DM loves traps, rules out take 10 / 20

[thejeff]

Stereofm wrote:

Another thing I don't like ; IIRC : you have to roll to detect SQUARE by SQUARE ! Why ????

Why can't you do it at least room by room ? Or at least be limited by your field of vision ?

That was 3.5.

PF doesn't require square by square.

[Stereofm]

thejeff wrote:

All of which, without more information, translates to guess what the GM (or module writer) was thinking.

1) Oops, wasn't ground pressure trigger, but magical motion sensor. Splat!
2) How do you wedge the far door without getting to it? Splat!
3) Alright, that might work. If you've got one.

Or maybe it wasn't crushing walls at all, but something else that left the blood and bones.

I don't like playing "Outthink the GM". It's not as bad for disarming as for finding traps, since you don't have to apply your whole list of trap finding measures every step of the way. But it's still a game in which I can't use my characters abilities, just my own.
Do character abilities never play into it? Can anyone who thinks of it wedge the walls or jam the mechanism or whatever just as well?

Personally, I'd rather just have less traps. I've never really enjoyed them. I've never played Tomb of Horrors, but I've read it. Even reading through it, I can't tell how you're supposed to figure out half the traps.

Fair points, but easy enough to solve :

1 ) You should not have to outhink the DM : just outthink the trap as written : that way, if you find a solution that's outside the box, you should be rewarded. there's no reason a good GM should complexify the trap further.
2 ) The far door : how about the mage dimension door to it, and then the rogue runs the corridor ? Of course, the length of the corridor should not be more than what can be done by a run action.
3 ) Also, who said that the walls should close on you in ONE round ? You should have at least three in my example.

I don't like auto-kill traps either, I just think the current range is way too limited by the rules.

Also, they should be used sparingly, OR in some areas where they make sense, but you get plenty of warnings that your standard tactics will need to adapt.

[Stereofm]

thejeff wrote:

Stereofm wrote:

Another thing I don't like ; IIRC : you have to roll to detect SQUARE by SQUARE ! Why ????

Why can't you do it at least room by room ? Or at least be limited by your field of vision ?

That was 3.5.

PF doesn't require square by square.

Ah, good thing then, I missed this one.

Our team is still a lot influenced by 3.5 LGH.

[ericthetolle]

Don't give me this nonsense about how back in the day it was all about figuring out traps. Back in the day it was REALLY about sending hirelings ahead and watching how they set off the traps. Or you bought a huge flock of chickens or dogs and sent them ahead.

The best was Tomb of Horrors, where I was all set to have them outwit the traps..."I have my bronze dragon henchman dig through the side." "I'll have my Type X demon henchman help." Bypassed 80% of the dungeon in one minute.

See traps were never challenges per se. They were tools to annoy players, and prove the superiority of the intellect of the DM. "Gee, can't you figure it out? The answer is so OBVIOUS!" Any system that allows us to avoid having to think about traps and get on with the game is a good one.

[Stereofm]

Actually, IIRC the Bronze Dragon should not have been able to dig though the wall. :)

I respectfully disagree about the intellect of the GM though.

[Lincoln Hills]

Actually, traps were a sort of encounter known as 'puzzle solving' that has since fallen out of vogue. Role-playing and combat are as popular as ever, but riddle-passwords and chessboard rooms just don't show up much anymore. I was never a big fan of riddles or chess problems, but deducing how to avoid a trap gave me a lot more satisfaction than rolling successfully on Disable Device ever has...

[Rynjin]

The problem with it is that as common as traps are, even people who enjoy puzzles (unless they're complete puzzle nuts) are going to get tired of spending 5-10 minutes trying to figure out a puzzle every time.

I'm not entirely against throwing in 1 or 2 scattered around every now and then, but when it's EVERY TRAP it becomes tedious and you start to long for the simplicity of "I roll Perception. Found it. Roll Disable Device."

Even for simple traps, saying "I avoid the bear trap by walking around it" takes more time and just as much effort as saying "I disable it." this is generally why when an area is made of a bunch of the same traps I let them roll until they actually disable one (as long as they continue moving carefully) and then use that successful roll for all of the same trap in a given area. I know Souls for Smuggler's Shiv would've lasted much longer (and not in a good way) if our GM hadn't used that method.

[Gauss]

The reason that puzzle solving has fallen out of vogue is because many people cannot do it.

First, it requires a specific type of mind to be really good at it. So, you just limited the number of players that could participate in such a game. This is opposed to the explosion of the game in the 3.X era because the players no longer had to think of every little thing, the characters can do it for them via a die roll.

Second, it requires that the person creating said puzzle provide a reasonably discovered way of solving it. The problem there is that what seems obvious to the creator may not be obvious to other people.

Between the first and second you wind up with puzzles/traps that just frustrate players. This is why I love the dice roll system. Even if you cannot figure out the puzzle/trap your character can figure it out, or not, via a die roll.

If you DO happen to figure it out you can either get a bonus to the die roll or negate the check entirely so that form of gaming is still supported.

- Gauss

[thejeff]

Stereofm wrote:

thejeff wrote:

All of which, without more information, translates to guess what the GM (or module writer) was thinking.

1) Oops, wasn't ground pressure trigger, but magical motion sensor. Splat!
2) How do you wedge the far door without getting to it? Splat!
3) Alright, that might work. If you've got one.

Or maybe it wasn't crushing walls at all, but something else that left the blood and bones.

I don't like playing "Outthink the GM". It's not as bad for disarming as for finding traps, since you don't have to apply your whole list of trap finding measures every step of the way. But it's still a game in which I can't use my characters abilities, just my own.
Do character abilities never play into it? Can anyone who thinks of it wedge the walls or jam the mechanism or whatever just as well?

Personally, I'd rather just have less traps. I've never really enjoyed them. I've never played Tomb of Horrors, but I've read it. Even reading through it, I can't tell how you're supposed to figure out half the traps.

Fair points, but easy enough to solve :

1 ) You should not have to outhink the DM : just outthink the trap as written : that way, if you find a solution that's outside the box, you should be rewarded. there's no reason a good GM should complexify the trap further.
2 ) The far door : how about the mage dimension door to it, and then the rogue runs the corridor ? Of course, the length of the corridor should not be more than what can be done by a run action.
3 ) Also, who said that the walls should close on you in ONE round ? You should have at least three in my example.

I don't like auto-kill traps either, I just think the current range is way too limited by the rules.

Also, they should be used sparingly, OR in some areas where they make sense, but you get plenty of warnings that your standard tactics will need to adapt.

But the GM made up the trap. That's what I meant by "guess what the GM (or module writer) was thinking." Not that he'd change it on the fly, but that you'd have to figure out what he was thinking when he wrote it.

[Xaratherus]

Gauss wrote:

The reason that puzzle solving has fallen out of vogue is because many people cannot do it.

First, it requires a specific type of mind to be really good at it. So, you just limited the number of players that could participate in such a game. This is opposed to the explosion of the game in the 3.X era because the players no longer had to think of every little thing, the characters can do it for them via a die roll.

Second, it requires that the person creating said puzzle provide a reasonably discovered way of solving it. The problem there is that what seems obvious to the creator may not be obvious to other people.

Between the first and second you wind up with puzzles/traps that just frustrate players. This is why I love the dice roll system. Even if you cannot figure out the puzzle/trap your character can figure it out, or not, via a die roll.

If you DO happen to figure it out you can either get a bonus to the die roll or negate the check entirely so that form of gaming is still supported.

- Gauss

I am a fan of puzzles in adventures that I create, and have run into the sorts of frustrations that you describe.

What I've adopted as a thumb rule at my table is this: The puzzle is an encounter (just like a trap) and so it has an XP value associated with bypassing it; if you (the player) can figure it out on your own based on whatever hints I've included, then you get some (significant amount) of extra experience, but if you get frustrated then I will allow appropriate checks to "figure it out" from an in-character perspective.

If it seems like the players are on track to figure it out on their own but they just need a hint, I will sometimes allow a roll or two and provide a hint, and then still grant extra (but slightly reduced from a 'complete solve') experience.

[Da'ath]

One compromise we came to, as a group, was as follows:

Traps are traps. Roll the dice, move on.

Puzzles are special. The players have the OPTION of either rolling dice & moving on OR pit their wits against mine. We use a 20 minute stop-watch on a cellphone and start it counting down. If the players solve the puzzle before the timer is up, they receive the equivalent amount of XP to the difficulty I set when I designed the puzzle if they solve it. If they fail to solve it in the alloted time, they receive 1/4 the XP and rolling commences. No cellphone use is allowed during this time, obviously.

Edit: Xeratherus and I apprently use similar methods, but he's the quicker poster.=)

[Lincoln Hills]

Rynjin wrote:

...even people who enjoy puzzles (unless they're complete puzzle nuts) are going to get tired of spending 5-10 minutes trying to figure out a puzzle every time.

I'm not entirely against throwing in 1 or 2 scattered around every now and then, but when it's EVERY TRAP it becomes tedious...

Oh, absolutely. Even in those days the thief had Open Locks and Disable Device skills for the ordinary, everyday poison needles and tripwires. I agree that genuine puzzles should be relatively rare, and that those that rely on anything other than deduction (such as those &$##*! riddles) work best when there's a clue at hand, or the answer to the riddle is written elsewhere (although preferably better-hidden than the one at the Gates of Moria.)

I prefer to restrict puzzles to areas where there's an in-game reason for them - and unless they're auto-resetting or the PCs are somehow the first ones ever to reach that particular dungeon, I tend to include plenty of disarmed and bypassed ones as the work of prior visitors.

[thejeff]

Gauss wrote:

The reason that puzzle solving has fallen out of vogue is because many people cannot do it.

First, it requires a specific type of mind to be really good at it. So, you just limited the number of players that could participate in such a game. This is opposed to the explosion of the game in the 3.X era because the players no longer had to think of every little thing, the characters can do it for them via a die roll.

Second, it requires that the person creating said puzzle provide a reasonably discovered way of solving it. The problem there is that what seems obvious to the creator may not be obvious to other people.

Between the first and second you wind up with puzzles/traps that just frustrate players. This is why I love the dice roll system. Even if you cannot figure out the puzzle/trap your character can figure it out, or not, via a die roll.

If you DO happen to figure it out you can either get a bonus to the die roll or negate the check entirely so that form of gaming is still supported.

- Gauss

I hate dealing with most puzzles in game. I'm actually fairly good at them, but I can't begin to think about them in character so that frustrates me.

They also tend to irritate me from a verisimilitude perspective: So the villain designed his lair so only smart people could get in? Why would he do that? Smart people don't key their treasure vaults to logic puzzles. They use a key and some random passphrase that won't make sense to anyone else.

[Spudster]

by eliminating the "take 10" and "take 20" rules, your DM is eliminating stuff that streamlines the game and adds fun for everyone. So demonstrate the alternative.

Spend an hour or two carefully explaining your actions, making a die-roll for each. Then, despite the die-roll, repeat it.

"I stand 50 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 15 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 20 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door 25 feet in front of me" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor 30 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 35 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 40 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 45 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
I examine the door from 50 feet" (roll d20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 45 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 15 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 20 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door 25 feet in front of me" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor 30 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 35 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 40 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door from 45 feet" (roll d20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 40 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 15 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 20 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door 25 feet in front of me" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor 30 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 35 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door from 40 feet" (roll d20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 35 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 15 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 20 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door 25 feet in front of me" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor 30 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door from 35 feet" (roll d20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 30 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 15 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 20 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door 25 feet in front of me" (roll d20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 25 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 15 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the door 20 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 20 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 15 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 15 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the floor 10 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I stand 10 feet away"
"I examine the floor 5 feet in front of me" (roll D20)
"I examine the hinges" (roll d20)
"I examine the Crack beneath the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the floor in front of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the right of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall to the left of the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the wall above the door" (roll d20)
"I examine the air in front of the door" (roll d20)

Be sure to add some "flavor", so each one of those statements takes a minute or so....

If he complains, simply state that his house rule leaves you no option, since he obviously wants you to roleplay "how" you take 10, or take 20

[Orfamay Quest]

Don't forget that you will want to double- and triple-check each of those rolls, since there's a good chance you'll have rolled a few ones and twos in that drawer-ful of dice.

[blackbloodtroll]

Might as well carry a bag of D20s.

Roll them all at once.

Note to your DM these are your rolls.

[strayshift]

Not the most loved class but become an Arcane Trickster. Disarm them from distance.

[The black raven]

Having just re-read the rules about traps in the CRB, they can in fact be used almost as is and still be quite enjoyable.

Concerning mechanical traps, the Perception roll not only tells you there is a trap, but also "Success generally indicates that the creature has detected the mechanism that activates the trap" and "Beating this check by 5 or more also gives some indication of what the trap is designed to do."

So succeeding at the Perception roll already gives you many clues to help you understand and beat the trap.

What I dislike with magical traps is that the DC is set at the same level for both Perception and Disable and that there is no RAW to alter this :-(

One interesting thing IMO, is that it is never stated in the CRB that traps can only be disabled/avoided with the Disable Device skill. Also, I believe that the Disable Device skill can only be used when having access to at least part of the trap's mechanism.

I think that the real problem is that nowadays writers do not give enough detail on their traps, which end up in them being dealt only with the Disable Device check.

Craft your traps lovingly, give the opportunity to all players to avoid them (or even disable them for a time), and give the opportunity to the guy with Disable Device to actually shut them down at one point (but not necessarily at the beginning, nor without some effort other than the Disable check) and your players could start enjoying them.

Also consider each trap separately. What is its purpose ? How can the owner (or someone with a legitimate access) bypass it ?

Answering these questions will help make your traps more realistic, again reducing the "Disable check only" syndrom.

[Chemlak]

The ultimate in passive-aggressive ways to overcome this issue:

Every 5 feet, everyone in the party searches for 20 rounds, each round to be rolled individually... oh, and to keep the mystery alive, the GM needs to make the rolls for you. Start a stopwatch. See how long it takes him to figure out what taking 20 is actually for.

[Question]

Waiting to see how the DM responds to the reply i just posted.

The problem i find with puzzle like encounters is that it quite often degenerates into situations where the players are stuck, frustrated, and the DM is doing nothing but watching the players talk among themselves.