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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imagicka" data-source="post: 3120761" data-attributes="member: 4621">Greetings... Well, when it comes to traps, I learned the game from a DM who was very big on creating situations where he would describe the trap, and how it worked... and we would have to puzzle out how to best disable it; or to simply avoid it.  As such, that gaming style very much affected my own style, and I bring it to the table every time I game; especially when I run a game.  Like Zaruthustran, I suggest you make the situation and trap more descriptive.  I wouldn't let the player get away with just rolling a Disable Device check whenever they encounter a trap.  Where would the fun be in that?  No.  I would describe a room/situation that looks suspicious enough that the players would at least make the more cautious players search for a trap.  But who says that the mechanism for disabling the device is in an easily accessible location?   Imagine a room where you have swinging blades all going in different directions and timed just right that someone who has to transverse the room is going to have to avoid those blades to get to what appears to be the control mechanism for the trap? – Or the obvious control mechanism for the traps is built into the ceiling… or down a small tunnel.  Think of the boiler-room scene in The Rock, where Sean Connery has to tumble through the furnace.  Like Wardo mentioned… time constraints are a good thing...  ”As you are inspecting the room, something start to happen.  The room starts to slowly fill up with sand, from very small holes that line the walls near the ceiling.  By your best guess-estimation you have about six minutes before the piles of sand reach the center of the room.  At which time, if undisturbed, the piles of sand at the walls will have reached up about 30’ leaving a remaining 20’ exposed, giving you sort of a bowl effect of sand.   The sand is pouring out slow enough that you won’t be buried in it, which would be fine for most people, because they could just pull themselves out of the accumulating sand, and stay on top of the pile.  However, a substance very much that which can be found in tanglefoot bags starts oozing and seeping up through the gaps in the floor tiles.  You have one round before you find yourselves stepping/standing in the goo.  What do you do?”Make the characters work for it.  Would you allow them to ‘disable device’ and just simply bypass the entire trap?  I wouldn’t.  I would give them one round to avoid the tanglefoot goo.  Otherwise they would be glued to the spot.  But that’s the least of their worries.  Eventually, the room is going to run out of space.  What do they do then?  Where is the sand pouring in from?  I would just let the players ‘stuff the holes with cloth’ and be done with it with a simple Disable Device.  Maybe I’d put in a secret trapdoor/passage that is small enough for one person to crawl through, that leads to clockwork mechanisms that will affect the trap.  Also, multiple disable device checks are in order.  ”This machinery looks complicated.  You don’t know where to start.  You can fiddle with it, but you might make things worse.  Perhaps the best thing to do is first study it for a few rounds.  Do you have engineering skill?  On a successful DC of 20 you’ll be able to cut your study time in half.  – Looks like your going to have to disable the goo first, then you can disable the pouring sand.  Oh, and it seems theres another mechanism here.  You don’t know what it does, but it doesn’t seem to be operating.  Good thing you took the time to study the mechanism, because if you didn’t… looks like you could trigger this third mechanism to do what it’s designed for.  Best to leave sleeping dogs lay eh?”</blockquote>

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