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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5856675" data-attributes="member: 82106">I disagree. I am fond of traps. I use them all the time in my 4e adventures, and they are perfectly useful and significant. Losing a healing surge is not insignificant. Sure, the main consequence of that may be down the road, but so is the main consequence of losing some hit points! Of course you could be implying that traps should be deadly or disabling. OK, but nothing in 4e prevents that, nor in 3e either.Traps can have 'operational' significance. This includes losing surges, but it could also include all sorts of other things. It could include alerting the enemy to your presence. It could include being forced to take a different path. It could include large consequences. Traps can also have 'tactical' significance within an encounter. They could even have 'strategic' significance when setting them off sends the adventure off in a significantly different direction (say a teleporter trap or something like that). What 4e minimizes is something that you probably don't want anyway. That is the &quot;oh, that door was trapped, gotcha!&quot; nonsense. Those WILL still drain resources by causing damage of course, but they were never really a very good way to design things. If you're going to have stand-alone traps they should either represent an interesting and significant challenge in and of themselves, like a stress trap or something or they should present a tactical challenge. The tactical challenge can come in a few different flavors. For instance a trap could set up for other traps, or it could be that later on you'll have a fight in that area, etc. Consider the traps in the famous Indiana Jones temple sequence. They're not really significant except atmospherically until they're turned into a gauntlet later in the scene. At that point they're entirely significant.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5856675, member: 82106"] I disagree. I am fond of traps. I use them all the time in my 4e adventures, and they are perfectly useful and significant. Losing a healing surge is not insignificant. Sure, the main consequence of that may be down the road, but so is the main consequence of losing some hit points! Of course you could be implying that traps should be deadly or disabling. OK, but nothing in 4e prevents that, nor in 3e either. Traps can have 'operational' significance. This includes losing surges, but it could also include all sorts of other things. It could include alerting the enemy to your presence. It could include being forced to take a different path. It could include large consequences. Traps can also have 'tactical' significance within an encounter. They could even have 'strategic' significance when setting them off sends the adventure off in a significantly different direction (say a teleporter trap or something like that). What 4e minimizes is something that you probably don't want anyway. That is the "oh, that door was trapped, gotcha!" nonsense. Those WILL still drain resources by causing damage of course, but they were never really a very good way to design things. If you're going to have stand-alone traps they should either represent an interesting and significant challenge in and of themselves, like a stress trap or something or they should present a tactical challenge. The tactical challenge can come in a few different flavors. For instance a trap could set up for other traps, or it could be that later on you'll have a fight in that area, etc. Consider the traps in the famous Indiana Jones temple sequence. They're not really significant except atmospherically until they're turned into a gauntlet later in the scene. At that point they're entirely significant. [/QUOTE]

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