Traps: What Should Become of the Spike-Filled Pit?

[Felon]

There are some sticky issues with traps that have made their usage fairly awkward and often moot in both 3e and 4e. Some folks think they're downright passé. I'd like to go over the major issues and see if any kind of meaningful discussion is sparked.

1) One-Hit Cheap-Shot Nature: While there is the occasional complex trap, like the gas-filled room or wall-closing-in traps, most are just single-shot attacks. Their threat is over as soon as they've begun. This is in contrast to D&D combat, which offers a lot of give-and-take. A player may fall in battle, but at least there's an exchange of blows. A one-hit trap, OTOH, offers nothing a player can push back against.

There's a big question as to how deadly a one-shot trap should be. If a scythe blade or poison dart is proportionately nasty to a monster's attack--say, a hit from a giant's sword or a snake bite--then it isn't likely that the trap will do anything meaningful. The characters just burn up a CLW wand charge or spend a healing surge. They're tedious inconveniences.

OTOH, if traps were so potent as to kill instantly, then characters can die from a single misstep. The inevitable result is characters being so paranoid about traps that they creep along prodding every cobblestone with a ten-foot pole. Characters simply aren't the disposable commodities they were in the old days. Even DM's may find trap-induced death undesirable due to the unceremonious, impersonal, and "cheap" nature.

2) Questionable Role: While some traps bring problem-solving skills to bear, many traps in published adventures are presented as utterly nondescript. 3e in particular loved to slap simple glyph traps on things willy-nilly. Basically, your only recourse agains them is use the official skillset for finding and disarming them.

The end result is that it often seems that the only reason a trap exists is to validate the existence of anti-trap character abilities. It's a pretty incestuous relationship; the anti-trapster is wasting her life if traps aren't laid in her path, but fi they are laid in her path then they routinely get found and negated.

So, has the spike-filled pit in the middle of the hallway outlived its heyday?

 

[Felon]

Well, I guess silence speaks volumes.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So, has the spike-filled pit in the middle of the hallway outlived its heyday?

In my mind, traps are the "monsters" of exploration.

They are there to consume resources and, as a whole, lead to the party's destruction.

A simple way to embody this is in something like a 4e skill challenge: you make rolls to explore the dungeon, and, if your roll fails, your character stumbles into a trap and suffers some penalty...lets say, he dies. And in order to get raised, you need to get out of the dungeon (e.g.: quit, fail, and walk home empty-handed without treasure or XP or whatever goal you wanted to accomplish here). So a trap-filled dungeon gradually whittles down the party to 0 members, or at least one party member manages to overcome all the traps, get the MacGuffin, and get back to town in time to raise those who weren't so lucky.

That paragraph is more of a proof-of-concept than a rigorous mechanical framework, but that's the idea.

IMO, that's also the idea behind rust monsters, ear seekers, disenchanters, and other "gotcha monsters." They're not there to fight, they're there to make the exploration of the dungeon more interesting, to whittle away the character's resources, and to eventually, in total effect, to thwart a party from completing their mission.

And as to the question of deadliness: IMO, it needs to suck away something that cannot be earned back (unless perhaps one admits to failure). 3e and 4e don't really have such a resource -- maybe GP, but it just seems odd to have a spike-filled pit ultimately just drain your wallet (even via a raise spell, or something).

That's part of why I think traps have trouble working in that environment. It's not helpless, though, you just need to re-contextualize the environment.

For 5e, I would like to see all sorts of traps and trap-creatures and hazards, but I would give the DM a few different ways to introduce them, depending on how they want to handle dungeon exploration, from very abstract (like my proof-of-concept) to very detailed (more like AD&D), and always with the recommendation that whatever the trap does to the PC's, it isn't something the party should be able to undo without some sort of cost (narratively, financially, etc.).

 

[frankthedm]

The characters just burn up a CLW wand charge or spend a healing surge. They're tedious inconveniences.

To me that sounds more like a problem of HP inflation and healing being too readily available.

 

[Hassassin]

Good traps in my opinion are things that have the potential to affect longer term game. Curses rather than damage, pits and cave-ins that mean you have to find another way forward, alarm traps that call in two groups of monsters you would have met individually, etc.

 

[Kingreaper]

In 4e, imo, out-of-combat traps are best when they interact with the Disease subsystem. Or are treated as part of a skill challenge.

Personally, I have a set of custom diseases that I really like, including, for pit traps:

Cracked Leg.

Progression essentially goes
Fine<- -1 to speed, can't run <-> slowed, can't run, -5 to all athletics checks -> Slowed, can't run, can't shift -10 to all athletics checks.

How do you contract Cracked Leg? Fall into a pit trip. Or get hit by a Knee-Smasher Dwarf while prone, etc.

 

[tlantl]

Traps serve as a type of monster that doesn't need food or water. Long deserted tombs might not have anything big and dangerous living in them but the traps left behind serve to deter the casual explorer or weaken the more persistent. There is no way in my mind that traps are passe.

 

[Zaukrie]

Traps serve as a type of monster that doesn't need food or water. Long deserted tombs might not have anything big and dangerous living in them but the traps left behind serve to deter the casual explorer or weaken the more persistent. There is no way in my mind that traps are passe.

Agreed, 100% agreed. I like traps, but don't use them enough. I think they are a type of terrain that attacks, and I'm good with that. It can be used to slow them down, to provide them with a skill challenge to get out of a trap, or to avoid one. I like the versatility of traps and the different ways they can be overcome.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Traps are problematic in several ways. They presume the existence of something to be trapped, which applies only during dungeoncrawling and a small number of other scenarios. They encourge players to simply stop and rest after taking harm. They're hard to balance because of that, because they either kill you or they don't. Honestly, I've run several campaigns and only ever used them a couple of times, with modestly fun results at best.

Then again, they're a classic element, and can be really flavorful if done right and mechanically interesting if presented in a very sophisticated way. They can require more creativity than monsters.

Honestly, I'd be happy to see a 5e Dungeonscape or the like. Relegate traps to a book for those that specialize in dungeoncrawling, and then trick them out (like the 'encounter traps' and really get them right.

I'd also like to see puzzles/riddles emphasized more in that setting, which kind of dovetails with traps.

 

[Felon]

Great replies. Let me run something past you. Pick the answer you prefer most. Ideally, a trap is a challenge that the party...

A) ...finds and disarms using standard skills checks.

B) ...finds but can't disarm, and have to devise how exactly to mitigate its harmful effects.

C) ...doesn't find, catches the party off-guard, and inflicts its harmful effect in full.