I think I'm missing the point here...Remember this:
If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each.No line of sight? You only know that there is magic, no idea about what school is involved.You can't identify the spell involved if you don't see the auras.
You don't even know the kind of magic, you only know that there is something magical in the chest, on the wall, etc.
So it is easy to create a lot of low cost false traps with with spells with a permanent or long lasting effects. That would make detect magic almost useless to find magical traps.Dispel magic too require line of sight, as it is a targeted spell.
With an appropriate trigger mechanism the magic trap can be immune to dispel magic.
I don't remember ever saying that :P
Am I the only person who thinks it's good that other classes can disarm magical traps, so as to avoid the 'someone HAS to play a rogue' syndrome?
(Now if only there were more non-divine healing options ...)
Detect Magic should simply be folded into a Spellcraft check. Keeping it as a spell IMO is simply for nostalgia, and is essentially a "cantrip-tax".Agreed.
Huh... I may need to apply that as a houserule. I wonder what else you can do with that idea. I've always been tempted to let anyone do a bit of light magic anyway.
I don't remember ever saying that :P
Well they were quoting detect magic with a little M, you've got a big M. Are you related?
Am I the only person who thinks it's good that other classes can disarm magical traps, so as to avoid the 'someone HAS to play a rogue' syndrome?
No, I let anyone disable them. However I rarely use them because they're really just there to set off a crazy contraption that might be considered a fun encounter rather than you know... 6D6 fireball > heal > move on. I always thought it was weird a guy with 20 engineering, 20 trapmaking, 20 dungeoneering, 20 arcane, can't actually do anything about a magical trap but stare at it.
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Am I the only person who thinks it's good that other classes can disarm magical traps, so as to avoid the 'someone HAS to play a rogue' syndrome?No, I let anyone disable them. However I rarely use them because they're really just there to set off a crazy contraption that might be considered a fun encounter rather than you know... 6D6 fireball > heal > move on. I always thought it was weird a guy with 20 engineering, 20 trapmaking, 20 dungeoneering, 20 arcane, can't actually do anything about a magical trap but stare at it.
Oh, Celestia yes. I always hated those traps that were just stand-alone damage like that. I love traps that get set off in a room where it's an encounter just to try to turn it off ... or there are monsters in the room who are functionally immune to it.
I once had a room that was full of swinging horizontal blades, from about 3' high and up ... and kobolds. Take a chance on getting hit, or crawl and be penalized in combat. Enjoy!
Huh... I may need to apply that as a houserule. I wonder what else you can do with that idea. I've always been tempted to let anyone do a bit of light magic anyway.Detect Magic should simply be folded into a Spellcraft check. Keeping it as a spell IMO is simply for nostalgia, and is essentially a "cantrip-tax".Agreed.
Possible idea: When you have at least 10 ranks in some skills, you get to cast certain cantrips as an SLA at will...
I don't know what skills and cantrips, though... Maybe...:
- Read Magic and Arcane Mark as part of Linguistics or Spellcraft?
- Stabilize/Bleed as part of Heal? Maybe Vigor and/or Resistance too?
- Mage Hand and/or Prestidigitation as part of Sleight of Hand?
- Open/Close as part of Disable Device?
- Ghost Sound as part of Bluff?
- Mending as part of Kn(Engineering) so that the skill is actually useful?
- Detect Poison/Create Water as part of Survival or Craft(Alchemy)?
- Disrupt Undead as part of Kn(Religion)?
Detect Magic should simply be folded into a Spellcraft check. Keeping it as a spell IMO is simply for nostalgia, and is essentially a "cantrip-tax".Agreed.
Agreed
I once had a room that was full of swinging horizontal blades, from about 3' high and up ... and kobolds. Take a chance on getting hit, or crawl and be penalized in combat. Enjoy!
I once had something like that without the kobolds. There was also a balancing ledge and a really long pit. It was one of those take damage and go on type traps. He wanted us to try and brave it. I smashed it all with a spiked chain. He didn't give me a nice face.
I always liked traps that you could find a lot of ways through or out of. Ones that's are just a riddle are short or take forever, and ones that just do damage you walk away from. The one that shapes the battlefield is a great excuse to control terrain, and the ones that make your party freak out are sometimes the most fun.
Possible idea: When you have at least 10 ranks in some skills, you get to cast certain cantrips as an SLA at will...Huh... I may need to apply that as a houserule. I wonder what else you can do with that idea. I've always been tempted to let anyone do a bit of light magic anyway.Detect Magic should simply be folded into a Spellcraft check. Keeping it as a spell IMO is simply for nostalgia, and is essentially a "cantrip-tax".Agreed.
I'll have great thoughts in the morning after coffee. I'd say it wouldn't be too bad to use a ritual system for spell craft and possibly giving it spell craft options. I'm sure someone's already done something similar. Its good to have a quick and cheap way without any resource management I'd think. I think it'd do better tied to spell craft with other skills as prereqs that way it feels more optional and is tied to spell casting at least a little bit, unless you fluff it as being so good as something its like magic(the idea that magic is as good as 10 ranks in a skill is bleh). Even low level spells being replicated by a spell check isn't an awful idea, depending on how you go about it. Some spells only exist for utility, and likely would only be used by NPCs or in puzzles you craft as the GM anyway.
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Am I the only person who thinks it's good that other classes can disarm magical traps, so as to avoid the 'someone HAS to play a rogue' syndrome?No, I let anyone disable them. However I rarely use them because they're really just there to set off a crazy contraption that might be considered a fun encounter rather than you know... 6D6 fireball > heal > move on. I always thought it was weird a guy with 20 engineering, 20 trapmaking, 20 dungeoneering, 20 arcane, can't actually do anything about a magical trap but stare at it.Oh, Celestia yes. I always hated those traps that were just stand-alone damage like that. I love traps that get set off in a room where it's an encounter just to try to turn it off ... or there are monsters in the room who are functionally immune to it.
I once had a room that was full of swinging horizontal blades, from about 3' high and up ... and kobolds. Take a chance on getting hit, or crawl and be penalized in combat. Enjoy!
those are the fun traps
but rogues are underpowered for the following reasons
their primary defining abilities are passed on to other classes on a silver platter
their defining abilities, exist solely to tax table time, and are nothing more, than a pair of skill rolls done to perform little else but mitigate a tiny bit of hit point damage.
the traps, are little more than a resource tax that costs a handful of wand charges, they are stopped by a skill check, and serve little more, than to force at least one party member to take a level of rogue.
not everybody wants to be taxed into playing a rogue.
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Well, yes, I don't argue that.
Which is why it's a GOOD thing that nobody HAS to play a rogue anymore.
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then you should learn to accept, that the only reason the rogue is your primary trapfinder, is because you sought to eliminate the other trapfinding options by negating the nonroguish trap options.I think I'm missing the point here...Remember this:
If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each.No line of sight? You only know that there is magic, no idea about what school is involved.You can't identify the spell involved if you don't see the auras.
You don't even know the kind of magic, you only know that there is something magical in the chest, on the wall, etc.
So it is easy to create a lot of low cost false traps with with spells with a permanent or long lasting effects. That would make detect magic almost useless to find magical traps.Dispel magic too require line of sight, as it is a targeted spell.
With an appropriate trigger mechanism the magic trap can be immune to dispel magic.
So, to sum up your posts:
- trap builders should be morons that don't craft anything that will make life difficult for non specialists when trying to defeat them;- giving extra powers to the spell Mount defeat traps, the problem is with the rouge, not with giving a first level spell power that it hasn't.
Really you think that putting the magical trap behind a door with it triggering if you don't say a password aloud before opening the door is is "eliminating trapfinding options by negating the nonroguish trap options"?
Or instead it is using a minimal level of thought when designing a trap?
then you should learn to accept, that the only reason the rogue is your primary trapfinder, is because you sought to eliminate the other trapfinding options by negating the nonroguish trap options.I think I'm missing the point here...Remember this:
If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each.No line of sight? You only know that there is magic, no idea about what school is involved.You can't identify the spell involved if you don't see the auras.
You don't even know the kind of magic, you only know that there is something magical in the chest, on the wall, etc.
So it is easy to create a lot of low cost false traps with with spells with a permanent or long lasting effects. That would make detect magic almost useless to find magical traps.Dispel magic too require line of sight, as it is a targeted spell.
With an appropriate trigger mechanism the magic trap can be immune to dispel magic.So, to sum up your posts:
- trap builders should be morons that don't craft anything that will make life difficult for non specialists when trying to defeat them;
- giving extra powers to the spell Mount defeat traps, the problem is with the rouge, not with giving a first level spell power that it hasn't.Really you think that putting the magical trap behind a door with it triggering if you don't say a password aloud before opening the door is is "eliminating trapfinding options by negating the nonroguish trap options"?
Or instead it is using a minimal level of thought when designing a trap?
this debate goes nowhere
when building a trap, the trapsmith would logically include a way for them to personally easily bypass their own trap.
mount and various other low level summons have been use to set of traps since 3rd edition started
might be the way my own group runs summons, accessing the party hive mind.
the problem isn't with the rogue
it's that to make a rogue feel useful, the trap has to be designed in a way, counterintuitive to the trapsmith's survival, and placed under so many fiat based defenses, that a rogue is the only option
my problem with the rogue, is that certain members on these boards, have to go many extra miles to make rogues feel useful
for you magical password trap, it either requires highly advanced technology, which is a setting specific thing, or magic, which requires the person to be a spellcaster
for a magical trap, the person has to be a spellcaster to make it
most spellcasters often don't have access to trapfinding, so they need an alternate way to bypass their own personally constructed magical trap
this usually means leaving magical traps vulnerable to such tactics that any spellcaster can use. such as the wand of mount, scroll of dispel magic, detect magic cantrip or other commonly used spell
a trap that the creator can't bypass, is bound to create a dead trapsmith before long
a general rule of trapsmithing, is not to design a trap you cannot personally survive or bypass
while traps should be difficult for non-specialists, the rogue shouldn't be the only viable form of specialist, which is what it appears you suggested.
what about non-rogues whom take disable device? by maxing disable device, they too should be considered specialists.
If detect magic is so valuable that it's a "cantrip tax," the solution isn't to make it free. Rather, make it a feat. It can still be a function of Spellcraft for success, but feats are WAY more valuable than cantrip slots, so people would think twice before grabbing it.
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this debate goes nowhere
when building a trap, the trapsmith would logically include a way for them to personally easily bypass their own trap.
mount and various other low level summons have been use to set of traps since 3rd edition started
might be the way my own group runs summons, accessing the party hive mind.
the problem isn't with the rogue
it's that to make a rogue feel useful, the trap has to be designed in a way, counterintuitive to the trapsmith's survival, and placed under so many fiat based defenses, that a rogue is the only option
my problem with the rogue, is that certain members on these boards, have to go many extra miles to make rogues feel useful
for you magical password trap, it either requires highly advanced technology, which is a setting specific thing, or magic, which requires the person to be a spellcaster
for a magical trap, the person has to be a spellcaster to make it
most spellcasters often don't have access to trapfinding, so they need an alternate way to bypass their own personally constructed magical trap
this usually means leaving magical traps vulnerable to such tactics that any spellcaster can use. such as the wand of mount, scroll of dispel magic, detect magic cantrip or other commonly used spell
a trap that the creator can't bypass, is bound to create a dead trapsmith before long
a general rule of trapsmithing, is not to design a trap you cannot personally survive or bypass
while traps should be difficult for non-specialists, the rogue shouldn't be the only viable form of specialist, which is what it appears you suggested.
what about non-rogues whom take disable device? by maxing disable device, they too should be considered specialists.
The whole discussion wasn't about Detect magic defeating magical traps?
Who should make magical traps if not someone that can craft magical items?BTW, Master Craftsman is sufficient for that, you don't need to be a spellcaster.
"when building a trap, the trapsmith would logically include a way for them to personally easily bypass their own trap."
And what is a trap with a password to avoid it if not a trap with a easy way for the creator to bypass it?
Why the creator should need to disable the trap to bypass it?
If detect magic is so valuable that it's a "cantrip tax," the solution isn't to make it free. Rather, make it a feat. It can still be a function of Spellcraft for success, but feats are WAY more valuable than cantrip slots, so people would think twice before grabbing it.
That would just make it a feat tax, which would be worse. What we're saying is that every spellcaster should have access to it at no resource cost.
That would just make it a feat tax, which would be worse. What we're saying is that every spellcaster should have access to it at no resource cost.
Then just make everyone able to detect magic all the time -- magic is inherently visible. Eliminate magical traps, glyphs, etc. from the game entirely, because they're pointless.
Or change the range of detect magic to "touch." Then the ability retains some value, but isn't a "gimme" all the time, and the game plays more or less the way it did. (And, as an added bonus, you don't end up with ridiculously contrived scenarios in which everything in the world is coated in lead-based paint.)
this debate goes nowhere
when building a trap, the trapsmith would logically include a way for them to personally easily bypass their own trap.
mount and various other low level summons have been use to set of traps since 3rd edition started
might be the way my own group runs summons, accessing the party hive mind.
the problem isn't with the rogue
it's that to make a rogue feel useful, the trap has to be designed in a way, counterintuitive to the trapsmith's survival, and placed under so many fiat based defenses, that a rogue is the only option
my problem with the rogue, is that certain members on these boards, have to go many extra miles to make rogues feel useful
for you magical password trap, it either requires highly advanced technology, which is a setting specific thing, or magic, which requires the person to be a spellcaster
for a magical trap, the person has to be a spellcaster to make it
most spellcasters often don't have access to trapfinding, so they need an alternate way to bypass their own personally constructed magical trap
this usually means leaving magical traps vulnerable to such tactics that any spellcaster can use. such as the wand of mount, scroll of dispel magic, detect magic cantrip or other commonly used spell
a trap that the creator can't bypass, is bound to create a dead trapsmith before long
a general rule of trapsmithing, is not to design a trap you cannot personally survive or bypass
while traps should be difficult for non-specialists, the rogue shouldn't be the only viable form of specialist, which is what it appears you suggested.
what about non-rogues whom take disable device? by maxing disable device, they too should be considered specialists.
The whole discussion wasn't about Detect magic defeating magical traps?
Who should make magical traps if not someone that can craft magical items?
BTW, Master Craftsman is sufficient for that, you don't need to be a spellcaster.
"when building a trap, the trapsmith would logically include a way for them to personally easily bypass their own trap."
And what is a trap with a password to avoid it if not a trap with a easy way for the creator to bypass it?
Why the creator should need to disable the trap to bypass it?
the problem with a password it requires any of the following criteria
setting specific or highly advanced technology most fantasy settings don't include
the ability to cast sufficiently powerful spells
master craftsman lets you qualify for a limited subset of items from craft magic arms and armor, or craft wondrous item. of which, magical traps are neither, there is no feat tax for crafting magical traps, there is a spell tax though.
That would just make it a feat tax, which would be worse. What we're saying is that every spellcaster should have access to it at no resource cost.Then just make everyone able to detect magic all the time -- magic is inherently visible. Eliminate magical traps, glyphs, etc. from the game entirely, because they're pointless.
Or change the range of detect magic to "touch." Then the ability retains some value, but isn't a "gimme" all the time, and the game plays more or less the way it did. (And, as an added bonus, you don't end up with ridiculously contrived scenarios in which everything in the world is coated in lead-based paint.)
You're not even trying, are you?
Slippery Slope Argument, 10 yard penalty, loss of down.
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Rogue does not have a problem because of traps. The rogue's problem can be summed up as follows:
There's A Demand for Party Slots
The typical D&D/Pathfinder game generally has between 3-5 players and one Dungeon/Game Master. In merely 3-5 "slots", players are expected to deal with everything. When I say everything, I mean everything. From the first page of the environment section to the last page of the last bestiary to the multitude of conditions in the glossary. Characters who can do more are simply more valuable to a group. Having a fast car and a car that gets good gas mileage is great, but having a car that is both fast and gets great mileage is better. It's just that simple.
By its nature the game appreciates classes that are capable of doing wide variety of things and depreciates classes that are do not. Most of the core classes are very versatile and capable of filling multiple needs (I'm not going to say "roles", because I feel "needs" is more accurate).
A need can vary wildly. Everything from getting along in the wild to talking down a hostage situation to breaking a terrible curse can be described as a need. You need someone who can address or do something to aid in that situation, and having more than one person to fall back on is a valuable thing (unless your players act like spoiled two year olds).
The rogue's problem is not detect magic. It's merely that the rogue is an archaic remnant of a class that existed for little more than dealing with a specific sort of problem. Its very existence was antithetical to good game design because it created a situation where either you MUST have class X or nobody could fill that need. Likewise, its existence meant that no other class could be able to fill the need without obsoleting class X.
To many people, the rogue fills the need of the trap-meister or the stealthy-damager but fills little else. Because of this, rogues suffer the worst when another class fills their narrow niche while providing more. The moment that happens, the rogue may not be unplayable but it is obsolete.
As an example, let's look at the classes in core that are the most balanced between each other. The barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, and wizard. Each of these classes has certain strengths and weaknesses but each can answer a wide variety of needs and usually without needing to specialize in it to be capable. This is good. No one must play a particular class, and of these the most specialized are probably the barbarian and sorcerer.
Meanwhile, the classes that are less valuable or capable of fulfilling needs are fighter, monk (though I will say the monk is being shown a lot more love these days), and rogue. Generally due to gross specialization that leads to being pretty decent at one or two things but pretty useless beyond that. Coming back to the rogue as our example, the rogue has a few needs they can do well at.
1. The rogue can deal decent melee combat damage under the right conditions.
2. The rogue can provide a variety of useful skills.
3. The rogue can find and disable traps manually with significant skill investment. The rogue has the benefit of being able to disable magical traps with the Disable Device skill.
The problem is, all of these things are needs that are generally able to be met by Bards or Rangers, who typically preform better at those needs while being able to bring more to the table as new needs arise.
On the Subject of Traps
Traps are an interesting thing. Now I'm not going to get into the design of traps (others have pointed out excellent examples of what makes a good or interesting trap), but I do want to discuss them from a perspective of dealing with them.
Detect magic is generally going to be sufficient for dealing with a trap. Blocking line of effect will protect the trap from being revealed or disabled via detect/dispel tactics but then the trap is generally going to be useless for the exact same reasons (if you have no line of effect to use detect magic or dispel magic on a trap, it can't shoot a lightning bolt at you either).
Meanwhile, you can still find magical traps without trapfinding (classes like Rangers are actually better at finding traps most of the time because they tend to be rewarded for having at least a 12+ Wisdom), and you can disable mundane traps regardless of your class (as a side note, my psion my friday night game has a rank invested in Disable Device and some masterwork tools so she can open locks and deal with minor traps). If the trap can reach you, more than likely it can be disabled, rendered impotent, bypassed, or destroyed without ever resorting to Trapfinding.
And that is a good thing. Such a mechanic would be akin to making a cleric required to fight undead. Imagine for a moment if to harm undead creatures you had to have a cleric first use channel energy, and only once the cleric had damaged the undead in this way did they lose their immunity to all other damage, allowing the party to harm them. If you didn't have a cleric then your party just fails against an entire creature type.
That would suck.
The real issue with good traps is that they make for poor gaming - traps can be obvious or well hidden, wimpy or deadly.
Obvious wimpy traps might as well not even be there.
Obvious deadly traps will be found, and simply waste time as the PCs figure out how to avoid them.
Well hidden wimpy traps don't make much in-game sense (who goes to the effort of making a crappy trap?) and encourage "I check for traps every 5 feet," which is boring.
Well hidden deadly traps basically just kill a PC out of the blue, then really encourage "I check for traps every 5 feet" for the rest of linear time.
Yep. Either traps are pointless, or they kill someone outright. Pointless traps are a waste of game time, and deadly traps killing a character is a crappy thing to do.
Ashiel has stated my intended points far more elegantly than i ever could.
as another drawback with the mentioned password traps
the passage of time could change one, it could make them forget the password, or it could give people a means to learn it themselves.
essentially
passwords can be forgotten, and stolen
and anybody, whom befriended the trapmaker for at least a month, could come up with a series of possible passwords by studying their personal patterns.
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Ashiel has stated my intended points far more elegantly than i ever could.
as another drawback with the mentioned password traps
the passage of time could change one, it could make them forget the password, or it could give people a means to learn it themselves.
essentially
passwords can be forgotten, and stolen
and anybody, whom befriended the trapmaker for at least a month, could come up with a series of possible passwords by studying their personal patterns.
Not to mention that passwords just beg to be divined. Whenever my group comes across the - albeit rare - password situation, it's usually going to come down to divining the answer or a strong clue as to the password or method of bypassing it with spells like commune or contact other plane (commune being a great spell to use to crack the password of a person you know, since you can ask questions like: "Is the password somebody's name? A location?" and so on).
In all honesty, in most cases the players actually need these sorts of options to get past passwords like these in my games since a lot of the "dungeons" that the players encounter are ancient ruins and the like, many of which have been lost to time with their owners long dead or vanished. Half of the motivation for delving in dungeons is to discover what was lost to begin with.
Ashiel has stated my intended points far more elegantly than i ever could.
as another drawback with the mentioned password traps
the passage of time could change one, it could make them forget the password, or it could give people a means to learn it themselves.
essentially
passwords can be forgotten, and stolen
and anybody, whom befriended the trapmaker for at least a month, could come up with a series of possible passwords by studying their personal patterns.
Not to mention that passwords just beg to be divined. Whenever my group comes across the - albeit rare - password situation, it's usually going to come down to divining the answer or a strong clue as to the password or method of bypassing it with spells like commune or contact other plane (commune being a great spell to use to crack the password of a person you know, since you can ask questions like: "Is the password somebody's name? A location?" and so on).
In all honesty, in most cases the players actually need these sorts of options to get past passwords like these in my games since a lot of the "dungeons" that the players encounter are ancient ruins and the like, many of which have been lost to time with their owners long dead or vanished. Half of the motivation for delving in dungeons is to discover what was lost to begin with.
so true
with various forms of divination magic
what point is there in being an arcane trapsmith?
all the stuff that stops magic from countering magical traps, stops magical traps from doing their job.
Don't get me wrong. I love magic traps. I use them frequently as both a GM and a player (craft wondrous = trap everything man). The easiest counter to detect magic is magic aura. It lasts days per caster level (which means anchoring a continuous magic aura effect is actually pretty cheap since it gets a pretty huge discount due to duration). It automatically foils detect magic, and could be overcome with an identify spell if the caster succeeds on their save but that's not very likely to be spammed as 1st level spell slots are valuable pretty much forever.
Detect magic first, Perception second. Those are pretty good first lines of defense.
On a side note, my favorite type of magic trap is probably resetting summon monster traps. Those are oodles of fun. =P