Ourph said:
I wouldn't say it's player vs. dm logic, but it's definitely challenging the player to think about the world his character lives in. If there's a 99.999% chance that the lever doesn't have an instant death trap on it (i.e. 1 out of 100,000 levers in the world WILL have an instant death trap on it), does that mean you pull the lever with no precautions or does that mean you treat the 99,999 other levers the same way you would treat the 1 that's trapped with an instant death trap? Players who choose the former route shouldn't complain when their characters turn to a pile of dust. Especially when this particular trap is easily avoided by a number of easily accessible means, even at low level.
Except that's entirely unrealistic for even the REAL WORLD, let alone for a game of heroic fantasy. If one out of every 100,000 people die in a plane crash or get eaten by a shark or get struck by lightning or die of spontaneous combustion or of being mauled to death by ferrets do people stop swimming in the ocean or taking flights or standing in the rain or ever being dry or being around ferrets? You take a calculated risk every time you take a breath that some deadly contagious disease isn't upon the ambient zephyrs. Or do you treat every breath as if it contained disease? Every rain shower as if it could strike you dead? Do you only swim in shark cages when you go to the beach? Do ever take airplaine flights?
Would I complain if my PC got struck by lightning or spontaneously combusted? Or caught a vicious disease from breathing the tavern air? Heck yes. It's not fair when it happens in the real world, and it's doubly not fair when it happens in a game that's supposed to be about heroes in a fantasy world.
What is the stat check, skill roll or saving throw for cleverness? As far as I know, the game doesn't have a mechanic that allows you to determine your characters every action based on a number on their character sheet or a dice roll. Do you roll an Int check for your character every time there's a choice to be made in game (do we go left or right at the intersection, do we fight the monster or run away, do we decide to sneak around the guards or fight them directly or attempt to bribe our way past them, do we pull the lever or let a summoned monster do it or just walk away) and allow the DM to decide for you based on whether you roll well or poorly? Unless you are doing exactly that you ARE pitting YOUR cleverness (not your character's) against the challenges the DM has set up.
I certainly would if the DM started throwing random deathtraps on odd levers. Fortunately, my DM's enjoy a world that makes sense and pit my characters against challenges that they have a fair chance to overcome by their own abilities, so it often doesn't become an issue. I know a bad choice will hurt me, but I can recover from it. If a bad choice would just make me generate a new character, I'd definately be more pro-active about NOT making that bad choice.
There is no difference between all those decision you make for your character in every single game and the decisions the players were faced with in this scenario. The only difference is that, in some people's opinion, the consequences of making the wrong choice were too harsh.
No, my problem is largely with the fact that the choice was arbitrarily and randomly declared WRONG, and THEN punished so harshly. "Oh, you walk out the left door to the tavern? You now have AIDS." "Oh, you use the word "Sword?" You explode." "Oh, I see you're waring a gauntlet. Your hand falls off."
It takes no imagination to be random and petty.
How is the game outlined by the scenario non-standard (except perhaps for the high Save DC of the trap)? The books seem to assume that characters can and will die during game play. They assume the PCs will occasionally meet challenges which are beyond their ability to defeat or circumvent. They assume that traps are a natural part of the game. They also seem to assume that choices such as "do we pull the lever" are something decided by the players and not by a roll of the dice or some other game mechanic. It seems to me that a game that eliminates the chance of dying because it's not heroic or fantastical (if we assume, for the moment that your assertion is true) is more nonstandard than the game described in Quasqueton's scenario.
They also assume there will be an internal logic to the game, that the traps will be commesurate with the encounters faced, and that something beyond their ability to beat or circumvent will declare it's unbeatability. If you see the Terrasque and you're 5th level, you know what to do. If the Terrasque falls suddenly out of orbit on your 5th level character, then, no, it's not fair or fun for me. If you could see bits of bone in a pile of dust on the floor under the lever, if you had faced magical traps in the dungeon before and didn't detect magic...that's a different story (and a story not told in the OP).
That trap is dirty pool by the RAW, as ThirdWizard is pointing out.
The real strawman here is that the decision is arbitrary and doesn't involve skill. If you read through the thread you can see at least half a dozen ways the PC could (even at low level) find out what happens when you pull the lever without exposing themselves to any risk. The decision to pull the lever or not pull the lever or to have a PC pull the lever or move the lever in some other (safer) way is not arbitrary, it's part of the challenge of that particular trap. No one was forced to pull the lever. In fact, no one was even encouraged to pull the lever. The PCs made some unsupported assumptions about the relationship between the lever and the door and faced the consequences. You're not saying the danger should be fair, you're saying that the most obvious assumptions about a situation should always be the correct ones because that's "heroic". Not only do I disagree with your definition of "heroic", I also disagree with the assumption that obvious always equates to correct makes for a fun game.
No, it is arbitrary, and the key word before skill that you are missing is "character". The character's skills should have an effect on the outcome.
It's as arbitrary as any of the effects I listed above. Because just as you might occasionally take an airplane flight or use a knife to cut your steak (despite the risk that the plane might fall or the knife might slip), you could also do a dozen things to avoid that threat, it's still arbitrary if something tragic happens. It might make sense, but that doesn't mean it's any less a random handwaved occurance. It does not follow logically from the course of events. If there is no reason to EXPECT a trap, then a trap is arbitrary. And there is no reason to expect that the lever would be horribly destructive given in the OP, so it is, as far as we know, arbitrary.
The point is that it is paranoid and unnatural to avoid something that doesn't pose an obvious threat. People don't always walk around wearing surgical masks, and I doubt you boil your water before you drink it every time. Why should PC's do that? They're not SUPPOSED to be affraid of the dangers lurking unseen around the corner. They're supposed to BEAT UP the dangers lurking unseen around the corner.
I'm not saying anything should always be anything. You're leaping to far too many conclusions to make a cogent argument for your case, i'm affraid.
If I wanted to play a game where danger was in waking up in the morning and walking out my front door (which could have been trapped by ninjas in the middle of the night!), I wouldn't play D&D. I might play Paranoia, but I wouldn't be playing a game of heroic fantasy. And I definately wouldn't play D&D expecting to treat every door as if it could explode and every commoner as if they were a polymorphed great wyrm and ever horse turd as if it was a land mine. Which seems to me to be the way a game in which a randomly and arbitrarily trapped levers would be full of.
It's the Chewbacca Defense. That lever just does not make sense. In any context. So it's arbitrary and, thus, unfair. Just like spontaneous human combustion (which, after all, there should be a chance for! After all, it could happen! Shouldn't adventurers always act as if it may be the case that they will suddenly explode for no apparent reason? After all, it can be prevented just by constantly being wet! All they have to do is pour water on themselves every hour or two, and they'll be safe! Wow, that'll make this desert adventure interesting!).
