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How is it Rogues are disabling these traps?
They put a piece of straw over the circle, attach some wires to different parts of the spell, carve the aleph (א) in emet hanging the inscription from "truth" to "death" , scrub the symbol off the wall.. pretty much whatever flavor they want to give it...
Is there any legitimate rules that can stop them from doing so?
Astronomical DC.s
I'm a little worried why you would want to do this? Do you make the fighter not hit things? Throw the wizard in an anti magic field? The rogues thing is they disarm traps.
Is it possible for a Rogue to see a magical trap, but have no way to disable it? Requiring him and the party in question to look for a way around it?
There are very bad and very rules lawyering ways to say that that's possible but it pretty much amounts to godming so that the players are incompetent and should be avoided at all costs.
How is it Rogues are disabling these traps?
You can flavor it any way you want to. Usually I have them combine some magic words with some little trinkets.
Is there any legitimate rules that can stop them from doing so?
Yup. Rule 0.
Is it possible for a Rogue to see a magical trap, but have no way to disable it? Requiring him and the party in question to look for a way around it?
Yes, you can choose to make the DC so high that the rogue has no possible chance of disarming it. Or you can do something like "you need to be on the other side of this wall to disarm the trap", and force them to find a way around.
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I have had large problems with folks disabling traps. Pit trap for one is bad. I mean, an actual hole with leaves and stuff on it. They just say they disable it. How? I get told "I put a plank on it." Hey good job, too bad I can see you don't have a plank in your inventory sheet and there are no planks in the room.
Another way to think of this is that there absolutely was a plank or similar item in the room or in his inventory.
The Rogue used his skill to beat the trap's DC, so he gets to control that bit of the narrative, even retroactively if necessary. That's the deal, it's an abstraction of the system just like a Wizard being able to easily grab bat poop, sand, demon's blood, and a small tart out his spell component pouch whenever he needs it.
(Alternatively Thieves' Tools are really just huge rolls of Duct Tape, which, as we all know, can do used to fashion a solution to almost any problem.)
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I have had large problems with folks disabling traps. Pit trap for one is bad. I mean, an actual hole with leaves and stuff on it. They just say they disable it. How? I get told "I put a plank on it." Hey good job, too bad I can see you don't have a plank in your inventory sheet and there are no planks in the room. This tends to cause an argument.
If it can't be disabled, it's not a trap. It's an environmental hazard.
I have had large problems with folks disabling traps. Pit trap for one is bad. I mean, an actual hole with leaves and stuff on it. They just say they disable it. How? I get told "I put a plank on it." Hey good job, too bad I can see you don't have a plank in your inventory sheet and there are no planks in the room. This tends to cause an argument.
For magical traps though it is strange. Somehow the rogue knows more about magic than the wizard in this instance. Mechanics wise, sure whatever. But when you break it down to the story stuff, it makes no sense whatsoever.
You want a magical trap to go off? Double up on a trap. Put a normal trap out with a magical trap where the trigger is or wherever the thing you need to disable it is. Heck, have someone watching that spot from a distance to shoot an arrow at the trap and just trigger it while they are trying to disarm it or something. Be creative.
You're in the woods. You roll a rock into it .
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...You want a magical trap to go off? Double up on a trap. Put a normal trap out with a magical trap where the trigger is or wherever the thing you need to disable it is. Heck, have someone watching that spot from a distance to shoot an arrow at the trap and just trigger it while they are trying to disarm it or something. Be creative.
Its at this point that, in all seriousness, why have a trap at all when seemingly a wall would have been better. If not a wall, why not make one trap good enough over multiple traps and having a guard. For a trap. I mean, is it an animated statue? Did the wizard just hire a guardsman to watch the trap?
I'm sorry but that really is stretching it a bit. The animated statue less so becaude that seems a bit like another part of the trap (but then how do you solve it outside having a wizard. Do you dislke rogues?)
Come to think of it, why on earth are people so determined to have their traps be unstoppable or go off? Wouldn't it be better to instead have an environmental based trap that can't obviously be disabled, or have a multi-part trap that requires looking for how to disable it before you can make checks? If it is just a pit trap, or an explosive rune, they are pretty basic level traps. So you should be able to disable those with ease. Or avoid them with some creative effort in the pits case. Like, surely those players had rope and grappling hooks. Using those, you can bypass a pit in the same time someone would take disabling some other trap. They are straightforward as hell.
Basically, your suggestion for a creative trap isn't actually that creative. In fact, it's a little vindictive towards the players and outlandish in its solutions. A creative trap should be less straightforward, but encourages player initiative in solving it.
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Gwiber, that is exactly and exclusively what 'trapfinding' is, the knowledge and expertise to disable magic traps. Know: Arcana or spellcraft just isn't really appropriate, they are too general. You are a rogue, you can't tell a fireball from a cure light wounds, but you damn sure know what a symbol of death is.
That is pretty much all trapfinding does. Part of being a rogue is overcoming a magical trap with just a handful of iron filings, a mirror and a spatula.
The how's and why's really don't matter, it works because the rules say it works. Fluff it and describe it however you want, or maybe let your players have fun justifying it.
Edit: for example when face with the aformentioned pit traps my resident trapfinder usually finds a spare dagger or a few nails and places them 'just so' and wedges the trap door so it can't open.
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My major stumbling block is not that a rogue can see a trap, its that sometimes there are just no methods to disable one as those traps are. OR the source of the trap is something a Rogue has no actual experience with.
Why is a Rogue with likely No Knowledge: Arcana, or very little of it, going to have enough knowledge on how to disable a magical trap? Recognize it as dangerous? Yeah I buy that. KNOW what to do about it? Not a chance.
How about a mentioned pit trap? Say its in a dungeon room and it covers the entire floor? Sure the Rogue can set it off prematurely to stop anyone form falling in. But if weight is what sets it off, how does he "Disable" said trap?
Recognition and premature activation are one thing, but disabling doesnt always make any sense. Or even having the skill to recognize the thing's functions enough to disable it.
I highly recommend you just don't allow rogues in your games--probably investigator and slayer, too. It will prevent a lot of conflict and bad feelings in the long run.
The trapfinding ability says A rogue can use Disable Device to disarm magic traps. How do they do it? I don't know, maybe the same way a wizard casts a spell? Or a bard makes everyone hit harder by playing a flute? Or a barbarian converts lethal damage to non-lethal damage?
They can do it because it is a power specifically granted to them by their class. They can do it because they took a class that had trapfinding instead of any other power. If you're not going to consistently rule that the trapfinding ability doesn't work in this case because {reasons}, then just don't allow the ability in your games and let them the players trade it out for something they can actually use.
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How is it Rogues are disabling these traps?
Is there any legitimate rules that can stop them from doing so?
Is it possible for a Rogue to see a magical trap, but have no way to disable it? Requiring him and the party in question to look for a way around it?
How: He makes the runes say circle of breath, lighting bulb, acid errands, magic thistle, flowerball, aqueous orange, meatier swarm, summon movie II (electric boogaloo), colorsprint, cone of bold, unnatural rust, dominate mobster, greece, blame strike, wall of files, wall of nice, etc. So that the effect goes from lethal to comedically sound.
How to legitimately stop this: Disallow the trapfinding class feature. Make the DC of your trap 9.8 billion. Have your "traps" be hazards. But the best is just to disallow trapfinding. Otherwise the guy who showed up wanting to be the trap guy will feel disappointed by the enemy having consistently unbeatable traps.
I have had large problems with folks disabling traps. Pit trap for one is bad. I mean, an actual hole with leaves and stuff on it. They just say they disable it. How? I get told "I put a plank on it." Hey good job, too bad I can see you don't have a plank in your inventory sheet and there are no planks in the room. This tends to cause an argument.
But, the plank is part of my culture.
My major stumbling block is not that a rogue can see a trap, its that sometimes there are just no methods to disable one as those traps are. OR the source of the trap is something a Rogue has no actual experience with.
Why is a Rogue with likely No Knowledge: Arcana, or very little of it, going to have enough knowledge on how to disable a magical trap? Recognize it as dangerous? Yeah I buy that. KNOW what to do about it? Not a chance.
How about a mentioned pit trap? Say its in a dungeon room and it covers the entire floor? Sure the Rogue can set it off prematurely to stop anyone form falling in. But if weight is what sets it off, how does he "Disable" said trap?
Recognition and premature activation are one thing, but disabling doesnt always make any sense. Or even having the skill to recognize the thing's functions enough to disable it.
This is still not an excuse. The nature of traps is their expertise. It doesn't matter how much academic umderstanding of magic, nor functional creation or working of magic a rogue needs to know, they just know magic traps tend to have components or structure just like any other trap does, and they know exactly how to pull those components apart in just tbe right way.
If you didn't want a rogue disabling the trap, who else? How else? Because there is only one other method here.
It's sheep. You get a bunch of sheep, or you summon them. Whatever. You glorious traps are thwarted by sheep. The wizard does the rogues job as they famously want to do, and you still don't get what you want.
Even more so, maybe you should have told your rogue how you approach disabling traps before the game began. If you just told them their skill investment and class feature flat out don't work when the game had already started, that rogue would walk from the table and anyone else equally disgusted by such DM'ing would follow. What on earth are you intending hoping ti achieve by making your traps insurmountable by a characters CLASS abilities? Do you just want them to walk away from a dungeon and give up the moment they encounter a pit trap at 1st level because they don't have a week to craft a bridge over the pit? Is the moment one of them detects a magic trap basically the end of the campaign? You can't have it both ways, mate, and the least disruptive method to traps disabling is to just handwave it. You don't HAVE to find reason for EVERYTHING and pedantically enforcing realism in a game which already handwaves a lot of it for the sake of pacing just isn't necessary.
Particularly when it comes to not nerfing the f*!& out of a player character partway into a game, which usually results in a justifiably angry player. Genuinely awful move from any DM ever.
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You're in the woods. You roll a rock into it .I have had large problems with folks disabling traps. Pit trap for one is bad. I mean, an actual hole with leaves and stuff on it. They just say they disable it. How? I get told "I put a plank on it." Hey good job, too bad I can see you don't have a plank in your inventory sheet and there are no planks in the room. This tends to cause an argument.
For magical traps though it is strange. Somehow the rogue knows more about magic than the wizard in this instance. Mechanics wise, sure whatever. But when you break it down to the story stuff, it makes no sense whatsoever.
You want a magical trap to go off? Double up on a trap. Put a normal trap out with a magical trap where the trigger is or wherever the thing you need to disable it is. Heck, have someone watching that spot from a distance to shoot an arrow at the trap and just trigger it while they are trying to disarm it or something. Be creative.
Or just remove the branches and leaves covering the trap....then it just becomes a hole in the ground that everyone can see....
If it would help, it isn't that rogues know more about magic than wizards. It is that rogues have figured out ways to make magic fizzle. Wizards spend all their time making spells that work. Rogues spend it trying to come up with ways to divert the energy off harmlessly, prevent it from manifesting, or changing it from Symbol of Death to Symbol of Breadth.
Creating something and sabotaging it are two different things.
Rogues have few enough abilities as is. If you take this away, there really is no reason for anyone to take the class.
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Like this -
“It took a freaking genius to put this together, Michael."
I hefted my staff.
"Fortunately," I said, and took a two-handed swing at the nearest stand of slender, delicate crystal. It shattered with gratifying ease, and the encasing light around the greater circle began to waver and dissipate. "It only takes a monkey with a big stick to take it apart.”