Is this fair? -- your personal opinion

[delericho]

Contrast the trap given below with the trap presented in the OP:

You’ve cleared out the dungeon and found the McGuffin you were seeking. Then you come to a room located in the back corner of the dungeon. In the room is only a large lever sticking up out of the floor. You search the room and find a secret door in one wall. You can’t find a way to open the door.

The rogue searches the door and lever for traps, and finds that both are somehow connected to a trap. He's also sure that the trap is well beyond his ability to disarm, and is of extreme lethality.

The party Wizard casts Detect Magic, but no magic is detected.

At this point, the party elects to leave. The Monk is in the front of the marching order. As he leaves the room, he has to make a saving throw – he rolls a 19 on the die, adds in his mods, and fails the save. He turns into a pile of fine dust on the floor.

It turns out that the trap was on the doorway into the room - anyone who tried to leave through either door triggered the trap. Pulling the level would have disarmed the trap.

This is an extremely similar trap to the one described by the OP. The key difference is that the 'right' answer is to pull the lever, not leave it alone. What's more, this trap neatly negates any 'have a proxy pull the lever while we watch from a safe distance', since getting to a safe distance triggers the trap. It's also just as sensible as the original, since whoever installed it would also know how to bypass it.

Finally, the trap is significantly more fair than the original - the Rogue was able to detect it, and was provided a great deal of information about the trap.

Now, tell me, is that really a fair trap? Or should PCs be paranoid about not pulling levers, just as they should be about pulling them? Alternatively, if this trap is unfair, but the other fair, why is that?

 

[wayne62682]

I think the bigger issue here is that there's no sign that the lever is trapped. If it's the only way out of a room (as the scenario described it) then there's no reason NOT to pull it to open the secret door, and as a result you get screwed because of a seemingly impossible save-or-die trap.

I think "metagaming" is simply a pejorative term used by people who want to avoid a need for tactical thinking in RPGs.

AMEN! Do I think it's metagaming to say "Lever, it's trapped!"? Sure I do, even though I agree 100% that "metagaming" is a term cooked up to make it "wrong" to play tactically. If you have no reason to believe it's a trap, then you shouldn't act like it (barring circumstances such as having experienced similar things in the past and/or playing a highly paranoid character)

The player is playing a heroic character, and getting insta-killed for it. Well, I guess this explains why no one plays paladins.

Exactly the point. The player is taking the initiative by pulling the lever, and his reward is insta-death via a ludicrous DC that nobody could reasonably save against short of miraculous luck. I don't consider that fair, I consider that a load of bulldrek. This is supposed to be a heroic D&D game, not Shadowgate where if you touch the seemingly inconspicuous book on a shelf you fall into a pit, break both your legs and die horribly.

 

[Ourph]

In the scenario presented there is no indication that the lever is trapped. There is at least some indication that it is not trapped. Assuming that the level is, therefore, trapped because "OMG it's a LEVER!!!" is metagame thinking.

It's not metagame thinking if levers in dangerous places like dungeons are often trapped in the PC's world (and in most games I've played in, this is exactly the case, traps abound in dungeons, especially around strange set ups like a lever in the open that potentially opens an otherwise secret door). In my experience, both the players and characters in this situation would have every reason to be cautious about the presence of a trap and should act accordingly. Even if levers are trapped only rarely, cautious PCs will treat all levers as if they could be trapped because doing otherwise just means you're SURE to fall victim to the one that is.

The argument that this is metagame thinking is not only incorrect for many player's groups, it's also hypocritical; since the other "side" in this debate is basing their judgement on whether a trap should or shouldn't be present on whether it's "fun" in the context of the game. If the reason the monk's player feels comfortable sending him forward to pull the lever is "the DM won't put a lever with an instant kill trap on it here because it wouldn't be fun, so as the person with the best saves in the party I might take damage or suffer some other inconvenience but I shouldn't die" then he's engaging in BIG TIME metagame thinking. That decision-making process has absolutely nothing to do with what his character is thinking about the situation.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

This isn't "allowing a character to die". The player is directly killing him. He has no chance of survival if he pulls that lever. Period.

This is how I would put it.

So the player should assume that any trap will be instant death, no save?

At the beginning of a game, particularly with inexperienced players, then as I've said all along, this trap would be harsh. Once the players are experienced and have learned the basics, then in games of the kind that I run it becomes normal.

To me the situation in a dungeon is analagous to the situation a 21st Century Special Forces soldier might be in, after he's parachuted into a combat zone which may contain landmines or booby traps.

The Special Forces guy who lives assumes that there are traps he can't see and proceeds accordingly. He scouts out the territory. If possible, he captures a prisoner and questions him. He doesn't open doors, pull levers or otherwise take risks he doesn't need to take.

Sorry, but, yes, the DM is killing this character in a completely arbitrary way.

I simply disagree.

The paladin should be pulling the lever.

I disagree with this too.

Heck, even under the game you play, he almost HAS to pull that lever considering the code of conduct he's using.

This is a paladin who's already retrieved the McGuffin, rescued the princess, or whatever. Surely his thoughts should be on his mission? Surely his primary focus should be to bring his comrades safely back to the surface?

 

[takyris]

It's interesting to me that you equate "allowing a character to die" with "punishing a player". With the system I play, rolling a fresh character takes ~5 minutes, so it's hardly a big punishment -- unless the player's emotional investment is in the character rather than the game.

Emphasis mine.

Also, "the character rather than the game" is a false distinction. For some people, the character is the game. For other people, the tactics are the game. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're one of the latter.

I understand that some people become emotionally attached to particular characters, and want to play them in a particular way. I don't adjust my world setting to take account of this -- my world's a very bleak, Darwinian place where the extremely careful, thoughtful and lucky survive, achieve character objectives and ultimately reach high level, but the careless, thoughtless or unlucky tend to die a lot.

"My world's a place where every dungeon has at least one instakill trap well beyond the save-capability of the best guy in the party, and the trap can't be detected with the abilities that were put into the game specifically for detecting traps!"

Players who like this presumably seek out DMs who support their playstyle, and good luck to them.

Any character can be killed for making a mistake.

With "mistake" in this instance being read as "Had the rogue take 20 and determined that there was no danger from the lever, then pulled it, and was then forced into a roll-a-20-or-die situaation."

The first sentence is the one that works for me, provided your clause on the end is actually sincere. Some players want to play a tactical game in which every darn lever is a five-minute event involving casting two-thirds of your daily allotment of spells, in which either the rules as written for trapfinding are ignored or the trap is beyond the capability of the party's designated trapfinder, and in which the result of taking reasonable precautions is roll-a-20-or-die. Good luck to them.

As stated earlier, I'm not against traps. I'm not against impossible-at-that-level-to-spot traps. I'm not against massively damaging traps. I'm not even against instakill traps. I'm against impossible-at-that-level-to-spot instakill-traps. Making the trap detectable but not disarmable, or leaving the trap undetectable but lowering the damage, would be fine.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

It is detectable though, Takyris. Or at least, if you extrapolate a little, it should be.

I agree that you can't detect it by rolling a d20.

In my game you'd be able to detect it by, for example:

• Pulling the lever remotely using one of the many methods discussed in this thread
• Using informational magic such as augury or detect magic
• Capturing a prisoner from elsewhere in the dungeon and questioning it (assuming you use a charm of some kind to make sure it provided all the useful information; a hostile prisoner probably wouldn't mention the trap)

 

[painandgreed]

I'm interested to see if there is a line of fairness/unfairness for this scenario that can be drawn.

I still say there is not enough information. For what is given us, it could be a 20th level monk in a 1st level dungeon, or it could be a 1st level monk in a 20th level dungeon. Many assumptions are made and people are argueing on those assumptions. Since different people will come up with different assumptions, it's doubtful if anybody will ever talk about the same situation, let alone come to a consensus.

Give us all the details, such as DCs, mechanics, levels of the people involved, etc, and then we can being to discuss if it was fair or not. Of course, you might as well start with a discussion about "what is fair?" first, since, like alignment, I suspect that there will be a wide variation on expectations of "fairness" in a game and what that means.

 

[delericho]

It's not metagame thinking if levers in dangerous places like dungeons are often trapped in the PC's world (and in most games I've played in, this is exactly the case, traps abound in dungeons, especially around strange set ups like a lever in the open that potentially opens an otherwise secret door). In my experience, both the players and characters in this situation would have every reason to be cautious about the presence of a trap and should act accordingly. Even if levers are trapped only rarely, cautious PCs will treat all levers as if they could be trapped because doing otherwise just means you're SURE to fall victim to the one that is.

The lever had been checked for a trap. No trap was found.

This suggests:

1) There is no trap.
2) There is a trap, but the Rogue failed to spot it.
3) There is a trap that is beyond the ability of the Rogue to spot.

Of these, #1 is by far the most likely outcome - far more levers are not trapped than are trapped. #2 should not apply - the Rogue should have taken 20. If the Rogue failed to do so, the party deserves to be hit by the trap.

#3 should not occur in a level-appropriate dungeon. The trick here is that the Rogue needs to look in the right place, but if the Rogue looks where there is, in fact, a trap, then in a level-appropriate dungeon he should find it (assuming he takes 20).

Ah, you say, but isn't that metagame thinking? My answer is "no". My reasoning for this is that the group will know in fairly short order whether or not they are over their heads. If the Rogue has been doing his job, he's been looking in all the sensible places for traps. In a non-level-appropriate dungeon, he will have failed to spot at least some of them. In this case, the party will be well aware that the Rogue's ability can't be trusted.

So, except in the case where the party know they're in over their heads, they shouldn't be missing traps that exist.

And this isn't a lack of "tactical thinking" either. The party did the RIGHT THING. If you suspect a trap, have the Rogue check for traps. If it's there, he should find it (again, unless #3 applies, in which case, you'll know).

The assumption, once the Rogue has taken-20 on his search, should be that there is no trap.

The argument that this is metagame thinking is not only incorrect for many player's groups, it's also hypocritical; since the other "side" in this debate is basing their judgement on whether a trap should or shouldn't be present on whether it's "fun" in the context of the game.

An undetectable, extreme-save-DC, insta-kill trap has no business being in any level-appropriate dungeon.

If the reason the monk's player feels comfortable sending him forward to pull the lever is "the DM won't put a lever with an instant kill trap on it here because it wouldn't be fun, so as the person with the best saves in the party I might take damage or suffer some other inconvenience but I shouldn't die" then he's engaging in BIG TIME metagame thinking. That decision-making process has absolutely nothing to do with what his character is thinking about the situation.

I file this under, "but don't be an idiot". Okay, the Rogue has detected no traps, and is confident about that assessment (he's taken-20). But even the best of us make mistakes. Therefore, if someone's going to pull the lever, you send forward the person best able to survive a mistake, just in case. (Hardly metagaming.)

Presumably, the reason for pulling the lever (at all) is that they think it might open the secret door. Which is a sensible goal, and hardly metagaming. And they've taken reasonable precautions - the Rogue has satisfied himself that there is no trap.

Did you read my other post, with the example trap where if you don't pull the lever you get zapped? Isn't that an equally valid set-up? Do you think that's fair too?

 

[takyris]

It is detectable though, Takyris. Or at least, if you extrapolate a little, it should be.

I agree that you can't detect it by rolling a d20.

In my game you'd be able to detect it by, for example:

• Pulling the lever remotely using one of the many methods discussed in this thread
• Using informational magic such as augury or detect magic
• Capturing a prisoner from elsewhere in the dungeon and questioning it (assuming you use a charm of some kind to make sure it provided all the useful information; a hostile prisoner probably wouldn't mention the trap)

- Augury, Monster-Summoning, Mage Hand, and other methods are fine -- but limited. As a PC, the point where I start burning daily resources is when I've got some clue -- any clue -- that this could be bad. A lever that the party rogue doesn't see as trapped doesn't merit that kind of resource expenditure without additional clues -- like piles of dust on the floor or old runes on the wall that translate as something ominous. Either the DM has failed to provide those clues, in which case I don't consider it valid to use daily resources unless I'm in the Dungeon of Undetectable Traps, or Quas neglected to mention it... and my assumption is that if Quas didn't mention it, it wasn't available.
- If a rogue's trapfinding can't detect it, a detect magic wouldn't. That's the whole point of trapfinding.
- The captured prisoner makes sense, provided that a DM who provided no clues relating to the lever decided to do an about-face and have a prisoner tell you that.

At this point, you can come up with all kinds of "If only they'd done ____" points on how you'd have handled it... but you don't have any additional information that supports your theory. All we have is what Quas wrote, and my assumption is that, if a DM makes an insta-kill trap that cannot be found with a rogue's trapfinding ability and doesn't put any warning signs around the lever, it's a stretch to assume that the DM has offered all kinds of additional clues that the poor pathetic players were too dense to find.

If we're going to make assumptions about things Quas didn't write, why don't we assume that the death-beam travels down the rope, or affects magically summoned creatures by casting a bless spell on them instead of Destruction, making it look like an attractive option for PCs? Why don't we assume that the monsters that live in the dungeon are immune to the lever's effects and don't consider it harmful at all? After all, the only information we HAVE is that the party rogue couldn't find it.

The logical conclusion, given that information, is that the DM didn't want that trap to be able to be avoided except by not pulling the lever.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I see two concepts here that I find puzzling:

1 – No trap should ever be deadly.

2 – If a trap is deadly, it should absolutely be so, with no way to “outsmart” it.

Is there no middle ground? A deadly trap that can be circumvented.

Quasqueton

Definately. IMO, a well designed trap is one that does not begin and end in the same action. The player's trigger it, are given a chance to react and interact with it, then face consequences. For my dislike of the Tomb of Horrors, the bleeding trap is an incredibly well done trap that rewards creativity. Same thing with the eyeball wall in Mud Sorcerer's Tomb.

The piano trap and the Rube-Goldberg style arm grabber/cannonball thing in the Goonies were good examples of traps as well.

What I dislike is the "zinger" traps. You walk down a hallway and get zapped with a magic missile, dart, or whatever. A trap should lead to more adventure, not just damage/death and move on. The lever could have done a million different things, like teleport you into an efreeti's harem... a dangerous situation, but not immediately fatal.

Even worse are the grimtooth "meta traps" that just exist to give players a damned if you do, damned if you dont feeling, which I thoroughly hate. In one of the "classics", theres an easy to discover trap on the outside of a chest. By disarming it, you enable the trap on the inside of the chest, which goes off when you open it. By succeeding, you've hosed yourself. Or the delightful one that is specifically designed to counter the "open the door with a rope" bit, that explodes 50 feet away. Lets not forget the delight of symbols of death/insanity scribed with invisible ink that only show up with detect magic or detect invisibility. Thus ensuring you that you're ed no matter what you do. Its just pure BS. If the DM is running that kind of game, they may as well tick off damage whenever they feel like it. Its crap like that which got me into DM'ing, when I realized that the game could be more enjoyable than some chode hiding behind a screen so he could cheat on every roll.