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Message: <blockquote data-quote="schnee" data-source="post: 7096635" data-attributes="member: 16728">I think the text they used to introduce them in the DM's Guide is just abominable, and is the cause of all the problems."They can be anywhere and be anything, there's no rhyme or reason woohoo!" is how it reads. That is straight out of AD&D 'fun house dungeon' thinking. Bad bad bad.What I would have rather seen is the 'verisimilitude' way. Teach DMs how to make traps that are a natural and easy consequence of the people who built them, and the purpose of the place they're in.   1) Put traps where they make sense. Guarding something important, in a way that won't be accidentally tripped by the people who put it there. That means they are in a place that nobody is ever supposed to be (i.e. inside a king's long-buried tomb) or is where everyone who is there is extremely familiar with the trap (i.e. the secret door to a conspirator's hideout). 2) Make the kind of trap thematically appropriate for the owners. Kobolds will have crude pits and deadfalls, maybe with sharpened wood stakes. A mage will use glyphs of warding. Gnomes will have well-machined mechanical traps. An assassin will use poison needles.3) Make the trap's effect make sense. If it's on the outside of a place, then it is usually to prevent others from getting in - via dissuading (a low-damage dart trap), catching them (a pit), or alerting guards to their presence (sounds an alarm). If it's on the inside of a place, then it can range from merely preventing entry (locking a door) to lethal (flaming oil).4) Make the level of damage make sense.If the trap could catch someone friendly, then it will not cause harm. (The secret door to the King's mistresses' quarters will lock the door and sound a small bell for the King's private advisor to go handle the situation tactfully.)If the trap will likely catch a stranger or enemy, it's damaging but not lethal. (The forest around a secret base has a series of deadfalls, pits, and painful snares so the place gets a dangerous reputation and the locals advise people to stay out.)If the trap protects something valuable to an elite member of the group, it will be lethal. (You'd be crazy to mess with the phylactery of a Lich without taking extreme precautions!)You get the picture.This sort of planning for traps makes them much more honest. Over time, good players will start to think like a villain, and start to logically deduce the best times and places to search for traps, and won't search everywhere out of blanket paranoia.</blockquote>

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