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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7089908" data-attributes="member: 20323">[MENTION=2629]jgsugden[/MENTION] You do make some great points about traps, but I think you fell into the "trap" of how traps are usually used in D&D. And it has to do with locating traps & observant PCs. Is noticing a trap with a high roll as satisfying as deducing the presence of a trap? My answer is an emphatic "no." Traps are most interesting when they invite interaction and require thought. They are least interesting when discovered or resolved by rolling a die without any thinking required.Consider the 5e Monster Manual entries for Animated Armor or Mimic or Gargoyle – they all have a trait called False Appearance. That should be the starting point of design for traps. I've previously posted extensively on the topic, but can't find my old post (possibly it was eaten in the database crash). Here's the essence of my idea...At a bare minimum a trap is so well concealed that it effectively appears to be something else - essentially, ALL traps have the False Appearance trait. This works. Let me explain. Think about Gargoyles. Savvy players learn to keep an eye out for them when passing through a hall of statues or under the entrance to a gothic cathedral. Why? Because they remember that one time getting surprised. This makes subsequent encounters (your principle about not using a trap in isolation) meaningful. The players know what to look out for. And that's where it starts to get interesting, as the module designer / DM attempts to come up with permutations on the theme that are still "Fair Play" given the parameters established earlier, namely "some statues are gargoyles." Why don't the players just start destroying ALL statues in the gargoyle dungeon? Maybe their quest in that dungeon is to free a Prince and Princess who were turned to stone. Maybe they need to activate three crystal light beacons held in the hands of certain statues. Maybe destroying a non-gargoyle statue angers the deity of the cathedral who sends celestials/devils to punish the interlopers, or inflicts a curse upon them. <a href="http://theangrygm.com/traps-suck/" target="_blank">http://theangrygm.com/traps-suck/</a> has some good ideas about how the DM can shake things up by establishing a pattern to trap placement, and then subtly tweaking it. This is definitely an art that takes practice to walk that edge of "Fair Play" without veering into DM sadism or a lack of challenge.So, in my games, a Perception check never locates a trap. It might give clues like faint blood traces at the edge of a particular flagstone, but it's always up to the players own intellectual capacities to interpolate what sort of trap there might be.</blockquote>

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