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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GQuail" data-source="post: 3026599" data-attributes="member: 30709">As ThirdWizard said, these aren't exactly reasons to pull the lever, so much as reasons why the lever trap wouldn't be fun for most players: I know when I asked my players about this kind of trap they were pretty against it for very much the reasons you listed.  It's not something to be overcome, but something to be avoided, a "neener neener" trap if you will.  Of course, 3.X does say that dungeons should invlude encounters you just have to drop and run from (hence me feeling the last two arguments aren't erribly solid: certainly, my party have tried to fight everything they've met in the past and learnt the folly of their actions.) but there's a difference in my mind between something that's obviously insurmountable and something which is gonna kill a player before they realise how deep they're in.Whilst I personally have no problem with the occasional situation which breaks the "it's a game" mentality because of ICly reasons, this trap at heart follows a design paradigm which I don't think is terribly condusive to how many modern players play the game.  It's more 1E than 3E: more Tomb of Horrors than Heroes of Horror, y'know what I'm saying?  I think this thread has turned into a sort of edition war with regards to module design: many of the people saying it's fair are posters I know are big fans of older editions, and indeed someone on this thread already brought up the Green Devil Head as a similar example, didn't they?  It's something where curiosity means death unless you're adopting an astounding careful dungeon clearing procedure, full of 10ft poles, summoned monsters and augurys: and I sense a lot of later D&D players don't have much experience in those kinds of modules, and thusly fail to see why that sort of behaviour would be expected of them.I wonder if this is part of the reason for the question in the first place: Quas' threads on older editions and modules often bring up the differences in current and older adventure design and if it has any quantifiable traits.  Whilst not all old-school modules have them, earlier D&D modules were certainly a lot more free & easy about snuffing out characters who didn't play cunning.  The differences between the original and the 3.5 version of the Tomb Of Horrors is an obvious example of these different expectations. I've stuck my players in lots of potentially fatal situations before: doesn't every DM?  Just last fortnight my Rogue and Fighter got stuck in a 30ft diameter circular room which started to fill up with water,  with a Belker and some Water Elementals hassling them, whilst the others deperately tried to open the sealed room and break the magical trap making the water.  That was fair and fun to my players, who liked the drama of being split up and getting to show off their tricks.  (Breaking down iron doors, casting Dispel Magic, swim checks to stay in combat in the water, etc)  But I don't think if they'd walked into the same suspicious room and I'd just said "water fills room quickly, you drown, here's 4d6" that they'd have had anywhere near as much fun.  Like a lot of people here, I can only really speak for what my players enjoy, so I can't say for sure that it's the WORST TRAP EVAR!!!11!!1one! or anything: but I do think that it's one I would be unlikely to use as written.That's assuming the trap has killed the monk, mind.  As more than one person has said, that's something we don't know for sure: I bet that Monk is haaving a lot of fun meditating whilst polymorphed into sand.  :></blockquote>

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