A stand-alone trap that deals hit-point damage is nothing but a speedbump unless it deals enough damage to kill outright. And murderous traps are... for very occasional deployment.I agree with much of your post, but I've got to say - this one's not quite accurate. Many low-level challenges are actually based around the concept of instilling fear in the players rather than causing any serious hardship. For example - many low-level poisons have such low save DCs that there is almost no chance that they cause any serious impairment given reasonable precautions (such as use of the Heal skill). A trap that doesn't kill may very well still affect player behavior. A piddly 2 hp isn't going to do much when the PCs are supporting average hp totals of 50+, sure enough, but there's still a range in which HP loss becomes threatening in the eye of the beholder. And then there's a potential damage range at which traps CAN be lethal to low-hp characters (such as arcane casters).
These things still affect player behavior, such as prompting the party to send the beefy tank characters ahead to do the exploring. And even reward the supposedly less effective martial type characters by giving them moments to feel special.
A poison instill fear because it *could* kill. Even if it is not very common, you *could* fail all those saves in a row (specially if you have low Fort). A goblin *might* kill you, if you fail enough attacks and he hit enough attacks.
A CR 2 javelin trap does 1d6+6. It can't kill a guy with 20+ hp, PERIOD.
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A stand-alone trap that deals hit-point damage is nothing but a speedbump unless it deals enough damage to kill outright. And murderous traps are... for very occasional deployment.I agree with much of your post, but I've got to say - this one's not quite accurate. Many low-level challenges are actually based around the concept of instilling fear in the players rather than causing any serious hardship. For example - many low-level poisons have such low save DCs that there is almost no chance that they cause any serious impairment given reasonable precautions (such as use of the Heal skill). A trap that doesn't kill may very well still affect player behavior. A piddly 2 hp isn't going to do much when the PCs are supporting average hp totals of 50+, sure enough, but there's still a range in which HP loss becomes threatening in the eye of the beholder. And then there's a potential damage range at which traps CAN be lethal to low-hp characters (such as arcane casters).
These things still affect player behavior, such as prompting the party to send the beefy tank characters ahead to do the exploring. And even reward the supposedly less effective martial type characters by giving them moments to feel special.
A poison instill fear because it *could* kill. Even if it is not very common, you *could* fail all those saves in a row (specially if you have low Fort). A goblin *might* kill you, if you fail enough attacks and he hit enough attacks.
A CR 2 javelin trap does 1d6+6. It can't kill a guy with 20+ hp, PERIOD.
It can roll a crit...
I had a rogue in the campaign I'm running die because he got hit by a scything blade trap that rolled a crit on him. 2d4+4 isn't all that scary as a level 4 or 5 character until it turns into 8d4+16.
It comes down to player perception, Shadowdweller.
I arrive at my conclusions because my players aren't scared by those kind of traps.
But your point is noteworthy; perhaps some player types will have their behavior affected. To me it hardly seems worth the effort, though.
It can roll a crit...A poison instill fear because it *could* kill. Even if it is not very common, you *could* fail all those saves in a row (specially if you have low Fort). A goblin *might* kill you, if you fail enough attacks and he hit enough attacks.
A CR 2 javelin trap does 1d6+6. It can't kill a guy with 20+ hp, PERIOD.
and won't kill any character with 20+hp anyways. 24 damage would only kill a character with 20 hp and CON 4. Anyone else can simply be healed while at negative hp, because, unlike an encounter, traps are binary. They kill, or they don't.
I had a rogue in the campaign I'm running die because he got hit by a scything blade trap that rolled a crit on him. 2d4+4 isn't all that scary as a level 4 or 5 character until it turns into 8d4+16.
a 4th level rogue with CON 14 and favored class bonus would have 35 hp at level 4, and 42 at level 5. 8d4+16 does an average of 32, unable to drop the 4th level rogue. Doing maximized crit damage, it does 38 damage, which would drop the first rogue at -3, enough to be healed by CLW wands.
And that's a scythe trap, which has a x4 modifier.
In any case, I'm sure there are traps over there who could take down a character in one shot. But that doesn't counter my argument, it does enforce it. My argument is that traps are boring because they are coin flips. Either your GM put traps with enough damage to kill you outright in the first hit if you fail the coin flip ("roll save. if you fail, you die. Rinse and repeat 3 times per corridor"), or otherwise they DON'T do enough damage to kill you if you fail the coin flip, and thus are nothing else than a XP speed bump that cost charges from the wand of CLW. A Scythe trap vs, say, 3rd level characters would fit in that description. It either crits, which means you have to roll a new char because of a coin flip, or it doesn't crit, which mean you have just exchanged charges of CLW wand for experience.
Gustavo you seem to have a very two dimensional view of traps i just wonder if you view low level encounters as the same sort of thing
Low level encounters aren't close to a trap.
for example, a CR2 3rd level barbarian orc could throw javelins at your party, doing 1d6+6. Unlike the CR2 trap, however, the barbarian *needs* to be tackled. Otherwise, he'll keep throwing javelins at the party, until someone dies. What is even better, is that the whole party can play the encounter. The cleric can Bless the fighter, who can use a trip maneuver in the NPC, and thus the rogue could sneak attack it, or whatever.
Compare that with the CR2 javelin trap. You step on it. It shoot, once. Maybe it hits, maybe it doesn't. Nobody really cares. You use 2 charges of the CLW wand, and keep walking, with a few more XP. Alternatively, if you have a trap spotter, then the trap spotter roll perception. If he hits the DC, rolls Disable Device. If he succeed, you gain XP. If he doesn't, then you take 1d6+6, shrug your shoulders, heal the rogue with 2 charges of CLW, gain XP, and keep walking.
If your idea of a "trap" is a single die roll to determine if you take damage, and nothing else, then yea, that would be a really boring trap by itself. That's not because traps are boring, it just means you did a horrible job designing that trap.It's not "my idea" of a trap. It's the trap that comes in the Dungeon Mastery Guide. Which was not designed by me, was designed by Paizo's staff. So you can go and tell them they did a horrible job designing traps, because I did not design nothing.
EDIT:
also,
A CR 2 javelin trap does 1d6+6. It can't kill a guy with 20+ hp, PERIOD.that's why you add poison to the end of the javalin and/or put it in a room with some monsters.
But if you add poison to that CR2 trap, it stops being a CR2 trap.
For example, a poisoned quill trap, which comes with poison and similar damage, is a CR 8 trap. Not counting extra monsters in the encounter.Sure, a CR8 trap against lvl 2 characters is deadly. It falls in the "coin flip to see if you die" type of trap.
I think its pretty safe to assume that every party that has a sense of practicality is going to have the party pool gold to purchase a Wand of Cure Light Wounds at the first available opportunity. Considering it's created with a first level spell that appears on a fairly hefty number of spell lists, a wand of cure light wounds is going to be extremely common in a Pathfinder setting.
Most of the "solutions" listed are not going to help the binary nature of traps.
Traps linked to Summon Monster spells are very high CR (So again, only dangerous when being used against a much lower party.)
It is very unlikely that anything but an absurd number of traps could put much of a dent in the healing resources provided by a wand of cure light wounds. (The sheer number would probably be enough XP to level.)
The simple gas trap, is a 50/50 be sickened, which is a fairly minor penalty and not likely to impose much difficulty on an encounter with a horde of small monsters. Certainly not enough of an impact to require a party slot dedicated to it.
Traps are by their very design binary. You either find and disarm them or move around them, or take the possible damage/condition and then mitigate it a standard action later.
an example of a good way of using mixed traps was something I did in a game based around a the pc's unknowingly hunting through the escape end of a Troglodyte clutch's cave system.
they ran into a series of portcullis traps that rapped them in very small area. The triggering of the last portcullis set off 2 javelin traps (that the PC's had walked by (and missed the (higher) perception check to see the holes, without the trigger being visible, if they had disarmed it, it would have triggered the portcullis) earlier in the tunnel. the first portcullis set off an alarm that warned the Troglodytes. The party had just broken free when they arrived (if they'd rolled more damage to sunder the gate they would have been out sooner).
this was a 2 player Gestalt game at lvl 3. They loved the encounter.
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If your idea of a "trap" is a single die roll to determine if you take damage, and nothing else, then yea, that would be a really boring trap by itself. That's not because traps are boring, it just means you did a horrible job designing that trap.It's not "my idea" of a trap. It's the trap that comes in the Dungeon Mastery Guide. Which was not designed by me, was designed by Paizo's staff. So you can go and tell them they did a horrible job designing traps, because I did not design nothing.
I've said as much in the past. I don't know if everyone at Paizo just hates traps or if they are actually horrible at designing them, but there is some kind of problem there.
Looks like you have had some bad experiences with traps (no pun intended) also you just assume that every party has a wand of clw to hand .
Every party with 750gp and access to a settlement with 201+ people there, have 75% to have a wand of CLW. Even those who don't, they have characters who can heal. If a party can't heal, then traps are the least of their concerns. If you can't heal the 1d6+6 damage from the Javelin Trap, you'll have a real problem when you face the 1d6+6 per turn of the barbarian javelin thrower orc.
Simple traps like your talking about on there own are pretty lame but if these same traps are linked to an alarm that summons some monsters then they are more of a problem .
Simple traps like I'm talking about are the default traps in the game. They are both the traps that come in the Dungeon mastery guide, and the traps that appear in published AP. You *could* change the nature of traps, sure. You could even build a different game system. That has no relevance to the debate about traps in pathfinder, though. Traps in pathfinder ARE simple traps that DO require a simple roll to disable, and ARE traps that simply do too low damage to be a threat to an appropiately leveled party. That's how traps are in pathfinder. We could discuss how we would like them to be, or how to "fix" them, but that's how the traps are in the current Pathfinder game system.
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I never said the trap was linked to a summon monster spell i said it sets of an alarm that summons monsters from a nearby area like a close guard room
Also i don't believe you get xp for setting off a trap as you have done nothing to earn said xp
You gain XP for surviving the trap. That includes if you disable the trap, if you discover the trap and bypass it (for example jumping over it), if it shoots, but don't hit your AC, or if it hits you, but don't kill you.
an example of a good way of using mixed traps was something I did in a game based around a the pc's unknowingly hunting through the escape end of a Troglodyte clutch's cave system.
they ran into a series of portcullis traps that rapped them in very small area. The triggering of the last portcullis set off 2 javelin traps (that the PC's had walked by (and missed the (higher) perception check to see the holes, without the trigger being visible, if they had disarmed it, it would have triggered the portcullis) earlier in the tunnel. the first portcullis set off an alarm that warned the Troglodytes. The party had just broken free when they arrived (if they'd rolled more damage to sunder the gate they would have been out sooner).
this was a 2 player Gestalt game at lvl 3. They loved the encounter.
This is a good example of an encounter with traps. As I've said before, (in my first post in this thread), encounters with traps are nice. But that's because they are a subset of encounters, which are nice by themselves. That encounter could be nice too if you had 2 troglodytes very well hidden, ambushing the party, and once the party enter, they pull the portcullis, trapping the party, ask for help, and start shooting javelins at the party.
What makes that encounter interesting, is not the javelin trap. Is the fact it creates an interesting encounter, with hindraces for the party to overcome, and that *need* to be overcame because otherwise the troglodytes defeat the party. The fact you substituted the two ambushing troglodites by two ambushing traps make little difference there.
That has nothing to do with my argument, which is about the general uselessness of the binary traps.
This is akin to me saying "lettuce is poor, because it's tasteless" and someone come and say "hey, but if you put lettuce into a hot bread, with lean buffalo meat burger, a delicious bbq sauce,a fresh, sweet tomatoe, and some excellent pepper, and good cheddar cheese it taste great!" Sure. But not because the lettuce is there.
So just because that's how the trap is in the book you can't use a little imagination and use it in a more ingenious way or just change it slightly so setting it of actually has some effect on players
Seems like your being a lateral thinker about this i mean have you ever tweeked the stats of a monster so it fitted in better with your game ?
Then why not do the same for traps like a arrow trap that fires several volley's of arrows instead of just one
Or a spiked pit trap that has barbed spikes so you can't just pull them out without taking more damage
Let's take your two last examples, to see how they fit with my theory of binary traps.
My theory is that a trap does damage X. Either damage X is bigger than the party hp Y, and thus the trap is a coin flip ("save or die"), or the damage X is below the party hp Y, and thus the trap is just a minor annoyance put there just to drain a few resources from your wallet (in the form of Z CLW wands charges)
You do an arrow trap that fire several arrows instead of one. So the damage, instead of being X, is 3X, or 4X, or whatever the number of arrows is. This changes nothing, because either 3X>Y (and thus it's a coin flip "save or die"), or 3X<Y, thus draining 3Z charges)
You do a barbed javelin. It does, instead of X damage, X+a damage, where a is the barbs damage. Either X+a>Y, and thus it's a coin flip, or X+a<Y, and thus just need to use Z+a charges of CLW.
Your examples have done zero to solve the problem with binary traps. They just change either the lethality of such traps, or the amount of wallet-draining they do. But, barbed or not, a trap that shoots a javelin against the party is just a binary threat, which is either solved by the rogue's (or other character) single die roll, or just punishes the party with a few gold pieces spent in healing.
In order to be interesting, traps need to be a threat that the FULL PARTY face (like an encounter), and a threat that can REACT to the party, and that NEED to be solvedIf there's an orc throwing javelins at you behind a door, and you flee, the orc might pursue you, or set an alarm. If there's a javelin trap in a door, and you just use another corridor, or bypass the door in any way, the trap is overcome and gives you XP. If the orc misses his first attack, you still have to solve the enocunter, or the orc will take another javelin and throw it at you. The javelin trap does not. If it misses, the "encounter" is over. Even if it hits, the encounter is over too, you just neeed to heal the damage
Do you want to know how I would change traps to be meaningful?
Traps should look like this scene.
The whole party tries to defeat a "trap", which is a multiround threat, allowing for different strategies. THAT's an intersting trap. A "crap, I step in the wrong place and now I'm shot" isn`t.
Sadly, Pathfinder traps aren't like those.
Some of the people in this thread SERIOUSLY need to check out some of the Grimtooth's Traps books.Pathfinder is not designed for that kind of trap. If you use traps that are solved by mechanisms other than "rogue rolls disable device" then the circular justification for the rogue is lost. Using Grimtooth traps means sacrificing a party role a lot of people are attached to.
Good riddance.
The circular justification for the rogue is just that: circular.
If the GM runs the kind of game where skills feature heavily, regardless of traps, the rogue is good to play. It seems like that kind of campaign is rare, because most of the book is about combat, and most of the discussions are about combat.
There are some good ideas here...we're not the first to see the problem.
This guy even has a solution...
Sadly, Pathfinder traps aren't like those.So you think none of these traps are 'pathfinder traps'? Please tell me, then, what makes a trap count as a 'pathfinder trap', since obviously existing in PF and being written for PF isn't enough in your mind.
Well, I don't own that specific Adventure Path, so I haven't seen them before. The traps in the DMG aren't like that, neither are most the traps of the AP I do own (or have played).
In any case, I'm reading them right now. And I'm not seeing anything to write home about. Many of them are just binary "roll X or take Y damage" of some sort, with some debuff attached. See for example the Dragging hook: a +20 attack that does 1d8+6 damage. It pulls you in the next round, unless you take an action and take +1d6 extra damage. So basically you take 1d8+1d6+6, then heal with 3 charges of CLW, and earn XP of a CR6. Compare that to a real CR6 encounter, like a Wyvern, Djinni, or a 7th level wizard. I think the later make for a much more interesting encounter than the dragging hook.
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I've said as much in the past. I don't know if everyone at Paizo just hates traps or if they are actually horrible at designing them, but there is some kind of problem there.If your idea of a "trap" is a single die roll to determine if you take damage, and nothing else, then yea, that would be a really boring trap by itself. That's not because traps are boring, it just means you did a horrible job designing that trap.It's not "my idea" of a trap. It's the trap that comes in the Dungeon Mastery Guide. Which was not designed by me, was designed by Paizo's staff. So you can go and tell them they did a horrible job designing traps, because I did not design nothing.
They're just following the 3E trap design paradigm. You should direct your grognardish nostalgia-fueled grar at Monte Cook, Skip Williams and Jonathan Tweet. You know, the people who killed everything Gary and Dave stood for and walked over 30 years of holy tradition of the best game ever, where every trap was a binary survive/die situation.
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A fairly popular book put out by Necromancer Games was The Worst of Grimtooth's Traps. It was quite a few of the Grimtooth traps given stats. Stats for 3.5, fully compatible with Pathfinder, by the way. My issue with the traps that Paizo uses isn't that they use the Pathfinder system...it's that they are by and large, overly simple and uncreative. Which isn't bad in and of itself, as long as you mix it up every once in a while and have something a bit more imaginative and interesting. Hell, they don't even have to think...they could just use something directly out of Wurst.
And by the way, the Pathfinder mechanics for traps make them far more binary than any "puzzle as trap". So you might want to rethink how to phrase your condescension.
Why not put in traps that require skill and badassery after activated.
Trip trap via trip wire log swings down to crush skull/ reflex save & str check to cut it in half avoiding tragedy
Or throw in traps in order to make the party do something
"we wanna leave"...pressure plate "awww I'm sorry it seems the exit collapsed and is sealed good luck finding another way"
Those are quite cool. As I pointed, a trap where you are caged in a room and the walls are slowly trying to squash you, like the scene in Star Wars Trash compactor, is cool. It brings all the group something to do. Some members could try to use STR to move big chunks of scrap metal to slow the wall. Others can try to disable the mechanism, or slow the walls through spells. Some others could try to find a secret door to leave the room. Quite cool, much better than "you step on the wrong tile, take 1d6+6 damage".
The problem with that kind of traps is two-fold. First, as someone has pointed, it destroy the circular reasoning for Rogues. Rogues are needed, because there are traps in the game that can be overcome with disable device. And traps which can be overcome with disable device are in the game, because otherwise, rogues aren't needed.
The second problem with this kind of Puzzle-styled traps, where the trap does not spring and directly do damage, but put the group in a dangerous enviroment that need to be addresed, is that it further increase the sensation of spellcastery dominance, unless everything is GM-fiat vs them. For example, the above wall-crushing trap isn't really that cool if the party wizard can Dimensional Door. However, this can be worked around, and at the very least, it's a better solution than the PF average "step in wrong place, take 1d6+6" traps
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Traps should admittedly rely on a psychology as well.
I've done this in cases where the rogue easilly found the bypass mechanism for a trap, only to discover the bypass mechanism was trapped seperately (and had its own bypass mechanism built in just because the trapsmith was that much of a jerk).
Traps that form integral portions of an environment are also something I've been toying with. Like a pair of slamming walls that process fluids that would otherwise flood the place. Although I guess they register more as 'hazards.'
Traps on equipment are also nasty. Again, you want to save this stuff for when the party is dealing with what I'd call 'trap experts.'
It means they can go back into relaxation mode when not dealing with say kobolds or fiends, and aren't terrified of springloaded daggers hidden in their pants in a normal circumstance.
I still feel bad about that. The adventurers came across a pair of comfortable looking leather pants in the kobold (and trap filled) dungeon, on a pole, with a sign crudely written reading 'Free Pants.' They assumed it was loot, one of them put it on and discovered they were lined with a caustic chemical. I thought its malice was obvious. :/
I still feel bad about that. The adventurers came across a pair of comfortable looking leather pants in the kobold (and trap filled) dungeon, on a pole, with a sign crudely written reading 'Free Pants.' They assumed it was loot, one of them put it on and discovered they were lined with a caustic chemical. I thought its malice was obvious. :/
Never pick up a duck in a dungeon.
Or in this case, free pants.
Last trap I ran:
The party found treasure vault, picked the lock, but failed to search for traps. (Searching for traps is boring and traps never really kill anyone anyway...)
They went inside to investigate a pile of coins.
The door slammed shut. One PC had waited outside and failed a reflex save to jump inside to avoid splitting the group.
Then a lightning trap went off in the floor.
Then the golem that had been hiding in the pile of coins attacked, and the party had to fight it while injured and with one party member unable to help.
I think it was reasonably satisfying. There were multiple elements (if they'd found one trap they might not have checked for the other one), a genuine sense of danger, something for everyone to do (less so for the player left behind) and if the group had successfully performed 'disable device' there would still have been an encounter to deal with.
That's natural selection at work. Disable Device won't help somebody who's that naive.
We once had a player who couldn't simply not to touch everything. Once we found, in AD&D, an altar with two books. One of the books was titled "Life", while the other was titled "death". The character went, and touched the "death". He died instantly, no save.
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A good trap will terrify the party; I know one gm who did that with one sentence: "Funny, your lantern flame just turned blue."
Other traps are good in moving the party someplace they don't want to go, like the long corridor that suddenly flipped over and toppled the party onto a lower level of the dungeon, including the flying wizard, who got swatted like a fly. Or the long 10' wide hallway, which had a 10x10 room at the end. Finding the exit, they find another long 10' wide hallway, at the end of which was a 10x10 room, repeat aboutfive
times. The party's map looked ridiculous. The truth was...
There was only one hallway, with six 10 rooms at the end. When the party entered, the room would slide back to the beginning of the hallway. Of course, that was back in the day when people actually made maps of dungeons. It wouldn't fly in the Pathfinder era, where gms actually show the damn dungeon areas that have been travelled through, and being able to trace your way or of a dungeon is assured. Back in my day we hoped we'd find our way back before we starved, and screwing with the map was possibly a slow death. Players have it SO easy these days.
Traps, something that should have died out long ago
Rogue, a class that should have died out long ago
the 2 go hand in hand
if we remove the rogue from the books, we can actually afford to design characters with more skills because we won't need to justify protecting the Archaic concept of a tomb raiding thief dressed in a leather catsuit who deals with traps
instead of a class specifically designed for traps, we could drop the rogue class from the next edition, give everybody a lot more skill points and a better class skill list to compensate, remove the concept of the disable device skill, and bring back the use of creative puzzles to deal with traps because we won't have to protect the niche belonging to the otherwise useless hot elven babe in the black leather catsuit nor justify her existence
wanna play a hot elven babe in a leather catsuit?
that would be called a ranger, or a rogue, or whatever you call your sneaky guerilla warriors. you would have more skills, and more feats, but you wouldn't have to waste skill points and party spotlight when the whole party could work together.
it would be, that rogue is no longer the trapfinder, but the guerilla warrior and likely transferred in part each to ranger and fighter.
if we remove the rogue from the books, we can actually afford to design characters with more skills because we won't need to justify protecting the Archaic concept of a tomb raiding thief dressed in a leather catsuit who deals with traps
instead of a class specifically designed for traps, we could drop the rogue class from the next edition, give everybody a lot more skill points and a better class skill list to compensate, remove the concept of the disable device skill, and bring back the use of creative puzzles to deal with traps because we won't have to protect the niche belonging to the otherwise useless hot elven babe in the black leather catsuit nor justify her existence.
I think you bring up a good point about how the skill system works, but removing the rogue as a class is likely to annoy a lot of people, given how iconic the thief/rogue is. However, I think junking the idea of the rogue as the best skill monkey/trap finder would be a good move all around. The role is obsolete, overvalued, and requires circular justification (Why do rogues exist? To deal with traps. Why do traps exist? So rogues can deal with them).
I like the idea of a thief/scoundrel/assassin class, and think Pathfinder should keep it. It just needs to work better than the current rogue does.
if we remove the rogue from the books, we can actually afford to design characters with more skills because we won't need to justify protecting the Archaic concept of a tomb raiding thief dressed in a leather catsuit who deals with traps
instead of a class specifically designed for traps, we could drop the rogue class from the next edition, give everybody a lot more skill points and a better class skill list to compensate, remove the concept of the disable device skill, and bring back the use of creative puzzles to deal with traps because we won't have to protect the niche belonging to the otherwise useless hot elven babe in the black leather catsuit nor justify her existence.
I think you bring up a good point about how the skill system works, but removing the rogue as a class is likely to annoy a lot of people, given how iconic the thief/rogue is. However, I think junking the idea of the rogue as the best skill monkey/trap finder would be a good move all around. The role is obsolete, overvalued, and requires circular justification (Why do rogues exist? To deal with traps. Why do traps exist? So rogues can deal with them).
I like the idea of a thief/scoundrel/assassin class, and think Pathfinder should keep it. It just needs to work better than the current rogue does.
the idea isn't bad, i just dislike their Malcontribution to anything that isn't traps.
i can understand a rogue class akin to the one in Dragon Age Origins which is based on Dexterity and Intellect as a short/mid range assassin more than a rogue whose only purpose is traps.
Dragon Age Origins, anyone with the training and enough cunning (intelligence) could disable traps, including magical ones, but the difference between rogues and fighters, was that fighters had more physical defense, health, and fortitude, while rogues had better physical damage, evasion, and magic resistance.
Fighters were the heavy armored juggernaughts who did the sundering, the tanking, the heavy impact. fighters made the bigger primary hits, but rogues deal nearly as much damage, and had the ability to inflict conditions, and drop normal foes pretty swiftly if they attacked a foe from the back or sides.
rogues were the lightly armored or even unarmored characters with smaller weapons who compromised the swashbucklers and assassins, using dexterity and intellect to augment their combat prowess and doing nasty backstabs, low blows, and dirty tricks. most of their damage came from conditions inflicted on their attacks, such as bleed damage, blindness and the like.
while the fighter was a defender, the rogue was a striker who dealt damage and inflicted conditions. a tank fighter could stun and stagger with a shield bash, but a rogue could blind a foe, make them bleed, dazzle them, or whatever
The "alarm trap" type (trap goes off, has its effect and alerts monsters nearby) sounds good, since that way the trapfinder still gets a chance to do their thing, but if it's missed it's more than "10 damage, we need another CLW" - instead you're suddenly fighting a goblin patrol while part of the party is entangled or slowed or ...
(BTW, how much does the assumption of things like CLW wands being buyable, easily available change the game? In older editions magic items were pretty much find-them-only, and I think it was actual advice in the 2nd edition DMG NOT to have magic item shops and such...)
magic items and CLW wands were purchasable since edition 3.0 when price tags were placed on magical items and the wealth by level chart was introduced.
for about nearly 15 years, we had magic item shops as a default.
rogues were the lightly armored or even unarmored characters with smaller weapons who compromised the swashbucklers and assassins, using dexterity and intellect to augment their combat prowess and doing nasty backstabs, low blows, and dirty tricks. most of their damage came from conditions inflicted on their attacks, such as bleed damage, blindness and the like.
Reminds me of an idea for a new way to work rogues and their sneak attack rules. Basically, Rogues would be designed to make heavy use of the Dirty Trick combat maneuver, which is great for providing short-term debuffs and very thematically appropriate for the rogue/scoundrel sort of the character. Heck, the description of the Dirty Trick maneuver in the APG pretty much screams rogue/swashbuckler.
So yeah, something like rogues getting a bonus on making/resiting Dirty Tricks, and some way of using the maneuver without hurting action economy (Like being able to perform a Dirty Trick as a swift action whenever they make a sneak attack). It gives the rogue a bit of a combat boost, while still staying completely on-theme.
i wouldn't mind seeing openly takable alternate class features for rogues that replace sneak attack with some kind of passive static damage bonus that applies against everything. as an example
Dirty Fighting (Ex); a rogue with the dirty fighting alternate class feature gains a competence bonus to damage rolls equal to her rogue level when wielding a weapon she is proficient with due to her tendency to target weak points and the like. a rogue with dirty fighting for the purpose of prerequisites and effects based on number of sneak attack dice; is treated as having a number of sneak attack dice equal to half her rogue level rounded up. a character with dirty fighting who multiclasses into another sneak attacking class may sacrifice her sneak attack progression in that class to continue her dirty fighting progression. dirty fighting replaces sneak attack and all improvements of it
Pierce the Gap (Ex); a rogue of 3rd level or higher ignores 1 point of armor class and damage reduction from a foe she attacks, at 6th level and every 3 levels after, she ignores an additional point of armor class and damage reduction from that foe, to a minimum damage reduction of 0, and to a maximum amount of armor class ignored equal to the sum of her foes armor, natural armor and shield bonuses to armor class. this ability replaces trap sense. a ninja who takes this archetype instead replaces no trace.