How the heck do you make traps FUN in a campaign? What's the most fun you've had with traps?

[OgreBattle]

Finding and disarming traps is part of the dungeon crawl experience. Back in pre-internet days, trap disarming was more of a narrative exercise in tossing bags of flour, rocks, and poking things with a 11ft pole. It can be fun but not everyone wants to play "read the DM's mind, either", so in D&D3e & Pathfinder you have a d20 roll for the process. But at it's worse that becomes *I roll to spot a trap!* *I roll to disarm it!*

What are ways to make it feel more involved? A good balance between player creativity and in-character skill use.

When I look at movies and stories with traps though, it's often triggering the trap that's the fun part (rolling boulders, ceilings crashing down and all that).

Have Pathfinder's designers given any specific advice for using traps in games?

[MagusJanus]

Puzzles to disarm a trap can help. Along with switches and such.

Then there's using things such as prestidigation and polymorph to make the trap really interesting... fail the disarm DC and you might end up being a bear wearing a pink tutu!

[Kimera757]

Make the trap part of an encounter.

Far too many traps are just "trigger trap due to insufficient paranoia, take X damage, use wand to top up, continue". Lame!

IMO, a better trap might be something in the villain's doorframe. Kick in his door, rush him in his nightclothes, and, oh look, you got turned into a frog and hit by a Maximized Energy Drain. Or a trap that casts Dispel Magic (or Disjunction!) when someone teleports near the trap. Such as PCs buffed to the gills trying a scry/buff/port gank.

Traps do not need to be hidden! I'm perfectly fine with PCs knowing where the traps are. Turrets are the best example of this. Maybe you saw the turrets (reward for high Perception) and maybe you didn't, but those turrets are basically stationary monsters. You need to either destroy the turrets (time not spent killing the kobolds who made them) or you can try to dash past the kobolds in order to disable or destroy the control panel, which has a pack of kobolds standing over it! (And maybe an explosive trap nearby that only explodes when there aren't any kobolds nearby.)

Also see this link: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060210a

The relevant info:

Quote:

the hidden trap that goes off without warning… the booby-trap that PCs just react to.

You know the type. It’s the poison needle that jabs the rogue picking the lock. It’s the explosive runes on the last page of the book. It’s the slay living spell that goes off whenever someone touches the door of the mausoleum.

I think these traps are fundamentally dissatisfying. Look at it from the player’s point of view.

Player: I go listen at the door.
DM: As you move down the corridor, it fills with caustic gas. Make a Fortitude save.
Player: [Rolls.] An 18.
DM: Not good enough. Take… [rolls]… 22 points of damage as you choke your way through the gas cloud. Now you’re at the door. Make that Listen check…

From the player’s point of view, he tried to do something ordinary, and he took damage for it. He eventually got to do what he wanted to do all along. He just took a little damage and earned some XP along the way. It’s almost entirely a mechanical transaction—no decisions involved. The trap’s only function in the overall adventure is to provide some minor attrition.

Worse, the whole table pays a penalty for that minor attrition. Now the PCs start taking 20 on every Search check. They develop elaborate operating procedures for opening a door. The pace of the game slows to a crawl. I ask myself this: Given that you have a finite amount of time at the D&D table with your friends, how much of that time do you want to devote to door-opening?

Does that mean no traps? Hardly. It means traps that feel like encounters, where the PCs work their way past them on a round-by-round basis. It means traps that function like interesting obstacles: big, obvious, and cool-looking.

An example might suffice: I’ve got a room full of swinging, bladed pendulums—an execution chamber that’s damaged and not exactly functioning the way its makers intended. Is it a trap encounter? Yes, the PCs will still get to use Disable Device to get the bladed pendulums to stop swinging. The PC can still use Search to find the hidden button that turns off the pendulums. And PCs can pile debris in the path of the pendulums or figure out the pattern of their swinging and deftly dart across the room.

No matter how the PCs get past the blades, the players feel like they did something. One way or another, they figured out a way to get through the room. If those blades had suddenly dropped out of the ceiling and started slicing up PCs, the players wouldn’t feel like they did something. They would feel like something was done to them. So I’m promising anyone who plays this adventure: No reactive traps. Listen at the door, sure, but you don’t need to check every single one for a slay living spell.

[Samuel Stone]

I quite liked on of the traps in the Shattered Star AP:

Trap:

Upon walking into the room, there is a strange blob that asks the PCs "What is your query?" The blob is essentially a research assistant that has been trapped to keep out inquiring minds that don't know the password to disarm it.

RESEARCH ASSISTANT CR 9 XP 6,400
Type magical; Perception DC 33; Disable Device DC 33
EFFECTS
Trigger question; Reset automatic (after a 2 round delay); Bypass speak the word "disarm" in Thassilonian
Effect spell effect (symbol of weakness; Fort DC 20 negates); if the trap is triggered multiple times, it cycles through the following symbols in order, restarting the pattern with a symbol of weakness after it finishes this progression: symbol of fear (Fort DC 19 negates), symbol of pain (Fort DC 18 negates), symbol of insanity (Will DC 21 negates)

This trap has some interesting effects that only trigger based on specific actions the PCs take, rather than an arbitrary sawblade that swings down when they open the door.

[Liam Warner]

I rather like making the players get involved. Anyway can have a "You step on tile X ceiling collapses" but if you make the player pull the lever that triggers the trap preferablly with a "Do not pull lever" sign (sadly that partiucular part obeyed the sign and didn't pull it" its so much more fun. It was a less serious campaign and I was playing around with the kill villain castle collapse trope whenever the BBEG is engaged in combat a minion is assigned to pull the "lever that shall unleash my ultimate weapon upon them" protected by a force barrier until his death (had to hire a minion with very low int not to question why it was only to be used after his death). Its whole purpose was to bring his castle down hopefully killing whoever got him in the process.

Most fun trap I had as a player was a series of rooms all set with lightning traps.

Room 1
A) Rogue fails search check "Its safe." (GM rolled behind screen) enters and triggers trap.
B) Three of us make our saves and dodge the lightning bolt.
C) Cleric fails his check and gets hit.

Room 2
A) Rogue fails search check "Its safe." enters and triggers trap.'
B) Three of us make our saves and dodge the lightning bolt.
C) Cleric fails his and gets hit . . . heals himself.

Room 3
A) Rogue fails search check "its safe . . . I think." Enters room and triggers trap.
B) Three of us make our saves and dodge the lightning bolt.
C) Cleric fails his and gets hit.

Room 4
A) Cleric "Okay I don't trust you anymore I'm going to wait in this room over here.
B) Rogue fails search check "Its safe, really guys it is." enters room and triggers trap.
C) Three of us make our saving throws and dodge the lightning bolt.
GM works out its ricochet path (old 1st ed game).
D) Cleric finds out he's in its path and again fails his save and gets hit " . . ." fun times and the look on his face after being hit by a ricocheting lightning bolt from a trap in another room legitimately was priceless.

It also gave me the idea later in that game to try and angle my attacks so I'd ricochet the lightning bolts and hit the monsters twice.

[137ben]

First, decide whether you want the trap to be an addition to the encounter, or to be the main feature.

If you want the trap to be the main event, check out the 3.5 book Dungeonscape.

If you want the trap to be a smaller part of an encounter, there are other ways. First, remember the Golden Rule of Traps:
Never use a trap that does nothing but hit-point damage.

For the important rooms in the villains lair, one of the best things you can have is a trap of Disjunction, contingent on unauthorized characters teleporting. While you're at it, also throw in a mass-stun/daze trap. This largely eliminates "scry and die" as an effective strategy: scry and die normally only works because it gives the PCs a surprise round, and allows them to buff before hand. Stunning them eliminates their surprise round, and disjunction eliminates their buffs (and magic items).

For normal combats, traps of forced movement is often the best--move the PCs into unfavorable positions. Status effects that compliment the monsters' abilities are also good.

[Kimera757]

Two fun trap examples, well I hope they're fun.

The bad guys are evil rangers and druids (for the most part) and own a cabin in a clearing in the woods. A great place for your PCs of about 6th-level or so to Fireball the lot of them, drop in Glitterdust, and what not.

There are trees for cover, great because most of the rangers shoot ranged weapons. Unfortunately, there are hidden bear traps and/or Snare spell traps in strategic locations, such as in clear areas that the PCs might pass through. Walk through the area, get stuck, now you can't scramble into cover while the rangers shoot at you because you can't move! Putting traps on the trees that PCs might use for cover just ups the nasty factor.

Second example: in a dungeon complex, some floor spaces are marked with hard-to-see runes (Glyphs of Warding), although PCs can make Perception checks to spot them. The bad guys know these spaces and generally stay behind them. PCs who don't spot the runes get hit by nasty effects (pretty much any cleric spell below 6th-level) ... and any PC who bypasses the runes can get bull rushed right back into said runes. The runes might not be discerning; the PCs could potentially force-move bad guys into the runes instead!

[Sissyl]

You can warn people about it beforehand. Thus, when the trap comes, the party will feel smart for doing their preparations. You can disguise this to various hints, making it sort of a puzzle. You can make it clear the area ahead is trapped, to let the PCs apply their paranoia where it should apply. You can make sure to put the trap where you could expect one, such as in the defense works of a fortress. You can let the heroes figure out the workings of a trap, and let them use it in a combat encounter. Make it big enough and you can put in a major fight centered on it. In short, everything but the completely unexpectable trap is probably fine.

[Zhayne]

The only time I've ever found traps to be fun is when they're part of another challenge or situation.

Most traps, historically, are just one-shot damage effects. You encounter them, then they either go off, deal some damage, the party heals up, and moves on, or you spot it first and disarm it. Kind of a yawn, really.

I prefer traps that are part of a combat, myself; my prime example was a kobold battle where the room had lots of horizontally swinging blades, all at an altitude of four feet. They'd swing over the kobold's heads, letting them attack unimpeded, but anybody taller than them had to either crouch/crawl (giving them penalties) or have to dodge the blades.

This gives the party an option ... they can either just deal with the trap, making the encounter more difficult, or they can attempt to disable the trap.

[Bacon666]

Player: I roll perception to look for traps
Gm: can you be more specific?
Player: no... Are there any traps?
Gm: you see a tile in the floor that looks a bit "off"...
Player: I roll to disarm!
Gm: the tile is just a broken tile, and while you find that out make a reflex save (enemy casting a fireball...)
Player: did I fail my check?
Gm: no... You looked fir traps... Not for dangers/enemies...

Group laughing

In other words, make you players roll play first, and only roll if you deem it nessesary...

[mln84]

Not my idea, but from the RotRL thread. Was fun and my players even liked it after the initial confusion.

spoiler:

In the Graul house, Hucker reset traps that the party had disabled, so when they moved back through an area they now "knew" was safe, they were hit.

[MagusJanus]

The most fun trap I had was a resetting Wand of Wonder trap. And it was designed so that they had to disarm it to move past it.

After three failed attempts to disarm it, the rogue was utterly convinced they were facing multiple traps. So when he finally managed to disarm it, he was utterly convinced he still needed to disarm traps and was not understanding why he couldn't find the other mechanisms to disarm. I finally had to move enemies into the room just to get the party to move on.

[Phoenix3270]

Most fun time with a trap was the time the rogue set off a fire trap and incapacitated the whole group of adventurers. Lost the encounter right there. The gm though, decreased the range so two people survived and revived the team.

[Sushewakka]

The funnest moment I had with a trap in a campaign was as follows:
Druid summons monkey to open trapped chest.
Monk in party pokes head in room to see the monkey die.
Monkey opens chest, trips trap (a lightning bolt trap), makes reflex save. Monk fails reflex save. Monkey survives, Monk dies.
It was hilarious.

[selunatic2397]

I was telegraphing this trap as a "do not pass this point as the dm has not finished this area of the dungeon" kinda vibe...

I described a humanoid chunk of bloodstained steel in the circular [think long tube] hall ahead...

The thief asked if he could tell what it used to be...

I said roll under your intelligence on a d20...he got a natural one!

mmmkay...it kinda looks like that greedy "knight" you met last week, the one who got you blamed for his thefts...if you had a really big monkey pick him up and twist him like a dish rag...

The thief was ecstatic...not for his revenge...no...he had the party totally deconstruct the trap taking extensive notes...then he had it installed on the parties own treasure vaults...

It did stall the party long enough for me to finish the dungeon though!

[Liam Warner]

Bacon666 wrote:

Player: I roll perception to look for traps

Gm: can you be more specific?
Player: no... Are there any traps?
Gm: you see a tile in the floor that looks a bit "off"...
Player: I roll to disarm!
Gm: the tile is just a broken tile, and while you find that out make a reflex save (enemy casting a fireball...)
Player: did I fail my check?
Gm: no... You looked fir traps... Not for dangers/enemies...

Group laughing

In other words, make you players roll play first, and only roll if you deem it nessesary...

Bleh I had a GM like that nice guy but yegods his view on what you'd notice . . .

GM: "You see your home a pool glistening in the moonlight the dead body of your master lying sprawled near the path."

I promptly checked on my master when apparently I should have gone to the pool which contained a magical talking fish which saw the the whole thing (A talking fish moreover that he hadn't mentioned to me out of character even though I'd lived in that house for my entire characters life).

or

GM: "You enter a room filled with tables and chairs around the walls of the room are windows looking out into a lightning flecked sky, a door is on the other side of the room."
Me: "I go to have a look out of a window."
GM: "Which window?"
ME: "That one" (Picked a random window)
GM: "The statue grabs you and hauls you towards the other door."
ME: "What statue?"
GM: "The 15' tall one by the window."
Me: "You didn't mention a statute."
GM: "It was a poorly lit room you didn't see it."
Me: "Its 15 feet tall and I was walking towards it."

I wound up chucked down a chute but I'm still convinced that I should have noticed a great huge THING there at least before I'm standing under it particularly since we had torch's.

On topic the anti-gravity pit trap. Part walks along a corridor and falls into a deep pit trap then the anti-gravity takes effect and they fall up to the equally high ceiling at which point regular gravity pulls them back down to the floor as they keep bouncing back and forth between the two taking damage each time. Plus getting out is tricky.

[Yemeth]

Alright, I have to mention this, my favorite trap that I've never had a chance to use.

The PCs enter a room with a gleaming black floor, it looks like it could possible be stone of some sort. There's some sort of condition to disarm the trap, either a panel, or a passphrase, depending on the needs of the setup. Detect magic notes some sort of evocation effect covering the floor, but poking and prodding doesn't really seem to do anything. As the party crosses the room, the wall of force that was pressing the black pudding flat vanishes, dropping everyone smack into the ravenous ooze monster. Heh, pudding.

[Doomed Hero]

Have you seen Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Remember the big rolling stone ball at the beginning?

That's a trap.

In game terms, that would have been a series of regular old easily avoidable traps in a long corridor. An easy balancing act along a ledge. A jump across a little chasm. A 'don't step on these stones" section.

Then, the big ball is set in motion and the group has to go back through all the stuff they avoided at a full sprint.

All the DCs go up, and the consequences for failure get a whole lot worse.

It becomes an entire encounter. The GM breaks out the chase cards, and the PCs have to make checks and saves while they are running for their lives back out of the temple.

Every trap should be built front he perspective of where is the drama.

[Thomas Long 175]

i accidentally dropped a pancake covered in maple syrup on my gm's chair once and was too afraid to say anything.

does that count?

... i don't play rogues much

[Lazurin Arborlon]

Doomed Hero wrote:

Have you seen Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Remember the big rolling stone ball at the beginning?

That's a trap.

In game terms, that would have been a series of regular old easily avoidable traps in a long corridor. An easy balancing act along a ledge. A jump across a little chasm. A 'don't step on these stones" section.

Then, the big ball is set in motion and the group has to go back through all the stuff they avoided at a full sprint.

All the DCs go up, and the consequences for failure get a whole lot worse.

It becomes an entire encounter. The GM breaks out the chase cards, and the PCs have to make checks and saves while they are running for their lives back out of the temple.

Every trap should be built front he perspective of where is the drama.

I did a variation on Indy ....greased hall that sloped downward, an enormous block falls and starts slowly sliding towards the party, building speed every round. The party makes continuous Dex checks as they run on the slick floor from the boulder....after a round or two many are sliding on their rear as they start to make out a closed stone door at the bottom...soon they pass nooks along the wall some make for the nooks and let the stone pass but the rogue making a int check realizes if one of them doesn't figure out how to disarm it they will block their path forever. The rogue starts using the depressions as hand holds and pulling himself faster and faster to out distance the giant block and buy time to disarm. On reaching the bottom he rolls his disarm just in time to open a hole behind him that the block neatly slots into allowing the others to follow him down.

[Cyrad]

Good traps create drama.

My best use of a trap was also the simplest. I employed a pool of fear, a simple fear trap. Trusting my player to roleplay it out, I simply passed a note describing their character seeing a reflection of themselves slaughtering each of their allies in gruesome, vivid detail. The player described her character briefly having a look of horror, sheathing her sword, and asking if the party can swiftly continue on, urging them not to look into the pool. It was a brief, but dramatic moment that left all players curious yet afraid of what she saw. A year has past since that moment, and yet it still lingers in the back of that PC's mind.

I've started to draft a whole set of pools like this for the players to find with a subplot tied to them, each pool representing one of the runelords. Karzoug's pool made a PC see themselves as a wealthy king surrounded by riches with their female rival by their side, slave Princess Leia style. We had a fun moment where he grew suspicious of his allies and threw a fit when they pulled him away from the pool like a screaming child.

[DM Livgin]

We had started with a few leads at the bottom of the thieves guild and hacked and slashed our way up the ladder. No subtly, kick in the door, kill everyone, stabilize anyone still breathing, interrogate, find the next one up the ladder, execute prisoner, rinse, repeat.

It ended up with just the guild leader holed up in his manor, his secret identity revealed as a town noble, all his underlings dead, and we had to move fast before he cut losses and skipped town.

Dm: you forced your way through main door, the noise would have woke the dead.
Me: The guard gave me rough plans to the manor, I rush down the hall to the dining hall door. What can you tell me about it?
Dm: Roll perception for the entry hall and door.
Me: 13
Dm: nothing special, the dining hall door is simple, wooden, and fancy?
Me: simple or good door?
Dm: simple, yes, a DC 13 break.
Me: I take a 10 an kick it down, that is last of my actions.
Party: enters the hall, checks other exits.
Dm: you see the guildmaster come down the stairs, rapier in hand and a hastely donned chain shirt. He flips a dining table and takes cover behind it.
Me: his table cover prevents a charge? (yep) Ok, I don't trust him, this has been to easy. Tell me about the dining room? (perception) 14.
Dm: the dining hall is packed with tables and chairs, just enough to make movement difficult. He is of course hunkered down behind the overturned table. Your knowledge engineering picks out something you wouldn't have noticed otherwise with your perception, the floor in front of the door has been tampered with (?) you can't tell how, could be a pressure plate, pit fall, or just recent repairs.
Me: what ever it is I'm setting it off. I smash the floor with my sword.
Dm: the false floor falls in to reveal a 15x15x30 foot pit in front of you.
Me: dirty bugger. I take a move action back down the hall, I'm not jumping that, end of turn.
Party: move up and attack with ranged, move up and cast fly.
Dm: we moves back towards the stair, around a corner, you hear a lever flip and the spinning of gears. You and you notice a portcullis dropping to trap the group in the hall. With a gust of air the hall also fills with a stinking cloud, everyone roll fortitude.
Me: fail Reflex, pass fortitude (K, the gate falls right beside you trapping you in the hall)
Party by the pit trap: Reflex to jump in the pit trap? I'll decline. I also pass Fort.
Me: we are trapped in a stinking cloud and the guildmaster has free reign... Knowledge engineering, what has less hit points, the portcullis or the stone Wall?
Dm: the interior walls are only 6" thick but it is still the portcullis.
Me: adamantite bastard sword, full attack on the portcullis.
Dm:... You cut open a 5 ft opening.
Party: evaluates.
Me: step out of cloud, attack the wall between me and the corner he took off around.

And hence we advanced through that bbegs home cutting holes through walls until we backed him into a corner with no where to run.

Great use of traps.

[Rednal]

So, there's this game called "Trapt"... if you really want to make them fun, try giving the players some control over them and have them be used to take down a big swarm of enemies or something. ^^