Traps: How do they WORK?

[Mort_Q]

This just came to me; someone needs to redo Tomb of Horrors with all 4e style traps and skill challenges!

Just saying.

I wonder if I still have a copy?

 

[redshirt2005]

Just a quick note that we're planning to preview skill challenges on 05/05 and traps on 05/09, on the D&D site.

Bart

 

[Rechan]

See, I don't understand this:

A giant boulder that follows the route indicated on the map.
Trigger Initiative +5
Target: All creatures in the same space as the rock.

I understand if the crushing rock was just a single one use thing, where it rolled from point A to point B.

But the rock is supposed to be an encounter thing, not a single-fire trap. So it's going from point A to point B and back again.

Which doesn't seem that dangerous.
Round 1: Point A to point B on its initiative.
Round 2: Point B to point A on its initiative.

So all a PC has to do is wait for the rock to go by on the rock's initiative, and then move past it.

 

[Rechan]

This just came to me; someone needs to redo Tomb of Horrors with all 4e style traps and skill challenges!

That's not how Tomb of Horrors work. You're not supposed to save vs. the traps or disarm them. You're supposed to out-think them before they go off.

If you are unlucky enough to trigger them, you die. The end.

 

[LostInTheMists]

Just a quick note that we're planning to preview skill challenges on 05/05 and traps on 05/09, on the D&D site.

Bart

Cool!

Don't suppose you could be convinced to give us the rest of the schedule, hm?

 

[Lacyon]

So all a PC has to do is wait for the rock to go by on the rock's initiative, and then move past it.

Unless of course they get pushed into the path by one of the other ~3-4 creatures (or more, with minions) that make up the 1st-level encounter.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I imagine Boulder Traps would be set up in chains. So you can have the PCs running through along a narrow walkway to their left is simply open air. As they run by, large boulders bounce down the mountainside towards them.

So yeah they be single use, but you can set up chains of them.

 

[deathdonut]

So all a PC has to do is wait for the rock to go by on the rock's initiative, and then move past it.

Unless points A and B are both in a narrow (boulder shaped) passage.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
A . . . ..O B
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

[MindWanderer]

You could have four of them (500xp encounter).

Maybe rolling around randomly ...

They move pretty fast, too. Even without random movement, getting from one side of a room to the other, with four of them moving around in an only moderately complex pattern, could be a reasonable encounter. But that's not the intention.

 

[Mort_Q]

That's not how Tomb of Horrors work.

That's why I want to redo it.