Disable Device too boring

[Thaniel]

I was thinking of a way to make the Disable Device skill more intuitive than "I disable the trap. <roll>".
It occured to me to make it somewhat like a bluff check. Bluff checks get a modifier (to the opposed Sense Motive check) based on the believability of the bluff. This encourages players to act out a bluff instead of saying "I bluff him into letting me through the gate. <roll>".
I thought you could port these same modifiers to the DC of a Disable Device check.

For example.

The rogue comes up to a door. With his search check, he finds that opening the door will open a pit under him. The base DC for disabling this trap is 20 (from PhB). If he just says "I disable it" the DM adds maybe +2, maybe even +5 to the DC. If instead he thinks up some elaborate way to stop it, the DM might reduce the DC just as a bonus for actually thinking through the situation instead of just rolling dice.

What do you think?

 

[ThirdWizard]

I could see this only if the player and DM want to go into detail about how traps are constructed and can be disabled. Which is something I'm not too intersted in. I really have no idea how one disables a pit trap or opens a lock, much less how you disable a symbol of death (though I've always throught through things like acidic solvents and such made the most sense).

If you're engineers, I say go for it. The DM can draw up schematics of how the traps work, and the players can try to deduce how to best get by them. It would work especially well if you can make the traps cinematic, ala Indiana Jones type deals.

 

[sfedi]

I'd rather have a richer mechanic than a DM adjudicating on the fly.

I agree that Open Lock and Disable Device are boring, but I also agree that they are very quick and don't eat up session time.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Hmm, but if not DM adjudication, then you end up with stock treatment, correct? Which just leads to the same problem.

 

[dvvega]

As a DM I do not "adjudicate" penalties/bonuses just because a player states "I disarm the trap" instead of going into details. Some players are not great thinkers in that sense for they have no background in traps from any source.

I prefer guiding the players by example if there is something that I would like to see in my sessions.

If you want to encourage this kind of thing, my suggestion is as follows (which I used effectively early on in d20 playing for many sessions until players "got it") ...

Player: I disarm the trap
DM: Okay, looking over the trap, you realise that turning the handle down more than 10 degrees is what makes the trap trigger. You reverse the handle thus the door opens turning it upwards.
Player: cool!

After a while, players started coming up with their own "McGuyver" ideas. For example:

Player: I disable the portcullis from closing every time someone steps under it (thinking)
DM: (pauses)
Player: Oh yeah ... I get some of those old spikes we found and jam them into the wall at about chest height so the portcullis slams down on them instead.

Now I have rogues who think about what Disable really means. They use it for things other than just traps (disabling the sherif's prisoner transport was hillarious) and so forth.

D

 

[Hammerhead]

While interesting, this leaves the question of magic traps or other traps with uncertain activations. Besides, we're all familiar with lying to people; I do it every day of my life. I have yet to disable any kind of trap. Thus, my base of knowledge on what might even be possible is much, much, lower.

 

[dvvega]

As I stated ... encouragement.

And as a DM make the damn thing up. So what if mechanically it could never work in real life.

For example that door handle thing ... would most likely not work in real life ... since the door handle bolt (that goes through the door to the other handle) would turn no matter the direction of the handle. And thus trigger the trap.

However it sounds cool ... and gives the player some feeling that their ideas are working.

Just make it up.

D

 

[Orcus]

Or go get our Grimtooth's Traps.

That book is all about how to counteract the total boredom that is 3E traps. No thinking. No roleplaying. No fun. Traps are little more than a boring obstacle. We provide rules on how to deal with traps and triggers and finding them independent of each other, ways to bypass traps, how to handle modifiers for thinking up smart plans around traps, etc.

Some people just want "i search for traps." [roll] "you found one." "i disable it" [roll] "you disabled it." OK that was a big waste of time.

To me traps should be more fun than that. If that is what you want, check out Grimtooth's Traps.

Clark

 

[genshou]

Or go get our Grimtooth's Traps.

That book is all about how to counteract the total boredom that is 3E traps. No thinking. No roleplaying. No fun. Traps are little more than a boring obstacle. We provide rules on how to deal with traps and triggers and finding them independent of each other, ways to bypass traps, how to handle modifiers for thinking up smart plans around traps, etc.

Some people just want "i search for traps." [roll] "you found one." "i disable it" [roll] "you disabled it." OK that was a big waste of time.

To me traps should be more fun than that. If that is what you want, check out Grimtooth's Traps.

Clark

Thanks for that Orcus, but could you provide a direct URL? Some of us ENners are too damn lazy to go search for the product on our own

 

[gogo_jerrick]

I personally think that roleplaying out disabling traps is great, it really gets the player into the paranoia of trap disabling. Never again will you have your party blown up by the rogue not searching for traps. (ex: Riidels the rogue searches a door for traps, which is a pretty standard thing. He succeeds and finds that it isn't trapped. He opens the door only to find a guidewire along the top of the door that sets off and sets off an explosive. It's guarenteed that the next time he won't simply say :i chenck for traps." He'll say I slowly open the door and slowly run my finger through the cracks to search for a guidewire. While it takes a whole extra minute to roleplay this, it adds depth and character to the rogue. I had a fighter/rogue who had an entire adventure planned out to search out the fire elemental god. After meeting him i had a permenent red streak that went through my white hair. IT made me permanently resistant to fire. Why would I go through this you ask, my character had been blown up so many times it was his trademark to fly through the air in a ball of flames. It really taught me how to roleplay and it added alot of depth to my character)