How often do you use traps?

[Lanefan]

Not sure how to vote here as my first question is "what percentage of what?".

However, most of my adventures are dungeon crawls, either canned modlues or homebrew, and traps show up now and then, and then, and then too.

There's two types I'll use: the alarm-style trap that makes a big noise and maybe delays people to give the defenders time to set up, and the kill-style trap that does the defenders' work for them. Occasionally, for humour value, I'll throw a snare or two into a forest setting: "Now how'd you get in there? You're supposed to be a nice fat deer to feed me and my family but you're not, and I can't exactly eat you, can I?"

Lanefan

 

[rawgt3]

does anyone know of any rules for pc's setting simple traps? you know, like deadfalls, nets, snares that kinda thing. All I see in the DMG are pit traps and elaborate rich person traps.
(like Combat trapsmith ability but slower and not magical or alchemical)

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

I like to use them pretty liberally, maybe about 30-50%. And my players that have been with me a while know this. That's what makes using them so fun, because it's a challenge to come up with something new that I might actually fool them and which they haven't seen before elsewhere.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

does anyone know of any rules for pc's setting simple traps? you know, like deadfalls, nets, snares that kinda thing. All I see in the DMG are pit traps and elaborate rich person traps.
(like Combat trapsmith ability but slower and not magical or alchemical)

It hasn't really been covered much in the rules, but crafting a trap would seem to fall under the same rules as crafting anything else. The character should take Craft (trap making or trapsmithing) and the craft rules (PHB pg. 70) would apply just as with anything else the character wants to craft.

 

[GammaPaladin]

also you don't need a dungeon crawl to have traps, you can have them out side too
nothing says hunting like a beartrap/falling net/spiked pit/avalanche!

When I ran campaigns, about 95% of everything took place in cities. Just not places where it makes sense to have traps everywhere.

Besides, I figure most people are smart enough to realize that they're more likely to kill themselves when they forget about a trap or mess up the disarming sequence than to stop an intruder/thief with one. Honestly, you open and close your safe probably 100-1000 times for every one attempt a thief might make at it.

Which of you is more likely to set off the trap in the long run?

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I remember the Grimtooth's Traps books which had excellent, interesting, and innovative (not to mention lethal!) trap designs. Too bad a couple die rolls and all that work goes down the toilet.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I probably use traps bout 10-20% of the time. My group's rouge has a system so that speeds up play. For most doors it's: Search, listen, mirror under door (if possible). For corridors his retractable 10ft pole comes in handy. If the party is not rushed he'll scout ahead with rope around waist. Hes managed to survive so far and other than 'room is trap' he usually sets or finds my traps without wasting game time.

This doesn't mean my whole dungeon is littered but i usually have one or 2. I actually have a request. I'm really into puzzles, and riddles but I'm not too creative. Is there any website that might have interesting puzzles/riddles to integrate into your campaign instead of full dungeons or adventures.

Heh, one I came up with, but have never used, is a room with a tiled floor. Each 3x3 section has a center tile of a different color from the surrounding tiles, and that tile bears a prime number printed on its surface....

Touching any of the prime numbers, in any sequence, sets off the trap - the folks who live there just walk on the plain tiles between them.

The Auld Grump