If you're checking a door for traps does it involve touching the door?
If the trap is triggered by touch do you have the trap go off even if they make their check because checking = touching?
Or do you say that there's something about this door that says touching it is a bad idea? Maybe describe some evidence like scrapes on the floor or fake hinges?
Does the trap have to give consent before you touch it?
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Checking for traps does not involve touching although it may limit the number of traps you could find - as a locksmith in RL when I am looking for ways to get into a premises for a customer I dont need to touch the door or windows I just look to see what there is holding/locking it shut - I apply the same logic here for dtecting traps
Nope. That's cheesey and completely violates the entire point of having someone look for traps, the perception skill, and most of the reason for having a rogue.
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A Perception check to notice a touch activated trap may alert the rogue through the glistening of the contact poison on the doorknob, or the slight offsetting of the pressure plate in the fresco, or even just the small gaps the acid sprays out of.
Perfect example in Shackled City, the monk was about to throw open the door, when her Perception check alerted her to the multitude of holes in the ceiling and floor where the spikes would emerge. She decided not to go that way. :)
Does the trap have to give consent before you touch it?
Depends. Even if it gives consent, if the CR is below 18, you're out of luck.
Hiya.
I'd say that, eventually, yes. However, I would also assume that a 'touch based' trap would have a higher DC. So, a spring-loaded poison dart trap may have a DC 18. A contact poison may have a DC 24, while a magic rune trap that is on the inside of the door knob and triggers when the knob is touched may have a DC 30.
So...when the player makes the roll, as long as he makes it, he has 'avoided' doing whatever it would have taken to spring the trap and obviously figured it out in time. If he fails, then he triggers the trap (ergo, he 'touched' the trap when he shouldn't have simply because he failed to notice it).
I guess it all boils down to how a lot of pass/fail checks are made in the game: if you succeed, you figured it out in time, and if you failed, you didn't. The "how" only comes into play when the die is cast. Of course, a DM is free to decide exactly how a trap works, and let the players do stuff to avoid/prepare for them...which, IMHO, is a very good thing to do as it encourages thoughtful roleplaying and not just tossing a die, adding some numbers, and announcing the result.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
I loled when I saw the subject, because I instantly thought of the other meaning of the word "trap"
Its a running joke at our table. Barbarians and rogues both have a trap sense... :D
Is this not why the ten foot pole exists?
I almost always try to remove the abstraction from traps. I use the dice rolls, but what they represent differs depending on the makeup of the trap. There's not really a good reason that the OP's question ought to have one answer the applies to every trap ever.
Some traps might only be "found" through touch, why not? Perhaps the only exposed mechanism is somewhere where you can't see! But no, I don't think we need to go and say "all traps must be touched", because it depends on the trap, doesn't it?