D&D 5E Mage Hand and Trap Avoidance

[Stalker0]

At the end of the day, the disabling of traps has never been the focus, its always the finding. Once you find a trap, there are many ways to disable them or bypass them. Mage hand is a useful tool to disable a known trap....but it won't help you find them.

 

[Stalker0]

The biggest issue is mage hand is free and unseen servant is a 1st level spell that can carry less weight than the cantrip

what do you mean?

Mage Hands carry 10 lbs, unseen servants have a carrying capacity of 30 (str 2). That means they can push, pull, or lift up to 60 lbs.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

PPP

what do you mean?

Mage Hands carry 10 lbs, unseen servants have a carrying capacity of 30 (str 2). That means they can push, pull, or lift up to 60 lbs.

my mistake!!! I was looking at variant rule where str 2 is only 10lbs

 

[Charlaquin]

This is just a little rant:

Last night, I was running the second full session of my new 5E 2024 campaign (this isn't tagged 2024 because I don't think it is relevant) and the 2nd level PCs did the old standard of setting off a trap with mage hand. It is a common tactic, but I had forgotten about it since it has been a while since it has happened in game.

I hate it. It is so boring.

Note: I was running a published adventure, and I just introduced the trap as the module presented it, and the mage hand solution was perfectly reasonable and made sense for the PCs that did not want to get poison gassed.

But I still hate it.

My feelings on traps have evolved over the years and ultimately they boil down to this: if the trap can be easily bypassed with mage hand, it is a bad trap. Full stop.

To me, the interesting part of the trap is in the interaction with it - picking up on the environmental cues indicating its presence, trying to figure out what activates it and what happens when it’s activated, and using that information to form a plan of how to bypass it. If that plan is “use mage hand to intentionally activate it from a safe distance,” that’s no more or less interesting than any other approach IMO. If springing a trap with mage hand is disappointing, it’s because they didn’t have to do any work investigating the trap and determining how it works to arrive at that solution, and any other means of bypassing it would have been similarly disappointing. I’d focus on trying to refine my presentation of traps to make the detection and determination of function more engaging.

 

[Mannahnin]

At the end of the day, the disabling of traps has never been the focus, its always the finding. Once you find a trap, there are many ways to disable them or bypass them. Mage hand is a useful tool to disable a known trap....but it won't help you find them.

I'm generally a fan of the OSR approach of making traps more obvious. So they're less "gotcha!" and more "how do we deal with this thing?" and problem-solving.

Mage Hand definitely can throw a wrinkle into that.

 

[Reynard]

To me, the interesting part of the trap is in the interaction with it - picking up on the environmental cues indicating its presence, trying to figure out what activates it and what happens when it’s activated, and using that information to form a plan of how to bypass it. If that plan is “use mage hand to intentionally activate it from a safe distance,” that’s no more or less interesting than any other approach IMO. If springing a trap with mage hand is disappointing, it’s because they didn’t have to do any work investigating the trap and determining how it works to arrive at that solution, and any other means of bypassing it would have been similarly disappointing. I’d focus on trying to refine my presentation of traps to make the detection and determination of function more engaging.

That is the mostly gently I have ever been accused of bad GMing. Congratulations.

Again, the real issue is that Mage Hand is free. I mean, the real real issue is that the trap was a typical boring D&D trap, but the fact that bypassing it was "free" was boring and kind of a problem because the boss' loot was behind it.

It is my fault for not re-prepping the adventure, but if I wanted to do that I would not be running a published adventure in the first place.

 

[TiQuinn]

To me, the interesting part of the trap is in the interaction with it - picking up on the environmental cues indicating its presence, trying to figure out what activates it and what happens when it’s activated, and using that information to form a plan of how to bypass it. If that plan is “use mage hand to intentionally activate it from a safe distance,” that’s no more or less interesting than any other approach IMO. If springing a trap with mage hand is disappointing, it’s because they didn’t have to do any work investigating the trap and determining how it works to arrive at that solution, and any other means of bypassing it would have been similarly disappointing. I’d focus on trying to refine my presentation of traps to make the detection and determination of function more engaging.

This is where the design principles of later editions of D&D really fail when it comes to traps. Some players want to deal with traps as a skill roll or through a spell; I roll to find the trap, I roll to disarm the trap, and if I fail at one or the either, I take my 10 points of damage. Of course that is unsatisfying. I'd rather ditch the trap and put a monster encounter in its place. IMO, traps work best when it challenges the player, not the PC. It is a form of metagaming, but it's a welcome one. Of course, the player can always decide that their low intellect PC wouldn't know how to figure out the puzzle, but I feel like that's their choice.

 

[Charlaquin]

That is the mostly gently I have ever been accused of bad GMing. Congratulations.

That was certainly not my intention. Is it not possible to offer advice on how to improve at something without claiming that the person you’re offering that advice to is bad at the thing? Moreover, my advice was framed very explicitly in the context of what I, personally, think is interesting about traps. If you don’t agree with me on that matter, then my advice isn’t really going to be relevant to you.

 

[Shardstone]

IMO traps are made to be avoided. A trap going off and having to be dealt with every now and again is cool, but most traps are there to be dodged and potentially repurposed.

 

[Reynard]

That was certainly not my intention. Is it not possible to offer advice on how to improve at something without claiming that the person you’re offering that advice to is bad at the thing? Moreover, my advice was framed very explicitly in the context of what I, personally, think is interesting about traps. If you don’t agree with me on that matter, then my advice isn’t really going to be relevant to you.

Sorry, I had hope the smiley would have conveyed that I was being facetious.