Is it me, or do some of the snare rules conflate crafting with "setting up" the trap? Seems to me the intent is that you can buy or craft a snare using the normal downtime crafting rules, then spend a minute in the field setting it up per the snare rules.
You can't sell a complete snare (that is, one that is set up), but you could move or sell an incomplete snare (that is, one that has not been set up yet, or was successfully disabled).
Does that make sense? Does that seem right? If not, shouldn't it be that way? Why or why not?
There are two overlapping ways to make a Snare:
-Like any other item. That's using raw materials, having the proper formula for it, taking time, etc. You should be able to sell these at normal rates by installing them where the buyer wants.
This would be a normal Earn Income downtime activity. (see below)
Could portable versions be sold, ready for deployment by somebody with zero ability with snares? Or prepped for oneself ahead of time?
It seems so in real life, like a bear trap, right? But the Snares price list is for the raw materials to make a snare, not for buying a snare. There's no price listed for buying a pre-built snare, and since found snares cannot be retrieved nor sold, I think once crafted, that's it.
-Via the Ranger feats. So ignore raw materials, though they still require formulae, and can be built much quicker (but only by the Ranger who prepped them it seems). The technical wording the feat uses is "prepare...for quick deployment" with the next portion clarifying that during deployment is when you are Crafting them.
So essentially the preparation isn't making or Crafting snares and having them on hand. It's getting ready using free materials to Craft those snares during deployment.
This suggests that normal snares also have to be put into place when made, and that you can't sell a "Ranger's prepped snare" since that's not a tangible thing, only a potential thing that the Ranger creates. Prepped snares are a "Ranger's zero-cost, prepped materials for their personal, speedy use".
But could a Ranger sell a finished project? Install them for wages.
Even selling snares for the price of raw materials (which are traditionally half of a finished product) or heck, half of that, would give Rangers a HUGE advantage over any other method of Earning Income.
-It seems technically yes, with nothing ruling against that. Except Snares don't have listed prices, so there's nothing to sell except labor which using normal Earn Income rules (so based on the Ranger's Craft Proficiency). Arguments could be made, but reasonableness & the fact you can't actually buy Snares (they have no market nor market price) get my vote here.
Now, whether or not snare preparation carries over to the next day (when you add another prepped set on top of those) seems a matter of balance to me. So no. Each day resets the amount available.
Also, would all Ranger fortresses have a ridiculous amount of "free" (to themselves) Snares? Every kingdom needs that! This is more awkward since there's no duration on a deployed snare (that I've seen that is).
So a Ranger PC with a home base could drop a hundred traps down in a month at zero cost. Hmm...
If I don't buy, then setup a snare, but rather buy snare-crafting ingredients and craft it in the field, does that mean I can buy 15gp worth of snare crafting components and then craft any snare of 15gp or less that I want (provided I know the formula)?
Or do I have to buy specific snare components for specific snares? (So if I bought trip snare components, I could not then build a hobbling snare.)
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@Castilliano; Technically speaking Snares do have prices, they just cannot be sold in their complete form for whatever reason. The prices appear in their stat block and are used to figure out how much it costs to craft a snare in place. I see no reason why a character couldn't purchase say, a complete Biting snare for the listed price in it's stat block then spend 10 minutes and a Craft check to put it together in place. Craft doesn't work with this very well, but you could make it work easy enough. Instead of 1/2 the price you provide the full "snare" upfront and don't have to pay off any difference at the end of the check.
This is a very odd system when you get right down to it. It doesn't operate in a way that feels natural. Why couldn't a party have a series of Warning snares that they reuse for camp security for instance? Why couldn't a character pick up a "biting snare" which is essentially just a bear trap and reuse it if it goes unused in place?
This comes back to an argument I made in my very first thread on this forum. Snares are an attempt to reuse an existing rule, Craft in this instance, without altering any part except for the time in which that activity is done. This creates a series of issues that only get more confusing when you compress the time scale into Encounter mode.
Even weirder is how fanciful some of the later snares become. Hail of Arrows Snares for instance blanket an area in, "hundreds upon hundreds of arrows". Well 100 arrows is 1 bulk. If a Snare Specialist Ranger at 16th level is Legendary in crafting, they can carry 8 of these around every day, 16 if they have ubiquitous snares. That isn't even mentioning all of the bows required to launch those hundreds of arrows. How?
The only real answer is balance reasons. But what balance reason would lead us to that set of rules?
If I don't buy, then setup a snare, but rather buy snare-crafting ingredients and craft it in the field, does that mean I can buy 15gp worth of snare crafting components and then craft any snare of 15gp or less that I want (provided I know the formula)?
Or do I have to buy specific snare components for specific snares? (So if I bought trip snare components, I could not then build a hobbling snare.)
You must supply raw materials worth at least half the
item’s Price. You always expend at least that amount
of raw materials when you Craft successfully. If you’re
in a settlement, you can usually spend currency to get
the amount of raw materials you need, except in the
case of rarer precious materials.
The answer is dependent on your GM, but generally I would err on the side of "generic" materials for the sake of simplicity. You could require a character to purchase specific materials for specific snares though. After all a Flying Blade Wheel Snare will probably require a different set of materials than an Instant Evisceration Snare.
The list for snare prices covers explicitly only the raw materials, not an actual snare. There are no rules about buying complete snares. The only way to deploy a snare is to craft that snare in the field.
Yes, that's wonky re: bear traps...or even mouse traps.
Paizo seems to be working hard to make Snares work, which I appreciate, though it's leading to some awkward economics.
RD, I would not allow raw materials to work with other traps, but "raw materials" is a nebulous term so I could see some GMs allowing it if they think it suits their style.
Oh, and the materials have no weight.
So um, yeah, it's Macgyver w/ Batman's utility belt.
Ranger sets up arrow trap.
Archer asks why Ranger didn't let them have some arrows when asked.
Ranger, "It's complicated."
Trap puns ensue.
So if I use the Craft activity during downtime to craft a snare and save money, I'm not actually crafting a snare, but rather the components to a snare?
I'm not sure I buy into that, at least not semantically. I think the intent is that you craft or buy a snare, then set it up in the field. Without class abilities/feats, it takes the normal amount of time to craft (4+ days), but can be armed with a minute of work. Like a bear trap, for example. The snare rules just happen to be badly worded I think.
It's the only explanation that makes any sense from start to finish and doesn't seem to cause a whole lot of nonsensical problems.
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So if I use the Craft activity during downtime to craft a snare and save money, I'm not actually crafting a snare, but rather the components to a snare?
No, you're crafting a snare. The snare just happens to be placed as part of crafting it and cannot be moved.
As written there is no way to create a snare to use later, because the act of crafting and placing the snare are the same activity. With a sort-of exception for Rangers with the Snare Specialist feat.
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So if I use the Craft activity during downtime to craft a snare and save money, I'm not actually crafting a snare, but rather the components to a snare?
I'm not sure I buy into that, at least not semantically. I think the intent is that you craft or buy a snare, then set it up in the field. Without class abilities/feats, it takes the normal amount of time to craft (4+ days), but can be armed with a minute of work. Like a bear trap, for example. The snare rules just happen to be badly worded I think.
It's the only explanation that makes any sense from start to finish and doesn't seem to cause a whole lot of nonsensical problems.
No. If you craft a snare during downtime, you are crafting the snare. You just have to craft it in the spot you want it. If you want to put a snare in the entryway of your fortress, that's not time sensitive, craft it during downtime on the square you want. Once it's done, you can't move it though.
A classic snare is a rope tied to a bent over tree, that snaps up when you activate it. The crafting of the snare is bending the tree, tying it in place, and setting the snare. Once you set that up, you can't carry it around with you.
A bear trap isn't a snare, it's a piece of gear.
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So if I use the Craft activity during downtime to craft a snare and save money, I'm not actually crafting a snare, but rather the components to a snare?
I'm not sure I buy into that, at least not semantically. I think the intent is that you craft or buy a snare, then set it up in the field. Without class abilities/feats, it takes the normal amount of time to craft (4+ days), but can be armed with a minute of work. Like a bear trap, for example. The snare rules just happen to be badly worded I think.
It's the only explanation that makes any sense from start to finish and doesn't seem to cause a whole lot of nonsensical problems.
No. If you craft a snare during downtime, you are crafting the snare. You just have to craft it in the spot you want it. If you want to put a snare in the entryway of your fortress, that's not time sensitive, craft it during downtime on the square you want. Once it's done, you can't move it though.
A classic snare is a rope tied to a bent over tree, that snaps up when you activate it. The crafting of the snare is bending the tree, tying it in place, and setting the snare. Once you set that up, you can't carry it around with you.
A bear trap isn't a snare, it's a piece of gear.
Well then what is a "biting snare" then? A bear trap really. This is part of the weirdness that making so many "common sense" traps into Snares. A Caltrop snare for instance is simply a bag of caltrops rigged to open and spill when someone trips a tripwire. Why couldn't you snip the wire and retrieve the caltrops? Same question for a bomb snare, which operates exactly the same. If you were to disable the trip wire, could you retrieve the bombs used for the snare?
Overall snares are undercooked. They really don't make much sense and break really easily. They require far too much GM fiat to get working in a sensible manner.
So if I use the Craft activity during downtime to craft a snare and save money, I'm not actually crafting a snare, but rather the components to a snare?
I'm not sure I buy into that, at least not semantically. I think the intent is that you craft or buy a snare, then set it up in the field. A bear trap, for example. The snare rules just happen to be badly worded I think.
It's the only explanation that makes sense and doesn't cause a whole lot of problems.
You cannot Craft a Snare during downtime unless you deploy it. Crafting and deploying are the same event. I would allow somebody to do this for NPCs to Earn Income if they'd like.
Since the price list is for raw materials, you couldn't save money anyway since you always need to begin w/ raw materials. You can't Craft raw materials and there is no separate components phase.I agree about the "buying a bear trap" issue since as it is now, you cannot buy a bear trap. You can only buy the materials for one which you then set up via Crafting. If you have Snare Crafting, you can use Snares. If you don't, you cannot.
Paizo, it seems, started w/ the idea of trained PCs placing Snares and Rangers doing so best. It seems apparent Paizo did not want Snares to be normal equipment, given that you can't salvage, reuse, purchase, or sell Snares and there's no mechanism for setting up a Snare other than Crafting it. I just wish they'd been more explicit for our sake so we didn't mix it up w/ normal item Crafting or how an Alchemist's class-based gear works.
So effectively, somebody who wants to buy a bear trap buys the raw material (which are the exact same thing as the components), finds a spot, then Crafts the trap there, permanently. And other than disarming it or setting it off, that's it. No moving, selling, etc.
As a PC mechanic, this is satisfying.
As an equipment mechanic, it's quite counter-intuitive.
So if I use the Craft activity during downtime to craft a snare and save money, I'm not actually crafting a snare, but rather the components to a snare?
I'm not sure I buy into that, at least not semantically. I think the intent is that you craft or buy a snare, then set it up in the field. Without class abilities/feats, it takes the normal amount of time to craft (4+ days), but can be armed with a minute of work. Like a bear trap, for example. The snare rules just happen to be badly worded I think.
It's the only explanation that makes any sense from start to finish and doesn't seem to cause a whole lot of nonsensical problems.
No. If you craft a snare during downtime, you are crafting the snare. You just have to craft it in the spot you want it. If you want to put a snare in the entryway of your fortress, that's not time sensitive, craft it during downtime on the square you want. Once it's done, you can't move it though.
A classic snare is a rope tied to a bent over tree, that snaps up when you activate it. The crafting of the snare is bending the tree, tying it in place, and setting the snare. Once you set that up, you can't carry it around with you.
A bear trap isn't a snare, it's a piece of gear.
Well then what is a "biting snare" then? A bear trap really. This is part of the weirdness that making so many "common sense" traps into Snares. A Caltrop snare for instance is simply a bag of caltrops rigged to open and spill when someone trips a tripwire. Why couldn't you snip the wire and retrieve the caltrops? Same question for a bomb snare, which operates exactly the same. If you were to disable the trip wire, could you retrieve the bombs used for the snare?
Overall snares are undercooked. They really don't make much sense and break really easily. They require far too much GM fiat to get working in a sensible manner.
A biting snare is obviously something substantially larger than a bear trap, considering it deals 5d6 damage.
I never argued that the rules are elegant, just that it is clear that a snare, once crafted is an unmovable hazard as written.
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I actually have become of the opinion that a character could pick up and move their own snare.
Justification:
Unlike other items, found snares cannot be collected or sold in
their complete form. Snares have the snare trait.
A found snare would be one that you didn't create. You don't find something that you put in place. I would say this is to stop players from collecting potentially higher level snares they encounter as traps that a GM uses.
You can automatically disarm a snare that you
personally Crafted without triggering it by spending an
Interact action while adjacent to the snare.
This creates a fundamental difference between snares that you craft and snares that others craft. We know that "found" snares can't be collected or sold in their complete form.. but what about your own personal snares? Why couldn't a player have a series of Warning Snares that they use for camp security for instance, and reuse the next day if they go unused? They certainly wouldn't want to remake them every day, 15 gold a piece is too expensive for that. And using Downtime to reduce that cost to 7.5 gp a day is not reasonable if the party isn't staying in a single camp for extended periods of time.
The argument is that your own snares are a piece of your equipment just like your own weapons or boots.
The only problem I can see with this is that Ranger's Snare Specialist Feat does not deal with it well. Their free snares don't decay after all. So a Ranger could lay out all of their snares, then get up in the morning, prepare their daily allotment, then go about and recollect all of their other snares giving them... just a ton of snares eventually.
Actually the wording of Snare Specialist doesn't stop this from happening in the first place. Unlike "infused reagents" ala the Alchemist, their special snares aren't removed at the end of the day. This creates a situation where a Snare Specialist could have dozens if not hundreds of unused free snares after downtime, simply because they aren't using them. Since their special prepared snares have no bulk, there isn't an issue with packing them around either.
A sensible workaround is to treat these as infused reagents; they are replaced during daily preparations and any leftover snares from the previous day go inert for whatever reason.
But I digress, allowing characters to retrieve unused Snares makes snares a much more attractive option for even non-rangers. As is I haven't had a single player interested in using them at all, since they are single use items, even if they have no effect.
Is it me, or do some of the snare rules conflate crafting with "setting up" the trap? Seems to me the intent is that you can buy or craft a snare using the normal downtime crafting rules, then spend a minute in the field setting it up per the snare rules.
You can't sell a complete snare (that is, one that is set up), but you could move or sell an incomplete snare (that is, one that has not been set up yet, or was successfully disabled).
Does that make sense? Does that seem right? If not, shouldn't it be that way? Why or why not?
No, it does not make sense. Portable snares, such as bear traps and fishing nets, exist in the real world. PF2 ought to allow setting up a premade snare.
Therefore, I bypassed the entire issue by writing my own houserules were crafting a trap and setting up a trap were two different activities: Mathmuse's Houserules. My main desire was to make snares economically viable without the ranger feats that give a few free snares. I envision a snare not as a combat trick, but as a precaution for resting. The party could retreat to a cleared room and the snaremaster could put a snare across the doorway to protect the party from wandering monsters. And then, rather than wasting the full cost of a snare for a 1-hour defense, the snaremaster should be able to disarm the snare and pack it up intact for re-use.
I had described setting up a snare as a 1-minute Interact activity. I had considered a Survival check for setting up the trap, but the default DCs (DC 15 for a 1st-level item) were too high. In retrospect, I should just make failure mean, "Not set up yet. Try again," so that true failure requires rolling a critical failure. I will probably change my houserules several times.
If I don't buy, then setup a snare, but rather buy snare-crafting ingredients and craft it in the field, does that mean I can buy 15gp worth of snare crafting components and then craft any snare of 15gp or less that I want (provided I know the formula)?
Or do I have to buy specific snare components for specific snares? (So if I bought trip snare components, I could not then build a hobbling snare.)
The PF2 Core Rulebook rules for 1-minute snare construction use the downtime rules, which assumes plenty of time to stop by a store and buy raw materials. Therefore, when someone crafts a 1-minute snare in a dungeon, the crafter doesn't use raw materials; instead, he or she pays money. I guess a merchant wanders by during that minute.
I invented raw materials rules in my houserules, and defining the raw materials was anything more detaied than "snare-making materials" or "wood, and non-wood parts free from the snare kit" would make the raw materials unmanageable.
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I suspect beowulf99 is onto something, and that the Ranger's Snare Specialist feat needs errata to prevent hoarding.
Did Player Core 2 fix or clarify snares in any way?
Free snares created by something like snarecrafter feat are less durable than snares crafted with cost, and fall apart after a day, so there's no hoarding.
They are still crafted in place, so there is still no buying/selling/carrying around/setting up without qualifications for complete snares.
Sorry for the redundancy with this thread. My first attempt disappeared for some reason, then popped up again after making this one.
Got my copy of Player Core 2 now. :D
It looks like Snare Genius' quick deployment applies to all your snares now, not just the bonus daily snares. That's quite the buff.