Search and taking 20: the problem

[Black Knight Irios]

Same here, I think I said it before, but I really enjoyed reading the other views how things could work out.

 

[Pielorinho]

Fair enough. Good discussion, all!
Daniel

 

[Nifelhein]

Darkmaster is indeed correct, we have exposed our points of view and explained them, if it has made anyone else's game better than it is great, this discussion is more than done in my opinion too.

Anyway, I think i am gonna open a thread on half orcs being broken... or maybe sorcerers needing a fix...

 

[drnuncheon]

As you see, I'm not ever going to say, "You find no traps." At each stage, the player gets information enough to decide whether to continue being cautious or to throw caution to the wind.

But now you're relying on the player's skill to detect (and possibly defuse) the trap - and the player doesn't have 13 ranks of search or disable device, as some of us have pointed out before.

Would you let a barbarian with zero ranks in Search or Disable Device find and remove that trap if he said the right words? Why or why not? If you would, why does the rogue need to spend any ranks on search or disable device at all?

In combat, saying "I'm going to wait for his blow, step back to put him off balance, then swing my blade in a mighty overhand arc to cleave him in two while he's still recovering" doesn't guarantee you an automatic hit, does it?

Just as I don't have to know the exact words and gestures my wizard needs to cast a fireball, the rogue shouldn't have to know the exact words and gestures he needs to disarm a trap. If you, the DM, make an 'unfindable' trap, then you need to set the detection DC (and the CR!) to an appropriately high level.

Then, when you make the detect roll, that's when your descriptive game comes into play.

Rogue: I search the cabinet for a trap.

DM: (rolls) Hmm. There's nothing obvious on the outside (since it's DC > 20, only a rogue has a hope of detecting it - by the standard rules, anyway). Still, something doesn't seem quite right (successful find traps roll). Telltale scratches around the handle seem to indicate that it can be turned to either of two positions - one probably sets the trap off, and the other is safe.

Rogue: Looks like a trap. Everyone back off while I try to disable it. My Disable Device is a +10.

DM: (rolls) OK. You carefully remove the lockplate of the door, exposing the mechanism. Unfortunately, in doing so, you seem to have upset a precariously balanced vial... (failed Disable Device roll by more than 5)

J

 

[Pielorinho]

But now you're relying on the player's skill to detect (and possibly defuse) the trap - and the player doesn't have 13 ranks of search or disable device, as some of us have pointed out before.

That's true, and that's why I don't give the player a little model of a trap and force them to disarm it. I do expect my players, even with no ranks in search at all, to know that sometimes cabinets contain things that they can't see; to that extent, I'm requiring the player to depend on their own ranks in search. I don't apologize for that.

Would you let a barbarian with zero ranks in Search or Disable Device find and remove that trap if he said the right words? Why or why not? If you would, why does the rogue need to spend any ranks on search or disable device at all?

Of course I would allow the barbarian to find this trap: he could chop through the side of the cabinet and see the trap. I'd probably allow him to make a difficult untrained DD check to rip the entire thing off the wall of the cabinet without breaking the flask or dislodging the cap, if he were foolish enough to try that instead of just ignoring the trap and getting the loot.

Why does the rogue need to spend any ranks on search or disable?

Maybe if I make this big, people will notice it.

BECAUSE THERE ARE OTHER KINDS OF TRAPS OUT THERE!

Does that make sense?

Some traps are easily overcome through the application of skills. Others are not. Sometimes the same trap can be overcome without skills, but the use of skills makes overcoming the trap more effective in some maner.

For example, take my previous scenario, only let's say that it's an infiltration mission, and the PCs are fairly sure that trapped cabinet contains important documents that the players want to read and then replace.

The barbarian can hew through the cabinet to get at the insides of it, but the damage will be obvious.

Only the rogue will have the skillset necessary to open the cabinet enough to see inside without setting off the trap, look at the trap's workings, and figure out how to bypass it without triggering it.

Remember the scenario above that ended with the PC shutting the door? Let's see how it'd go if the PCs were on an infiltration mission:

Player: I want to open it a fraction of an inch and peek inside.
DM: Okay. (rolls another search check, looking for a very easy result now that the trap is visible) You do see some sort of mechanism inside -- a metal rod run from the handle along the inner length of the door, ending in the cap to what looks like a pint-sized glass flask. It looks like the cap on the verge of being pulled out of the flask.
Player: Yikes! I don't move the door any more!
DM: No worries -- the cap's not coming out right now, but if you do move the door it might.
Player: Can I figure out how this mechanism works?
DM: Gimme a Disable Device check.

On a roll of less than 11: "It should be fairly easy to reach in there and cut off the part of the cap that's attached to the rod, so the whole cap doesn't come out. Wanna try it? [heh heh heh]"
On a roll of less than 15: "You can't make heads or tails of it."
On a roll of 15-24: "You could reach in there with your good cutters and snip through that metal bar without too much trouble; wanna do that?"
On a roll of 25 or better: "Looks to you like the way the bar is attached to the handle indicates the handle can turn farther to one side and that'll slide the bar out of the cap, enabling you to open the door freely."

This is all perfectly within the rules, again: as soon as the trap is visible, the search check gets made, and then a disable device check gets made.

That's how a rogue outshines a barbarian in handling this specific trap -- it's very unlikely any other class could achieve 25 or better on a DD check.

On other traps (see the big red letters above), rogues are more useful. As my party discovered to their chagrin in a recent adventure: faced with a prison full of symbols of weakness, they realized that their lack of a rogue really hurt them.

Eventually they came up with a novel way of exporing the prison complex: the cleric cast spell immunity on herself and one other PC and went through a door, activating the symbol and thereby paralyzing everyone except for the two of them. Those two then quickly went through the rest of the prison opening doors and activating their symbols, and then came back to the roomful of paralyzed party members and started the slow process of nursing them back to health .

If they'd only had a rogue in the party, they could've erased the symbols one by one -- and when they later faced the prison's guardians, they could've been in much better shape.

Due to the needs of the prison and of the spell's nature, of course, this was a trap with part of its components in view of the intended victims, and I would've certainly allowed visual searching of the doors.

Different traps are handled differently.

Daniel

 

[Pax]

I'm not sure I understand your objection to my method of doing it. If I roll the dice and then tell the player what they do based on the dice's results, I remove the chance for the player to feel smug about figuring out a way around the trap. Sure, I could do that, but that's not very interactive.

I don't know his objection, but I'll tell you mine: given yoru narrative, it's obvious that someone who out of character, int eh real world, is careful, methodical, and has a grasp of how things might be trapped, will fare veryw ell as a rogue, without even having to invest heavily in the Search skills.

However, the flip side to that is, someone who is not, themselves, careful and methodical, who is perhaps a bit impulsive in real life, and/or who hasn't got a clue how anything at all could possibly be trapped, otehr than "someone attached a trap-thingie to it", will fare very poorly, even if they maxx out their search skill!

And I despise gameplay styles where real-world knowledge is worth as much as, or more than, in-game resources - especially skills and class abilities. I hate it when the no-skill-ranks-in-alchemy fighter's player (a chemistry major) gets to be better at all things chemical/alchemical than the wizard, who has max ranks in alchemy but whose player wouldn'tknow an acid from a base if you tattooed the difference onto their genitals!

I've been there, I've played in those games, and I hated them. So, in fact, did everyone but the chemistry major (who got to play an astonishingly-well-educated "big, dumb fighter", because his CHARACTER was big and stupid, while the PLAYER was incredibly intelligent).

In your example, things could have gone the same - youc ould have taken the ONE search check result (even the take 20), and applied it DURING THE COURSE OF THE EXAMINATION. The narrative chain of events need not have changed, one whit! And a newer player,or one unused to rogues, or one simply inexperienced with traps in general, could simply have said "I'll check for traps, and Take 20 - my life is worth more than saving a couple minutes' time" ...

 

[drnuncheon]

Of course I would allow the barbarian to find this trap: he could chop through the side of the cabinet and see the trap.

Why is he chopping through anything at all? You miss my point: I'm not talking about finding this in a 'typical barbarian way'. I'm talking about him finding it and disarming it with your 'narrative gameplay' where the skills of the character don't matter.

Would you let him find and disarm the trap if he said the exact same 'right things' as the rogue has to say to do it?

J

 

[Majere]

Wheee long post.
Hmm ok example, short point and exit are in order.

Example
Room A is connected to room B. Room B has a number of exits and it is possible to enter room B without ever entering room A. The room between room A and room B is 2" taller and wider than the doorway in room A such that the door when closed is not only flush witht he doorway but infact extends slightly past with a lip so that there is no gap, the door's lip was greased before the door was closed and locked making it light and air tight.

Room B is then entered and a very simple trap constructed in which a table is place 1' behind the door and in the table is a groove, in the groove rests a broom handle. One end on the broom handle is place 1" away from the door and a potion of cloudkill is placed at the other end of the handle. This is all done in such a manner that when the door is opened the door makes contact witht the handle and pushes it into the potion, knocking the potion to the floor and setting off the trap.

To improve the trap the end of the handle to be struck by the door is padded and the padding soaked in a liquid like oil to dampend the noise. The groove is oiled (possibly with oil of slipperyness or potion of sneaking) to further reduce noise. At NO POINT in the trap construction was the door ever touched.

Argument:
(Please read carefull as there are specific points I wish to raise)
1) The rogue cannot, ever, even taking 20 with a stupidly high skill, search for the trap with JUST HIS EYES. There was no physical interaction with room A at any point.

2) What the rogue CAN see with just his eyes (and thus can find with a T20) is that the door is unusally sealed and impervious to gas.
-> A good rogue will INFER that there is something "wrong" with the door.
-> A good rogue CAN drill a hole in the door and, IF THEY DO THEY CAN SEE the trap, however I suspect most people will infer a gass filled room and not attempt this. In this situation drilling the hole has no risk involved.

3) There are TWO ways the door can be opened
3a) "I open the door"
-> The rogue opens the door and set off the trap, he gets a listen check (DC10) to hear the potion break and a Reflex save (DC22 ) to slam the door closed.
3b) "I cautiously open the door a crack" (Or similar words)
-> I ROLL a search check for the rogue in secret (DC25). If the rogue fails then he has KNOCKED OVER THE POTION WHILE OPENING THE DOOR. If he makes it thenhe stops and realises the other side of the door is trapped.
--> He may then use disable device (DC25) to disable it.

Conclusions:
The rogue HAD to interact with the trap to detect it.
This doesnt NOT mean that the trap was "undetectable", just that it was undetectble WITH JUST EYESIGHT. The rogue had to employ touch and listening in this case.
There was a RISK OF SETTING OF THE TRAP WHILE SEARCHING. Thus the rogue could NOT TAKE 20.

Comments:
Sorry for the capitals, the aim was to highlight the key points not to patronize or insult anyone. These threads have a habit of getting distracted so the idea is simply to make my ideas clear and sussinct.
The idea is to show that it IS possible to make a trap undetectable to the EYE, but that this doesnt mean the rogue cant make a search roll. Only tht they have to interact witht he trap and thus cannot take 20.
Also note that at no point do meta gaming appear, noone has asked for a etailed dissemination of the trap form the rogue, he just has to use his skills at appropriate times.

Hope that made my ideas and opinions clear

Majere

 

[Nifelhein]

Why is he chopping through anything at all? You miss my point: I'm not talking about finding this in a 'typical barbarian way'. I'm talking about him finding it and disarming it with your 'narrative gameplay' where the skills of the character don't matter.

Would you let him find and disarm the trap if he said the exact same 'right things' as the rogue has to say to do it?

J

I don't think you quote got the way he handles things, he asks one to actually roleplay the character, much like an actor roleplays a character in a movie, an american roleplaying a japanese samurai, for example.

None said that a player will know all a character does, that is not the point, the question is whether the difference wil be attempted to be overcome or not, an actor does not need to have a degree in chemistry to make a chemist in a movie, does he?

Sure that can seem unfair but I do the same thing and when we have a player that simply has no clue to what the characetr actually can do, we handle things lightly on his side and also, he seems to try and get a little bi more knowledgeable on the area, in my experience this has proven ver effective to impove the player knowledge and also, has made them get more into the game.

Of course this asks a hell lot of the DM but that is not meant to be eprfect you know, I am human and make mistakes too, if one in the tale knows the subject betetr than me he will help us and teach us the actual way.

We do not play ourselves in a fantasy game we just try and make our best to play the character itself, no matter how different it is from us.

And I have to say that the trap shown by Majere is one of the examples of a good exception to the general case of the traps being detected by far, and one that still holds the mechanics as the players know them. good one, I am gonna store the ideea in my mind here!

 

[FireLance]

Wheee long post.
Hmm ok example, short point and exit are in order.

(Trap Example Snipped)

The idea is to show that it IS possible to make a trap undetectable to the EYE, but that this doesnt mean the rogue cant make a search roll. Only tht they have to interact witht he trap and thus cannot take 20.
Also note that at no point do meta gaming appear, noone has asked for a etailed dissemination of the trap form the rogue, he just has to use his skills at appropriate times.

Hope that made my ideas and opinions clear

Majere

Majere, I'll do you one better. Instead of your elaborate mechanical trap, I'll have a magical trap set to go off under the same circumstances as your mechanical trap, i.e. Cloudkill spell is cast in an airtight room once someone opens the door. The Search DC for a magic trap is 25+spell level or CR 30 in this case. If there are *any* traces of the spell, e.g. glowing runes, etc., they are on the other side of the door.

Tell me what you would do in the case of the mundane trap and the magical trap when the rogue PC says, "I search the door for traps. I take 20 because the Search skill has no 'Try Again' paragraph, and the rules say that if the 'Try Again' paragraph is omitted, the skill can be retried without any inherent penalty, other than the additional time required."