D&D 5E Traps, how do you handle them?

[Bladecoder]

So I should probably start off by saying that I HATE Passive Perception, I think that it does not add anything to the game and is overall just very lame. However I also hate it when players just do a perception check in every single room they enter... So I came up with a solution which is describing a room with a couple of odds quirks such as "A book that sticks slight farther than the rest outside" or "A hook on a shelf that is slight more bent than the others" then if my players attempt to do a perception check and succeed then I reveal some more information. So anyways I guess what I was leading up to was this...

How do you handle traps in 5e? Do you do it just like the DM's guide says to? Do you use the UA's approach? Or do you have your own way of doing traps?

Post your method below!

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I expect [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] will be along sometime relatively soon, and be much more eloquent in describing his process which I have unashamedly stolen for my own use.

But, basically, traps are handled by way of giving the players something that they can interact with - something to investigate further (numerous open-mouthed demon face carvings lining the walls of a hallway, and scorch marks on the stone flooring), or begin to reason through the meaning of (a section of floor tiles that have a rough, pitted surface, positioned under a small hole in the ceiling), without having to involve any game mechanics (such as a perception check, whether passive or active) just to start the process. Game mechanics only become involved if the characters are doing things which the outcome of is not certain (i.e. there is probably a roll to use thieves tools to disengage a pressure plate without triggering it, but there is not going to be a roll needed to jump over a pressure plate unless it is way bigger than it needs to be or your character is particularly horrendous at jumping).

 

[Quickleaf]

My approach has evolved to be a bit of a hybrid...

Trap design should be internally LOGICAL but embrace FAIR PLAY. A giant slab of stone sealing off the only tomb entrance after the party is 50 feet down a hall makes sense. A real-world trap designer looking to kill could do worse. But in D&D that's rarely a good option. Instead, it could work if it adds a secondary goal of finding a new route out of the dungeon, and the DM includes a couple alternative exists. That could work.

Similarly, when you place a trap you want to think about how the inhabitants interact with it. For example, gnolls with a hyena pack aren't going to have a bunch of bear snares and pit traps lying around because their pet hyenas would be setting them off all the time. Another example, if a wizard has the 7th stair from the top trapped with a lightning bolt spewing from a gargoyle's mouth if the password isn't uttered...you'd better believe that there's some visual hint (and a pretty big one), just so the wizard and any apprentices/guests don't get zapped by accident while getting up late at night to get a glass of water.

My basic trap questions are:

• Who made it and why?
• How do current inhabitants avoid the trap? Does that make sense given how they use the space?
• Who resets it or takes care of corpses caught in it?
• If the trap recurs renewing components (e.g. poison), where do those come from?

A trap is NEVER automatically noticed due to high Perception. It's deduced by clever thinking. Look at a mimic, galeb duhr, or shrieker in the Monster Manual and you'll see a trait called False Appearance. As written, there's absolutely no way to detect the creature's presence with skills because it's guise is just that flawless (which is different than, say, a hag's Illusory Appearance, which Insight can see through). At a bare minimum, I expect traps to be designed such that they benefit from something like False Appearance.

Instead, certain details may be picked up (as I elaborate below), but none of those obviously give away the trap. A player needs to think a bit and interpolate to figure out the trap's trigger, mechanism of action, effect, and how it might be safely sprung, disabled, or bypassed.

You see BLANK, and here's what you observe. You encounter something interesting or unusual. What information I automatically describe may either be pre-defined (usually for smaller less-significant traps) or it may depend on other factors (for more involved "set piece" traps):

• Passive skill scores, including but in no way limited to Passive Perception. Usually I use other passive skills more than Perception.
• The presence of certain races in the party (e.g. dwarves & stonework).
• The presence of certain classes in the party (e.g. clerics and paladins & holy/unholy fonts).
• The presence of a PC of a certain background, in rare cases.
• The type of senses available to the PCs, either innately or through magic.
• Other mitigating factors.

There's usually nothing structured about it, and I do it entirely by feel and a glance at the few PC stats I have behind my screen.

If the PCs decide to investigate further, I lean a lot on auto-successes (i.e. no roll) unless there's clearly a conflict or something difficult that would draw what happens next into question.

CLICK! Now what do you do? One of the great observations that AngryGM made is that when a trap is triggered it's best to give the player a chance to respond to it. Thinking back on my childhood, that's pretty much how I ran traps on my own because I wanted to involve my friends. Many traps are one-and-done affairs (e.g. poison needle, pit trap, sphere of annihilation in the wall); in terms of their "stage presence" they're like 1 hit point monsters. Monsters usually survive long enough to have a bit of back-and-forth with the PCs, and the 2-4 rounds of combat give the players chances to respond to monster actions. Traps are rarely designed that way, and thus don't inherently give the players a chance to respond. What I've found to be much more fun than, say, a pressure plate triggering a trap is for CLICK! the pressure plate is activated and releasing your foot will now trigger it like a Hollywood movie land mine.

Not all trap mechanisms can be tweaked to behave like the pressure plate, and sometimes once players are aware of a certain kind of trap you want encountering other versions of that trap to "remove the kid gloves". That's fine. But now I try to find ways to consciously incorporate the "CLICK rule" more often than not.

SURPRISE your players with the effects / side effects of the trap. There was a great online article written during 4e, which may or may not have been incorporated in the DMG#2 (I can't remember), which described a rolling boulder trap smashing through a wall at the end of a corridor only to reveal a room with hidden clues about the trap-maker and dungeon. That's brilliant! When I remember, I try to incorporate that kind of stuff into my traps. My players really love it, and it speaks to instigator-type players who might just trigger a trap to see what new avenue of exploration it opens up.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Very, very carefully...

 

[Jester David]

I like my verisimilitude, so I try to be logical. Traps need a makers and if creatures use a passage they should have a way around the trap, or their should be a way to deactivate the trap. You don't poison a doorknob you use repeatedly everyday because you're going to forget and trigger the trap.

I have a few different types of traps in my games. Just like I have a few different roles for monsters.

There are the low damage gotcha traps. These are there for flavour, to get the players acting cautious, and take off a few hit points. Wear down the characters slightly and extend the adventuring day. Like a mook fight or a guard. They typically have a single usage. They might also serve as an alarm.
Then there's the more dangerous repeating variant of the above that has to be disarmed. This keeps the rogue occupied, or requires some creative thinking to bypass. But they're not that deadly as they're noticed when they're triggered. It might get one or two characters at most.

Then there are terrain traps. These just make combat interesting. Pit traps, dart firing pressure plates, jets of fire, etc. Stuff to make the party pay attention to the battlemap.

More deadly traps should have some sign. A dead body. An obvious colour coded pressure plate. A giant looming boulder. Some clue in the room that screams "trap!", so the players know something is up but they just don't know exactly what. This is more a skill challenge or excercise in creativity thinking, as the goal is not to trigger the obvious trap.

I don't use passive Perception for traps, unless it's a deadly trap. That's more a usage of Investigation. Finding a trap is much more active. I might allow Perception for some signs or clues in a hallway of the player says they're looking. Similarly, looking at an entire room isn't going to reveal much. I request that my players examine certain areas and specify where they're looking.

 

[Shiroiken]

So I should probably start off by saying that I HATE Passive Perception, I think that it does not add anything to the game and is overall just very lame. However I also hate it when players just do a perception check in every single room they enter... So I came up with a solution which is describing a room with a couple of odds quirks such as "A book that sticks slight farther than the rest outside" or "A hook on a shelf that is slight more bent than the others" then if my players attempt to do a perception check and succeed then I reveal some more information. So anyways I guess what I was leading up to was this...

Real quick (before [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] mentions it), players can't call for a check... ever. YOU, the DM determine when a check is rolled. If you describe an area and they want to make a check, ask them what they're doing instead, and then call for a check on that specific thing. A lot of times checks are irrelevant, so don't call for them (it just speeds up play).

As for Passive skills, it depends on your group and playstyle. If your players react based on their roll, rather than the results you give them, then calling for checks isn't good (the players are meta-gaming the die roll). If your players have no problem accepting the results as gospel, regardless of the "1" they rolled, then don't bother with passive.

How do you handle traps in 5e? Do you do it just like the DM's guide says to? Do you use the UA's approach? Or do you have your own way of doing traps?

Post your method below!

In general I use Wis/Perception to locate the trigger (if possible) or clues to the trap's presence (such as scorch marks on the floor). A lot of times I'll roll against the party's passive, so that they don't know a trap is coming if they fail. Int/Investigation is used to figure out the effect (if possible) or countermeasures to the trap, and usually Dex/Thieves' Tools or Int/Arcana is used to disarm the trap. While this can make things a bit MAD (multi-ability dependency) for a single character, it actually allows the a Wisdom based character to be the trap-finder, while the Rogue (or whoever) then focuses on disarming the trap.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

As [MENTION=6775477]Shiroiken[/MENTION] said, the Players *don't decide* when they get to make a check. Making any sort of skill check, save, or anything else for that matter, is when the DM says to do so. Heck when I'm looking for a player to make some kind of skill check or ability save I usually just say "Roll d20 for me". If I'm checking their PC's Perception and the players had stated they are being 'extra cautious' or slow; then I add their Perception adjustment (I have Passive Perception, Passive Insight and any 'important' skill for that character; e.g., Survival for a Ranger , Knowledge for Wizard types and Bards, Stealth for Thieves, etc). I relay any info that result may have garnered...

I DM 5e very similar to how I DM BECMI/1e (or, hell, just about any game I run actually!). That is to say I DM "old skool". If a door is trapped with a falling block, I'll say something like "The door in front of you looks similar to the other dungeon doors you've seen. This one doesn't seem to be used very often at all, as a large spiderweb connects from the ceiling to the top and upper left side of the door. There also seems to be a bit more dirt, dust and small rocks around the floor in front of the door". If the players are quick and on the ball they may suspect this door isn't used often for a reason.

I will then use Perception to determine any extra info the PC's may discern. Passive if the players aren't "on the ball" (e.g., "Oh, ok. Well, I'll listen at the door"). If they say "Hold on guys. Somethings not right here...", then a Perception check is made in secret...I don't let the players roll them because if someone rolls, say, an 18 and has +6, and I say "Nothing stands out other than this area and door isn't used much", the roll, and my description, is pretty much the same as saying "You see no traps". If the result is good (beats the trap DC), I relay the type of trap (e.g., "The debris and pits, cracks and chips on some of the flagstones indicate some sort of falling block type trap").

Once a trap has been "found", it's up to the player to see if they want to try and disable/overcome/neutralize it. This is when other skills come into play; Thieves' Tools for most 'lock or fine trigger-traps', or Investigation for 'bigger or macro-type traps'. In the example above, a falling block trap would be Investigation. My players know that if they opt to try and disarm/overcome/neutralize a trap, and they fail, they almost always 'spring' the trap. So, owing to my "old skool" roots, my players will usually describe how/what they are doing to minimize the effects of failing to 'remove' the trap. If their description would make the trap ineffective, then they simply trigger it and no harm, no foul (e.g, "I'll tie a rope to the door handle, use a spike in the opposite wall to act as a fulcrum, wrap the rope around that, then pull from...I guess 35' or so away" <-- door opens, block falls, PC's safe).

Anyway, that's how I handle traps. Perception to see if a PC notices anything odd. Player choice to decide to search the area more closely. Perception to see if they notice the trap. Investigation (or whatever is appropriate) to figure out how to disarm the trap. To put it another way, it's not just "Make a Perception check. --rolls-- Ok, you find a trap" anytime the PC's come upon some form of trap. It's up to the PLAYERS to decide if some area, item or whatever deserves a more careful perusal. So, yeah, I do use Passive Perception

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Draegn]

I trap/obstacle three main areas

Places where very few people go: Why does the Viscountess keep the old tower locked?
Old ruinous places: A burned out castle where the floor may or may not collapse.
Things people should not touch/play with: You have the baron's lock box, what did you expect?

I allow the players to take whatever precautions they wish.

 

[Imaculata]

Whenever I present a trap to my players, I often make sure to give them fair hints that a trap may be near. Traps rarely trigger right away. Usually something happens that the players can respond to. This doesn't mean that I give away the presence of all traps.

Last week my players were about to open a treasure chest, but they decided to check for traps. So I asked them 'how' they check for traps. The player then told me how he would try to carefully check for hidden springs with a needle, from the side. Fair enough. Only in this case the trap was magical, so he didn't notice any mechanisms. What he did notice, was an odd buzzing sound. I asked him for a perception check, but because he didn't roll very well, I informed him that he was unsure what the buzzing could be. His elven friend decided to assist him, and with his keen hearing he was able to deduce that the sound was of some kind of magical effect that was building up a charge whenever the lid was even slightly opened, and he noticed a red glow on the inside of the chest. He asked me if he could perhaps try to identify the spell, since he could hear it and see it. So I asked for a Spellcraft check, and he was able to identify it as a Disintegrate spell. They decided not to open the chest, but keep it as a one-shot item. It could come in handy.

 

[Seramus]

Game mechanics only become involved if the characters are doing things which the outcome of is not certain

A trap is NEVER automatically noticed due to high Perception. It's deduced by clever thinking.

So I asked them 'how' they check for traps.

I request that my players examine certain areas and specify where they're looking.

If you describe an area and they want to make a check, ask them what they're doing instead, and then call for a check on that specific thing.

It's up to the PLAYERS to decide if some area, item or whatever deserves a more careful perusal.

How do each of you handle the almost inevitable circumstance where a character trained in some of these skills becomes far more experienced and knowledgeable about that skill than the player will ever be?

Or, whenever the character is far wiser and more intelligent than the player? And in some cases, wiser and more intelligent than the player AND the DM combined?