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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 5778120" data-attributes="member: 8158">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?</blockquote>

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