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Easy enough. Put the trigger someplace far forward of the actual trap. If you have them coming through a door, put the pit on their side of the door and the trigger near the monsters down the corridor (say 40 feet away or so). Whatever works for your layout. A charging player with a poor perception skill may end up dumping all his buddies into the pit while he makes it through.
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Three ideas:
1) A monster hiding around a corner is holding the lever or string to trigger the trap. When one of his buddies screams "NOW!" he pulls the lever or string and triggers the trap. This would require perhaps the distance from the players to the goblins to be perhaps 60 feet, and the pit to be 50 feet long, thus ensuring that almost all the players will enter the trap area.
2) The pit is weight sensitive. Perhaps 400 to 600 lbs. So as soon as that much weight is on the trap, it triggers. If both groups see each other, then there really isn't a surprise round.
3) The trigger for the trap is on the other side of the pit, all along the entire 5 foot section from corridor wall to corridor wall. When the first player enters that section and triggers the trap, it is timed (water or ball rolling down a ramp or chute to eventually trigger the pit fall) to basically drop characters into the pit on the start the triggering character's initiative. That will probably ensure to get many of the spell casters and ranged weapon players.
I was wondering if someone could give me some help with this. Imagine a long corridor with a nice big pit trap in the middle. The party is on one side and the monsters, who are aware of the trap, are on the other. To provoke the party into running across/into the trap, they range.
The question is, is it at all possible that multiple party members could fall into the trap?
During game play what I would imagine is that the first player to run an engage the monsters in melee will spring the trap and then, naturally, none of the other players will fall in. If the pit were long enough, you might imagine, however, that if multiple players 'simultaneously' charged the monsters that they might all fall in.
The only mechanism I see for potentially making this happen would be to let the players run through a full round as if the pit were not there (letting them charge across and attack the monsters) and then afterward having anyone who charged across roll a reflex to see if they fell in. For those that did you'd have to undo any damage they might have done. This seems even more complicated if the monsters get their turn in there, since they could potentially be swinging at players who are at the bottom of the pit. Thus, this doesn't seem to work.
Any suggestions?
For that scenario, I would delay initiative rolls, explain the layout to the party and ask what they intend to do. You'll likely get "I'm charging them", "Me too", "I'm going to stay here and shoot" etc.
For the guys that charged, I'd make secret perception rolls to see if anyone spotted the trap (all sorts of modifiers for being distracted etc) then go straight for the Reflex saves. Describe what's happened after the dice are rolled.
It's maybe a ham-fisted way of dealing with it, and savvy players may thow a spanner in the works, but it gets the effect you're looking for while technically staying within the rules.
Last quick question - Should someone make their Reflex save, I'm assuming that they make it to the far side of the pit. Correct?
I'd give them the choice, you've already sorta tricked them in a way (not really but they'll probably feel like it!) so if they make the save and it's time to talk squares and stuff, I'd let them be whichever side they like =)
Last quick question - Should someone make their Reflex save, I'm assuming that they make it to the far side of the pit. Correct?
Not necessarily. What if the person who made their save had ended their move in the middle or the near side of the pit trap?
The reflex save means they prevented themselves from taking the falling damage and any additional damage from spikes, oozes, etc and are left hanging onto the edge of the pit trap at the nearest point the pit edge is to them.
Our group has come up with a simple system for resolving simultaneous actions.
It works like this.
Actions before movement by anyone is resolved.
Movement by all forces is done one square at the time. Actions as a consequence of moving are resolved (example - two opposing combatants come into each other's melee range - each combatant has the option to resolve the charge attack). All forces keep moving one square at a time until all movement is done.
Once all movement is done, all other outstanding actions are resolved.
Works very well and it creates a very dynamic battlefield.
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I had a pit trap that was a bit fun in that it worked sort of like a teeter-totter. The players were walking down a narrow corridor in a straight line, the one in the front felt a click below his feet(his weight effectively triggered the trap by releasing the teeter-totter). When he heard that I told him he could have a reflex save to avoid whatever trap he triggered by jumping to the next square.
Didn't really matter what he rolled since there wasn't a time on the trap, but he decided he did want to avoid it and so as soon as he jumped to the next square and his weight was gone the floor tipped under those behind him and dumped the next two characters in a pit behind him.