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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 4916902" data-attributes="member: 53980">Actually, I did note this (though I admit it may have been easy to overlook):One of the games I'm in currently has both a goblin rogue and an elven druid, so I've seen the issue firsthand.Nonetheless, it would be easy to fix if you simply allow the rogue to use his highest ability score in place of Wisdom.  With that feature in place an elven druid would be, at best, a marginally better trap detector than the rogue (whereupon both would no doubt successfully search for traps).The problem with the Pathfinder approach is that it still limits what a "fair" DM can use in the absence of a rogue.  Admittedly, I'm not familiar enough with Pathfinder to know how trap detection via spells works, but it seems to me that many DMs would simply avoid using magical traps if the party has no rogue because the traps are otherwise unavoidable (assuming the party doesn't have easy access to spells for magical trap detection).  Additionally, the 1/2 level bonus is also problematic.  At 1st level it doesn't guarantee superiority of any sort (since 1/2 of 1 is 0) and by 20th it grants a +10, meaning that an average check for the rogue becomes essentially impossible for the next best trapfinder (if the rogue needs a nat 10 to succeed the secondary trap finder requires a nat 20) and if the secondary trap finder has a reasonable chance of discovering the trap, the rogue cannot fail at all (if secondary guy needs a 10 then rogue cannot fail; I'm assuming Pathfinder doesn't use critical successes or fumbles for skills, though I can't be certain as I've only skimmed the Pathfinder rules).Basic fantasy falls into the same problem.  A party without a rogue (or even with a low level rogue) is one that is more likely to stumble into a trap than to have a realistic chance of finding it.  Additionally, it seems reminiscent of 1st and 2nd edition in that one's character can't improve in certain areas regardless of how hard he tries (my fighter's main hobby and fascination might be traps, but unless I multi/dual class rogue, he'll never get any better at finding them).  That always used to annoy me back in the day.Keep in mind, I'm not saying that the 4e approach is perfect (see above).  Just that (IMO) the Pathfinder and Basic Fantasy approaches aren't very good ones, at least for my gaming preferences.  While I have no problem with a trap-focused rogue having the best chance to find a trap, I don't believe that it should be massively greater than that of a trap-focused non-rogue, and I certainly don't agree that there should be traps that only a rogue can find.</blockquote>

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