Is this fair? -- your personal opinion

[Slife]

You were doing well until you hit #5. After all, presumably, making the door mechanism or the trap hard to detect costs the same amount. Moreover, if you take #5 to heart, why are you building underground anyway? Way more expensive than building above-ground.

Just pointing out here, that by RAW it's many times easier to build underground. There was a post a while ago about someone wanting to make a tower for their wizard, and the general consensus was that it would be more practical to make an underground complex. Mostly because of spells like mud to rock and stoneshape.

More to the point, where in the OP is the dungeon listed as underground?

 

[FireLance]

Not at all. When asking if something is unfair, one assumes that we are talking about some form of objective analysis. The OP does not ask, "Is this unfair in your campaign? One can easily imagine that something is unfair within the context of a particular group dynamic but this does not make it unfair in and of itself.

"DM is giving a setup the PCs have seen hundreds of times that was relatively safe with a few precautions" is a playstyle assumption. There is no assumption inherent in the OP, and it is safer therefore to follow the assumption that you do not know the playstyle and act accordingly.

Well first off, I don't think the question of fairness lends itself very well to objective analysis. Such questions either relate to a specific scenario, in which case the circumstances of the situation (however unique or unlikely) become important, or relate to a general scenario, in which case the analysis centers around "the most likely case" or "the average man", which still contains an element of subjectivity.

Since the discussion in the thread has got around to, "Is it fair for the players to expect that activating the lever will set off a trap that will result in almost certain death for the PC pulling the lever?" (as of the time I started writing this post, anyway), I would say that for the general case, the answer is still no. The "average player" might expect a trap, but not such a lethal one. Perhaps this is a reflection of how player expectations have changed since the earlier days of the game - what was considered "fair" then is now considered "unfair" by the majority of players.

As for the specific case, I infer from the fact that the players have taken no special precautions that encountering such a lethal trap is something that they are not used to and hence, do not expect. The OP did not state that the players were being more reckless than normal, and perhaps it is bias on my part that I consider that scenario less likely than the scenario in which the DM simply decided to change the way in which he challenged the players.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Silfe, good observations.

Firelance, my terminology is unfortunate. What I mean to imply is that the analysis should be as objective as possible. Ultimately, nothing is subject to actual objective analysis.

ThirdWizard, I am heading out of town, and will jump back on this when I return.

As a starter, I will ask, assuming you agree with Post 572, do you also agree that the three potential conclusions in that post correspond with the possible choices on this poll? See below:

IF you accept the assumptions are true, THEN the logical conclusion is that the trap is unfair. You should therefore answer NO.

IF you do not accept that the assumptions are all true, but do not aver that the assumptions are false, THEN the logical conclusion is that the trap may or may not be fair, and that more information is required to make a statement that the trap is fair or unfair. You should therefore answer OTHER.

IF you believe that one or more of the assumptions is not true, THEN the logical conclusion is that the trap is fair. You should therefore answer YES.

 

[Nightfall]

Um, why do you care if this thread has reached 14 pages without a conclusion? Surely if you don't like it, you don't have to read it?

No but I keep seeing it on my screen (the thread) when people post on it. So if keeps going...Shennigans!


Shennigans!


Shennigans!

And for good measure....

Shennigans!

 

[Raven Crowking]

No but I keep seeing it on my screen (the thread) when people post on it. So if keeps going...Shennigans!

Ah, my favourie word! I keep posting just so you keep using it!



RC

 

[Nightfall]

Raven,

Hey what ever floats your boat man. It's all good by me.

Shennagins!

There. That should make you happy.

 

[MarkB]

Shennigans!

Doo doo dee-doo-doo

 

[Nightfall]

Works for me Mark.

And yes: Shennagins!

*figures this is working better than yelling Scarred Lands every 30 seconds...*

 

[Scarbonac]

The word is "Shenanigans".



Fun thread.

Trap is fair; it's practically the first law of dungeoneering:

"For Hastur's sake, don't pull the lever!"

Levers are there to seperate the wheat from the chaff. The monk in the OP, sadly, was chaff.

My favorite lever-based trap involved a rune-carved staff, set in the floor like the OP's lever. There was a sign nearby to the effect that the person who pulled the staff would receive one million gold pieces. Nobody wantd to pull it, until one greedy feckless sod essentially said "Screw this!", yanked on the staff...and the ceiling opened up and a million GP buried the puller, leaving only his hand, still gripping the staff, visible.


The sad part was that the party didn't have the means to carry off more than a small portion of the gold.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Originally Posted by Me
IRL, what would you do if you found a toy on the battlefield? LEAVE IT ALONE- its probably not booby trapped, but the consequences of it being so are lethal.

IRL, what would you do if you entered a room in a secure area of a military base that had an unlabled phone on the wall? LEAVE IT ALONE- if it were meant for your use, there would be a sign and/or you would have been told going in what the phone's purpose was.

IRL, what would you do if you were in a maximum security prison (just visiting) and you were left unattended in a room with a lever on the wall? LEAVE IT ALONE- you don't know what it does- it could be a power switch, but it could also open barred doors meant to be closed, or close those meant to be open.

SlifeCase 1
Land mines are way too small to fit into toys. I'd be more worried about things that I know could be dangerous (like a mound of recently tilled soil, or that patch of leaves that's been strewn all the way across the road in an otherwise unwooded area.) That stated, while a toy may be unusual on a battlefield (depending on where the battle is taking place, of course. Urban combat, anyone?), a lever is certainly not too unusual in dungeons.

Actually, you're dead wrong on this. Booby trapped toys are pretty common in some of the dirtier wars. The majority of the victims obviously being children, and they're meant to be- in those wars, children commonly scavenge fields for scrap metal from destroyed machines and weapons and whatever else they can find. The equation is simple- harm the children, terrorize the villagers.

Typically, the toy is meant to maim, not kill, so the explosives are typically what we would call IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). However, some are cunningly placed on the triggers of landmines- the toy is removed, the mine detonates. A child's doll is quite sufficient to cover up most of a mine, the surrounding dirt, debris, and flora do the rest.

BTW, this was one of the major facts behind Princess Diana's getting involved with trying to get landmines outlawed.

SlifeCase 2
If I'm invading the base? Probably leave it alone - but only because it's only possible to use as a communications device. Even then I might smash it just on the off chance someone coming behind me might use it. If it were a computer I'd use it, and if it were a big ol' switch or lever I'd use it.

And invading the base is analagous to what the PCs are doing in an adventure. IOW, you might try to disable the device, but you probably wouldn't try to use it as it seems to be intended to be used.

SlifeCase 3
Well, if I'm supposed to be invading the prison and killing the guards, I'll go for it. The more chaos the better!
But seriously, how many switches that could release prisoners wouldn't have... I don't know, a key, or a pass code, or a fingerprint scanner, or a retinal identification...

In a modern prison (or certain other kinds of similar institutions, like Hospitals for the Criminally Insane), most (not all) such controls are centralized (I spent a little time as an intern in the Dallas Public Defender's office, so I got to visit all of the jails in the city at least once). I accidentally triggered at least one control I wasn't supposed to, and that was in the newest of our jails, the Lew Sterrit Justice Center.

In older prisons, where electronic technology was not available, no such safeguards exist. The only thing preventing you from working a control is whatever guard is in the vicinity.