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I wouldn't crank ALL the DC's up, but you could crank one of them up every once in a while. Maybe have a dungeon full of DC15-20 traps and one trap that is DC25 or something.
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Build an obvious trap that conseals the real trap, which springs when you disable the obvious trap.
It could be a 10x10 pitfall in the floor. It has a hidden handle on the wall to disable it tempory, but years of use has made it quite easy to spot. But there is a well hidden pressure plate beneath the handle which release a gigantic hinged stoneplate from the low cealing hitting the PC’s from behind (bludgeoning dam.) and Bull rushing the them into the pit. (Refl. save to avoid)
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We've never had so many traps that needing the rogue to scout ahead like this is all that necessary. IMO traps are way overrated in the game and should be used sparingly. Typically because of point 2 made above.
That being said, since this is a pre-written mega-dungeon, I say use the material as is.
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are they boring to you as the GM or boring to the group? Can you explain how they are boring?
I happen to like traps, but I don't see much of a point of a lone trap that is just a check away from disarming all by its lonesome. There should be more going on if it's a trap that only requires a disable device check, like mass combat, a flooding room, necessity to find a bathroom, etc...
otherwise, if its a lone trap, I much prefer a skill challenge trap, where several checks are needed to overcome, and not all or even the majority of them being disable device. Think of like Goonies traps, especially the bone organ one; perform, profession (musician) or linguistics, athletics, acrobatics, reflex saves, grapple hook checks, etc...
just a dart trap in a corridor is a little lame and is essentially nothing but a speed bump. But I wouldn't axe them altogether, the character has spent resources on being good at finding traps, so let them have their moments to shine.
Finally, again there are modifiers to Perception checks that you could use to add to the difficulty by RAW. If in combat, the distracted modifier is +5, mix up some favorable and unfavorable conditions for a -2/+2 to the DC, and so on.
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I would read The Angry GM's "Why Traps Suck". The whole idea is that they don't involve the whole core concept of a ttrpg; that player decisions matter/he consequences. Either the players search every square (which isn't a real choice, and has negligible consequences, and is incredibly tedious) or they don't search any (which is barely a choice, and the consequences aren't interesting).
The best solution that I found is in the placement of traps. If a trap's location is part of some kind of pattern (there's a pit at the center of every intersection, or all the stone lion statues pour flaming oil onto the ground, or there's an impromptu snare everywhere there's evidence of new tunnels or construction, etc), then the players can spend less time finding traps and be rewarded for diligence and cunning.
And then there's the matter of time. Scouting ahead to search every square is very...thorough. If the dungeon is going to cave in or the prisoners are about to be eaten or the terrible monster that's slowly stalking the party is catching up, they have to make some choices, and those choices are dynamic and engaging, and have real consequences in the game.
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Yeah sounds like you're in a bit of a pickle.
Maybe switch to magic traps then. They're far more complicated to disarm because of the range/method they can detonate, and now you can have reasonably-explainable powered up DC's for both Perc and SloH checks.
As far as the combat-hungry players, I dunno what else you CAN do when you have someone scouting and they avoid everything... /shrug. You should do something to throw them into combat while your rogue is off scouting, maybe you can Pavlov's Bell her into staying with the group if Assassins from the last dude they pissed off keep showing up whenever she splits from the group.
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https://theangrygm.com/traps-suck/
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so your players want to find the traps for the advantage it gives them, but then turn around and complain about finding and disarming the traps...they sound terrible
Dead serious, I'd take a break GMing and tell one of them to run.
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Throw in something that punishes the party for not moving fast, to go with those traps and now they have to choose between slow deliberate searching and disarming of traps and hustling through, consequences be damned.
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The wandering monster is a great element to add with traps, for the most basic reason of all: if there's an X% chance of a wandering monster every Y minutes...I mean. Searching for traps takes SO LONG. If the rogue takes two hours looking through every nook and cranny for potential traps, then they or the remainder of the party are likely to encounter some kind of beastie. And if they can't finish it quickly and quietly, other dungeon denizens will be altered to the hullabaloo.
But yes, add a ticking clock. Add several. They don't need to always be ticking down, but you need something. D&D is a game of resource management. Time is a resource. If you give them infinite time, you're hacking off a pretty big chunk of the game's challenge.
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search time isn't an issue as he mentioned they have Trap Spotter which lets them make a check automatically if within 10ft.
Mark, you could always pre-roll Perception checks and Disable Device checks (which since they are both supposed to be secret rolls, stays within RAW) and then apply them to the traps ahead of time, allowing you to pre-plan encounters, thus saving time, or knowing which ones to "spice up" as needed.
So if you know that the hall they are going down has 3 traps, before the game have a list of results for the two skills and apply them to those 3 traps. When the Rogue goes off to do roguey things, you already know if they are a success or failure and the consequences or rewards thereof. That doesn't make them any less of a speed bump, but greatly speeds up their play time, turning the successfully found and disarmed traps into simple narration and allowing you to focus the action on those that are missed/sprung and whatever may show up afterwards.
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Hi Mark, I think you raised this as an issue a couple of years ago. The advice then was to add some time pressure.
The other thing is disabling traps is a rogue's thing, just like turning undead is a cleric's, or a barbarian's is huge damage. It wouldn't be fair to punish a player for investing in a skill/ability by raising the DC to compensate.
If a thing has become trivial, then trivialise it to make the game run more quickly. But let the player know that it's their character's ability that has removed the challenge.
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Well if search times aren't an issue, disabling and Stealth checks still eat up the clock. And are boring, in-world. So make them boring at the table. You want to be slow, methodical and precise, like some kind of ancient, well-oiled clock? Okay, cool. Have at it. But clocks do not lead exciting lives. So. There's that.
And while I agree that you can't punish a player for spending resources and being good at X, I would say that allowing X to be trivialize and moving past it is just another form of punishment. Like, if a GM handwaived some combats because my barbarian was so good at murder, and said "hey, you're so good, you don't even need to roll!" I'd...feel short changed, at least.
Really, though. That article is the key to using traps at all. If someone didn't want to implement any of the ideas or discusses, I'd advise they just cut traps out of the game, period. Because they don't fit very well with the ttrpg experience, and the d20 system doesn't have rules in place to make them good, fun or interesting as-is.
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sounds like you have one player (the scout) who is taking too much of the limelight and not letting the other players have their time as well.
If this is the case, then reduce the number of traps and make the combats such that they affect the whole party and not just involve the rogue.
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If you're running something pre-written with no modification, then well that's kind of it. Any kind of module is going to have some content that players are built to trivialize, so if you don't want to change the traps, then just make peace with them being ineffective. You can say they're present and just remark that the unrogue deals with them trivially if that's the route you want to go. Sometimes I do travel sequences where I give a little description that tells the players they have some minor encounters that aren't dangerous enough to merit playing so that I can get to the actual challenges.
If it's specifically an issue with trap spotter, you could talk to the player about dropping the feat because it's not appropriate for the game.
Nothing wrong with scaling the DCs for that matter, though I'd communicate it to your players so that they know you're going to be expecting them to be more careful.
Disable device doesn't have to be a one-step trap solution. In fact if it's being used a lot, you really should expand on those situations so that they don't get boring. A more complex trap could require something specific to disable it or a particular series of actions. How do you just disable an Indiana Jones type trap where the mechanism is inaccessible and the trap activates from breaking a beam of light? Have a mechanism in mind and make them figure out how to approach it.
Or disabling a particular trap might necessarily cause some other issue. As long as they feel like their perception and disable device are getting them somewhere, you're allowed to put in a hard barrier. You can switch to using hole-in-the-ground type simple traps as something more like set dressing than actual challenges, but then have traps with complex switches like say a trap in a wizard's tower that needs an arcana roll to suss out some aspect of the design and disable completely and you'll let them try UMD but either way now you've got them onto less specialized skills that either involve more members of the group or force them to use skills they're less specialized in. Or a minor illusion conceals some crucial part of the mechanical trigger so that at the very least they need to make a will save.
You could have some cunningly set up sequence where the rogue's skills let them deduce that disabling one trap will set something else off and now they have to figure out what that thing is before they do it. There could be a trap with a manual trigger activated by someone watching from pick-a-safe-viewing-place, or a wandering monster that's figured out he can catch things to eat if he steps on a particular stone while the PC is standing in a particular spot. So the rogue sees the trap and maybe even starts disabling it and a successful roll just tells them someone could be pulling the trigger on it *right now*, giving them a chance to get out of the way, but leaving the problem intact
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@ the Ryser Geyser: it part of point 2, part of point 3. The player has complained that the traps in the source material are stale. She likes when her high Perception and scouting finds enemies (sometimes SO excited she opts to attack foes the whole party could've otherwise avoided). Finding traps and disabling them has gotten a tad rote b/c of how high her Perception is versus the DCs.
You can simply speed through the traps. They're there, they're not interesting, but they're not slow enough to be boring.
"Taking 10, you spot another trap, this one designed to trigger an explosion. Taking 10, you disarm it."This means (a) the rogue still knows they're being useful - this really doesn't negate the build, and (b) you have more time to do interesting stuff like interact with enemies.
I find traps are at their most interesting if you know they're there but can't disarm them because of all the other stuff that's happening, so you have to work around them. However, this shouldn't be overused.
The other 2 players' complaints, in part, is that with the rogue constantly scouting ahead they don't get the chance to explore a lot of the megadungeon and get into encounters.
This seems like a different issue.
If the dungeon is any good, scouting ahead isn't going to solve everything. For example, you scout ahead and find a door. If you open it, the enemies on the other side will see you open it, and then you're going to wish the entire group was there instead of just the scout.
And some creatures have life-sense, tremor-sense and similar abilities. These are going to be very hard to surprise. In which case, the rogue might find herself isolated and under attack. Again, you're going to wish you hadn't split the group.
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Yeah, fixing the trap issue is a mix just breezing through the rogue doing their routine to disable traps that don't have anything else happening around them and not giving the party time (whether they're chasing after someone, or in the middle of combat) to disable them. Sure they know the traps are there, but they can't do anything about them.
With regard to the scouting, the easy answer is to not let scouting be so effective.
Closed doors, monsters with senses that can't be hidden from via stealth, etc can all present a wall that the scout can't get past without alerting enemies. And if the scout encounters those enemies alone, they'll wish they hadn't. The first time it happens, you might give the scout "weak" enemies so that their solo fight is survived. But hopefully they get the idea that scouting out alone like that is dangerous.
Remember, this is a megadungeon. There doesn't need to be safe routes around dangerous areas, and I would argue there shouldn't be.
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I had a scouting ranger at my last campaign. The player enjoyed the thrill, but I tried to keep my descriptions short so the other players get to act sooner.
Maybe it's possible to make the scouting mission interesting enough so the other players are content with watching and listening, for a while. Both mystery (weird room interior or creatures etc.) and close calls (guards on patrol etc.) add to excitement, so maybe it's already exciting enough to just watch. Depends on the player, naturally.
Personally I think a Perception DC of 16 to 20 (or even 15 and below!) is a tad low for 5th-level adventurers. I used DC 20 in a 1st-level kobold cave lately, and it seemed like a reasonable challenge. At level 5, I'd go for 25 (basically compensating the additional skill ranks), even at the expense of damage output or Disable Device DC. Speaking of trade-offs: I guess traps can become a bit more interesting if each one gets special strengths (high Perception DC, Disable Device DC, Reflex DC / attack bonus or damage output) while being quite weak at another aspect. This way the CR stays the same while it becomes a tad more challenging and interesting.
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In a living mega-dungeon, if the scout goes too far ahead, the rest of the party might get attacked by wandering monsters.
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Traps don't work on their own. You stop briefly, roll a few dice, move on. Nothing interesting.
They need to be put in as part of a larger encounter. Disarming a trap in the face of an arrow storm is much more interesting and has actual consequences, especially if you need to disarm it to get at the archers. Pursuing an enemy down a corridor is more difficult if it's trapped in ways that he knows how to avoid. Swarming a solo BBEG suddenly gets harder if the floor opens up under the charging barbarian and 500lbs of rocks land on the wizard.
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PC is a U-Rogue 5 with the Trap Spotter talent. I don't have her full build right here in front of me but I know her Perception is +11. I'm running pre-written material for a megadungeon loaded with mechanical and magic traps.
On the mechanical ones... avg Perception DC is a 15-20. SOP for this player is to scout ahead of the party, clearing the way before the group proceeds. Even when I spontaneously add traps to a fight scene this PC is often close enough to the front line that she senses something unless I'm cheating or I roll really poorly on her secret Perception checks.
In short; most of my mechanical traps are no more interesting than a speed bump.
I've been running games in PF1 for 11 years now and this is honestly the first time traps have gotten THIS boring. No one ever plays Rogues in my games and folks with Trapfinding haven't been this religious about scouting ahead.
Do I just have to crank the DCs on all the traps sky high? Turn all the traps to Magic traps? How do I make the environment more engaging with a PC so focused on finding/disarming traps. Please note: this player is one of 4 that are obsessed with RAW, so just homebrewing a new way of running traps will be a non-starter. Also, I'm not looking to be a killer GM here either.
Personally, I say let the player and their party benefit from their focus on dealing with traps. They chose to be good at that over something else.
Countering players' investment in what they want to excel at by raising the difficulty makes them feel like their choices don't matter and they're at the mercy of your whims. I don't think that's a good way to keep the game fun for all involved.
The trap expert will fail to detect or disarm a trap occasionally, and it will be all the more shocking to the party when it happens.
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When someone is that good at bypassing something, I usually play it for laughs. The character comes back to the party weighed down by disarmed traps, dumps an arm load of bear traps and poisoned darts off at the party's feet and goes back for more. They get to show off a bit, their ability is rewarded, and it doesn't take too much time.
The only way I've found to make traps interesting is for them to have some purpose other than deter or damage. Using things like poorly maintained elevators that work a bit but should be disabled if you don't plan to use them, or fire suppression systems that are a bit aggressive but necessary if the fire elementals escape, that sort of thing.
If you do ramp up the DC's do something like a trapped room with increasingly easier threats. Do the classic, doors slam shut, gas starts pouring in, burning creatures on the floor will ignite the gas if it fills to their level. The door trap is hard to see and disable, the gas is easy to see and disable but needs to be done quickly, and the monsters can be disabled by the party.