Rod Staffwand
aka Ermlaspur Flormbator
My personal trap theory breaks traps into the following categories:
1. Attrition Traps or Ambush Traps. These are things that PCs blunder into causing them to take some minor damage such as arrow or poison dart traps. Mostly boring so they're best resolved quickly. I usually make them easy to find even without searching (Passive Perception). All such traps in an area will likely be of the same type. Once the PCs find or get hit with a few, they'll know what to look for. Uses:
*Inflicting low to moderate attrition on a party to beef up relatively minor enemies in an area.
*To enhance the thematic elements of an area, such as kobold warrens, or just emphasize they're in a dangerous place.
*Force the PCs to slow down and consider their environment (or charge ahead soaking the damage...you never know with players...).
2. Escalation Traps. These are my favorites. These are traps make a ruin of the PCs careful made plans (light sources, stealth, marching order, etc.) to fun effect. These are traps that sound alarms, release/summon monsters, split up the party, move them to an unwanted location, negate their light sources, negate their spells or concentration, cause them to lose their rations and so on. The key here is to give the party an unanticipated situation they need to quickly react to.
These traps often have a time element as well, either in the form of a creature or a situation that will get worse from round to round unless action is taken:
*Split the party with a portcullis and unleash zombies on those on one side.
*Cause a chamber door to lock and a giant dragon statue start inhaling air...
*Have a bridge start collapsing when the PCs are halfway across.
*When they're climbing a set of stairs, have the starts turn into a slide and the door at the top of the stair slowly start to seal shut.
Since the purpose of escalation traps is to be unleashed on the party, I make them much harder to spot and circumvent. Simple passive perception won't cut it, even for an alert party, though actively searching the floor for pressure plates or pit traps would. Usually the higher the stakes of the trap the easier they are to spot or deal with. A death trap with crushing walls will be mighty imposing, but the PCs should make it out with relatively easy skill checks or similar efforts.
3. Evil Traps. These are the fiendish traps that are either impossible to detect, circumvent or figure out with stakes involving minor curses up to the worst things the DM can dream up. They exist to serve as puzzles and challenges to the dungeon delver. Examples:
*Two levers in a room. Pull one, get 1000gp. Pull the other, die.
*A mystic pool that gives a random effect to someone who drinks from it. Some effects are good, most are bad.
*A treasure pile covered with hard to detect poison.
*A reverse gravity effect and pit trap on the ceiling. DM: "You don't see any traps on the 'floor' in front of you...hee hee hee."
These are your old-school dick-move traps and should be reserved for the appropriate audience (and only then with forewarning) since circumventing them often involves:
1. Not touching anything or doing anything interesting when exploring.
2. Sheer luck such as by blind picking the correct option or rolling a benign result.
3. Divining/searching/detecting every square inch of the dungeon.
4. Being the DM's girlfriend or ride home.
Using Traps. No matter what traps you use, I advise that you know:
1. How the trap is activated. Pressure plate. Tripwire, Magic glyphs, etc. This is essential for adjudicating if and when the PCs trigger the trap.
2. Telltale signs of the trap. This might be minimal or obvious, depending on its construction. If the PCs do spot something, you have to give them something to spot. Scuff marks. Discolored flooring. Slits between the flagstones.
3. Countermeasures. How can the PCs disarm or avoid it. This should be more than a skill DC, but include some rough procedures. Jam the pressure plate. Clog the poison vents. Break the pendulum arm. Generally, a mechanical trap will have rather obvious failure points and moving parts that enterprising PCs can mess with. I'll allow a roll for any plausible idea and give an auto-success for any great idea.
1. Attrition Traps or Ambush Traps. These are things that PCs blunder into causing them to take some minor damage such as arrow or poison dart traps. Mostly boring so they're best resolved quickly. I usually make them easy to find even without searching (Passive Perception). All such traps in an area will likely be of the same type. Once the PCs find or get hit with a few, they'll know what to look for. Uses:
*Inflicting low to moderate attrition on a party to beef up relatively minor enemies in an area.
*To enhance the thematic elements of an area, such as kobold warrens, or just emphasize they're in a dangerous place.
*Force the PCs to slow down and consider their environment (or charge ahead soaking the damage...you never know with players...).
2. Escalation Traps. These are my favorites. These are traps make a ruin of the PCs careful made plans (light sources, stealth, marching order, etc.) to fun effect. These are traps that sound alarms, release/summon monsters, split up the party, move them to an unwanted location, negate their light sources, negate their spells or concentration, cause them to lose their rations and so on. The key here is to give the party an unanticipated situation they need to quickly react to.
These traps often have a time element as well, either in the form of a creature or a situation that will get worse from round to round unless action is taken:
*Split the party with a portcullis and unleash zombies on those on one side.
*Cause a chamber door to lock and a giant dragon statue start inhaling air...
*Have a bridge start collapsing when the PCs are halfway across.
*When they're climbing a set of stairs, have the starts turn into a slide and the door at the top of the stair slowly start to seal shut.
Since the purpose of escalation traps is to be unleashed on the party, I make them much harder to spot and circumvent. Simple passive perception won't cut it, even for an alert party, though actively searching the floor for pressure plates or pit traps would. Usually the higher the stakes of the trap the easier they are to spot or deal with. A death trap with crushing walls will be mighty imposing, but the PCs should make it out with relatively easy skill checks or similar efforts.
3. Evil Traps. These are the fiendish traps that are either impossible to detect, circumvent or figure out with stakes involving minor curses up to the worst things the DM can dream up. They exist to serve as puzzles and challenges to the dungeon delver. Examples:
*Two levers in a room. Pull one, get 1000gp. Pull the other, die.
*A mystic pool that gives a random effect to someone who drinks from it. Some effects are good, most are bad.
*A treasure pile covered with hard to detect poison.
*A reverse gravity effect and pit trap on the ceiling. DM: "You don't see any traps on the 'floor' in front of you...hee hee hee."
These are your old-school dick-move traps and should be reserved for the appropriate audience (and only then with forewarning) since circumventing them often involves:
1. Not touching anything or doing anything interesting when exploring.
2. Sheer luck such as by blind picking the correct option or rolling a benign result.
3. Divining/searching/detecting every square inch of the dungeon.
4. Being the DM's girlfriend or ride home.
Using Traps. No matter what traps you use, I advise that you know:
1. How the trap is activated. Pressure plate. Tripwire, Magic glyphs, etc. This is essential for adjudicating if and when the PCs trigger the trap.
2. Telltale signs of the trap. This might be minimal or obvious, depending on its construction. If the PCs do spot something, you have to give them something to spot. Scuff marks. Discolored flooring. Slits between the flagstones.
3. Countermeasures. How can the PCs disarm or avoid it. This should be more than a skill DC, but include some rough procedures. Jam the pressure plate. Clog the poison vents. Break the pendulum arm. Generally, a mechanical trap will have rather obvious failure points and moving parts that enterprising PCs can mess with. I'll allow a roll for any plausible idea and give an auto-success for any great idea.
