Is this fair? -- your personal opinion

[Raven Crowking]

A fair question. Given that the save DC was so high, I don't think it would. Any trap with a DC high enough to kill a character outright with a roll of 19 will almost assuradly have a Search DC above what an equal level rogue can find, because they scale at the same rate.

Therefore, it is not true that the criteria I suggested earlier would be sufficient to determine fairness in your campaign. You do not believe that the ability to find the trap by Taking 10 or Taking 20 is sufficient to falsify a claim of unfairness.

The next question would be, if there were sufficient clues to cause you to Search, and you could find the trap by Taking 10 or Taking 20, would the high save DC and insta-kill on failure still render the trap unfair?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Honestly, it's that last bit of Thirdwizard's that gets me. The fact that the trap is instant death. Pull the lever, die. (Ok, you might live if you roll a 20, but, that's bit of a cop out IMO). Even if the rogue discovered the trap, he still has a fairly high chance of dying since failing a disarm roll by 5 or more sets off the trap.

The trap is unfair since the party could do everything right and still die. We shouldn't be punishing parties for doing the right things should we?

If the save DC was standard, then I would have no beefs with this trap. The fact that this is instant death makes it unfair.

Hussar, I agree with you that a save which requires a natural 20 to succeed is, for nearly all intents and purposes, equivilent to having no saving throw at all. In fact, I think that this is actually the reason that most of the people on this thread found the trap unfair.

I think that the objection is not to "Save or Die" traps (so long as it is possible to save) so much as "Think or Die" traps where simply rolling a die is insufficient to ensure a reasonable chance of survival.

RC

 

[Hussar]

Hussar, I agree with you that a save which requires a natural 20 to succeed is, for nearly all intents and purposes, equivilent to having no saving throw at all. In fact, I think that this is actually the reason that most of the people on this thread found the trap unfair.

I think that the objection is not to "Save or Die" traps (so long as it is possible to save) so much as "Think or Die" traps where simply rolling a die is insufficient to ensure a reasonable chance of survival.

RC

I'll mostly buy that. Although, really, how much thinking here is up for grabs. Like I said, if the rogue spotted the trap, he could easily fail the disarm check (assuming it's similar to the save DC) and instantly die. Sure, the players could have been smarter and used other ideas to set off the trap. However, the fact that they did everything right and died leads me to call this an unfair trap. They checked for traps, they let the guy with the best saves test the potentially dangerous lever. That's doing the right thing as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Barak]

I never thought the trap was crazy unfair, like the Sun in the room thing.

The problem is that we have too little information, really, to know if the trap was fair for those characters. Here's what we know..

-There's a secret door in the room and an obvious lever
-The characters looked for and failed to find a way to open the secret door.
-The characters don't -have- to open the door/touch the lever to successfully complete the adventure.
-The rogue searched for traps on the lever and didn't find any.
-The monk pulled the lever, had to make a save, rolled a 19, and was disintegrated.

That's pretty much it. We don't know if they heard rumors/whatever that may lead them to believe something else important but not vital is in the dungeon. We don't know what the rogue rolled on his search, or wether or not he took 10/20. We also don't know if, assuming he hadn't, taking 20 would have enabled him to actually find the trap. And, had he found it, if a reasonably good roll on his Disable Device would have disabled it or not.

We also don't know what the lever actually does, if anything. We don't know if the rope on the lever thing would have worked to bypass the trap or not. We don't know the level of the characters in question. We don't know who built the dungeon, how many traps the group encountered before, how many levers, if all previous levers were trapped or not. We don't know if they encountered many secret doors opened by levers (it -seems- dumb to have an obvious lever open a secret door, unless you figure that maybe that door is an exit/entrance, and is only supposed to be hard to find from the other side).

Depending on which choices one makes when determining all those unknowns, I can easily see the trap be unfair. I can also see it be fair, to be honest. But if I answer (for myself) all those questions using an "average" response (that the rogue took 10 or rolled 10 on his search, for example), I end up on the side of unfair, which is why I said so.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Barak, if you examine your post, above, and then examine the numbers on the poll, what conclusions do you draw?

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Okay, I'll tell you what I infer.

If a PC died, someone made a mistake. That someone was either the DM or one or more of the players.

You say

Depending on which choices one makes when determining all those unknowns, I can easily see the trap be unfair. I can also see it be fair, to be honest. But if I answer (for myself) all those questions using an "average" response (that the rogue took 10 or rolled 10 on his search, for example), I end up on the side of unfair, which is why I said so.

I say

Yes, it seems dumb for a secret door to be opened by an obvious lever, and that alone is a fair indication that this is a trap.

When you were making a determination based on average responses, the problem that you perforce encounter is that "Take 10/20 should work to locate the trap" and "Rogue should Take 10/20 when searching for the trap" are both average responses based upon the same criteria. Obviously, they cannot both be true here -- either Take 10/20 doesn't work, or the rogue didn't Take 10/20. Either the DM screwed up or the player(s) screwed up.

And, frankly, because the DM could have simply told the monk that the save succeeded regardless of what was written in his notes, we must assume that if the DM screwed up here he was simply not playing fair. He upped the save DC, or didn't drop the clues, or was mad at the monk's player. The only alternative is that, even when it came to the moment, the DM somehow failed to realize that his trap design was deadlier than he intended even though (as some argue) the players did everything right.

In other words, this seems to me to be a choice between (1) the players screwed up and the DM let the dice fall where they may, or (2) the DM decided to kill the monk.

Which of these two seems more likely, on "average"?

I argue that, given this situation, unless we have compelling reason to believe otherwise it is necessary to assume that the DM played fair. This is because, if for no other reason, the game absolutely sucks if you spend it blaming every PC failure on the DM.

Frankly, I find the numbers in this poll somewhat disturbing.

RC

 

[ThirdWizard]

Therefore, it is not true that the criteria I suggested earlier would be sufficient to determine fairness in your campaign. You do not believe that the ability to find the trap by Taking 10 or Taking 20 is sufficient to falsify a claim of unfairness.

IIRC the criteria wasn't that the rogue take 10 or 20, it was that it was easily searchable, within the limits of what the PC can reasonably do. Take a level 10 rogue with a 14 Int and a +5 item to search and disable device. He has a search and disable device of around +20. He can find a trap with a DC of 30 50% of the time with a single roll or all the time with a Take 10, and he can disable it easily with a Take 10.

The next question would be, if there were sufficient clues to cause you to Search, and you could find the trap by Taking 10 or Taking 20, would the high save DC and insta-kill on failure still render the trap unfair?

Clues to cause you to search, or clues to cause you to believe the lever is trapped?

If you mean the latter, lets say a charred corpse still clutching the lever (it doesn't leave dust anymore), then I would say that it depends on how well non-rogue trap methods work. If a dispel magic won't suppress it, then we're back to unfair, for example.

Yes, it seems dumb for a secret door to be opened by an obvious lever, and that alone is a fair indication that this is a trap.

What if the PCs hadn't found the secret door?

Wouldn't you find it strange if the PCs had searched the entire wall painstakingly (search DCs to find a secret door start at 20), but just decided to glance over the lever (roll once).

Why the connection between the two? This was debated pages and pages back, but there is no indication that the lever opens the secret door. None at all. And, throughout this thread it seems to be that the people who think that the trap is fair believe that the lever obviously opens the secret door. The people on the unfair side don't make that assumption.

In other words, this seems to me to be a choice between (1) the players screwed up and the DM let the dice fall where they may, or (2) the DM decided to kill the monk.

There is a (3). The DM didn't think it was a difficult trap, and didn't pull his punches when the monk pulled the lever. Good DMs do this all the time. They design a puzzle thinking the puzzle has an obvious solution, but what they don't realize is that other people won't see it as so obvious. Then they wonder why the Players are having such a hard time with it. This DM foolishly added in a death effect, thinking it wouldn't be too bad, because he didn't think anyone would pull the lever.

I find that option most likely.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There is a (3). The DM didn't think it was a difficult trap, and didn't pull his punches when the monk pulled the lever. Good DMs do this all the time. They design a puzzle thinking the puzzle has an obvious solution, but what they don't realize is that other people won't see it as so obvious. Then they wonder why the Players are having such a hard time with it. This DM foolishly added in a death effect, thinking it wouldn't be too bad, because he didn't think anyone would pull the lever.

I find that option most likely.

And, frankly, because the DM could have simply told the monk that the save succeeded regardless of what was written in his notes, we must assume that if the DM screwed up here he was simply not playing fair. He upped the save DC, or didn't drop the clues, or was mad at the monk's player. The only alternative is that, even when it came to the moment, the DM somehow failed to realize that his trap design was deadlier than he intended even though (as some argue) the players did everything right.

Surely, you are not arguing that the DM foolishly didn't think it would be too bad even after the monk pulled the lever and rolled the 19?

RC

 

[ThirdWizard]

The only alternative is that, even when it came to the moment, the DM somehow failed to realize that his trap design was deadlier than he intended even though (as some argue) the players did everything right.

I find it highly unlikely that the DM didn't realize that the PCs couldn't make the save before putting the trap there. That would be DM incompetance in my book. So unless we assume the DM is a moron, he put that save DC above the PCs' ability knowing that if they pulled the lever, someone would die.

My only idea for that is he thought that the PCs wouldn't pull it, so the save DC didn't matter.

Surely, you are not arguing that the DM foolishly didn't think it would be too bad even after the monk pulled the lever and rolled the 19?

Many DMs don't change something just becuase the PCs do something unexpected. Does the mysterious wizard informant suddenly drop 5 levels because the PCs attacked him? I don't play that way. I wouldn't have ever made this trap, though, so I wouldn't need to change it on the fly in the first place.

Why would the DM purposely set the DC so that they PCs couldn't make it then at the last minute change it to save one of them? A change of heart?



Once I was playing a PC fighter named Cal. We beat down a veritable horde of undead and found ourselves in the basement of the keep of an ancient castle. In this room was a swirling pool of earth: rock, dirt, and all assortments of the element.

Cal put his finger into it.

It was actually an Earth Weird (MMII), and Cal had to make a saving throw or be turned to stone, fall into the rolling earth, and be crushed into a thousand pieces never to be seen again. The save DC was so high that Cal had to roll an 18 or better (I looked it up later, those Weirds are insane).

The DM never thought I would do something like that. I didn't expect the consequences of my actions to be so dire. But, he played them out exactly like the book said. Now, I rolled a natural 20, so I didn't get to test that, but I do believe that he would have killed my character.

Now a swirling pool of earth is a whole lot more of a hint of DO NOT TOUCH!!! than a lever on the floor. I realize that I shouldn't have touched the earthen pool that was sitting at the bottom of an undead infested keep. But, at the time it seemed like a good idea for some reason. Hey, hindsight is 20/20.

 

[gizmo33]

Now a swirling pool of earth is a whole lot more of a hint of DO NOT TOUCH!!! than a lever on the floor.

That's funny because "pulling levers" among my players is proverbial for "acting carelessly". A lever, or any other object in a dungeon is as capable as being enchanted/trapped as any other object.

In fact, in choosing to trap either a pile of swirling dirt or a lever, the smart money says to trap the lever because you know that people are more likely to pull it than they are to touch the dirt. By that reasoning, the lever is actually more dangerous than the dirt.