How stupid is my party? Falling for the same trap, not once, not twice, but 5 times

[Rapthorn2ndform]

Jade regent spoilers below
I don't know how to do spoiler tags so have a fish
I>( , *)

My party is in the second book going to the fortified farm house.
We see a party within.

Our (pathetically built) goblin monk scouts on side while the ranger scouts the other. Our cleric hangs back, and I, the social character (high cha magus) along with the other magus (dressed as a servant) decide we'll walk up and i'd pretend to belong there.

While we're still together i walk up and set off the trap, a circle of posts that, when crossed, summons 2 lions. We tell our 2 scouts to continue with the plan. After a lack-luster fight w/ the 2 lions. we leave the circle and get healed up, i blunder right back across, thinking that the trap expended...NOPE. 2 more lions. kill them. me being tough and the other magus being an archer. the the other magus needs to cross. so we ready to fight another 2 lions. IN THE MEAN TIME. Our ranger sets off the trap and kills his 2 lions after a fairly brutal fight and the monk nearly dies in one round due to bad luck (and horrible creation). Actually that happens so much, that leaving some one with one hit point is called a modified carol (missing by one is called a carol)

We find out later that we needed the armbands we found earlier.
The dm wasn't sure weather to reward our combat skills or penalize our stupidity.

[Irnk, Dead-Eye's Prodigal]

If you click on the button marked show after 'How to format your text' below your text box, one of the formatting options it shows is how to put spoilers on something.

The answer for your GM is both.

[Rapthorn2ndform]

Irnk, Dead-Eye's Prodigal wrote:

If you click on the button marked show after 'How to format your text' below your text box, one of the formatting options it shows is how to put spoilers on something.

The answer for your GM is both.

Yeah we're not the brightest knives in the crayon box.

[Mercurial]

Rapthorn2ndform wrote:

Yeah we're not the brightest knives in the crayon box.

LOL

[Doorhandle]

...If your optimisation was a bit higher, you could harvest the lions for pelts. :P

[Rapthorn2ndform]

Doorhandle wrote:

...If your optimisation was a bit higher, you could harvest the lions for pelts. :P

Alas, they were summoned lions, so they blinked out of existence once dead.

But jokingly,we said we should just exp farm for a session.
the Dm was not amused.

[maouse]

Rapthorn2ndform wrote:

Doorhandle wrote:

...If your optimisation was a bit higher, you could harvest the lions for pelts. :P

Alas, they were summoned lions, so they blinked out of existence once dead.

But jokingly,we said we should just exp farm for a session.
the Dm was not amused.

I woulda. That's how I beat The Legend of Zelda in a single night! Farmed Skulls til I was maxed out. Lion. Skull. Same. Same. 800 xp a lion.. that is only 263 resets to level 10! Easy Peasy! (4 person party)

[Aranna]

Are summoned Lions worth any experience? In 3.5e D&D they were not worth anything. All summoned creatures were assumed to be part of the challenge rating of the summoner. So you could reset the trap 1000 times and in the end you only get the Exp for one trap encounter. Think of it as a pit. No matter how many times you hurl yourself into the pit you certainly don't get any smarter.

[A highly regarded expert]

Aranna wrote:

No matter how many times you hurl yourself into the pit you certainly don't get any smarter.

Now you tell me...

[Celestial Pegasus]

When people mention Exp Farms, I always think of the literal setups for them done in Minecraft.

Anyway! Falling for the same thing five times (I did not read it in full too closely since I may one day wind up playing in Jade Regent) is... well. Pretty stunningly incompetent. I've seen parties do worse before, though. Far worse, like picking head-on fights with things that have repeatedly proven they are far above the PCs and a win with the chosen tactics would require the most insane dice luck ever.

So I would say at the very least this sort of thing isn't unheard of.

[Doomed Hero]

And that's why I don't use XP...

[Rapthorn2ndform]

Aranna wrote:

Think of it as a pit. No matter how many times you hurl yourself into the pit you certainly don't get any smarter.

Yes, but that pit didn't have teeth and try to chase you down

[Old Drake]

Well, XP are easy. It's a trap, a trap is worth it's CR in XP, no matter how you go around it, pass through it, or how many times you set it off.
The lions, being summoned creatures, have no XP value.

Now, if I were DM, I might give an RP reward, if the scouts blundered into the trap because they acted on their character knowledge alone and set off the trap because there was no way for the characters to know there was a trap. After all, just because the players just saw you fight lions three times does not mean that their characters have any idea what's going on. So that might be worth an award. But simple fighting is not.
On the other hand, the lions might provide a decent testbed for combat tactics after you cleared the area. If there are still coordination problems, a few simple fights might be a good way to straighten them out. Or to test the effectiveness of new feats and class abilities. If presented well in character and handled seriously, I'd give some reward.

[LeadPal]

Haha, that's priceless. I think I can actually top this story, though. In Council of Thieves, my party walked into eight consecutive traps, all of which had the same, easily circumvented trigger.

Spoiler:

It was a corridor full of mirrors that curse whoever looked at or touched them. Most of them did ability drain, IIRC. My character was the only one who never touched any, although I did send in my familiar, since it was immune to damage and drain--naturally, the mirror I chose inflicted confusion instead (which also affected my character for some reason). While I was incapacitated, the party continued to disable the rest of the mirrors with their faces. We ended up burning a lot of time and resources on recovery, and couldn't heal everything.

Why did we do it this way, instead of something sane like throwing summoned monsters at the mirrors? Because behind every mirror was a bit of treasure, and the party had crippling trust issues--if you didn't find it yourself, there was no guarantee you'd ever see it. In this case, it was the cleric who refused to share his spoils. To this day I'm still not sure what he found.

[blue_the_wolf]

when i first GMed this I was absolutely surprised that anyone would try to walk in and act like they belonged (especially since the players are in no way native to the kalsgard as in not dwarf or 'nordic' and in many cases not human)

but now I am learning that this is a common plan that many groups try.

I will have to adjust for that with the second group (yes i happen to be running jade regent for 2 groups at the same time... ^_^

[Chernobyl]

Spoiler:

The trap automatically resets, AFTER 1 day. When I ran that part I had each post in the ring trapped...seems silly to avoid this trap with a detect magic..."oh look, only the two posts by the path are magic...we'll just walk over here..." my players wound up fighting 4 of them eventually.