Is this fair? -- your personal opinion

[delericho]

Roll-playing approach to this trap:

PLAYER: I search for traps.
DM: Roll away.
PLAYER: Err, actually I take 20.
DM: K. You don't find a trap.
PLAYER: The monk pulls the lever.
DM: Roll a saving throw.
PLAYER: A 19.
DM: You fail and crumble to dust.

I agree, this is a crappy approach to gaming and no fun for anyone.

I agree, somewhat.

My approach to this trap:

PLAYER: I search for traps.
DM: How do you go about it, exactly?

Answer 1: "Hey, am I a thief in real life? Just give me the d20."
Answer 2: "Hmm. Describe this lever in more detail."

If your reaction is to come back with answer 1, you're not going to survive a game I run. It's really that simple. But I think most gamers would come back with answer 2, and maybe we'd have a game going.

So, how exactly would you go about searching the lever for traps?

Oh, and since you'll just come back with "describe it in more detail"...

It's a three-foot iron pole with a red rubber moulded top, designed for easy grasp. There pole is slightly rusted along its length, but not excessively so, and there is some grease at the bottom of the pole, where it enters the main mechanism (that's a lubricant, nothing more). The mechanism itself can be seen somewhat, and consists of several large interlocking cogwheels.

So, how do you go about searching the lever for traps?

 

[delericho]

Rule 0 does, indeed, allow the DM to produce a trap that cannot be detected by a rogue with a sufficient Search modifier.

Introducing such a thing alters the way the Rogue's trapfinding skill works. Players have a right to know if it's possible. In theory, the player of the Rogue might decide to choose to play something else if he knows that, no matter how high he raises his modifier, there will exist traps that he simply cannot detect. (That might be an extreme reaction, but it's a possible one. And, since the character is the only thing the player controls in the game, it is a choice the player has a right to make.) To be fair, the DM has to tell the player that this is a possibility.

Moreover, so would creative use of magic. Easy example: "I wish that this trap can never be found by non-magical means."

I would doubt very much that that is within the scope of the powers of the Wish spell. What you're suggesting is a trap that the God of Rogues cannot detect via Search. Would you allow a wish "I wish I can never be harmed by non-magical means"?

Additionally, is it clear that the Search skill includes only non-magical means? Isn't it more reasonable to think that, in a magical universe, the Rogue picks up bits and pieces about detecting glyphs and wards, and unravelling such things? I don't know exactly how it would work (since magic is not perfectly defined), but perhaps he uses special crystals to focus the lines of power, or marks the level with runes of detection, or something.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So... people should always be on gaurd against levers? Why? What makes levers special? They are, if anything, one of the least useful places to put a trap in. Why is a lever a warning?

Is there some god of traps whose holy symbol is the lever?

I suppose it's just like Archimedes said, give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I'll scare off the PCs.

If the lever is part of a slot machine, you should be on guard.

If the lever is part of a moat house assembly to ratchet up the drawbridge, you can probably assume it is safe.

If the lever is a large lever located in the back corner of the dungeon in a room with nothing else but a secret door in one wall, you might want to consider that no one goes to the effort of hiding the door while making the way to open it so bloody obvious.

This doesn't require a god of traps whose holy symbol is the lever. It requires nothing more than a little insight and some common sense.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

While both accurate, this boils into the metagame consideration of what kind of characters you want to encourage.

If their deaths can come out of left field, undetectable and unsurvivable (or virutally so), you breed paranoid characters who will use elaborate survival tactics on seemingly inoccuous things as well as on truly dangerous things because they cannot reliably tell the difference.

The question is not whether or not they can reliably detect traps; the question is whether or not they can detect all traps using the dice alone with a reasonable degree of reliability.

Asking for the dice to provide absolute reliability is unfair.

Once again the PC's in the above scenario DID take precautions against the trap.

These precautions were just ineffective.

Like scentless, SI-immune deadly pink unicorns.

My response to Slife more than adequately covers that. If the DM tells you that there are deadly pink unicorns, and then lets you see a pink horse with a horn sticking out of its head, and you demand that you also need a Knowledge check, you are simply failing to use the information provided.

 

[Slife]

If the lever is a large lever located in the back corner of the dungeon in a room with nothing else but a secret door in one wall, you might want to consider that no one goes to the effort of hiding the door while making the way to open it so bloody obvious.

And nobody would go to the effort of concealing a trap if the trigger is so "bloody obvious".

I mean, if you're designing a very powerful and costly trap, what are you going to do with it? Put it on a switch and hope someone decides to flip it?

You also have to assume that the secret door was designed to be secret. In such a case, what's the point of having a big trapped lever in the middle of the room? It would only make people suspicious that there was something worth protecting there.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think we miss the point of what exactly does this rogue's search do. Does it simply look at an area and a bell goes off that says trap or no trap, or does he carefully inspect the area looking for anything odd or any hint that there is more to the mechanism. Why was there no other dust on the floor I asked earlier? Thats not a hint, thats logic. They couldnt have been the first to fall victim to the trap.

Why not? IMC, PCs tread where others have not walked in centuries all the time.

If the purpose of the dungeon is to hide the McGuffin, as seems likely from the original question, then there is an obvious purpose to the lever trap: kill the curious but skilled who got past the guards. A last-ditch attempt to protect the McGuffin. An expensive one, sure, but no more expensive really than digging out the dungeon in the first place.

Why is it that so many people are quick to claim that there would be continual flame streetlights in major kingdoms, but assume that the BBEG who built the dungeon couldn't predict that adventurers might try their hand there one day?

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Introducing such a thing alters the way the Rogue's trapfinding skill works. Players have a right to know if it's possible.

Really?

From where is this "right" derived? What book is it in? What law, what bill, what charter? Players have the right not to play in the game you're running; they have no right to tell you how to run it. Must you tell the wizard that some creatures might be immune to magic missile? Must you tell the fighter that some creatures might be immune to damage from edged weapons?

Bullocks, says I, to that entire line of reasoning.

You must tell the players what their characters should reasonably know about the world, no more and no less.

I would doubt very much that that is within the scope of the powers of the Wish spell. What you're suggesting is a trap that the God of Rogues cannot detect via Search. Would you allow a wish "I wish I can never be harmed by non-magical means"?

If, in your world, the God of Rogues is both mundane and subject to mortal Wishes, then I suppose so.

Additionally, is it clear that the Search skill includes only non-magical means? Isn't it more reasonable to think that, in a magical universe, the Rogue picks up bits and pieces about detecting glyphs and wards, and unravelling such things? I don't know exactly how it would work (since magic is not perfectly defined), but perhaps he uses special crystals to focus the lines of power, or marks the level with runes of detection, or something.

Is the Search skill then treated as a supernatural ability?

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

And nobody would go to the effort of concealing a trap if the trigger is so "bloody obvious".

Excepting, in this case, that the point of the trigger is to be bloody obvious...and enticing to boot. Judging by the number of people who are claiming this trap would be unfair, it would apparently be bloody effective, as well.

 

[wayne62682]

Really?

From where is this "right" derived? What book is it in? What law, what bill, what charter? Players have the right not to play in the game you're running; they have no right to tell you how to run it. Must you tell the wizard that some creatures might be immune to magic missile? Must you tell the fighter that some creatures might be immune to damage from edged weapons?

Bullocks, says I, to that entire line of reasoning.

You must tell the players what their characters should reasonably know about the world, no more and no less.

The right of fairness, perhaps? The DM has omnipotent power as it stands and by right doesn't NEED to play by any of the same rules the player does (i.e. Rule 0). IMO it's only fair to NOT be a complete jerk and deliberately put something that you know nobody in the group can find (or has a chance of finding) and then wonder why they're upset if it kills them. Is that such a hard concept to grasp? (don't mean that last comment to be offensive)

The game, after all, is supposed to be about the player characters, not the DM or how sneakily he can kill them by throwing unfindable, unavoidable death traps at them. If your group enjoys that, then more power to you. For me, however, I would leave that DM's table if I felt they were on a power trip and thought nothing of placing DC 1000000 traps in places.

 

[delericho]

Actually, never mind.

I'm done with this thread. My opinion is not going to be changed, and I don't think yours will either, so I see no point in continuing.