Is this fair? -- your personal opinion

[PapersAndPaychecks]

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

PLAYER: I search the lever for traps.
DM: How do you go about it, exactly?
PLAYER: Hmm. Describe this lever.
DM: 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.
PLAYER: Without touching the lever, I examine it minutely.
DM: Your inspection reveals nothing new.
PLAYER: Using a wooden stick, I touch one of the cogwheels, but not enough to make it rotate.
DM: Nothing seems to happen.
PLAYER: Hmm. Okay, I carefully loop a piece of rope around the lever, still being careful not to touch it. I warn the party to move back.
DM: Go on then, warn them.
PLAYER: I give the party a courteous bow, then twirl my moustaches. I'm looking particularly debonair. "Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to retreat some goodly distance. It's possible that I'm being overcautious, but it's also possible that there might be a nasty surprise rigged for whoever touches this lever."
(The other players retreat.)
DM: What now?
PLAYER: I think I'll pay out the rope a good ten feet and retreat around the corner in the corridor, so if there's an explosion, the corner will shelter me. Then I put on my thick leather gauntlets before taking hold of the rope.
DM: And?
PLAYER: Very gently, very tentatively, I pull the lever -- just enough to make it move slightly...

 

[DonTadow]

Lets look at this in a broader perspective.

Should every little piece of the dungeon be investigated before the PCs interact with it? That's just a bit too paranoid for most campaigns. Once you start supertrapping typical objects where does it end. Yoou'll blow through 4 hours of game play with the pcs just checking out one room. And why?
So the DM can say he scored a PC kill by carefully hiding a trap and using his power of DM Fiat.

Puzzles are only fun if the PCs think they can solve it and can't. They are even more fun when the PCs are aware of it.

There is only one instance I can see this trap, as it is being fair. If the dungeon was built to test the greed of the players. But the only thing that would make it cool if there was some wierd riddle, hint or clue that hinted that greed was bad.

The trap as is just lacks the kinda tack that seperates good DMs from great ones.

 

[ruleslawyer]

PLAYER: I search the lever for traps.
DM: How do you go about it, exactly?
PLAYER: Hmm. Describe this lever.
DM: 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.
PLAYER: Without touching the lever, I examine it minutely.
DM: Your inspection reveals nothing new.
PLAYER: Using a wooden stick, I touch one of the cogwheels, but not enough to make it rotate.
DM: Nothing seems to happen.
PLAYER: Hmm. Okay, I carefully loop a piece of rope around the lever, still being careful not to touch it. I warn the party to move back.
DM: Go on then, warn them.
PLAYER: I give the party a courteous bow, then twirl my moustaches. I'm looking particularly debonair. "Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to retreat some goodly distance. It's possible that I'm being overcautious, but it's also possible that there might be a nasty surprise rigged for whoever touches this lever."
(The other players retreat.)
DM: What now?
PLAYER: I think I'll pay out the rope a good ten feet and retreat around the corner in the corridor, so if there's an explosion, the corner will shelter me. Then I put on my thick leather gauntlets before taking hold of the rope.
DM: And?
PLAYER: Very gently, very tentatively, I pull the lever -- just enough to make it move slightly...

And, yet, there is not a single shred of useful knowledge or logic to say that this has less of a chance of disintegrating you than actually just using your hands to pull the lever. Or is it a known fact in this campaign world that magical effects are blocked by rope or thick gloves?

 

[ThirdWizard]

PLAYER: I search the lever for traps.
DM: How do you go about it, exactly?
PLAYER: Hmm. Describe this lever.
DM: 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.
PLAYER: Without touching the lever, I examine it minutely.
DM: Your inspection reveals nothing new.
PLAYER: Using a wooden stick, I touch one of the cogwheels, but not enough to make it rotate.
DM: Nothing seems to happen.
PLAYER: Hmm. Okay, I carefully loop a piece of rope around the lever, still being careful not to touch it. I warn the party to move back.
DM: Go on then, warn them.
PLAYER: I give the party a courteous bow, then twirl my moustaches. I'm looking particularly debonair. "Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to retreat some goodly distance. It's possible that I'm being overcautious, but it's also possible that there might be a nasty surprise rigged for whoever touches this lever."
(The other players retreat.)
DM: What now?
PLAYER: I think I'll pay out the rope a good ten feet and retreat around the corner in the corridor, so if there's an explosion, the corner will shelter me. Then I put on my thick leather gauntlets before taking hold of the rope.
DM: And?
PLAYER: Very gently, very tentatively, I pull the lever -- just enough to make it move slightly...

Then repeat for every single doorknob encountered.

And thus 20 minutes of fun in 4 hours of gaming is born.

 

[MarkB]

With a DM who skips over the traps but concentrates on the battles, it would strike me that a fighter would be a lot more fun to play than a rogue.

If there were a party of six characters, and one was a rogue, then it seems fair that about one in six situations should focus around the rogue -- not necessarily always a trap, but we're in a dungeon here. And the situation focusing on the rogue's abilities should be given the same amount of time spent and dramatic tension as an average fight.

Am I missing something, or does this attitude give the rogue a really raw deal?

Only if the rogue's player really wants to roleplay an extended "searching a lever" scene. If not - if, to quote an earlier post, his attitude is "just hand me the d20" - then requiring him to play out a simple scene in fine detail is boring him as much as anyone else.

I've played rogues, and played games where others were playing rogues, and DM'd players playing rogues, and the spotlight time for them lies in sneaking, and scouting, and finding ways to get their sneak attacks, and breaking & entering, and - for some builds - social interaction. I've yet to see one who got a great deal out of extended role-playing of searching a door or lever.

 

[DonTadow]

PLAYER: I search the lever for traps.
DM: How do you go about it, exactly?
PLAYER: Hmm. Describe this lever.
DM: 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.
PLAYER: Without touching the lever, I examine it minutely.
DM: Your inspection reveals nothing new.
PLAYER: Using a wooden stick, I touch one of the cogwheels, but not enough to make it rotate.
DM: Nothing seems to happen.
PLAYER: Hmm. Okay, I carefully loop a piece of rope around the lever, still being careful not to touch it. I warn the party to move back.
DM: Go on then, warn them.
PLAYER: I give the party a courteous bow, then twirl my moustaches. I'm looking particularly debonair. "Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to retreat some goodly distance. It's possible that I'm being overcautious, but it's also possible that there might be a nasty surprise rigged for whoever touches this lever."
(The other players retreat.)
DM: What now?
PLAYER: I think I'll pay out the rope a good ten feet and retreat around the corner in the corridor, so if there's an explosion, the corner will shelter me. Then I put on my thick leather gauntlets before taking hold of the rope.
DM: And?
PLAYER: Very gently, very tentatively, I pull the lever -- just enough to make it move slightly...

This sounds good on the outside looking in, but again I ask if you didnt know that this thread exists do you really do this for every mundane objects. I doubt it. I doubt most parties want to waste the time playing CSI for every room.

There's just no bait to make this level more than what it is and without bait its just pointless DM fiat.

 

[ThirdWizard]

And none of this addresses why someone would spend 50k or more to death trap a lever that can be bypassed by a simple rope. The point of a trap is not to allow "smart" playing to get them by it. The point of a trap is to kill people.

 

[Quasqueton]

In one game where I had a PC, we encountered a room known to be the “lair” of a necromancer we had previously killed. The room was filled with blackness we could not see through. We had no need or reason to go into the room other than sheer curiosity and/or greed to loot. The rogue searched the doorway and found no trap. The mage used detect magic and saw the darkness was magical, and he saw an unknown abjuration inside the room.

After much discussion, the rogue said he would enter the room. We tied a rope around him in case we needed to pull him out. We gave the rogue a potion of protection from evil, and he drank it before entering the darkness.

The rogue jumped in passed his save (because of the potion bonus). He fell to the floor and we dragged him back out. Prompt healing prevented his death.

We knew it was magically trapped. We knew it. We took precautions (rope and potion) to help the rogue survive the trap. Letting the rogue go in was stupid. Darwin Awards stupid.

None of us thought the scenario was unfair. Was it?

Quasqueton

 

[Raven Crowking]

Should every little piece of the dungeon be investigated before the PCs interact with it? That's just a bit too paranoid for most campaigns. Once you start supertrapping typical objects where does it end.

Um, do you have empty rooms strewn with levers as typical objects in your dungeons?

I have already given the (much ignored) complete line of reasoning as to why this is not "every little piece of the dungeon" and ought to be investigated. I can cut & paste if you like, but there's an obvious reason why those posts are not being responded to by the "Oh no! Unfair DM!" crowd.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Then repeat for every single doorknob encountered.

And thus 20 minutes of fun in 4 hours of gaming is born.

I have already given the (much ignored) complete line of reasoning as to why this is not "every little piece of the dungeon" and ought to be investigated. I can cut & paste if you like, but there's an obvious reason why those posts are not being responded to by the "Oh no! Unfair DM!" crowd.

RC