D&D 5E Brief Thoughts on Traps and Player Agency

[FormerlyHemlock]

Not just you. Putting that kind of time pressure on the player while being very vague about what's happening feels very "gotcha"-y to me. Which is odd, Angry hates "gotcha" monsters, like mimics, rust monsters, etc. Randomly picking a response, with little to no info and no time to think about it, and getting rewarded or penalized for it, isn't really my cup of tea as a GM, and certainly not as a player.

As far as I'm concerned, "click!" is a way of concisely eliciting a player's suspicions. Instead of having to ask, "In what manner of walking are you advancing across the floor? Are you feeling ahead with anything?" etc., "click!" gives the player a chance to show you how he was walking. In Bob's case, he was suspicious of the floor so he leaped backward, or caught the chandelier. If he were worried about a tripwire or something, maybe he would freeze. Obviously there's nothing stopping Bob from explicitly checking for tripwires beforehand, but "click!" gives the player a last chance to declare actions before the DM completes resolution.

You might call it a "player's saving throw."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I was thinking the same thing. Would saying that they're "sagging" give away too much? Maybe you see little bugs running around, and if you inspect closely and pass a Nature check you realize they're termites or carpenter ants or something.

I can imagine floors where it would be obvious. In that case I'd just make it low DC or even just outright volunteer the information to the PCs, like I volunteered the info about the dented portcullis.

For the sake of the OP I wanted to describe a situation where there are no visual indications, where the wood looks okay until the combined weight of the tables and the player forces a sudden collapse. I'm not a carpenter so I'm not sure how realistic that actually is, so if you don't think it's realistic we can pretend that the trap gremlins sawed away portions of the wood from beneath. Regardless, I wanted a scenario where no matter what your Perception is, there is no visual indication that the floor is unsound. Visual DC Infinity.

 

[Guest 6801328]

As far as I'm concerned, "click!" is a way of concisely eliciting a player's suspicions. Instead of having to ask, "In what manner of walking are you advancing across the floor? Are you feeling ahead with anything?" etc., "click!" gives the player a chance to show you how he was walking. In Bob's case, he was suspicious of the floor so he leaped backward, or caught the chandelier. If he were worried about a tripwire or something, maybe he would freeze. Obviously there's nothing stopping Bob from explicitly checking for tripwires beforehand, but "click!" gives the player a last chance to declare actions before the DM completes resolution.

You might call it a "player's saving throw."

I don't find it gotcha-y at all. I mean, maybe if it were the only feedback the players got it would be. But as a last-ditch, "you failed all your Perception checks, you missed the clues, and you didn't take basic precautions, this-is-your-last-chance-to-save-yourself" I think it's awesome.

And it's exactly in line with my definition of "immersion", which is that I feel (some of) the same emotions as my character.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Edit: I see you clarified that it's not always "click" - I missed that before this response. I still think the PCs need more context in order to have a chance to make an informed choice.

I went and reread the article (because the "click" bit seemed a bit odd) and Angry doesn't suggest you say "click" he just says the DM asks "What do you do?" immediately after the PC declares their action. Not giving any idea as to what it might happening that they need to react to:

In that split second, in that moment between when a trap is triggered and when it goes off, you ask the player “what do you do?” You don’t tell them anything about what’s going on around them except that they triggered something. They caught a trip wire. They stepped on a pressure plate. Or the lid of the treasure chest caught for a moment and then clicked free. And then you say “what do you do?”

Now, take their answer, whatever it is, and figure out whether it would actually help them avoid the trap in a remarkable way OR if it would make them less likely to avoid the trap OR if it would have no effect at all. If it was an exceptionally GOOD reaction, give them a bonus to avoid the trap. If it was an exceptionally BAD reaction, give them a penalty to avoid the trap. And if it’s a normal response that really isn’t anything special, just let them roll normally.
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I'm not sure I'm totally down to giving no clue to the PC - they are receiving a stimulus that is causing them concern but they don't know what it is? Personally I'd prefer to give them some clue:

* You feel something catch your foot, what do you do?.
* You hear a click, what do you do?
* The floor begins to give way, what do you do?

But that's me

No, I clarified that for me, it is always "click." It doesn't necessarily represent a clicking sound, but I'm not handing out any extra context at the moment of click. Whoever said that it wasn't always click was not me.

If I ask you "you feel something catch your foot, what do you do?", you know one thing for sure: it's not a tripwire, or it would have already gone off with a "click." It might be a troll hand though. It's something where you don't have to react reflexively and instantaneously to beat it, or it would be "click".

 

[Rhenny]

I really like your approach, Hemlock.

And I agree with others that to make traps more interesting they need to function more like features in the environment. Successful perception or investigation should reveal details of the feature, but it should always be up to the player(s) what they want to do with those features.

If I've described features of an area (and there is a trap), and nobody actively scans the area further or investigates a specific location, I will sometimes roll a d20 (sometimes with + modifier for really good trap makers) to determine the DC of the salient features that I haven't revealed. Then I check the nearest PCs passive perception. If they beat it, I let them notice something else.

To have traps work though, you need to consistently describe 3 or 4 things every time PCs enter new locations so that there is always something to investigate even if it isn't trapped. And, of course, if traps are over used, the players get too cautious and the game bogs down.

 

[Seramus]

It's the same problem as Riddles, but a little less obvious. It becomes a challenge for the players instead of the characters. Otherwise one of the characters in the game probably has some experience with traps, and has every right to ask:

"My character knows WAY MORE about this kind of stuff than me. What does he deduce?"

Roleplaying it adds important and delicious flavor to the scene. But after a certain point you are no longer adding flavor, you are demanding your players to metagame.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I really like your approach, Hemlock.

And I agree with others that to make traps more interesting they need to function more like features in the environment. Successful perception or investigation should reveal details of the feature, but it should always be up to the player(s) what they want to do with those features.

If I've described features of an area (and there is a trap), and nobody actively scans the area further or investigates a specific location, I will sometimes roll a d20 (sometimes with + modifier for really good trap makers) to determine the DC of the salient features that I haven't revealed. Then I check the nearest PCs passive perception. If they beat it, I let them notice something else.

To have traps work though, you need to consistently describe 3 or 4 things every time PCs enter new locations so that there is always something to investigate even if it isn't trapped. And, of course, if traps are over used, the players get too cautious and the game bogs down.

Traps and treasure go hand in hand. You want them to be examining objects because they're afraid of traps, and examining objects because they're also afraid of overlooking secret doors/treasure. And occasionally meeting a wandering monster too while they're busy searching an interesting-but-actually-not-trap-or-treasure-filled room, like a library full of scholarly treatises on mathematics.

 

[Guest 6801328]

And occasionally meeting a wandering monster too while they're busy searching an interesting-but-actually-not-trap-or-treasure-filled room, like a library full of scholarly treatises on mathematics.

I get ambushed all the time while reading D&D forums.

 

[Wuzzard]

Ooh...I like it. The rule could be:
- If you react generically ("I jump to safety") or in the obvious way ("I leap back the way I came!") or in some way irrelevant ("I jump straight up") then you roll normally.
- If you react in a bad way ("I jump toward the table!") you roll with Disadvantage
- If you react in a non-obvious beneficial way ("I leap for the hanging chandelier!") you get Advantage

That might give players an incentive to try something creative, rather than just being generic. But it doesn't really penalize the absence of an inspiring idea, either.

Oh no! the ceiling is also rotted!

 

[Wuzzard]

Yes. Most traps (and especially the rotten floor you postulate) aren't that hard to detect. They're successful because they're somewhere or something that doesn't get looked at closely and/or are things that can't be avoided (a large pit trap that can't be jumped across by normals blocking a narrow hall, for instance). Your method is placing traps on the level of "normal people will always fall for them unless they pick the right pixel first." Most traps should be able to be found by a normal actually looking for them. I think the method of artificially raising DCs so that passive skills fail to detect while simultaneously having the right questions asked generate autosuccesses to be a poor design decision. If, for example, I was playing a character with a high passive perception and had no clue that the floor was rotten aside from a general statement of 'there's a faint smell of rot in the room, you can't tell where it's coming from' while the person who said, 'I try to tell where the smell is coming from' gets to know immediately, that's a failure in description to take into account the fact that my character is better at noticing such things. You've arbitrarily decided to remove agency from my character to grant it to another. Not a good trade-off.

...

IMO, you don't have agency unless you take action. You don't just get to know because of character build choices.