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<blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 3855463" data-attributes="member: 8158">The kind of traps that just boil down to a Search and Disable Device check are lame. But those aren't gygaxian or &quot;old-school&quot; traps. Unfortunately, those are at least as prevalent in the current edition, if not moreso, as they ever were. Official 3e adventures, starting with the Sunless Citadel, featured an abundance of lame-o glyphs of warding and arrow traps with zero thought put into them.There are a couple of different types of traps. There is the kind that is a sort of puzzle that rewards thoughfulness (which we don't get very often anymore), and then some are simply hazards that suddently srping upon you. You're not really meant to find the latter (it's rather anticlimactic for the big ball to NOT come rolling down the hallway...) so there needs to be a way to get players past the notion that they're entitled to find traps--rather, they should take more practical precautions against a sudden trap encounter, like making sure the trap-sense characters are on point.Personally, I'm a big fan of throwing out Search as a skill. That removes the sense of entitlement right there, as well as the blandisment of traps that results from having one all-purpose blanket mechanic for finding any particular type of trap. Spot checks to find some traps, Listen for others, Open Lock for those pesky needle traps, and for some maybe no skill check at all (they're undetectable until triggered).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Felon, post: 3855463, member: 8158"] The kind of traps that just boil down to a Search and Disable Device check are lame. But those aren't gygaxian or "old-school" traps. Unfortunately, those are at least as prevalent in the current edition, if not moreso, as they ever were. Official 3e adventures, starting with the Sunless Citadel, featured an abundance of lame-o glyphs of warding and arrow traps with zero thought put into them. There are a couple of different types of traps. There is the kind that is a sort of puzzle that rewards thoughfulness (which we don't get very often anymore), and then some are simply hazards that suddently srping upon you. You're not really meant to find the latter (it's rather anticlimactic for the big ball to NOT come rolling down the hallway...) so there needs to be a way to get players past the notion that they're entitled to find traps--rather, they should take more practical precautions against a sudden trap encounter, like making sure the trap-sense characters are on point. Personally, I'm a big fan of throwing out Search as a skill. That removes the sense of entitlement right there, as well as the blandisment of traps that results from having one all-purpose blanket mechanic for finding any particular type of trap. Spot checks to find some traps, Listen for others, Open Lock for those pesky needle traps, and for some maybe no skill check at all (they're undetectable until triggered). [/QUOTE]

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