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

[Ovinomancer]

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

You also have agency when you take action, but agency means that your choices have a real impact that isn't arbitrary - ie, that the world responds rationally to the choices you make. Your choices in character creations -- what you choose to focus on, what you choose spend your limited build resources on -- are also part of agency. If I make a choice between taking proficiency in perception because I want to be a good finder of things and the DM then arbitrarily negates that choice, I've lost agency. My choice has been negated.

You've turned the trap into a combat encounter environment facet. That's fabulous, and it makes the combat much more interesting. But its no longer a trap. Traps are exploration pillar fun, not combat fun. You can put traps into combat, but unless the players have the time to sweat it out, debate and try crazy stunts, its not a trap worth having.

Yes, this trap, because it's quite boring otherwise. It's a slightly gimmicked up pit trap, the most boring and mundane of all traps. Further, it is still part of the exploration pillar. There's nothing that says the exploration pillar only occurs when the players have plenty of time to fiddle without pressure. All of the pillars can occur simultaneously or independently. Just because there's a fight going on (combat pillar) doesn't mean a character can't take time to negotiate with an enemy or third party (social pillar) or explore a trap or other terrain feature (exploration pillar). I, personally, tend to find that encounters of any pillar are often enhanced when you bring in the other pillars.

I also use traps on their own, just usually not pit traps. For example, the next 'trap' my players go into is the whole encounter area - the location uses non-euclidean geometry, meaning that moving between locations in the area does not make normal sense. You can leave a room via a hallway, arrive in the next room, immediately turn around and go down the same hallway, but end up in a completely different place from the first room. The 'trap' here is that the entrance is very hard to get back to (although you can do it by luck -- the place isn't random, just not laid out in understandable 3D space) and there are clues/markings form previous explorers to decipher that will help make the right choices to get back. Also, some locations are more contained 'traps' of varying degree, some of which will only 'open' if poked in specific ways meaning you can walk through it without triggering it or even being aware of it's existence. Other areas have combats encounters. Other areas have social encounters, some of which will devolve into combat encounters. Pretty sure there's one encounter that will automatically start as a combat encounter (due to the players absolutely hating the group encountered) but my end up as a social encounter. All of these take place in the larger trap area. So, yeah, you can easily mix and match pillars. No one pillar excludes the others.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You also have agency when you take action, but agency means that your choices have a real impact that isn't arbitrary - ie, that the world responds rationally to the choices you make. Your choices in character creations -- what you choose to focus on, what you choose spend your limited build resources on -- are also part of agency. If I make a choice between taking proficiency in perception because I want to be a good finder of things and the DM then arbitrarily negates that choice, I've lost agency. My choice has been negated.

Hence the proposal in the OP: an idea for allowing both kinds of choices to matter. By taking Perception proficiency, you will gain more information more often about traps. You won't necessarily be Sherlock Holmes, able to identify the traps just by being in the same room, but you'll be more like Indiana Jones than a normal person. If you choose to also take the Observant feat and Perception and Investigation Expertise, you will be Sherlock Holmes. Quoting from the OP:

In this specific case, let's say there is no way normally to detect the rot visually before you actually step on the section which is rotten enough to give way under the weight of an adult human, but not only can you smell the rot easily (DC 2d10+5 Perception (smell) check determined in advance to notice that the smell of decay is stronger in the center of the room; DC 2d10 + 10 check determined in advance to realize that it smells like an old lumberyard after the rain) but it's possible to outright deduce that the floor here is probably weak (DC 15 + 3d6) just because it's so old and wet.

A 9th level character with 14 Intelligence/Wisdom and Perception/Investigation Expertise and the Observant feat has a passive Perception/Investigation of 25. 50% of the time the DM will just outright tell you "the floor in this room is probably weak". You're gaining real value from your build investment here--you get to bypass a whole challenge automatically 50% of the time. If you got to one-shot-kill monsters 50% of the time before they even got to roll initiative you'd probably think it was OP.

By 20th level he's got Int/Wis 18 and a passive Perception/Investigation of 31, which means he "just knows" 98% of the time.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Hence the proposal in the OP: an idea for allowing both kinds of choices to matter. By taking Perception proficiency, you will gain more information more often about traps. You won't necessarily be Sherlock Holmes, able to identify the traps just by being in the same room, but you'll be more like Indiana Jones than a normal person. If you choose to also take the Observant feat and Perception and Investigation Expertise, you will be Sherlock Holmes. Quoting from the OP:



A 9th level character with 14 Intelligence/Wisdom and Perception/Investigation Expertise and the Observant feat has a passive Perception/Investigation of 25. 50% of the time the DM will just outright tell you "the floor in this room is probably weak". You're gaining real value from your build investment here--you get to bypass a whole challenge automatically 50% of the time. If you got to one-shot-kill monsters 50% of the time before they even got to roll initiative you'd probably think it was OP.

By 20th level he's got Int/Wis 18 and a passive Perception/Investigation of 31, which means he "just knows" 98% of the time.

A 25 DC is "Very Hard". Having a build that hits DC 25 passively is a massive investment, not a trivial or minor one. That should be a recipe for 'almost always' not '50% of the time'. And it's not really 50% as the average DC (and most common value) for deduction of your trap is 26-27. So a 9th level character that's taken a feat and put proficiency and expertise into skills has a less than 50% chance of figuring out the floor is rotten without pixelhunting. That's agency busting. It's also something that's flat out nearly impossible for builds that don't invest that strongly. Even 20 stat characters with proficiency in the skills will have a less than 20% chance to roll and hit the average DCs. A top roll on the DC is 33. 33 is outside the ability of the 20 stat proficient character altogether, on any roll, meaning he has to successfully pixelhunt to know anything. For your uber focused build at 9th, a roll of 18 is necessary. That's straight up broken, man.

Look if you don't want skills to work without extreme investment, that's fine, tell your players and they know that anything less than hyperfocus isn't worthwhile and you'll have a fine game. Don't, however, pretend that your system does anything but act to diminish skill effectiveness. And that's fine, if that's what you want to do. If you prefer OD&D pixelhunts, go for it. I enjoy a game of OD&D occasionally as well.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Why are they lighter? Is that something that happens when wood rots?

The wood is thinner, so more light from the room below comes through.

The point is, Perception spots somethhing odd, not the reason for the oddness. It's up to the player to have their character do some investigation (or not, their choice) to determine what happens.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The wood is thinner, so more light from the room below comes through.

The point is, Perception spots somethhing odd, not the reason for the oddness. It's up to the player to have their character do some investigation (or not, their choice) to determine what happens.

Ah. There isn't any light below. It's just a room full of Gray Ooze. (And with the room I had in mind, the wood isn't thinner, it's just weaker/more rotten.)

I agree with your point.

 

[Imaculata]

This reminds me slightly of a trap that I had in my pirate campaign, only it was slightly different:

The players were exploring the ruins of an old city by the sea. As they entered one of the rooms, they could NOT tell that the stone floor was weak. There were no clues that anything was rotten or broken. It was just a crumbled old floor, but some of the tiles had fallen to the level below. Because if you want to surprise them, then why disguise it with unnecessary DC's?

But instead of the floor collapsing right away, it would only break when the weight of two people was on it. This way, even a careful player would initially assume the floor was safe, even after testing it. And test it is of course what they did. But this is where it matters "how" they test the strength of the floor. The floor follows a very simple rule. Two people or more, equals CRASH! So unless the players apply extra pressure on the floor, a simple 30ft pole is not going to reveal the weakness of the floor.

As the floor collapsed, all players were allowed a save to quickly grab hold of a nearby wall or ledge, if they happened to be close to one. Otherwise they would fall straight down.

The consequences and goal of this trap were different however. For this pit was not filled with dangerous foes, but with harmless waist-high water. The goal was to simply startle them, and drop them down to the next floor. They had been playing rather safely up to this point, and been avoiding the water. I expected as much, and figured that the best way to get them to trust the water, was to drop one of them into it.

Now the trap wasn't the only way to access the lower floor. There was also a staircase, which they neglected to find. I think it is important that the players have a choice, even if they don't yet realize the importance of the route they take.