D&D 4E Traps in 4e - Mearls blog

[blargney the second]

Encounter traps are awesome. I love describing a room with spearheads protruding from all the walls. It's usually followed by a look of dawning apprehension and an immediate "I search for traps." My favourite part is simply answering, "Yep, it's a trap" at which point they get all strangely paranoid.
-blarg

 

[Rystil Arden]

Pits are never really boring non-encounters in my games, especially at low levels. A very basic encounter, yes, but not boring.

First you have to spot the pit. Then you have to navigate over or around it. If you didn't do that, you have to avoid falling in the pit. Then, in addition to anything nasty at the bottom of the pit, you have to get back out of the pit.

If you don't gloss over it, pits can be a fun and interesting challenge for low-ish level PCs. Encumbrance, armor, use rope, climb, tumble, reflex saves, equipment choice (rope, pole, grappling hook, whatever), find traps, trap sense and spell choice (did you have feather fall or levitate ready?) all come into play.

Indeed. I recently had a fairly involved encounter with a pit trap in one of the games I GMed for a bunch of newbie players, and they enjoyed it quite a bit. Lacking a Rogue, the player out in front first fell into the pit, which was filled with spikes and a waist-deep water with an ooze swarm in it.

Once they dropped a rope to pull him out, they had to find a way to cross, which they did by having the dog with his excellent jump checks leap over and double back a rope in such a way that they could tie one of the characters to the middle of the rope and then as the two characters, one on either end, pulled on the rope, the middle of the rope would move across, thus ferrying everyone across without necessitating a Climb check (which probably would have failed).

Then they discovered that the kobolds who made the pit trap had one last trick up their sleeves--a makeshift wooden wall with spikes on it that the kobolds pushed down the corridor (filling up all the space in the corridor) in an attempt to push the characters back into the pit. The group was pushed all the way to the edge, making balance checks to avoid falling in, with one guy failing and barely making a Reflex save to grab the edge with his hand, but then they managed to puncture a hole in the wall and use that for line of effect to summon in some wolves on the other side to harass the kobolds, pushing back on their side to move back the wall.

One of the players said that it was intense because he could envision the yapping little kobolds and their wall moving forward and he could almost feel his back coming up against the pit with no room left. Best reaction I've ever seen to a pit trap encounter!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

In (very) brief, it's a trap that the entire party faces, and that, in many respects, functions like a monster or opponent.

For instance, a hallway with rising and falling blocks that drop or rise on a specific initiative count in the combat, while spears shoot from the walls at a different initiative count. The rogue is attempting to cross and get to a point where he can disarm the trap, while the fighter is struggling to smash through the wall where the spears are coming from, and the wizard is casting protective spells to keep the other two alive while they do so.

That's a fairly rough example, and one I just sort of pulled out of the air, but I think it gets the idea across.

The best trap I've run across in years is the key feature of the dungeon in The Whispering Cairn in the Age of Worms adventure path. It is precisely a trap as an encounter. There's also a flooded area in that dungeon that functions in much the same way. If that's where trap design is going, I'm all for it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Encounter traps are so sweet I've started using them as the basis for combat against giant creatures, shadow of the colossus style.

 

[Legildur]

I like the kobold encounter above. Traps like pits are really just obstacles (like a modern minefield) and can be negotiated if given time and resources. Armies across the world know to cover obstacles by view and by fire. The kobolds in the above example are doing exactly that, otherwise the obstacle has no purpose.

 

[Glyfair]

We've heard (IIRC) "talking your way past a city guard" and "climbing a mountain" as examples of non-combat encounters.

Oooohhhh! So, "approaching the gazebo" might be an encounter in 4E?

 

[Lord Zack]

If there's some kind of challenge to it maybe.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I like the kobold encounter above. Traps like pits are really just obstacles (like a modern minefield) and can be negotiated if given time and resources. Armies across the world know to cover obstacles by view and by fire. The kobolds in the above example are doing exactly that, otherwise the obstacle has no purpose.

Yup--the kobolds were trying to use the terrain to their advantage, since otherwise they knew that they were going to be crushed in a straight-up fight. And they got the Druid to blow every one of his spells on a bunch of low level kobolds, several of which also managed to escape at the end. In my mind, that's a much more entertaining and exciting use of a trap than, to pull an example from a published adventure, the Green Slime that was separate from everything else in Drakthar's Way ("Okay, after the Rogue takes the first Con damage, we scrape it off immediately." What else were we going to do--it just randomly fell on him in the middle of nowhere)

 

[grimslade]

A trap becomes part of an encounter, just like the terrain will. If 4E will pit the party vs a group of monsters, maybe a trap can be a replacement for an opponent.
A 5 man party takes on 4 large spiders and a pit trap. The spiders, with webs and spider climbing can utilize the trap much more than the party. The environment becomes a challenge to overcome.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

In my defense of the classic pit trap, I forgot to mention that I actually like the new ideas being put forward for encounter traps.

Just don't malign the lonely old covered pit. It has served us well for many years, and as long as kobolds and goblins can pilfer shovels and tarps, will continue to do so!