Ridley's Cohort
First Post
Shannagins!
Is this fair? -- your personal opinion
- Thread starter Quasqueton
- Start date
I got another follower! 
Ridley's Cohort said:
Ummm... I'm not trying to be rude here, but as far as I can see this response has absolutely nothing to do with the post I just made. It seems to miss the point of the post completely and address another issue altogether (one to which I was not speaking). Care to clarify?
Someone
Adventurer
Raven Crowking said:Please explain the difference.
Better, explain the difference between the lever and the mousetrap. I think, were 55-56% of all gamers on this thread mice, they'd be dead mice by now.
RC
The difference in point of view, I think, relies in considering the setiign room-lever-door in itself, as opposed to considring the dungeon (or heck, the world) as whole.
The adventurers got the McGuffing. They killed the BBEG, solved the puzzles, rescued the villagers, and got the treasure. And did it all without even seeing the lever, so we can reasonably conclude that said room and lever was located in a part of the dungeon that is not vital, nor frequently traversed, and by the look of it, just a backward room. Even the secret door, judging by the OP wasn´t particulary difficult to discover (at least compared with the DC to find the trap!).
What, I wonder is the reason to put a deadly and difficult to discover trap in that location? I mean, it was one of the BBEG´s best assets. The adventuring party has kicked asses and taken names along all the dungeon and stolen the McGuffin. Probably, the reason to live or build that dungeon (Imagine living in a cold, dark, damp and humid place) is for defense. The BBEG´s purpose was to aviod intrusion, and in that case, eliminate the intruders in the most efficient, cruel and painful way possible. However, while in the rest of the dungeon´s vital areas there are only "level appropiate" challenges (we know that because the adventurers are not dead), he maybe found that there was an excess of several hundred thousand gold coins in the coffers, so why the heck, we´ll just live once, let´s build a complex, rogue-proof, state-of-the-art trap tied with that lever.
Those adventurers will see! When they kill me, and by any chance they stumble into the room, I´ll laugh from the infernal plane where I shall be seeing how they are disintegrated.
The difference between the lever and the mousetrap is that you don´t put the mousetrap on the roof and put a large, nontrapped cheese in the kitchen. The reason the trap lever is unfair is because it exist to punish players who pull levers.
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Ridley's Cohort said:
That's not necessarily true. As you say, the way DCs relate to CR is only a guideline. If the trap has a very high Search DC and a very high Save DC but is easily detectable and easily defeatable by means other than rolling a d20 then it shouldn't necessarily have a high CR. If detection and defeat of the trap is possible with low level magic (Detect Magic, Augury) or with use of another skill (Knowledge: History, Bardic Knowledge) or through taking simple actions (reading a sign saying "Don't pull the lever" written on the wall in the next room) then it's reasonable for the CR to be low even though the save DCs are high. Those are called "circumstantial modifiers" and the rulebooks regularly encourage DMs to use them at their discretion when applying the normal guidelines.
Ridley's Cohort
First Post
Ourph said:
Sure.
You asserted the fact that PCs were Searching at all or that they chose a Monk to pull the lever as supporting your position that they should have been more suspicious.
My counterargument is that there were other sound reasons to do exactly those, even if we subtract the lever-as-trap from the scenario entirely (for the sake of argument). Therefore the Searching and choice of a Monk is non-evidence for your position.
Someone said:
You're assuming the creatures populating the dungeon at the time the PCs entered and took the MacGuffin were the ones that placed the trap. It is entirely possible that the trap was constructed long ago by other inhabitants of the dungeon and that the very reason the trap is located in an out-of-the-way, unused portion of the dungeon is because the current inhabitants know about the trap, do not know how to defeat it, haven't figured out a way to open the secret door without turning to dust and simply avoid that area because it is very dangerous.
This is also a very, very good reason not to assume that because the rest of the dungeon is level appropriate this one particular area must be also.
In fact, I would argue that since the MacGuffin WAS NOT kept behind this very effective, very expensive trapped area that the current inhabitants (owners of said MacGuffin) were in exactly the position I describe. If they created the trap they should have been using this area. The fact that the area is unused and the important objects were on the PC's side of the secret door indicates the current occupants were leaving this area alone. This is yet another reason for the PCs to be suspicious.
