Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimstaff  How prevalent do you guys think traps should be in a MegaDungeon?
Lots of them, scattered around?
A few, here and there?
A lot in special, trap-focused areas?
etc? |
IMO "traps" that serve as obstacles (open pits or crevasses, portcullises, chutes, shifting walls or rooms, one-way doors, teleporters, elevator rooms, etc.) should be pretty common, and are a big part of why when you go into a megadungeon you can't always count on just being able to retrace your steps in order to get out. The idea of being lost in the dungeon with no idea how you're going to get out and hoping you can find an exit before you run out of supplies (torches, food & water, hit points) is a very big part of the "megadungeon experience" and shouldn't be discounted.
OTOH, traps intended to injure or kill (spear or arrow traps, spiked pits, deadfalls, poison needles, poison gas, acid jets, flooding rooms, etc.) should be rarer, and usually placed for a specific reason (guarding a particular location or treasure) and not just randomly (except on the lowest levels of the dungeon, where in some sense the entire level counts as a "particular location"). The players should be constantly worried about such traps (because when they spring one chances are pretty good they're going to die) but if they're actually encountering more than, say, 1 for every 3 or 4 monster encounters (which is to say about 1 for every 10 to 12 rooms explored, or about 1 per session) that's probably too much.
I'm speaking generally (edition-neutrally) here -- I have no idea how the specific dynamics of
4E might affect the above.
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