Outdoor traps (pits, snares, etc?)

[Shin Okada]

Are there any rule regarding those outdoor traps? If not, I want your opinions. Which skill should be used to notice those traps? Should a character use active search (search skill, 1 turn per 5-ft. square or so) to notice those traps? Or should they allowed to roll for some skills (spot? wilderness lore?) to notice traps when go near those traps?

 

[Henrix]

There's nothing in the rules, AFAIK.

I recently had this situation when I DM'd and decided that it would be unreasonable to expect the PC's to scour every single 5' square they passed. They would never reach their goal at a speed of 5'/round!

So I allowed Spot checks to find the traps. I thought that they perhaps would not be so meticulously hidden as traps in a dungeon and lowered the DC required to find them with a Search, and decided that a Spot would find them with a DC 10 higher.
So for a basic pit trap, with poisoned bamboo splinter at the bottom, I set the Search DC to 15, and the Spot DC to 25.

Perhaps one should give a character with five ranks in Search a synergy bonus of +2, though.

 

[Crothian]

For setting snares and other common hunting type traps we use the Wilderness Lore skill.

I still use Search to detect them, but I don't limit it to one 5ft square per check.