Scion said:
This isnt the point, sure you could create a 'completely undetectable' trap to some extent in real life, or even in the game. But IN THE GAME the rogue will have some way to find it. Describe it however you like. The nail you used to attatch the board to the other side pressed the wood out on the other side, he notices a slight noise from the balloon, whatever. It doesnt matter. If there is no dc then it isnt a 'trap'. It is something else.
As I said, I've got no problem with calling it something else. The narrative, the swashbuckling story I and the players create together, is more important than the categories or rules; as soon as the rules get in the way of the story, they gotta go.
But let me repeat myself: the rogue DOES have a way to find any trap. It's just that sometimes they don't have a way to find it without manipulating something that may or may not set the trap off.
Like I said before, where do you set the dc's to set them? Do you allow the trapmakers to roll and whatever they roll is the dc? Or do they make a trap and its search dc is something set? How do you do it?
I'll repeat something I said at the beginning of the thread: I don't use traps very often, because they don't make sense to me very often. When I do, I eyeball the DC for finding the trap.
An example: early IMC, a group of amateur assassins guarded their front door by putting a poison-needle trap in the "keyhole." The "keyhole" was actually a hole through the door through which a string dangled, with the other end of the string tied to the door's crossbar; it was a simple, completely insecure arrangement used in the poor section of town for keeping doors shut. For the assassins, however, pulling the string activated a springloaded needle to shoot out into the hand of whoever pulled the string; the door itself wasn't latched at all, so to avoid the trap you just had to push hard on the door and ignore the string.
The players encountered it under time-pressure (they were assaulting the assassin hangout and didn't want the assassins escaping out the back window), so the front guy pulled the string and got a fingerful of poison. Had they searched, I would've assumed they looked in the hole, and the DC for finding it would've been about 5 -- only an idiot wouldn't have noticed the needle when looking into the hole.
If they'd been more careful about hiding it, they would've put the whole contraption on the far side of the door, spending more money and time, and the DC would've gone up to maybe 15 or 20.
Honestly, I can only think of one other trap I've used in a game: Symbols of Weakness on a magical prison, whose DC was set by the spell description.
Black Knight Irios said:
Switching skills isn't fair, players know how the gamemechanics work, they create their character based on what they know. If you start creating situations where gamemechanics work different, I would starting wondering, why I gave my Rogue a maxed out Search skill plus Skillfocus on top. -Just another situations you can create when you like, tell the highstrength-fightertype he should use his DEX-Mod instead of his STR-Mod on his melee attackrolls because his opponent is so incredibly fast.
Disanalogous. A fighter-type might equally wonder why he'd put all his points into swordfighting when facing flying opponents. Not all strengths are good in all situations.
Of course, were I arguing that all traps should be undetectable by visual means etc., you'd have a legit criticism of what I'm saying. Fortunately, I'm not taking an extreme position like that. I'm just saying that you can't see what you can't see, and some traps can take advantage of that fact.
Daniel
