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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 8824961" data-attributes="member: 6801845">But even telling the DC would bug me.   I don't want to know the DC ahead of time, it would take away from the tension and turn it into a calculation.If it’s going to take time I might communicate that ahead of time but it wouldn't automatically be "it will take ten minutes". If they try to disarm a particularly difficult trap, I'd have them roll and base the results on that.  Once they start it may be "this is going to take a bit to disarm" if they want to know how long that could require another investigation check.  Let's take picking a lock as a real world example. Sometimes you can open a lock quickly, in just a few seconds.  Most mundane locks can be picked given enough time, with locksmiths saying it can take up to a half hour or so.  The result of the check to pick the lock indicates how long it will take, roll high enough, you get it right away.  Roll low and it's going to take a whileOnce picking the lock doesn't work immediately I'll let the player know.  But they don't know exactly how long it will take, it could take 5 minutes it could take half an hour, I may do a hidden secondary roll at this point to determine that.  Perhaps the lock will never open because it's a fake lock simply designed to slow them down and they didn't do or failed an investigation check to notice the alarm trigger.So I'd handle that as "It doesn't open immediately, you know sometimes locks can take quite a while to pick. Do you want to continue, and for how long?" Typically we'll go in intervals after that, starting at "It's been 5 minutes, continue?" I'd probably increase the increment and after a half hour has passed if it's a fake lock "You really think it should have opened by now but maybe it's just particularly difficult?"In case of traps either it works immediately because they find the button that disables it.  Other times I handle it somewhat like a skill challenge in that I'd probably have some intermediate rolls.  If I make it a complex trap it may require multiple people and skills.  What I wouldn't tell them is that as they start to disarm the trap that they will trigger a block that's going to start descending that they can hold for a moment but that someone strong needs to hold for a minute or some other solution like a spell.  Then if it's a particularly devious trap a valve opens on the other side of the room where someone else has to figure out how to shut it off because the rogue needs to keep their hand on the lever he's trying to reset and so on.With most of the checks, nobody knows ahead of time how much effort is required.  They just know the block is descending, the valve is opening but there seems to be some writing on it and so on.  Give clues as to what's going on, but he clues are going to be from the perspective of the PCs.  Since traps don't have a glowing set of numbers over them, the PCs don't know what the target is or the results.  They only know what the PC knows.  At least that's what works for me.</blockquote>

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