dcollins said:
Who said anything about Take 20 Search in every square of the dungeon? I didn't. No one else in this thread did.
It sure sounded to me like that's what you were doing--because that's the only way that traps become binary.
I'll tell you what my current power-gamer Rogue player did. He did this:
(1) Max out Search & get a lens of detection. (A bit academic, but he did it because he knew he was going to able to...)
(2) Take 10 Search in every square of the dungeon.
(3) Take 20 Search on every door, chest, or otherwise obvious portal.
Fair enough. But that's a very different matter from the taking 20 on every square situation. In the T20 everywhere situation, the rogue is going to find any traps he can find. No question about it. In the T20 only on obvious portals and T10 everywhere else, the rogue will find all the traps he can find in the obvious places but may miss traps he could have found in the not-so-obvious places.
Now, actually, that's more or less how I run my rogues (though I don't always take 20 on the obvious places because, in the games I play in, the monsters in room 2b get listen checks to hear the monsters in room 1a getting killed and might just decide to get together with the monsters in room 2c (or maybe all of the monsters in the entire dungeon if it's something like an orc lair or the secret cult's base) and set up an ambush if we give them time to do it (and minutes is all that takes).
However, when you do that, you run the risk of not finding traps in the not-so-obvious places. Is the rogue being "screwed" if you put ones there with DCs he can't always find while taking ten. Not really. He just needs to adjust his tactics a bit. And he really shouldn't feel like he's being unfairly targetted. After all, this logic is rather persuasive:
Player: What do you mean a DC 34 trap in the hallway? Aren't those only for doors and chests?
DM: So, [player], you've got a very clever and canny rogue; where do you expect to always find traps?
Player: On chests and doors.
DM: So, being a clever and canny rogue, you take enough time to find anything that can be found on chests and doors but only give a cursory search to floors, passages, and rooms.
Player: where's this going?
DM: So, if you were a clever and canny bad guy who wanted to protect himself from clever and canny rogues, would you put all your traps where the rogues expect them? Or would you put some where you expect the rogues only to give a cursory search?
Player: You're just out to screw me.
DM: No, the BBEG's out to screw you. That's what the traps are for.
Player: Fine, when I design my fortress, I'm putting DC 45 traps in the hallways.
DM: I see you're becoming a clever and canny trapmaker.
However, from the sounds of things, your rogue player is somewhat like the rogue in my hypothetical example: he's maxed out search, he's probably got a good int, he's got a lens of detection, and he may even pop potions of vision every now and then. He might even take Skill Mastery: Search so that he can take ten even when a couple orcs are shooting at the party. So, it's quite possible that he can find any reasonable trap by simply taking ten--heck, by high mid levels, he might be able to find 9th level spell traps on a roll of 1. (And he can probably do it now with a potion of vision). So it's not really a problem with taking ten. It's a problem with your rogue being so good that he (quite reasonably) doesn't expect traps to give him much of any difficulty very often.
At that point, IMO, you just have to say "you find it because you're that good" nearly every time in normal circumstances and then set up a few situations where he might miss some traps--either:
A. A misty, fog filled dungeon (like what might be created by guards and wards that gives a big circumstance penalty to search checks.
B. Some very well constructed traps in an anti-magic area where the lense of detection, etc will be useless.
C. The Tomb of the Fiendishly Clever Trap Obsessed Lich King where he knows from rumor and reputation that the traps there will challenge even his incredible skills.
D. The choice of challenges. If, for instance, one orc runs away to warn his comrades when the party kicks in the door of room 1A, your party will have a choice: pursue him immediately or search the room and hallway. If they pursue, they can stop all of the orcs from organizing and becoming a very difficult encounter but they will risk running across any traps in the hallway--even low DC ones that the rogue could find on a take -10 if he were looking--and probably won't have time for anything more than a cursory search of the door if even that.
So the complete exploration of this dungeon takes about (assume 8 doors, 1 per room) 36 + 8 = 44 minutes, less than an hour. It's within the duration of many of the buff spells you mention. We're playing 3.0, so the ability-buffs last many hours, long enough for a dungeon 10 times this size. No rest-camp sessions are necessary for this time period.
Yeah, that's one of the differences between 3.0 and 3.5. When you only take 20 in a few places it really cuts down the time. However, that only solves some of the problems. 44 Minutes is still plenty of time for the monsters in the latter rooms to organize ambushes, etc.
According to DMG ch. 4 (3.0 DMG p. 118), wandering monster checks are made "Every hour the characters are in the dungeon." Since the complete exploration of the dungeon took less than an hour, by the rules as written, no wandering monster checks had to be made.
So the power-gamer exploration plan is clearly without any in-game disadvantage by the rules as written. It can be accomplished in a "reasonable" time frame.
That refers only to random wandering monsters. As far as I'm concerned, if the ghouls in room 2c see the vampire from room 1a float back to his coffin in gaseous form, they know something's up and may inform their Lich Lord master or go take a look at what's going on themselves. That kind of "living dungeon" encounter isn't technically a "wandering" monster but does serve a similar purpose in reinforcing the consequences of overcaution.
And he's right. I know in advance the exact DC point for any trap in a corridor (10 + skill bonus) or a door or chest (20 + skill bonus) that will automatically be found by the standard search protocol. The only choice I have as DM is: is this a trap that will be found (within the DC) or not found (above the DC) by my player? It's not like AC where it's a little bit harder or a bit easier, but dependent on the dice. It's just automatic true-or-false. I might as well just write down a number of damage points I want the rogue to take from traps before the BBEG. My power-gamer player gets upset anytime there's a high-DC trap in a corridor, because I must have picked it just to screw him, and in some sense he's right, because I did know in advance that would happen.
As I explored earlier, it's the rogue's tactics and your aquiescence to them rather than the take 20 rules that are making this situation binary. If it's reasonable for a dungeon to have traps that the rogue can't find taking ten then it's reasonable for them to be in seemingly random hallways, etc. After all people look harder in places where they expect traps so a big part of placing the trap is putting it somewhere that won't necessarily get thoroughly searched. The only real advantage that doors have in that regard is that they are natural choke points and it's almost certain that anyone passing through will encounter the trap. However, a random square in a five foot wide hallway (or a random 4x4 section of a 10' wide hallway) is actually a better choice since it's just as much of a choke point but isn't so obvious as to be the kind of place people would take 20 to search.
Summary: Take 20 Search in every square is a nonissue. Predictability of the Search that will occur in every square of the dungeon (combination of Take 10 & Take 20) is a big issue.
But that's only an issue because your player's tactics make it one. If the hard traps are just as likely to be on random floor tiles as on the doors (and if I were making a dungeon, I'd be tempted to save money by putting cheap, low-DC traps on the doors--if I can't make the traps there next-to-impossible to find, they're likely to be found anyway, so why bother with a high DC--the cleverly hidden traps have more of a chance if they're somewhere they're not expected).
If he gets through his head that super high DC traps are as likely to be on the floor as on the doors, he'll adjust his tactics in one of two ways. Either he'll pump up his search skill so high that he can find the traps no matter what he's doing--in which case, he's just that good and you might want to acknowledge that (and if he then complains that none of the traps challenge his character, you can point out that he designed his character not to be challenged by traps)--or he'll decide to do something different--roll twice and take ten (increasing the time pressure a bit but giving him a good chance of finding any traps that are there), or just straight up roll to find traps (because that gives him a chance of finding high DC traps but probably doesn't hurt his chance to find low DC traps that much).
You're the one who brought up the Adventure Path modules as a case study. Since that turned out not to support the small-time-scale contrived examples, you're now going to try and change the subject to Living Arcanis modules?
Actually, I brought up the Adventure Path modules to support the idea of long-scale time pressure--where a difference between 1 hour and 12 hours is quite significant even if a difference of 10 minutes and 44 minutes is less significant. Why did I do that? Because search is ONLY binary when you take twenty on every square. If your players take ten through most of the dungeon, it's the PLAYERS not the DM who are making it binary and they can easily adjust their tactics to give themselves a chance (even a very good chance) of finding the traps.
The Arcanis modules have been here since my first post as examples of acute time pressure which is a good deal more common than you seem to think it is. (I'm less familiar with Speaker in Dreams than with the others but I think there's some acute time pressure situations in there anyway). They also serve as an example of the fact that, the more rogue-centric the module, the more likely it is to have acute time pressure. And, while D&D is usually a party exploration adventure, there's lots of precedent for rogue-centric modules, situations, and plots being incorporated into it. (Heck, I'd say the standard D&D campaign has some rogue-centric city elements in it).
I'll tell you, my players do in fact feel that Wandering Monsters are "old-school and implausible". They want each monster to have a story for how they got there. They ask questions like: Where did these monsters come from? Are they removed from rosters in other parts of the dungeon? Where are they coming from and going to? How can monsters just appear out of nowhere that weren't there before a die-roll was made? I'm the only person in my playing group who is willing to use wandering monsters when they DM.
In that case, they should expect monsters in other parts of the dungeon to hear the ruckus in their part and react to it--something which isn't conducive to spending five minutes searching after entering each room. By that time, the monsters will have made any preparations they were going to make.
Again, I agree with you that they are important, and I make it clear to my players that I will be checking for them, even though they are accustomed to not having them in any other game. It's the only real disadvantage to deterministic Take X searches of some sort in every square of the dungeon. Nontheless, by the rules as written, even these checks are so infrequent as to never occur once in the dungeon you proposed as an example.
Not really. Monsters (and their reactions) are the only disadvantages to SEARCHING (whether by rolling or taking ten) every square of the dungeon and a massive disadvantage to taking 20 on every square of the dungeon. The fact that the PLAYERS are making the search for traps roll binary (in the find it or don't find it rather than the find it or CAN'T find it sense) is the disadvantage of take ten searches of entire dungeons. It's a gamble that can pay off if you've got a really unnaturally buffed search score (through a potion of vision for instance) but can backfire if there are traps in the dungeon you can't find while taking ten.
The rogue is still helpful in dealing with the rare hazard that looks like a trap and that can be disabled using a DD check.
