Trap Spotter is a Rogue Talent that gives an auto perception check when the rogue is w/i 10' of a trap. It has nothing to do with taking 10.
Generally speaking, if you're not in combat, you can take 10 on Perception Checks, including those to spot traps. There will always be exceptions, of course, but this is typically true.
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Like when your GM hates take 10 and prevents them on everything.
I'm the other way around. My group will move 10', roll, move 10', roll, check the door, roll... it gets old. Take 10 is a lifesaver. Take 20, too, but they rarely ask for that.
Like when your GM hates take 10 and prevents them on everything.
Well yeah. There's always that ...
Take 10 is 100% allowed by RAW - if you as a GM don't allow it good for your homebrew.
The difference in this context is time - Trap Spotter is first off a hidden role made by the GM without the players knowledge - and takes no time in the dungeon crawl.
Taking 10 uses time to search a specific section of the grid.
One of the biggest struggles most GM's face is time in a dungeon - and the desire that not everything becomes 'trivial' to the point that adding traps at all is pointless. This is the reason so many GM's hate trap spotter and take 10. Trap Spotter is tricky in itself and GM's frequently don't take into account perception penalties depending on the environment when that talent is active - which makes it much less reliable than the player might like.
Take 10 again takes time - if your GM doesn't have the dungeon inhabitants move around - or react to the party - and if you aren't using a random monster table per 'X time' then you encourage your party to play it safe - and they might as well take 20 in every square and a week to search a dungeon. The onus is on a GM to keep track of the parties time doing 'things' and have the dungeon react appropriately. Keeping the pressure on the players encourages them to not stop every 5 feet to look for traps - another good way to get traps to trigger is to have a chase - the players never check for traps when chasing something.
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At my home game, however, I don't typically allow take 10 for finding or disabling traps. Pits - yes; but anything with a trigger - no. My reason is that the very action of looking for a trap often requires more than just visually inspecting or looking for something. You may need to touch, feel around, wipe away dust and cobwebs, etc to uncover a trigger/tripwire/pressure plate; and that action may set it off.
I go almost exactly the opposite, I'm afraid. I'm fairly explicit that all characters are at all times assumed to be taking 10 if possible to detect traps, ambushes, and the like.. This, in turn, prevents meta-gaming when I ask for Perception rolls, and speeds up play immeasurably. (Nothing grinds the game to a halt like stopping every 10 feet to roll a die.) Players, of course, can ask for a Perception check any time they like....
I go almost exactly the opposite, I'm afraid. I'm fairly explicit that all characters are at all times assumed to be taking 10 if possible to detect traps, ambushes, and the like.. This, in turn, prevents meta-gaming when I ask for Perception rolls, and speeds up play immeasurably. (Nothing grinds the game to a halt like stopping every 10 feet to roll a die.) Players, of course, can ask for a Perception check any time they like....
At my home game, however, I don't typically allow take 10 for finding or disabling traps. Pits - yes; but anything with a trigger - no. My reason is that the very action of looking for a trap often requires more than just visually inspecting or looking for something. You may need to touch, feel around, wipe away dust and cobwebs, etc to uncover a trigger/tripwire/pressure plate; and that action may set it off.
I run it this way too. I call it passive perception. At all time all characters are assumed to be taking 10 on perception checks to notice things around them, which includes traps through places they are walking through. But you have to remember to apply distance penalties, or other circumstance penalties (like being distracted and rushing through) etc. However I find overall this really streamlines movement through a dungeon and you don't get bogged down by rolling every 10ft of movement. And as always you can always ask for extra perception check if you are worried that the chest is trapped and didn't notice it before. Before you casually inspected it as you walked up. Now you're really inspecting it (roll) and if you spend a really long time you're taking 20.
Of course, this turns out to be a mimic with class levels and max ranks in disguise. CHOMP!
Except there are very table variation limitations for take 10, and somewhere there is that ruling that take 10 can be obliviated when you want to increase storytelling tensionTake 10 is 100% allowed by RAW - if you as a GM don't allow it good for your homebrew
That ruling would be homebrew - not RAW. As this is currently in the rules forums that's why I'm clarifying my answer. What you do at your table is 100% ok - even if you don't use classes, ditch alignment, and get rid of all skill checks. You can still call it pathfinder if you want to and if you guys are having fun I salute you.
On the rules forums asking for a rules answer - take 10 is allowed for searching for and disabling traps.
Since I'm home-brewing, when I have a trigger trap its typically linked to something specific such as a door or item (chest). Often its been installed by someone to do something/protect something, and if the area is inhabited by anything, it can't just be triggered by something so accessible that a visual detection from 10' away will pick it up. Thus requiring a more deliberate search on that item by a rogue trained in these type of things and with the right tools (mirrors, dust brushes, fine hairs for detecting trip-wires, etc).
Do you have any frog god 3rd party material? Bill Webb's Book of Dirty Tricks has around 5 pages of random charts to add variety to trap design and triggers without having to come up with all of that on the fly - very nice stuff. Also nice ways to keep players on their toes throughout the rest of the book.
As someone else who enjoys traps that can actually be puzzles I can't recommend it enough. Another nifty trap trick is the one that requires more than one person to disable - your disable roll may give you the solution to disable the trap however it may require 3 people working together to perform the disable - as with anything that breaks the mold (so to speak) if you use the standard rules for traps if you make something that is outside of that, it should be a centrepiece of the dungeon and or an encounter by itself (and the CR should reflect it) - however by having some variety to the traps you can certainly spice up an adventure.
Everyone loves the opening to Raiders of the lost Ark - no one wants to the the guy that gets impaled though - they all want to be Dr. Jones :)
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I don't use it for things where the party would need to actively be searching. If the party walks into a room, that passive check will not tell them there is a secret compartment in the bottom of one of the drawers in the cabinet; they can't even see the inside of the cabinet until they search it. I wouldn't use it to notice the dollop of contact poison on the underside of the doorknob; it's out of view to notice unless someone looks more closely. In these cases, we'll either roll or allow a Take 10/Take 20 when they state they are making a more detailed search.
I find this approach doesn't work, because it's not obvious to the party when they are no longer able to take 10 and need to roll, or else you need to tell them about it.
For example, if they are poisoned by a doorknob that they were not allowed to take 10 on, they will explicitly ask to examine every doorknob in the entire castle from that point on, and the game skids to an undignified halt as all the airbags deploy.
If I only ask them to roll perception when there is actually poison there, I might as well hang a sign on that particular door saying "This door is trapped," and the whole point of the traps is lost.
And if I ask them to roll perception at every door, trapped or not, we're back at the first situation again (and again the airbags all deploy).
A better approach, IMHO, is simply to use a higher DC for things that are better hidden. Covering the entire knob in contact poison? DC 10. Putting a dot of contact poison on the bottom of the knob so it's out of sight? DC 15. Putting a syringe of poison that squirts the person turning the knob? DC 20. A magical rune written in invisible ink in letters too small to be seen without a magnifying glass? DC 30. (And when someone whips out the invisible-ink-developer, he gets an active Perception check and add a +5 circumstance bonus to the roll.)
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That ruling would be homebrew - not RAW.Except there are very table variation limitations for take 10, and somewhere there is that ruling that take 10 can be obliviated when you want to increase storytelling tensionTake 10 is 100% allowed by RAW - if you as a GM don't allow it good for your homebrew
No, it's explicitly RAW that the GM can prevent you from taking 10 for no reason beyond being a jerk dramatic irony.
Not only is take 10 permitted on perception when looking for traps, take 20 is explicitly permitted.
Common “take 20” skills include Disable Device (when used to open locks), Escape Artist, and Perception (when attempting to find traps).
Take 20 has a much high threshold for allowance than take 10.
Taking 10 on perception does not require naming a specific location on the map. That was a 3.5 rule and was not carried over to Pathfinder.
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At my home game, however, I don't typically allow take 10 for finding or disabling traps. Pits - yes; but anything with a trigger - no. My reason is that the very action of looking for a trap often requires more than just visually inspecting or looking for something. You may need to touch, feel around, wipe away dust and cobwebs, etc to uncover a trigger/tripwire/pressure plate; and that action may set it off.I go almost exactly the opposite, I'm afraid. I'm fairly explicit that all characters are at all times assumed to be taking 10 if possible to detect traps, ambushes, and the like.. This, in turn, prevents meta-gaming when I ask for Perception rolls, and speeds up play immeasurably. (Nothing grinds the game to a halt like stopping every 10 feet to roll a die.) Players, of course, can ask for a Perception check any time they like....
For ambushes and stuff that's a killer for the players. You've now DRAMATICALLY decreased their chance at avoiding ambushes and traps.
I don't believe that's accurate.That ruling would be homebrew - not RAW.Except there are very table variation limitations for take 10, and somewhere there is that ruling that take 10 can be obliviated when you want to increase storytelling tensionTake 10 is 100% allowed by RAW - if you as a GM don't allow it good for your homebrew
No, it's explicitly RAW that the GM can prevent you from taking 10 for no reason beyond
being a jerkdramatic irony.
Re-read what you called the "non-FAQ." I stand by my statement.
A better approach, IMHO, is simply to use a higher DC for things that are better hidden. Covering the entire knob in contact poison? DC 10. Putting a dot of contact poison on the bottom of the knob so it's out of sight? DC 15. Putting a syringe of poison that squirts the person turning the knob? DC 20. A magical rune written in invisible ink in letters too small to be seen without a magnifying glass? DC 30. (And when someone whips out the invisible-ink-developer, he gets an active Perception check and add a +5 circumstance bonus to the roll.)I like the idea about DCs and use similar thought on specific trap DCs. But it seems like the higher DC method wouldn't avoid the PCs deciding to check everything after the first trap they triggered after taking 10?
Not in my experience, since a trap they couldn't find by taking 10 is a trap that they probably couldn't find by active searching either (since, by definition, the DC to find it is higher than they will probably roll). If they want to find it, they need to cooperate, they need to spend resources, and so forth. And my players, at least, are good enough at math to know this. Basically, searching for traps only becomes part of the game if they think it's appropriate.
The result seems to be that they only check (actively) for traps when they actively suspect that traps are in the area *and* are likely to be too well-hidden for them to find passively. So the game really only slows down when the group is at Red Alert (which is when it's appropriate for the game to slow down, anyway).
[snip]
So from a game play stand point it seems like the take-10/passive only speeds up play for DCs under those thresholds anyway,
Yes, and those are typically the nuisance-level traps that aren't actually worth wasting a lot of game time on.
since cautious PCs are also going to want to find higher DC traps/secret doors, and unless you have some kind of existing game/social contract on how you as a GM use/place those it could still spiral into searching every 10' square.
You call it a social contract, I call it "realism." If this is the door to the Pharoah's main treasure room, d--n straight it will be trapped, and anyone who didn't just fall off a turnip truck knows that. If this is the door to the latrine behind the camel salesman, he probably wouldn't bother to trap it and couldn't afford a high-end trap if he did (which, in turn, means that if there is a high-end trap there, there's something going on and the Mystery, Inc. gang should look into it).
The point is that, in some situations, the average amount of attentiveness has zero chance of discovering something.
Shrug. Which is covered by the DC.
If you allow a constant passive perception check for all situations, you end up with completely absurd situations, such as:-You open the door and notice that there is a ring hidden between the mattress and box spring of the bed.
-You notice that the strange man in the bar sitting in a booth has an Evil Empire tattoo on his right buttock under his pants.
Of course, these are absurd examples, ...
... and, more to the point, something that would only come up if someone has rocked their perception scores to truly Sherlock Holmes levels, in which case I have no problem if Sherlock correctly identifies that the guy has a tat on his butt from the way he's sitting. Because Sherlock's "attentiveness" is better than I could do with the entire CSI forensics squad at my disposal.
If your players really do have perception scores that would put Sherlock to shame, they should be able to perform superhuman feats of perception.
But if I Take 20, and I fail many times to find a trip wire, pressure plate, or similar trigger and incur penalties for that failure in my opinion, it means I set the trap off while looking for it.
If you have a trigger that is sensitive enough to detect whether or not a photon has entered a sapient eyeball or not, perhaps.
Otherwise, no. There's no reason that standing at the doorway to a room and looking for a pressure plate will set it off. You can stand at the door of a room for hours without setting off a pressure plate, because the only way you will set off the pressure plate is by putting pressure on it, and you will have line of sight to the pressure plate (and be able to see it) before you have line-of-foot to that pressure plate.
Bolded areas in the quote seem very contradictory to what a trap is and what it does. Not all traps mind you, but many, and especially those with a trigger. Keep in mind, many trigger type traps are spatially designed such that you're not going to notice any part of the trap itself before you "find" the trigger. For example, the arrow holes aren't going to be right next to the room entry, but trigger all the way across the room (it could...but is that how you would design a trap). If I roll a 20 on my perception, maybe I actually see the arrow holes all the way across the room, or maybe I notice the trip-wire/pressure plate near the item it is protecting. But if I Take 20, and I fail many times to find a trip wire, pressure plate, or similar trigger and incur penalties for that failure in my opinion, it means I set the trap off while looking for it. Which is why I don't ever let players Take 20 in my home game to find traps.
The way I look at this - it's not the act of searching that triggers the trap - it's stepping on the pressure plate after the searcher fails to find it.
The way perception (and search in D&D) is written up, it assumes that the searcher isn't triggering the trap by searching for it and failing to find it. Rather, it's doing something else after failing to find the trap. If your skill check with taking 20 ended up being high enough to find the trap - great, the assumption is you found it without triggering it. If not high enough, the assumption is you didn't find it AND didn't trigger it. Once you get to that point, the question is what does the PC do now? Does he carry on... and by doing so trigger it? Either way, it's not the act of searching and failing, it's the act of moving on that does it.
So an object hidden in a mattress can't be detected with perception from several feet away, just because it exists in the game world regardless of the roll.
Shrug. I disagree. The object in the mattress "obviously" occupies space and so there will be a corresponding lump in the surface of the mattress. If the object in question were a cinder block, a set of scuba tanks or a wheelbarrow, this would be obvious even if there's no line of sight to the wheelbarrow itself. If we're talking about a brick, it wouldn't be as obvious, and if we were talking about the six of clubs, it's probably extremely subtle.
.... and the appropriate way to handle something with scaling difficulty is with a scaling DC, not by GM fiat saying "no, it's not possible."
I already mentioned the fact that the guy with the tattoo is sitting funny. (It's a habit he got into when the tattoo was fresh and very painful to sit on.) The DC to detect his tattoo will increase over time, but there's no sensible way you can draw a line and say "ten minutes ago, his tat could be detected by a sufficiently perceptive person, but now it can't."
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If your perception is that good why wouldn't you notice those things?If you roll, sure - you're risking failure of a low roll and missing it anyway, so you may set it off or you may roll a 20 and find it (or somewhere in between with either of those 2 results). But taking 20 says you're going to fail many times as well. It just comes down to how you want to define failure of finding a trap's trigger in your game.
Well, this is the rules forum. According to the rules, traps have a predefined trigger, and they don't go off until the triggering condition is met. Looking around the room is sufficient to allow a perception check for anything you have line-of-sight to (including line-of-sight to secondary effects, like a mattress draped over a cinder block), even if the triggering condition is not met. And standing in the room gives you line-of-smell to anything in the room, allowing you perception checks against anything that emits an odor, which could be anything from a bucket of ammonia (which could be detected by almost anyone) to the smell of a particular brand of cigarette smoked by the BBEG's trap master, which requires Sherlock to identify. ("Hmm, as I get closer to the mattress, the scent of Venezuelan tobacco gets stronger, so there's probably something under it, rigged to go off.")
Re-read what you called the "non-FAQ." I stand by my statement.I don't believe that's accurate.That ruling would be homebrew - not RAW.Except there are very table variation limitations for take 10, and somewhere there is that ruling that take 10 can be obliviated when you want to increase storytelling tensionTake 10 is 100% allowed by RAW - if you as a GM don't allow it good for your homebrew
No, it's explicitly RAW that the GM can prevent you from taking 10 for no reason beyond
being a jerkdramatic irony.The PDT said they were not going to issue a FAQ on Take 10 and what constitutes a distraction. There is no FAQ on Take 10 on this topic. There is no official change to the rules.
If there is, link a FAQ or an Errata which changes the Take 10 rule.
Now please actually re-read that document. I stand by my statement.
So an object hidden in a mattress can't be detected with perception from several feet away, just because it exists in the game world regardless of the roll.Shrug. I disagree. The object in the mattress "obviously" occupies space and so there will be a corresponding lump in the surface of the mattress. If the object in question were a cinder block, a set of scuba tanks or a wheelbarrow, this would be obvious even if there's no line of sight to the wheelbarrow itself. If we're talking about a brick, it wouldn't be as obvious, and if we were talking about the six of clubs, it's probably extremely subtle.
.... and the appropriate way to handle something with scaling difficulty is with a scaling DC, not by GM fiat saying "no, it's not possible."
Ok, something bulky like a brick or wheelbarrow, I wasn't trying to be literal about in existence, wasn't the example up thread "a ring"?
Something that small, or your card example would on a quick look in the room give you no reason to suspect otherwise inside the mattress.
Me, perhaps not. Sherlock Holmes, however, it certainly would. Because his Perception is much better than mine, and he can make the DC 30 to identify the bulge a ring makes in a mattress while taking ten.
Some of this goes back to passive (w/o letting the players know something is important) vs GM Prompted (they think something must be important since you asked them to roll) vs player prompted (they're not sure and are willing to break the moment to roll/search etc).
Well, that one's easy. GM-prompted Perception checks are a bad idea that should never be used.
No, not even then. They do nothing except encourage meta-gaming and discourage involvement with the description. No, that's not quite true. They also encourage really bad adventure design because they tempt game masters to hide important clues behind Perception checks, which then forces GMs to have to break verisimilitude in order to make sure that the game doesn't screech to a halt when the players muff what should be a routine roll. But there are no positive outcomes of a GM-prompted perception check.
So the alternatives are a) no perception checks at all, which means traps and ambushes are entirely off the board -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing for many groups, b) demanding that the players make a Perception check at literally every object they encounter, including the change the barmaid makes at the Flaggin' Dragon, or c) making passive Perception do much of the routine work.
As a group you've got to decide when the GM assumes you searched and when you didn't.
That's easy. "You are always assumed to be taking 10 on Perception unless circumstances make that impossible." Done.
If someone wants roll for Perception instead of taking 10, they can do so at any time (unless circumstances make it impossible -- "no, you can't roll Perception; you're dead"). It still usually doesn't take time in the game universe ("Most Perception checks are reactive, made in response to observable stimulus"), but slows things down at the table, which is why I (mildly) discourage it. If anyone wants to explicitly search, they can easily say so.
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there is no FAQ nor is there an Errata and there is no rule change. The PDT didn't change the rules, they restated something that was already true.
.... which is to say, RAW states [and has always stated] that GM can disallow taking 10 at any point for any or no reason (including, explicitly, being a jerk dramatic tension). As I stated several posts earlier, and as you disagreed with me about, for reasons which forum rules prevent me from speculating upon. At least in writing.
The way I run traps, is I have the PCs tell me when they are actively searching. This causes them to move at have speed and counts them as distracted for noticing ambushes. Then, right before a trap is triggered, they roll perception. On a failure, they blunder into it, on a success the trap is noticed.
Once I call for the perception check it is too late to meta-game as your character is already doing the action that triggers the trap or has already noticed it.
Of note, the Take 20 to find traps just doesn't follow logically for me on some types of traps.
Bolded areas in the quote seem very contradictory to what a trap is and what it does. Not all traps mind you, but many, and especially those with a trigger. Keep in mind, many trigger type traps are spatially designed such that you're not going to notice any part of the trap itself before you "find" the trigger. For example, the arrow holes aren't going to be right next to the room entry, but trigger all the way across the room (it could...but is that how you would design a trap). If I roll a 20 on my perception, maybe I actually see the arrow holes all the way across the room, or maybe I notice the trip-wire/pressure plate near the item it is protecting. But if I Take 20, and I fail many times to find a trip wire, pressure plate, or similar trigger and incur penalties for that failure in my opinion, it means I set the trap off while looking for it. Which is...Taking 20: When you have plenty of time, you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, if you roll a d20 enough times, eventually you will get a 20. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.
Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes 20 times as long as making a single check would take (usually 2 minutes for a skill that takes 1 round or less to perform).
Since taking 20 assumes that your character will fail many times before succeeding, your character would automatically incur any penalties for failure before he or she could complete the task (hence why it is generally not allowed with skills that carry such penalties). Common "take 20" skills include Disable Device (when used to open locks), Escape Artist, and Perception (when attempting to find traps).
There is no penalty for failing a perception roll to notice a trap by any amount. Looking, however poorly, does not trigger a trap.
Opening the door, moving onto the pressure plate, tripping over the wire: Yes! Looking, No! Failure on one may lead to the other, but they are not the same thing.
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I go almost exactly the opposite, I'm afraid. I'm fairly explicit that all characters are at all times assumed to be taking 10 if possible to detect traps, ambushes, and the like.. This, in turn, prevents meta-gaming when I ask for Perception rolls, and speeds up play immeasurably. (Nothing grinds the game to a halt like stopping every 10 feet to roll a die.) Players, of course, can ask for a Perception check any time they like....
At my home game, however, I don't typically allow take 10 for finding or disabling traps. Pits - yes; but anything with a trigger - no. My reason is that the very action of looking for a trap often requires more than just visually inspecting or looking for something. You may need to touch, feel around, wipe away dust and cobwebs, etc to uncover a trigger/tripwire/pressure plate; and that action may set it off.
That's really a terrific idea actually. I kind of love it. With Trap Spotter it changes that Take 10 for locating traps into a secret roll made by the GM. Anything to keep gameplay smooth, meta-gaming to a minimum, and preserve immersion. But since you can't take 10 while distracted, you should find a way to let your players know when they are distracted.
And regarding taking 20 as was mentioned a moment ago. It requires that there are no immediate threats, and requires a couple minutes to perform. And there's nothing which establishes the range of perception and it is left up to GM discretion. So a GM can easily nerf taking 20 by requiring it be used on specific squares, and applying penalties for distance, and unfavorable (or terrible) conditions, or by introducing distractions in the minute spent taking 20 on a square. Or (and I think this is perfectly reasonable) for a home game you can forbid taking 20 on traps, as it can trivialize traps with pedantic or anal retentive players.
And regarding taking 20 as was mentioned a moment ago. It requires that there are no immediate threats, and requires a couple minutes to perform. And there's nothing which establishes the range of perception and it is left up to GM discretion. So a GM can easily nerf taking 20 by requiring it be used on specific squares, and applying penalties for distance, and unfavorable (or terrible) conditions, or by introducing distractions in the minute spent taking 20 on a square. Or (and I think this is perfectly reasonable) for a home game you can forbid taking 20 on traps, as it can trivialize traps with pedantic or anal retentive players.
As there are no penalties for failure on perception, as I player I simply continue rolling dice until I roll a number I am happy with.
This may bog the game down somewhat, but low die rolls and random results will still not lead to a failure to notice traps. This is the scenario Take 10 and Take 20 averts. Not the die rolls and fixed outcomes, but the time a player will spend sitting there rolling dice until he is happy with the result.
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And regarding taking 20 as was mentioned a moment ago. It requires that there are no immediate threats, and requires a couple minutes to perform. And there's nothing which establishes the range of perception and it is left up to GM discretion. So a GM can easily nerf taking 20 by requiring it be used on specific squares, and applying penalties for distance, and unfavorable (or terrible) conditions, or by introducing distractions in the minute spent taking 20 on a square. Or (and I think this is perfectly reasonable) for a home game you can forbid taking 20 on traps, as it can trivialize traps with pedantic or anal retentive players.As there are no penalties for failure on perception, as I player I simply continue rolling dice until I roll a number I am happy with.
This may bog the game down somewhat, but low die rolls and random results will still not lead to a failure to notice traps. This is the scenario Take 10 and Take 20 averts. Not the die rolls and fixed outcomes, but the time a player will spend sitting there rolling dice until he is happy with the result.
Yeah but this still can develop into an RP issue. One example I can think of is the impatient Barbarian doesn't want to wait while you stare at something until you get a Nat 20, so he wanders through the door (or hallway, or path, etc etc etc) anyways. It can also often be hard to justify, in terms of RP, taking longer than reasonable to check an area for traps. Most people would look once, some might double check, a few might triple check. But "rolling until you get a high roll" is a bit metagamey.
If a player isn't going to be a pedantic, anal-retentive twit then the GM can be more forgiving, letting perception checks be rolled against greater than a single 5 foot square, placing less punishing traps, etc. But if he is... Then the GM is likely going to find the easy ways to subvert the player's shenanigans, by making perception for traps apply to single squares and putting traps in hallways (instead of just on doors), etc.
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<rant>
PRD Taking-10
Read that NON-FAQ again. Now read the CRB. When did player option become GM control of pacing?
"dramatic needs of the moment"? That is roleplaying, not a mechanic. Take-10 is a mechanic, not roleplay.
If the GM wants to prevent Take-10, then they need to introduce a distraction. How hard is that?
</rant>
/cevah
There is no penalty for failing a perception roll to notice a trap by any amount. Looking, however poorly, does not trigger a trap.
Opening the door, moving onto the pressure plate, tripping over the wire: Yes! Looking, No! Failure on one may lead to the other, but they are not the same thing.
Your senses allow you to notice fine details and alert you to danger. Perception covers all five senses, including sight, hearing, , taste, and smell.
Perception isn't 'just looking'!
Some traps (I'd argue, especially those magical ones) you won't find just by looking.
At that point, failing to notice it might mean tripping it (depending very much on the trap in question).
I let my players take 20 on the perception checks to find traps. But those traps might explode in their face.
If you fail to notice a trap and trip the trigger of said trap (while searching for said trap), it goes off.
If you don't trip the trigger, nothing happens (regardless of the character noticing or not noticing the trap).
If you fail to notice a trap and trip the trigger of said trap (while searching for said trap), it goes off.
If you don't trip the trigger, nothing happens (regardless of the character noticing or not noticing the trap).
There isn't a trap published that functions that way in Pathfinder. The theoretical trap:
Magic Missile trap:
Trigger: line of sight
Effect: 1 magic missile per round at anything within light of sight
Reset: Automatic
Type: Magical
XP: millions - because it's a strawmanThis trap is at the end of a 60 foot hallway and has a line of sight trigger so that when you enter the hallway 60 feet away from the trap it fires magic missiles at whoever is in the hallway
The rogue can detect the trap *at the end of the hallway* 60 feet away - why? Because the rules say so - the rogue gets to detect prior to the trap being allowed to trigger - always - the detect is perception and can *NOT* set off the trap.
And what can the rogue do if they detect the trap? They can disable it - by the rules always - there way traps work in Pathfinder is that there is no way to build a trap that the rogue can't disable. The rules work like that - pretty much end of it - anything else and you are using a homebrew. While I agree personally that Pathfinder traps suck and aren't worth using except as free XP - what is clear to me the last time this topic was discussed was that overwhelmingly players think a GM is a jerk if they use traps in any other way.