolved into an actual Tabeltop RPG game...and is now de-evolving back into the tactical war-based game with 4th Edition. Sad that the game is going backwards and not forwards.
Maybe with 5th Edition, they'll start to bring it back the way it's SUPPOSED to be. Or, maybe 4E will bring D&D the death it now deserves since it's in the wrong hands.
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Apparently, traps like these were presented in Secrets of Xendrik. Here's an example as posted on enworld by Rechan from SoX.
Description A 40ft by 40ft room with two entrances. Just inside one entrance is a pleasure plate that activates the trap. Once the trap is activated, a spear shoots up from each 5ft square of the floor each round. (Each spear emerges from a slightly different spot each round, so that creatures cannot simply stand between the spikes.)
Search DC 17: Type Mechanical.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trigger Location: Init +1
Effect Melee +4 Spear (1d8+1/x3) (each square each round).
Duration 5 rounds.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Destruction AC 12, hardness 5, 10 HP (each square)
Disarm Disable Device DC 17 (each square): Disable Device 19 (Disadvantage: central disarm, location on the wall opposite the pressure plate).So they are changing traps significantly, and now the trap is something the entire party needs to deal with, and not just the rogue. Just spotting the trap isn't enough, and once it is set off, you have some time to react, rather than just "You take damage", and the whole party needs to deal with it.
Sounds like a good change to me, and I am solidly looking forward to it. I never liked how traps worked in 3.5, I am glad they are changing them in 4th, and hope they follow and improve on the standard set in Secrets of Xendrik.
Hmm, this type of trap is not a new idea. Back in the days of AD&D 1st and 2nd we had flying Buffalo and the infamous Grimtooth Traps Series. They intruduced devious Traps that were much more refined than simple Spear- or Pit Traps.
Then in 3rd edition we got "Traps & Treachery" I-II by Fantasy Flight Games (in their Legends and Lairs Series). They re-introduced complex Traps.
And then Necromancers Bill and Clark visited Grimtooth himself and gave us "The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps" an update of the above mentioned series to 3rd edition rules.
So complex Traps that take Brainpower and Dice rolls to disarm are around a long time already.
It's not that they're talking about it, it's that they don't know what they're talking about. Arguing over if a unicorn should be a Good creature or not? I mean, come on.
Actually taking that into context, they were discussing if they should give the unicorn the Good alignment because alignments are being largely downplayed in the game. Do you think unicorns as a whole should all epitomize everything that is right and good in the world? Good alignments will probably be mostly relegated to paladins and stuff like them. Not people who are “usually good people”.
Who is still on the staff of WotC that's been around since TSR? Barely any. Half of what you're hearing in 4E would've never came to pass if they were still around. Heck, 4E probably wouldn't have been announced.
D&D wouldn’t probably still exist, or at the least be suffering from the problems that plague Rifts. We’d still have THAC0, negative AC scores, and wizards with one 1st-level spell per day.
The thing is, the game is called Dungeons&Dragons. What do you expect to find in Dungeons? Traps. People like traps. A world without traps? So every tomb, pyramid, ziggurat, 50-level dungeon, castle, tower...is completely unguarded and teeming with hordes of monsters as the only guardians? That just, doesn't make any sense.
“People” do not universally like traps as a whole. Some people do, some don’t. It would seem to me that the majority do NOT like traps in their current incarnation. Also, despite your misconception, not every D&D adventure takes place in what people would normally think is a dungeon. Some take place in a city, or even in a single building. Some take place in a section of a forest.
Also, have fun guarding your “50-level dungeon” with traps. Most of them will be useless anyway once the party breaks 10th-level. They begin as mostly dangerous then slowly trickle into minor irritations before people suddenly just stop using them altogether because at 20th-level the villains metagame the fact that “traps are now pointless”.
Traps are iconic in the game, and to think they were just going to "ditch it" like the rest of the "sacred cows" instead of making it "work" and more "playable and fun", as you've stated, is downright lazy and, well, totally American.
Oh yeah, I’m sooo sure they got around a table, someone said “Traps,” and everyone thought about it for 3 seconds before taking a move action to say “Too hard, lets move on, we still need to argue about the feaking UNICORN and then wrap up the meeting by removing gnomes from the game.”
You could probably make a lot of weird things work in a game, but not all of them are as good as they sound, or seem, when you apply it. I think what they actually did was talk about a way to make them more than just “nut punchers”. The end result is pretty good, and likely would stem from them actually, you know, discussing it (something you seem to think they never do) because they are…American? Oi.
It's simple. Don't ditch alignment, make it work so that it's fun. Instead, they cut half of it out, make the game a more morally "gray" place, and destroyed the fact that the D&D Mythology has always had Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, and Neutrality as principle forces behind the multiverse.
Alignment is one of many things that people often gripe about. Since you seem to be sooo much smarter than they are, I’m curious as to how YOU would do it. Myself? I only loosely ever apply it, often to try to maintain some consistency. Usually what alignment someone actually IS tends to fall by the wayside as it never seems to impact play enough until someone pulls out a protection from alignment spell.
Magic. Don't ditch the schools of magic, make it work so they're cooler and more fun. I'm fine with that. They didn't, they just ditched it.
Yeah, YOU’RE fine with it. It’s not about you or the minority though. Plenty of people don’t seem to mind it at all the change, some actually like it even more. They didn’t just ditch it because it “didn’t work”, they seem to have removed it to promote flexibility. Now what a spell is, is more subjective to the spellcaster or spellcasting tradition. Magic more unpredictable? Sounds fine by me.
Gnomes. Make them work. Make them more fun and bring them in. Don't ditch them and give them a half-ass makeover in a Monster Manual.
They DID make them work, and they ARE in the Monster Manual as a fully statted PC race. The race blocks in the PH? Well, they have the power to type up the same things and put them in the Monster Manual, just as they did in Revised Edition with some monstrous races. I know you think that its some “half-assed” attempt, but then you think everything they do is half-assed. When you think they did something right, you lament about how they should somehow release a “patch” for the game instead.
I can go on about the stuff they change that simply wasn't thought out at all. It has been "If they can't get it to work in 5 minutes, throw it out." with them.
Which you base entirely on speculation, your own bias, and misinterpretation of what has been said.
My entire problem with 4th Edition is they're not tailoring it for their loyal customers and fans, the "grognards" they call us, since we're the ones faithfully buying their books and we're the ones that market this game to other people (because we all know how bad WotC's marketing and advertisement for D&D has been). Seriously, how many people do you know say "I saw an ad or commericial and thought I'd give it a try?". Never. It's always been someone else introducing the game to them. They're tailoring the game for the feebleminded, the lazy, the power gamers, and the munchkins. Kids and hardcore MMORPG players.
I’m sure that the majority that play 3rd Edition that are transitioning to 4th Edition would disagree. I’d also like to know which faithful players you refer to, as plenty of people seem to spew nothing but hatred at books like Magic of Incarnum, Complete Psionic, Tome of Magic, Tome of Battle, etc.
A lot of people DO like the changes they are hearing about, so it would seem that they ARE tailoring the game to what people are going to generally like.
That is not a direction D&D should ever go, and it has for the sake of profit. The problem is, D&D is a niche market no matter how you spin it. It's never going to compete, the sales will only be good on initial release and will die down in a year or two. The same "target audience" they hope to bring in are the same people who will be angry about reading hundreds of pages of material to play a game, no matter how much you condense that material (since 4E is just a huge condensed game now) and will either play for a few months or still not bother with it at all. They're a fickle market. It's back to the much more visually stunning and interactive World of Warcraft they go.
Maybe that’s because that for what, 30 years, D&D hasn’t had a lot of huge changes. Up until 3rd Edition, strange mechanics were kept just because “that’s how its always been”, like some bizarre forced adherence to tradition. In 3rd Edition, they finally started changing some elements for the sake of making the game run better, more smoothly, and more simply.
I think that 3rd Edition to 4th Edition isn’t as big of a change, since 4th Edition uses many of the same things that 3rd Edition does in terms of skills, feats, gear, etc.
My friend pointed out the ironic thing about D&D. It started as a tactical war-based miniatures game...evolved into an actual Tabeltop RPG game...and is now de-evolving back into the tactical war-based game with 4th Edition. Sad that the game is going backwards and not forwards.
You again suffer from the misconception that D&D has never had a large combat element (the rules pretty much only apply to combat situations), and that all that character-acting you do in 3rd Edition will be somehow impossible. And before you try to cite the “social encounter” rules that you have NO idea how will function, I’m going to point out that Charisma-based social skills that some groups just gloss over.
I tend to see the way they are talking as one friend to another about an opinion, as opposed to some flat "business-dood" kind of voice. Its one of the things I like about Penny-Arcade: they come across with a tone that suggests a friend telling you why they think this or that game is cool, or fun, or whatever.
Seems to have a better character, than if they tried to sound like Ben Stein.
I suppose it really wouldnt matter how they were telling me about a given rules change: I'd STILL look at it and determine if I liked it or not. I dont care if the label it with a stack of "Xtreme" labels a mile high, if I think it sucks, I think it sucks.
The trap rules I REALLY like, though I've implemented some of that already thanks to Dungeonscape. The critical hit rules I am mostly impartial too, leaning slightly in favor of. I'll probably implement them in my Age of Worms campaign just to see how they fly.