Jack Simth
First Post
I'm not familiar with it, no; what do you mean by great stuff?
Scrying with a Crystal Ball
- Thread starter LiL KiNG
- Start date
I'm not familiar with it, no; what do you mean by great stuff?
RUMBLETiGER
Adventurer
The Book of Challenges: Dungeon Rooms, Puzzles and Traps.
Some experts from the index read, in part:
-Running a Clever Dungeon Room
-Running a Clever Puzzle
-Running a Clever Trap
-Ten Indispensable Spells
Pages 7-123 then proceeds to give very specific examples of ECL traps, from level 1-20, and 22. It offers one to four examples at each ECL.
All throughout there are "Advice for the DM" boxes such as "Adventuring In Three Dimensions", "But I Know The Trap Is There", "Familiars As Scouts", "How To Win Friends And Influence PCs", "Making A Deceitful Sales Pitch", "Playing Monsters Smarter Than you", "Using Anti Magic Zones", "When Good Battles Good"... the list goes on.
Great Stuff. For a DM. Wanting to make a Great Dungeon.
If the setup is such that both traps have to be disabled at the same time, I think it's a cool idea. Two party members (e.g. rogue and spellcaster, if at least one trap is magical) will have to work together to overcome the challenge. This is the sort of thing traps should encourage more often.
Jack Simth
First Post
Do you regularly set things up the other way around, such that a spellcaster strictly requires the aid of the rogue to deal with some obstacle? If not, you're running the cool idea by way of shifting spotlight time off the rogue towards the spellcaster.
Edit: Besides: If there were such a thing as a trap that a rogue could not effectively disable, they would be everywhere, as they'd be mostly unbeatable... and, if you can combine two in such a way that they both have to be disabled simultaneously, why not six or eight that way? Then you have a trap on your door that effectively cannot be bypassed, which is very good for security.
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@Jack ; like I said, I know at least one party member has seen this thread so I won't go into specifics about the traps, but I will say that as a DM I do not believe in deadlocking the party into any one thing (of course the party will always do what you least expected, or figure out who the villain in the first ten minutes, or decide 'you know what, we really don't like boats so we'll rent a wagon...'), so of course both traps could be found/disabled - disabling one of them is harder due to it's construction but it can be found just as easily and by-passed. It's more of a 'if you set this one off, this one goes off as well; changing the layout of the dungeon somewhat'.
@Hassassin ; the party actually has a catfolk rogue and a wood elf scout (though the preachy Pally, yes preachy lol, won the roll on the goggles with darkvision and +5 spot >.>), and the idea of both of them working together to by-pass a couple of the traps was already in the works. =)
Talking traps and all, how do you other DM's run Trapfinding? Do you make the rogue (or scout or whatever class that offers it) roll for every 5' sq. or do you treat it more like an Elf's or Dwarf's ability to locate hidden doors (where they get the roll even if they're not actively looking for it?). I find it really slows things down if the rogue is rolling for every 5' of movement, but I don't wanna just give it to him either - I was thinking maybe DC 30 and below offering the 'free' search checks if within 5', and maybe DC 31+ they'd have to actually roll for it; but then you get into that 'well, where would the DC 31+ traps be? so I'm going to roll for every 5' again...'
I'm thinking now though to have the rogue/scout roll their search checks at the beginning of their turn, and then if during the course of movement they move near a trap and their check was high enough for the turn they could find it before setting it off. I think that would help speed things up a bit. Not sure though, opinions?
@Hassassin ; the party actually has a catfolk rogue and a wood elf scout (though the preachy Pally, yes preachy lol, won the roll on the goggles with darkvision and +5 spot >.>), and the idea of both of them working together to by-pass a couple of the traps was already in the works. =)
Talking traps and all, how do you other DM's run Trapfinding? Do you make the rogue (or scout or whatever class that offers it) roll for every 5' sq. or do you treat it more like an Elf's or Dwarf's ability to locate hidden doors (where they get the roll even if they're not actively looking for it?). I find it really slows things down if the rogue is rolling for every 5' of movement, but I don't wanna just give it to him either - I was thinking maybe DC 30 and below offering the 'free' search checks if within 5', and maybe DC 31+ they'd have to actually roll for it; but then you get into that 'well, where would the DC 31+ traps be? so I'm going to roll for every 5' again...'
I'm thinking now though to have the rogue/scout roll their search checks at the beginning of their turn, and then if during the course of movement they move near a trap and their check was high enough for the turn they could find it before setting it off. I think that would help speed things up a bit. Not sure though, opinions?
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I regularly set things up so the party has to cooperate, yes. I don't really keep a count of spotlight moments, however.
Cost, maybe? Traps are already very costly and such a complex trap would probably be much more so. For magical traps the cost may be exponential with respect to the number of traps, depending on how you add the individual costs.
That's cool. I recently GM'd a party with several rogues and it was fun to come up with challenges. It's especially interesting when the rogues have different approaches and are convinced their's is superior.
I usually assume the rogue is *not* searching for traps when they are traveling in the wilderness or in a city. If the party enters a dungeon, the rogue will usually start searching for traps (the player has to say so), in which case I only ask for rolls whenever there's something to find (+ every once in a while just to keep them on their toes). Then it's generally assumed the rogue will search for traps whenever not in combat (or e.g. running from/to something), until they exit the dungeon.
RUMBLETiGER
Adventurer
Generally at first, I have them fall into one because they're not looking. On purpose, I make the first one or few not very damaging. once they're aware, I have the trapfinder actively be looking for each of them. Eventully, when it starts to slow things down, I start tipping the trapfinder off to a few at a time within a room or hallway.
The goal is to maintain challenge, speed of gameplay and fun, therefore I don't really do anything consistently.
Jack Simth
First Post
And yet, in making it so one trap must be dispelled at the same instant that the rogue disables the other, you're setting it up so that in order for the rogue to do his job, he must have help from a fairly specific member of the party (there's only a relative handful of classes that can fill that role). If you don't specifically do this in the opposite direction as well, every time you do this, you're reducing the value of the rogue to the party, and increasing the value of the caster to the party.
And, of course, there's the question of "now what happens when the caster spent that prepared dispel magic on debuffing a magically-inclined opponent before they encounter this situation?" - non-bypassable trap, now, and the party rogue cannot do his job because you specifically set things up so that in order for the rogue to do his job, the party caster had to also add a very specific daily resource.
This type of thing is generally going to be a relatively minor shift in spotlight time... but the casters already tend to get a disproportionate amount of it.
Actually, the trap cost rules are quite explicit in them being linear for adding more traps. You have a couple of traps with a detection method of Arcane Sight (+7,500 gp, +600 xp per magical trap you're using this on - unless they're one-shot traps, in which case it's one-tenth that), which all fire on the nearest creature based on the magical auras in the area changing. Disable one trap, all the rest go off (and if they're one-shot traps, one of them going off also sets off the others, as one going off means it's aura changes). Walk a standard adventurer through, and they all go off anyway (a standard adventurer has quite a few magical auras). Oh yes, and eight traps of 3rd level spells at CL 5 (Fireball, say... or maybe Lightning Bolt...) make an encounter level of 10; with the Arcane Sight component, they total cost works out to 120,000 gp and 9,600 xp; the CR 10 Energy Drain example trap costs 124,000 gp and 7,920 xp - fairly comperable.
In short, it's actually quite easy to do this with magic traps... but the same logic that says "make a pair such that one goes off if the other is disabled, in addition to the normal trigger methods" says "why not more?" - especially given that the existing example traps already list a number of traps that are just two lower-CR traps combined (two examples).
'Spotlighting' for characters I include usually revolve around the storyline; this adventure is to rescue your captured kinsmen - oh yeah your cousin was killed in the attack too' type of deals. My group works very well together, everyone having fallen into role that blends well with everyone else whether in combat, overcoming a puzzle, dealing with the upset noble, causing a distraction so the rogue can sneak in somewhere, etc., everyone attempts to assist the Class PC who would best be fit for it in their own way.
While I can agree having to have Dispel Magic spell available is a bit steep of a price, many, many magic items offer that effect, plus there are always wands - I had a rogue PC (who liked to go break into castles, expensive homes, etc. when the party was sleeping in the Inn at night) in one of my parties that carried a wand of dispel magic and used his high 'use magic device' skill to negate magic wards or traps around whatever he was going after.
I like the idea very much of including other non-traditional classes in a challenge like this, it opens up their usefulness in the party instead of steamrolling them into a specific way of playing their class. Also, as a DM you should know the capabilities of your party and cater your adventures to them somewhat.
Maybe there was a break in the session and everyone left off 'camping' so next time everyone gets together to play you know the wiz/sorc will have his full daily allotment of spells and you know the trap will be one of the first things encountered.
The trap I have in mind, while the rogue and scout could potentially find/disable it, if anyone gets caught in it - it will be the goliath fighter (with his ridiculous strength) who will end up being the most useful in helping them - the other party members can team up to combine their strength scores to help, the the fighter could probably do it solo. I'm actually hopeful someone does fail their reflex save just so the goliath can be useful in something other than cutting things in half with his large bastard sword (of course, this is as long as the goliath doesn't get caught in the trap himself).
While each class does have it's strengths and intended rolls, its always nice when you find yourself being more useful in a (non-class) task then you thought you could be, and I find my players get a lot of enjoyment out of those accomplishments more-so then when, for example, the rogue just disables a really hard trap on his own... It also gets the players more involved in every situation because now instead of thinking only the wizard can handle this or only the rogue can do that, they're all looking how they might be able to overcome the challenge, and my group has come up with some interesting ways around things.
