How important is Disable Device in Rise of the Runelords

[seiken]

What sort of effect would it have in this AP if none of the PCs had Disable Device? Would they be screwed? Are there other ways to get through traps?

[the David]

Buy a lot of goats and herd them through the dungeon? You might want to put some ranks into Handle Animal, though.

[seiken]

Hah, okay... so it's probably a bad idea then :)

[the David]

That depends. Assuming you're playing Pathfinder, someone could just put ranks in Perception and Disable Device. If nobody wants to fill that role, you might have a problem unless the players become creative.

[Stratagemini]

There aren't that many traps. But the ones that do exist are pretty damn deadly.

[Haladir]

Stratagemini wrote:

There aren't that many traps. But the ones that do exist are pretty damn deadly.

Agreed. I've added more traps, including magical traps, to my version of the AP. Partly, that was to increase the difficulty overall (I've been running with a 6-PC party of very-experienced players), and partly to make the party rogue shine a little brighter.

But, you can most definitely run the game as written without a rogue-type PC. I'd recommend dropping a wand of detect snares and pits and/or a wand of find traps for the party to use; make the traps magical so that, if found, a targeted dispel magic has a chance to deactivate it. And, such a party really needs to use a 10-foot pole or a precise crossbow shot to remotely trigger traps without being in the area of effect [wich won't help if the effect is to release a cloud of poison gas...]. You might want to include non-canon spells like greater mage hand for this reason too.

[seiken]

Yeah, we are playing Pathfinder. Currently 5 PCs, but the rogue will be leaving in a couple months. The bard ended up taking a trait that gives her Disable Device as a class skill, so she'll pick up the slack after the rogue leaves. Thanks for all the help and advice on alternative trap solutions!