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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8875929" data-attributes="member: 6877472">[spoiler="HP as follows"]Yes, damaging traps are just a grind and not really a very good idea- I stopped using many old school damaging traps when I was playing 3e because they are largely meaningless.The traps I favor are ones that lead to more interesting combats or challenges- the victim finds themselves in a cage or a portcullis drops, loud noises attract enemies, barriers close that impede progress or force the party to seek an alternative route.Generally, when an area is "on alert", rather than force extra major encounters, the idea is more to make it harder for the party to bypass encounters, something I'm perfectly happy to let them do.  More doors are locked, passageways are blocked, and while they will encounter guards and patrols, the numbers individually are too small to provide much of a challenge- two hobgoblins guarding an important doorway, or simply looking to spot the players, then retreat to warn others.The difficulty of fights does increase if the enemy has good intel and can prepare an ambush, or even just fortify a position to repel an assault, but the way I always understood monster CR is that it's intended for "encountering enemies under conditions ideal to them".So I plan the "high alert" encounter as what the "base" encounter would be.  If the players can bypass the encounter, or catch the enemies off guard or less prepared, it gets easier for them, as a reward for their craftiness.The last time I ran an adventure with Kobolds, they kept encountering small groups of kobolds, who, upon sighting the party, would maybe fire off a few crossbow shots, but very quickly would drop some caltrops and run away towards the next grouping of kobolds- the encounter budget was built including the "patrol" kobolds- if the party could kill them before they could join with the main group, they got a much easier fight.Amusingly, my players quickly got very annoyed with caltrops, and slowed way down, instead having the Rogue take point and clear out caltrops before they proceeded.  Which gave them a large supply of caltrops to use against the kobolds and their bugbear masters later in the adventure.There is at least one good use for damaging traps, however; I'm occasionally prone to using fairly easy to spot and disable traps between encounter areas, just to slow their progress down.  If they stop to disable/bypass the traps, great!But if they decide they need to get from point A to point B in a hurry and can't be bothered to check for traps, they might take a little damage, or a leg wound that reduces their speed for their trouble- something like this happened when I had a Barbarian give chase to fleeing enemies so that he wouldn't "lose" his rage.  He ended up taking a great deal of incidental damage, even with resistance as a result- but he only had himself to blame for it!Another thing that not using light can cause you to miss are secret doors.  I ran this lead-in adventure to Forge of Fury in AL that involved an extra way into that adventure, through a kobold lair.(I think the adventure was called "One Thousand Tiny Cuts" or something like that).The kobolds had small, cramped tunnels with secret doors all throughout the area, with small openings in the walls that they could see through, and fire blowgun darts at the party.  The Rogue kept insisting that using a light source was bad, as he wanted to stealth around unseen, and kept missing both the "arrow slits" and the secret doors, allowing the kobolds to keep tabs on the intruders, and any time they got into an encounter, they were suddenly being stung by blowgun darts.(I would have recommended the adventure as a perfect way to show how to challenge a 5e party without using ridiculously over the top encounters, but the writer had to ruin it with the final encounter against a Kobold Sorcerer armed with Haste (for his minions, a pair of those winged kobolds that have sneak attack and drop rocks on people- we used to call them Urds) and Fireball (!) against the Tier 1 party.It was this close to a TPK, and that's when I really noticed for the first time how unfair NPC spellcasters tend to be in 5e, typically able to cast strong spells, long before PC casters can do the same.)Now if these strategies are what people would consider a violation of the social contract, or would get me labeled as a killer DM, I dunno.  I've played under killer DM's, the kind of guys who would use an AD&D random encounter table and have 2nd level characters encounter 2d4 Trolls without batting an eye.I always tell my players that if there's an encounter you can't handle, you're going to know about it well before initiative is rolled, and it totally can be bypassed.  That having been said, if you're fighting intelligent foes, you can expect them to act accordingly, giving some thoughts to their own defenses, and rarely being inclined to fight to the death if they can avoid doing so.[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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