D&D 5E Traps and DCs

[slaughterj]

You don't appear to know what you are talking about. The same reason for rolling initiative as a group applies to all rolls for that group other than actual combat rolls like attacks and saves. It's too time consuming for the DM, and just plain boring for the players. They don't want to wait while I roll 50 times to see if the orcs detect the PCs sneaking up on them.

Thanks for the attack! I have only been involved with RPGs for 35 years, guess I don't know what I'm talking about?!

Sure, no one wants to wait for 50 Orc rolls, but you really don't have to roll that many. If you have 20, you can assume a roll of every number from 1-20. And then consider the implications. No one would ever succeed at Stealth against that group, which is my point as to why I find mechanics like passive Perception useful. I think you have gotten very far afield from the point of this thread though, which was about traps and DCs, so I don't think much more discussion will be productive to the original point.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, no one wants to wait for 50 Orc rolls, but you really don't have to roll that many. If you have 20, you can assume a roll of every number from 1-20. And then consider the implications. No one would ever succeed at Stealth against that group, which is my point as to why I find mechanics like passive Perception useful. I think you have gotten very far afield from the point of this thread though, which was about traps and DCs, so I don't think much more discussion will be productive to the original point.

People should be able to succeed against a group like that, though. I'm also not going to assume numbers. I've rolled dice for decades and you can roll 50 times and never roll a 1 or 20. Why would I screw over the players by assuming that the rolls happened in some predictable and repeatable way?

 

[slaughterj]

People should be able to succeed against a group like that, though. I'm also not going to assume numbers. I've rolled dice for decades and you can roll 50 times and never roll a 1 or 20. Why would I screw over the players by assuming that the rolls happened in some predictable and repeatable way?

Exactly my point, people should be able to successfully stealth against a group like that, and that is handled by passive Perception.

Similarly, and the bring this thread full circle back to the point of my original post, this seems to work well similarly for traps, use the PCs' passive Perception, and roll once for the trap's DC.

 

[Maxperson]

Exactly my point, people should be able to successfully stealth against a group like that, and that is handled by passive Perception.

It can be handled by passive perception, but there are other ways to handle it as well. I dislike the passive perception mechanic, so it will never exist in a game that I run. Rolling like I have been saying works much, much better for me.

Similarly, and the bring this thread full circle back to the point of my original post, this seems to work well similarly for traps, use the PCs' passive Perception, and roll once for the trap's DC.

You can easily just have the PCs roll an active perception check to notice that trap's DC. Alternatively, you can roll the check yourself if you want to.

 

[Ristamar]

TL;DR Summary: If trap DCs are static and passive Perception is static, then you either auto-find (boring) or auto-fail (annoying) traps, so I reduce DCs of traps by 10 and replace with a 1d20 roll to allow for variability, which allows even low Perception PCs to possibility spot hard traps, and avoids the foregoing issues with opposed static numbers.

Change of heart: I've done a 180 on rolling simple "gotcha" trap DC's versus passive scores (complex traps are a different story), though I prefer Investigation over Perception. It's not a complete stand alone solution that suddenly makes traps good/fun encounters for the players, but as a starting base mechanic from which to build, it is quick and flexible.