Can magical traps be detected by a detect magic spell or (more efficiently at higher levels) by arcane sight? The rules say that only a rogue can find magical traps with the search skill, but they don't clearly say whether magical traps and trap-like spells (glyph of warding etc.) have a visible aura.
At lower levels, this is not a particular problem for most classes, which can only detect magic a few times per day at best. The 3.5e warlock, however, can detect magic at will, so it's pretty much automatic for them to at least check every door and chest, if you've got one in the party. Then when you get into the 11th or 12th level range, you've got arcane eye, which doesn't even require concentration to find a magical aura. This means that if the aura isn't masked, the caster is going to walk around the dungeon with arcane sight on, and is likely to spot a magical trap no matter where you put it.
My temporary solution to this problem has been to require a spot check with the same DC as the rogue's search DC to find the greater glyph of warding or whatever. This is not based on any written rules that I know of, but on an assumption that the game's designers didn't intend magic traps to be completely useless at high levels.
Anyone have any wisdom to share on this issue?
And is anything being done to clarify/rebalance this in PFRPG? (Aside from not having warlocks?)
Well, I suppose Nystul’s Magic Aura could help.
Alternatively, you could have the trap be designed so that it is still effective even if found. For example, a fireball trap, even going off each round, isn’t very dangerous to a mid level party. But if it is combined with an iron golem in the same room, suddenly it is a source of constant healing to the golem, and the trap is useful since the party won’t be able to just disarm it at their leisure, even though they can detect it easily.
Detect magic will get you aura location and power after 3 rounds. An example in-game would be "Strong evocation magic, directly above the doorway on the ceiling."
Which is about the same as a person saying "A brick of C4 with some wires in it, right above your head."
Hardly helpful information for actually bypassing the trap. Some information could be gleaned with detect magic that may be useful, like flying over a trap that seems to be tied to the floorstones. But consider most magical traps have a proximity trigger. You enter the squares, it goes off. Invisibility and such can fool it, but you can build better traps that can get around that even.
So a cone of cold trap built into the ceiling over the door is going to go off if its proximity trigger is the space in front of the door. In my mind, only spellcraft checks breaking DC 30 should give any "technical" information about the magic trap. Which makes sense, hitting DC 30 is difficult, and rewards the placement of ranks. Again, so now the PCs know that if someone steps into the space in front of the door, the trap will go off and the hallway will be bathed in a cone of cold. Now what? There are many ways to handle this, but all of them require either an expenditure of energy (dimension door, protection from energy) or an element of risk (back off and let the monk try to trigger it and evade, let the rogue try to disarm it).
Honestly, detect magic and magic traps is pretty much a non-issue if handled with a reasonable hand. Give the PCs some info, reward them for not blindly relying on the rogue. Let the whole group make decisions about the trap bypassing process.
Can magical traps be detected by a detect magic spell or (more efficiently at higher levels) by arcane sight?
Generally, yes. And FWIW, I don't see this as any kind of problem at all.
Can detect magic be used to identify magical traps? Would nondetection block this?
Detect magic locates magical traps, but it can’t identify anything more than the location and strength of the aura revealed (and, with a successful Spellcraft check, the school of magic involved). Thus, technically the spell doesn’t actually reveal the fact that the magical trap is, in fact, a trap.
Nondetection wards a trapped object from detect magic (requiring a caster level check to pierce the nondetection). An even better option is Nystul’s magic aura, which can conceal a magic trap’s aura (or change it to appear as that of another spell of your choice).
Only if the creater didn't put a Nondetection spell in the mix (magic aura, or misdirection also are good choices).
At high levels there are lots of reasons to have magical auras. Some dungeon complexes are wholly magical. What I am saying is that a magical aura need not be automatically a trap. If they assume every aura to be a trap, let one be a magical door, gateway or treasure chest. If they avoid it, confront them with it later. Let an NPC tell what they found there.
Moreover, if they try to disarm a magical trap, they waste resources. At best they waste spells. So you can use these traps to wear them down for the next fight.
Right. Part B of my particular problem right now is a warlock with an invocation that effectively gives him dispel magic at will. That means one shot trap-spells like glyphs of warding are removed entirely if detected before triggering, with no waste of resources. Self-resetting magical traps are a little more difficult, since the dispel only suppresses it for 1-4 rounds, but still, when combined with the wizard's arcane eye, don't present much of a hazard.
I'll have to give some thought to using some of the suggestions in this thread--I've been running a published adventure and added a few traps to a nearly trap-free dungeon to give some added protection to the object of the quest, but didn't give careful thought to how the traps might be combined with an encounter to make both tactically interesting and challenging. The example of fireball/iron golem is a useful starting point, and I'm sure there are other combinations like that, not to mention the possibility of shaping battlefield terrain with traps.
I think part of the problem too is that I haven't gotten used to thinking in terms of (and therefore) describing the dozens of magical auras that might overwhelm arcane sight in a high level dungeon. There might be a lot of residual auras, too--no longer tied to a noticeable effect, but contributing to the "background noise" that the wizard has to sort through to actually spot something.
Thanks for the suggestions, folks. Keep them coming.
Who needs magical traps when you have mechanical traps like this classic irresistable purple slide over open pit trap.
Bruhahaha!
Some shameless self-promotion: you might want to check out Kobold Quarterly 8's Traps of the Mind.
More good ideas and inspirations.
A note--the dungeon I'm running now is not a burial crypt but a temple occupied by worshippers of Tiamat, so the traps can't be too elaborate and must be designed not to target the worshippers. This means magical traps keyed to non-worshippers make the most sense, and it limits what I can throw at them right now.
As for the next dungeon, well, that will be different. . .
a warlock with an invocation that effectively gives him dispel magic at will. That means one shot trap-spells like glyphs of warding are removed entirely if detected before triggering, with no waste of resources.
Oh, there is no waste of resources, as waste implies misused or innefficient use. But there is a commitment of resources, as the warlock had to take that particular invocation over others. He could have taken another and been more dangerous in combat, or socially, or what have you. Cost/profit ratio and all that. Just pointing that out.
For your Tiamat worshipper dungeon, consider what could be done if the dungeon was Unhallowed, and a spell of Freedom of Movement was tied to said Unhallow, keyed to affect anyone faithful to Tiamat. Then fill the dungeon with all manner of tanglefoot bags, ghoul touch spells, evards black tentacles, and my personal favorite, carvings of large dragon heads that turn out to be animated, with animated chain "tounges" inside them that try to grapple intruders and drag them back to the head for a fatal bite. Don't forget to one-two punch any movement impairing trap with a second trap that is easily avoided via movement, like a crushing wall trap in a hallway. All harmless to the faithful due to Freedom of Movement
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Here's an easy favorite favorite: Put a Symbol of Death or something else unpleasant on a wall. Cover it up with an illusion of something that someone might disbelieve. Wait until Disbelief Girl or Dispel Boy comes up and either looks through the illusion or gets rid of it.
Other fun tricks: Support dangerous architecture with magical braces such that if anyone starts blasting away at magic stuff, something worse happens. This is especially the case if you build your lair somewhere that can't really support life without magical aid. Does Mr. Warlock really want to blow up the one forcefield that stands between him and explosive decompression?
Fill a room with magical darkness, then put a basilisk in a tank inside. Wait until the idiot who can use demonic woodjie powers to see through any darkness anyway starts looking around. Now you have a tiefling statue.
In other words, make some of the magical traps safety precautions where the unsafe thing is removing them, but don't tell people what they are.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
|
Greater arcane sight is an insanely effective magical trap nuker. As written, it even bypasses magic aura (shows you all spells active on an object, which includes magic aura). I'm ok with this, given the relative levels involved. Nondetection should still work, but remember it's not 100%.
I'm mixed on magic aura on magical traps in general - symbols and the like aren't exactly objects, so I'm not convinced they are valid targets for the spell. But it's not gamebreaking.
Note that declaring that spells are objects can create unpleasant synergies in your game, like silenced spiritual weapons.
Oh, there is no waste of resources, as waste implies misused or innefficient use. But there is a commitment of resources, as the warlock had to take that particular invocation over others. He could have taken another and been more dangerous in combat, or socially, or what have you. Cost/profit ratio and all that. Just pointing that out.
Not really. All warlocks get the ability to detect magic at will at 2nd level. It requires no allocation of resources on their part and carries no opportunity cost because it is a universal ability all members of the class gain for free. Just FYI.
Thanks for more ideas. I'm not certain I'll use them in the current adventure, but they are useful in case the next campaign has similarly capable characters.
Symbols are not objects, but they are placed on objects (doors, walls, and the like), and thus would make the object on which one is placed bear a magical aura, unless Nystul's magic aura is somehow built in to the spell.
Saern, I think the earlier poster was referring to Voracious Dispelling, which is an invocation and thus takes up a slot in the warlock's limited array of invocations. However, I'm mostly in agreement with you. Perhaps others have different ideas, but I see dispel magic as a pretty attractive capability. It's usually one of the first third level spells I take, and I usually prepare it if I can cast it. So, while taking that invocation means you're sacrificing something else, it's not like you're taking an invocation that has limited applicability. Especially given how much the higher levels of 3.5 revolve around buffing and debuffing.
The main resource used by this warlock in the adventure is time--since the caster level on a lot of the traps is 15th, so it takes a lot of tries to dispel the trap or the after-effects.
Not really. All warlocks get the ability to detect magic at will at 2nd level. It requires no allocation of resources on their part and carries no opportunity cost because it is a universal ability all members of the class gain for free. Just FYI.
I'm well aware of that. That was not the "resource" I was referring to. Specifically, I was referring to the aformentioned "invocation that gives him dispel magic at will". Which has later been confirmed as Voracious Dispelling. Which I am also unsure if it could be used to dispel magic traps, but that is besides the point of this post.
Not really. All warlocks get the ability to detect magic at will at 2nd level. It requires no allocation of resources on their part and carries no opportunity cost because it is a universal ability all members of the class gain for free. Just FYI.I'm well aware of that. That was not the "resource" I was referring to. Specifically, I was referring to the aformentioned "invocation that gives him dispel magic at will". Which has later been confirmed as Voracious Dispelling. Which I am also unsure if it could be used to dispel magic traps, but that is besides the point of this post.
Ah. I misread your post. Apologies.
That's why you accompany it with a summoning trap, the trigger being any spell from the divination school being cast.
Some shameless self-promotion: you might want to check out Kobold Quarterly 8's Traps of the Mind.
Yep.
Some shameless self-promotion: you might want to check out Kobold Quarterly 8's Traps of the Mind.Yep.
Yep = shameless or Yep = Traps? :>
Yep = That is a good and relevant article.