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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 2451268" data-attributes="member: 1465">I rather think that traps are supposed to be found most of the times. Which is very different from saying that they are supposed to be always bypassed with no harm.You put a trap where it makes sense, such as to prevent a door or a container to be opened, or to prevent a passageway to be walked.A smart player will have the idea of searching for traps where it is more likely. It is always possible however that it doesn't come to the player's mind to search, in which case the player's mistake is paid by eventually walk into the trap.Taking 20 on the search isn't a problem to me. Traps are usually always findable with Take 20 by a single-class Rogue who has (circa) maxed out his Search skill. If he decided instead to neglect the Search skill or be a multiclass, he knows that he won't be able to find some traps.But once the trap is found it is not yet bypassed. Now is when Disable Device kicks in, and for our pleasure Disable Device does NOT allow to Take 20 because of the penalty failure (which is not part of Search).I think this is intended by the designers: since you usually have to first Search and then Disable a trap, it would not be very fair if the Rogue had TWO chances of springing out the trap on itself.There are of course situations (with specific traps) when Search is enough, when you don't need Disable because your party can teleport, fly, or other high-level stuff, but you in fact need to consider that it is not a bad thing and it is part of high-level play (apart the fact that if you still use traps in high-level games, they should be magic traps which can counter some of these tricks).And of course you could try to spring some traps by sacrifing a summoned monster (or the party bard), but this can be done only if the trap is one-use only.IMO Search & Disable are designed pretty well to work this way, and most of the problems arise because the DM plays them in a free-form way, or because the DM is very bad in placing traps where they shouldn't be.</blockquote>

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