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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 6750080" data-attributes="member: 16814">I'm currently rarely using traps because my game is focusing on exploration of ruins that were left by a sudden apocalypse, not built to be death trap dungeons.  But, the standout so far was a set of very nasty traps that were essentially immediately lethal.  They were also extremely obvious, what with the 5' tall, inset metal hammers on either side of the hallway humming and spitting sparks.  The trap was meant to be 1) obvious and only triggerable intentionally, and 2) scary as hell.  There were, IIRC, four of these installations down a long hallway.  What the players didn't know was that the particular set of ruins they were investigating where once a high security experimentation lab on some rather nasty things.  So the traps weren't there to keep players out, but to make sure that anything that broke containment in the lab would be incinerated trying to escape.  The traps worked by essentially an object reducing the resistance between the hammers, causing a bolt of energy to erupt across the offending object (or person, or thing).  The mechanism was hidden behind solid rock walls, and very well protected, so it wasn't easy to disable.  Bypassing was similarly difficult, due to a lack of available insulating materials.  However, since the facility wasn't designed as a screw you deathtrap, but by thinking creatures that lived and worked there, all of the traps had easy to find, if not immediately apparent, disable switches at a convenient location for someone on the correct side of the trap.  So a brief examination of the area found the necessary 'off' switches, allowing the party to continue unimpeded.However, the clues in the facility and the traps themselves led the party to realize the likely intent of the traps - to keep something in, not out - and they spent about 5 times longer discussing the wisdom of disabling the traps and/or trying to figure out if they could remotely deactivate the traps from the inside (they didn't come up with a workable plan that they liked and trusted) so that they didn't have to leave them off to continue. That made the trap, and it's ease of bypassing, far more valuable in game than something for them to solve and disable like a more conventionally built trap.</blockquote>

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