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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 9604002" data-attributes="member: 3400">I'm generally of the same mind. I don't care if they manage to set off the trap safely from a distance with a pretty easy spell. I figure if they can do it with mage hand, they can to it with rope and a hook, a 10 foot pole, or whatever else they happen to have on them. The fact that it's mage hand doesn't really factor into it.I feel you're on to something. Adventures, particularly published ones, that have a proliferation of pointless traps bore the hell out of me. They're either just exercises in die rolling (in the Search DC/Find Traps era) or pixel-auditing ("skilled" play era) as far as I'm concerned. But traps that make sense in the environment - ones that alert other dungeon denizens in particular - are ones I find worth it. Then, if they set the trap off safely rather than disable it, the trap can still fulfill a function of bringing trouble to the PCs.Otherwise, a trap left just out there somewhere isn't very useful. It's either a hazard so random that it doesn't do much good or it's a bit of busy work for the people capable of dealing with them rather than being a true obstacle or challenge. While the DM isn't there to be the players' screen monkey and deserves to have non-boring fun of their own, there's some give and take involved. If the players are sufficiently enthused about something I'm not when I'm DMing, I'll take one for the team.</blockquote>