Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cor_Malek" data-source="post: 5337963" data-attributes="member: 91608">Um, call me crazy and  presumptuous, but to me it looks like DM's cock-up. If we're too devoted  to Chekhov gun philosophy, then whenever anything is mentioned,  players expect it to be relevant. Did the DM describe every twig the  characters saw, ever? If not, why did he choose to describe this one?If  he did that on purpose (knowing that everything he mentions is relevant  and players are expected to, and do respond to it), it might just go  into history as the worse attempt at lamp shading, ever.As to traps: I like my RPG conversion of spike trap. The trap itself looks like that (if you pardon my ASCII):[OOC]|______||\__ __/|| \___/_||\ \_ /_/|| \_ _     /_||\ \ _/ / | | \_ _     /_| |  \___/_||______||______||______||______|[/OOC]Vertical and horizontal lines are walls, and the diagonal are some sort of long  spike, something springy. When someone steps over it and spring it, his  leg falls inside and past the spikes. If he tries to pull it out,  however - the spikes dig into his thigh (or calf, if he reacted  quickly), dealing damage.How I do it in DnD is:- grant spot attempt- character that sprung it get's a reflex check to jump in some other direction, it has high DC- if given PC has points in traps*, he's granted a secondary reflex check (lower  than above) to fall down. How much he botches this roll, signifies how  deep his leg falls in.- Um, nothing happens. There are two possibilities, depending on players reaction: a) he's calm and tries to asses his situation, I describe spikes at downward angle pressing on his leg or b) he tries to get out immediately, and the spikes dig into his body, dealing damage. Mounts don't get to do b).Continuous attempts to pull the leg out will just deal more and more  damage. x2 in fact, half of which is non-lethal (the idea here is that  he'd rather pass out than kill himself with it. If he doesn't pass out, I  handwave the non-lethal damage on account of adrenaline rush or  something - it's essentially my failsafe as DM).Either by figuring it out themselves, or by a good trap check, players  will know that the only way to get out of the trap is to destroy it  (unless they're into field amputation). The HP and hardness will vary  from trap to trap, but it takes time, and is almost always very loud. A  villain with a lot of low level spell slots to spare might consider  putting Alarm spell on bottom of the pit, which will make him know  immediately if one is sprung. This is of course on top of the hassle  anyone will do when attempting to get out.Bottom line - it's supposed to create suspension of "what to do" for  players. It really doesn't need lethality to be effective. It's goal is  to shaken the PC's and provoke them to make enough racket to be noticed.  And off to our cunningly improbable escape route!*It's a design so common that I count it among things players don't have to know, but their characters do.</blockquote>

Verification