D&D 5E Traps, how do you handle them?

[Tony Vargas]

So I should probably start off by saying that I HATE Passive Perception, I think that it does not add anything to the game and is overall just very lame. However I also hate it when players just do a perception check in every single room they enter.

Nothing more boring than 'door drill.' Except going through door drill every time in painstaking detail, that is.

.. So I came up with a solution which is describing a room with a couple of odds quirks such as "A book that sticks slight farther than the rest outside" or "A hook on a shelf that is slight more bent than the others" then if my players attempt to do a perception check and succeed then I reveal some more information. So anyways I guess what I was leading up to was this...

That's how I did it back in the day, before we had skill checks, or ranks, or non-weapon proficiency... or electricity, or gravity. (We had it rough in the olden days, is what I'm say'n.)

How do you handle traps in 5e?

Drive a flock of sheep ahead of you through the dungeon. Or zombies, but some traps are keyed to living or warm things.

Seriously, though, I agree that passive perception vs a fixed DC in a module is lame. You spot the trap, or you don't, it's all pre-ordained. It's worse if you're making up your own dungeon and you happen to remember the party's best passive perception, because then you're tempted to build to it.

My preference, if we want any uncertainty (or the appearance thereof), is to always have one die roll. Not passive vs set DC, not contested checks like in 3e. Check vs DC. Because that's neither overly swingy nor sucked dry of all drama.

So if players aren't actively searching, roll the trap-makers check vs their passive perception behind the screen. If they are, choose a DC.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Your method is good, but you can also use passive perception for that.

Like the adventurers enter a room. You describe everything that's obvious. Anything that might stick out for the more perceptive guy is only revealed to the characters with high enough passive perception. If they still can't figure it out, they can still ask to check something in particular which then might prompt an active roll.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

I use traps in mostly 3 ways -

* Combat complications - Something like a collection of heavy stones suspended over part of the battlefield that can be released by lever or cutting a rope. Essentially things that make combat a bit more tactically interesting. Sometimes these are used to make tactically disadvantaged foes (for example - those with slow move speeds and no ranged attacks) a credible threat.

* Quick resource sinks - In which case the binary nature of passive perception / other skills doesn't really bother me, nor does the PCs quickly bypassing the trap. The point is to cost the PCs something (or let them bypass something) WITHOUT needing go through a full set of combat rolls. Used where thematically appropriate.

* Puzzles - These are essentially meant to be encounters unto themselves. They're designed to make the PLAYERS (in addition to the PCs) think and experiment so as to keep gameplay varied. Some can be hard to bypass - for example, the PCs might need to pry away a heavy stone before getting to the gears or magical wards so that they can disarm the trap. I ALWAYS make sure that character abilities are useful - either passive perception, or thieves' tools proficiency. But these skills are probably only one step in the multistep process of dealing with the trap. Just to reinforce what others have said, you can make passive perception and investigation checks useful without giving away the trap based on what sort of information and how much you offer. To illustrate - the party scout has a high enough passive perception to notice something. So you give the most general of details - "You feel an odd draft of air as you creep down the hallway." "Something about the echo of your footsteps in the NE corner of the room draws your attention." "This area seems slightly dustier than usual." "You perceive the faintest blur around the scroll work, as if looking at something through heat convection." You essentially describe something suspicious that doesn't give away the nature of the trap. Merely alerting the PCs to the presence of something suspicious gives them an advantage in finding / disarming a trap and experimenting in such a way as to (hopefully) keep them safe as they try to reveal what sort of threat the trap poses. Occasionally these are actually red herrings or nonthreatening location features, for the purpose of either keeping the PCs on their toes or to promote interaction with the "dungeon" environment. Sometimes the holes along the wall are just a ventilation or heating system.