Traps rearming ...

[RObiN-HoOD]

"Once activated, the trap magically rearms itself one minute later."
Dragon 291, p.83, #2 Durgath's Death

Now is this possibility covered by any rule in any book?

What if someone disarms the trap?
Does the trap rearms after a specific amount of time or not? Especially the magical traps with no mechanical parts.

 

[SableWyvern]

To my knowledge, the rules neither mention nor dissallow this.

Generally, I would rule that a successful disarm would prevent rearming. However, were this not the case, I would probably let the player know that the trap was going to rearm.

Another way of dealing with this would be to set more than one DC. Only if the higher DC was reached would the character know that the trap would rearm.

An even more complex method would be to set 3 DCs. At the lowest, the trap is disarmed, but will reset. At the middle DC, the character knows the trap will rearm. At the highest, the trap will not rearm.

 

[Christian]

There are some actual, honest-to-goodness rules about this in Song and Silence. I'm at work right now, but if you check out the extensive section on traps in that work, you'll find answers to your questions. Both parts, IIRC-about self-resetting traps and under what circumstances a Disable Device roll prevents such a trap from resetting. (On a very high roll, you can actually bypass the trap while leaving it set, very handy if you're being pursued ...)

There's some uneven quality in that book, but the traps section is just dreamy.

 

[SableWyvern]

S&S is next on my shopping list, so I look forward to their marvellous trap rules.

The bypassing a trap rule is in the PHB, p67 - a rogue who beats a trap's DC by 10 can bypass it (along with his party) without disarming it or setting it off.

 

[Christian]

Oh yeah, that's right ... I think I was thinking about a rule where an insanely high DD roll let's you leave the trap set but with a permanent bypass; so you can slide through without even having to make a roll in the future.

Frankly, IMHO, there was nothing really worthwhile in S&S except the trap section. Fortunately, that one section was worth the price of the book, so I didn't feel cheated.