Do you pull the chain?

[Abraxas]

It's interesting to note how differently this poll is going (so far) from as similar one from 4 years ago: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/174075-good-idea-pull-lever-dungeon.html

Yes then and yes now.

 

[Lancelot]

Yes. Or, rather, I bully either the rogue or the party meat-shield into pulling the chain.

My line of argument with the rogue will be: "No traps, eh? So pull it... while I stand 6 squares away. You don't want to? ...hmm, so you don't back your own work. What use are you to this party again?"

My line of argument with the meat-shield will be: "You have the most HP and the most surges. You also have the best AC and Fort. Pull the damn chain already... while I stand 6 squares away."

One of those two gambits will usually work.

 

[Ourph]

I absolutely do NOT pull the chain. Look at it this way... SECRET door. Chain in PLAIN SIGHT. Why would you put the mechanism to open a secret door in plain sight? Why would any sane person go to all the trouble of making a door undetectable to casual observation when the mechanism for opening (and thus revealing) the door is in plain sight for any random person to come along and trigger? So either you're pulling a chain that will not open the door but very likely will do something highly unpleasant to you and your companions, or you're pulling a chain that DOES open the door, but the door and chain were both installed by someone who is insane.

Pulling the chain is a sucker move.

I either 1) ignore the chain and hack my way through the door, 2) go back to town and buy mining equipment to hack my way through the wall beside the door; or 3) explore other areas of the dungeon that look (based on my detailed map) like they could grant access to the area behind the door.

Never. Pull. The. Chain.

 

[IronWolf]

A crafty trapsmith would trap the hallway since the rogue would look for traps in the room. =)

Yeah, my plan didn't account for that! And so true it is!

Or the crafty trapsmith would trap the ceiling to collapse as soon as you hammer in the piton, thereby burying the person and making the door inaccessible behind a wall of rubble. Oh, and pulling the chain just opens the door for those who know or aren't paranoid adventurers trying to steal his stuff.

In a fair number of cases our party rogue would probably give the all clear even if he blew his search for traps roll!

 

[coyote6]

If we haven't got anywhere else to be, sure (if the objective was "get the MacGuffin to stop the end of the world", we might want to move along).

But we'd probably stop and rest and make sure everyone is at full strength and full spells, if they weren't already -- and maybe rest even if we were okay -- someone might want to prepare unseen servant or summon chain-yanker I.

 

[TheNovaLord]

No

I Leave.

The session ends with the players congratulating themselves for self control and a successful end to the mission

As I start my car, in the distance, I hear the GM sobbing as we utterly ignore his attempt at Kobayashi Maru and in tears over the three wasted days he spent cunningly designing 'the oh-so-clever chain room'

 

[fanboy2000]

Yes.

First, I trust my rogue's expertise. If the rogue says it's not trapped, I might as well. Otherwise, why bother to check?

Second, it's fun to yank people's chain.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Depending on the character I am playing then I'd pull the chain, I rarely play the type of character that have the impulse control not to pull the chain. That said I'd take the usual precautions.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

You are in a large, bowl shaped white room. A central pool of water of unknown depth looks to be about ten feet wide.

A green stain depends from a slot up near the ceiling.

A long chain hangs from the center of the room, with a Y shaped handle.

What do you do?...
Amazingly, no one has ever fallen for my cunningly disguised trap....

The Auld Grump

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

You’ve finished off your objective in this dungeon, but your mapper points out an area in the back corner of the complex that your group never checked. Going there, you find a room empty except for a pull-chain hanging from the ceiling. You search the room and find a secret door in one wall. You can’t find a way to open the door. The rogue searches the door and the chain for traps, and finds none.

Well yes of COURSE the chain gets pulled, but...

What I object to is the fact that you assume the objective in the dungeon doesn't ALWAYS mean searching every room, every, corridor, leaving no blank, unexplored space on a map short of planning to return later to complete that very task. No job is finished until the paperwork is done - and that includes ensuring that the map displays every explored nook and cranny - and even then there's the possibility of not believing we've found everything and going over it all again.

Yes, adventuring is my characters JOB and he's good at it.