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Beyond Combat; It's a Trap!
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5314621" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Before I get into the core of this discussion, there are two rules to trap design that are absolutely essential.</p><p></p><p>1) Mark your traps: As a DM, you have to pretty much put up a neon sign that says, "There is a trap around here somewhere.", any time that the PC's entire into a region containing traps. Your traps have to make logical sense. It has to be believable that someone took the time and effort to build a death trap here, and that the trap exists in a place where the inhabitants of the dungeon can live with the trap. Contact poison on a door knob might seem cute, but it raises the serious question of how anyone opens the door. Which brings me to the next point...</p><p></p><p>2) Traps as challenges: Simply put, your traps should be poorly designed. As a DM, you have unlimited resources. It's quite easy to design undetectable and unavoidable death traps. But this is wholly uninteresting and to be avoided. Whenever you as a DM get invested in the notion of the trap going off, and are very disappointed when it doesn't, you are on the dark side of the screen. That the PC's defeat the trap using the tools provided to them should be the expected and desired outcome. No matter how clever the PC's are, you'll get them eventually, so don't sweat it at all if they disarm or avoid 75% or 90% of your traps (depending on their skill as players). The goal therefore is both to make the trap fun, and the process of avoiding the traps fun. If the process of avoiding the traps isn't fun, then you are either over using traps or not spending enough time designing the challenge of avoiding them.</p><p></p><p>Ok, good traps in the sense of traps that are both threatening and exciting do the following:</p><p></p><p>a) Isolate their victims, forcing the rest of the party to try to rescue them. How much isolation is necessary depends on the level of the party, but the goal is to keep them able to interact (hear or see each other) but make actual rescue difficult given the character's current resources. At low levels, the simple pit trap can do this. At higher levels you'll need porticulli, harpoon traps, water traps, walls of force, antigravity traps, wind traps, vacuum traps and so forth. </p><p></p><p>As an aside, Ravenloft (I6) doesn't get the same level of fame as Tomb of Horrors (S1) for trap induced death, but it is filled with traps that serve this purpose. The I6 traps are actually in many ways just as deadly as those in S1 despite the fact that none of them are 'death traps', because they are all 'split the party' traps under conditions where splitting the party often means a TPK when facing a DM willing to use Strahd's full resources against the PC's. Try to avoid this degree of isolation in most of your trap design because split parties are difficult to run, but do take inspiration from it. The trap doesn't have to do alot of damage to be interesting.</p><p></p><p>b) Kill their victims somewhat slowly. Instant death traps don't provide alot of drama. You want traps that do damage over time. This doesn't necessarily just mean the familiar room with slowly closing walls or that fills up with water or some more lethal fluid (sand, acid, poisonous insects) although it can. For example, a barrage of arrows is fun. A barrage of arrows that continues for several rounds however is a better distribution of your trap resources. (Remeber, good traps are badly designed!). At low levels this can just be a 'get out of the corridor' challenge which you can make as easy as taking cover behind some dungeon feature and as hard as a long corridor with door that has to be forced or unlocked. At high levels, this should drive the party from one challenge to another and include the risk of adding new traps to the fun. Likewise, have fun with projectiles that imbed themselves in the target (doing damage when removed without a heal check), jaws that grapple the party members and do damage over time, sticky flammable substances, acid, smoke, and so forth which are lethal only provided that damage accumulates unchecked. Good traps don't necessarily do alot of damage, but they just keep going and going with each new iteration just making the problem worse.</p><p></p><p>c) Go off at the worst possible moment: You don't always want to put traps in a place where they become a part of a larger encounter, but its always something you should be thinking about. Adding alarm bells or ringing gongs to a trap can increase the fun, especially if you adhered to the ideas in 'a' and 'b'. Please do keep in mind the real challenge you are providing here. The monster that provides real challenge to the PC's at full strength is probably overly lethal if it arrives when the party is split, wounded, and partially incapacitated. More fun are monsters that would not represent any challenge in the best of circumstances arriving when the party is in the worst of circumstances. The utility of a horde of goblins or skeletons pouring into a room is extended into higher levels if this occurs when the party is trying to figure out how to get the cleric out of the pit with the locking iron grill that is filling with water while the rogue is dangling from the ceiling with his foot in a snare. More challenging still are monsters that are immune to the effects of the trap: the trap 'puts out lights' rendering it difficult or impossible to see but the monsters have tremorsense, the room fills with burning oil but the monsters are immune to fire, the room fills with poisonous gas but the skeletons don't have to breathe. This scales up almost infinitely, so that at high levels you have, "The trap sucks the air out of the room and creates a negative energy field while summoning incorporael undead out of the walls." This is just simple variation on the theme; once you know the theme its easy to create infinite variations.</p><p></p><p>d) Debuff the party. It's easy to miss this point, but the whole purpose of a trap beyond the short term thinking challenge it provides is to get the party to use resources. If you miss that point, you might think that the purpose of the trap is to damage the players, but hit point loss is only one type of resource. Forcing the party to use consumables or spells is equally 'useful' in your dungeon design. So, for example, you can have traps that shatter all glass in the room (everything fragile must save or break) covering the party in their own potions/burning oil/acid/whiskey/green slime/etc. One of the most common simple traps I utilize is a dispel magic trap either alone or in combination with some other hazard that playes would normally buff themselves for. You can also have traps that release 'harmless' pests that infest and eat food stuffs. Or the trap can directly debuff the party so that a normally easy fight is rendered more difficult. A 'goo trap' that makes movement hard and lowers dexterity, makes a fight with low level archers much more interesting. Again, this scales up almost infinitely. At higher levels, the floor might turn suddenly into quicksand and a number of mephits may fly into the room. A fight with low level brutes (ogres for example) is more interesting if the wizard has just been feebleminded, or everyone in the party has just been hit by a ray of enfeeblement. Be careful that you don't make the 'save or suck' suck too much, but generally, this can be a much better alternative than just knocking off chunks of hit points.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5314621, member: 4937"] Before I get into the core of this discussion, there are two rules to trap design that are absolutely essential. 1) Mark your traps: As a DM, you have to pretty much put up a neon sign that says, "There is a trap around here somewhere.", any time that the PC's entire into a region containing traps. Your traps have to make logical sense. It has to be believable that someone took the time and effort to build a death trap here, and that the trap exists in a place where the inhabitants of the dungeon can live with the trap. Contact poison on a door knob might seem cute, but it raises the serious question of how anyone opens the door. Which brings me to the next point... 2) Traps as challenges: Simply put, your traps should be poorly designed. As a DM, you have unlimited resources. It's quite easy to design undetectable and unavoidable death traps. But this is wholly uninteresting and to be avoided. Whenever you as a DM get invested in the notion of the trap going off, and are very disappointed when it doesn't, you are on the dark side of the screen. That the PC's defeat the trap using the tools provided to them should be the expected and desired outcome. No matter how clever the PC's are, you'll get them eventually, so don't sweat it at all if they disarm or avoid 75% or 90% of your traps (depending on their skill as players). The goal therefore is both to make the trap fun, and the process of avoiding the traps fun. If the process of avoiding the traps isn't fun, then you are either over using traps or not spending enough time designing the challenge of avoiding them. Ok, good traps in the sense of traps that are both threatening and exciting do the following: a) Isolate their victims, forcing the rest of the party to try to rescue them. How much isolation is necessary depends on the level of the party, but the goal is to keep them able to interact (hear or see each other) but make actual rescue difficult given the character's current resources. At low levels, the simple pit trap can do this. At higher levels you'll need porticulli, harpoon traps, water traps, walls of force, antigravity traps, wind traps, vacuum traps and so forth. As an aside, Ravenloft (I6) doesn't get the same level of fame as Tomb of Horrors (S1) for trap induced death, but it is filled with traps that serve this purpose. The I6 traps are actually in many ways just as deadly as those in S1 despite the fact that none of them are 'death traps', because they are all 'split the party' traps under conditions where splitting the party often means a TPK when facing a DM willing to use Strahd's full resources against the PC's. Try to avoid this degree of isolation in most of your trap design because split parties are difficult to run, but do take inspiration from it. The trap doesn't have to do alot of damage to be interesting. b) Kill their victims somewhat slowly. Instant death traps don't provide alot of drama. You want traps that do damage over time. This doesn't necessarily just mean the familiar room with slowly closing walls or that fills up with water or some more lethal fluid (sand, acid, poisonous insects) although it can. For example, a barrage of arrows is fun. A barrage of arrows that continues for several rounds however is a better distribution of your trap resources. (Remeber, good traps are badly designed!). At low levels this can just be a 'get out of the corridor' challenge which you can make as easy as taking cover behind some dungeon feature and as hard as a long corridor with door that has to be forced or unlocked. At high levels, this should drive the party from one challenge to another and include the risk of adding new traps to the fun. Likewise, have fun with projectiles that imbed themselves in the target (doing damage when removed without a heal check), jaws that grapple the party members and do damage over time, sticky flammable substances, acid, smoke, and so forth which are lethal only provided that damage accumulates unchecked. Good traps don't necessarily do alot of damage, but they just keep going and going with each new iteration just making the problem worse. c) Go off at the worst possible moment: You don't always want to put traps in a place where they become a part of a larger encounter, but its always something you should be thinking about. Adding alarm bells or ringing gongs to a trap can increase the fun, especially if you adhered to the ideas in 'a' and 'b'. Please do keep in mind the real challenge you are providing here. The monster that provides real challenge to the PC's at full strength is probably overly lethal if it arrives when the party is split, wounded, and partially incapacitated. More fun are monsters that would not represent any challenge in the best of circumstances arriving when the party is in the worst of circumstances. The utility of a horde of goblins or skeletons pouring into a room is extended into higher levels if this occurs when the party is trying to figure out how to get the cleric out of the pit with the locking iron grill that is filling with water while the rogue is dangling from the ceiling with his foot in a snare. More challenging still are monsters that are immune to the effects of the trap: the trap 'puts out lights' rendering it difficult or impossible to see but the monsters have tremorsense, the room fills with burning oil but the monsters are immune to fire, the room fills with poisonous gas but the skeletons don't have to breathe. This scales up almost infinitely, so that at high levels you have, "The trap sucks the air out of the room and creates a negative energy field while summoning incorporael undead out of the walls." This is just simple variation on the theme; once you know the theme its easy to create infinite variations. d) Debuff the party. It's easy to miss this point, but the whole purpose of a trap beyond the short term thinking challenge it provides is to get the party to use resources. If you miss that point, you might think that the purpose of the trap is to damage the players, but hit point loss is only one type of resource. Forcing the party to use consumables or spells is equally 'useful' in your dungeon design. So, for example, you can have traps that shatter all glass in the room (everything fragile must save or break) covering the party in their own potions/burning oil/acid/whiskey/green slime/etc. One of the most common simple traps I utilize is a dispel magic trap either alone or in combination with some other hazard that playes would normally buff themselves for. You can also have traps that release 'harmless' pests that infest and eat food stuffs. Or the trap can directly debuff the party so that a normally easy fight is rendered more difficult. A 'goo trap' that makes movement hard and lowers dexterity, makes a fight with low level archers much more interesting. Again, this scales up almost infinitely. At higher levels, the floor might turn suddenly into quicksand and a number of mephits may fly into the room. A fight with low level brutes (ogres for example) is more interesting if the wizard has just been feebleminded, or everyone in the party has just been hit by a ray of enfeeblement. Be careful that you don't make the 'save or suck' suck too much, but generally, this can be a much better alternative than just knocking off chunks of hit points. [/QUOTE]
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