D&D 5E Traps: yay or nay?

[generic]

Do you use traps?

I use traps when they are fun puzzles rather than just a tax on hit points.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Do you use traps?

I use traps when they are fun puzzles rather than just a tax on hit points.

I use traps when they make sense. Traps protect entrances and escape routes to lairs, traps might protect treasure that the villain does not use often, traps at the most extreme may protect the private sanctuary of the main villain if he is particularly paranoid or he leads a CE organization and fears assassination.

Traps do not protect common hallways, cupboards in the kitchen or the alter of the chapel the evil priest sermonizes at on a regular basis.

You should place traps to be effective but not annoying to those that are living there on a regular basis. Ancient ruins should contain traps on hidden locations no one has ever found, old traps that were set off in the past (possibly with corpse nearby) disarmed traps, and worn out traps rust shut or sprung on their own just by time itself.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I use traps when it makes sense for a trap to be there, and the traps that I use make sense for who might have set that trap.

If you go into a goblin lair, there will be traps that are easy to spot if you have darkvision,easy to bypass once you notice them, need to be reset manually once triggered, and that tend towards crippling and noise making, rather than fatal. They will also not be on obvious thoroughfares (unless they are manually triggered). They are there to draw attention to intruders, and if they happen to kill someone who isn't a goblin, great!

If you go into a demilich's lair, you'll get traps that are very hard to spot, hard to bypass, incredibly fatal and horridly unfair. They are there to make sure that anyone who found the lair dies or is utterly discouraged from proceeding, all without the demilich being disturbed. If you do get far enough to disturb the demilich, expect them to evacuate and leave something nasty behind: you've proven yourself a threat to them, and they've got millenia of unlife ahead of them. No sense risking things.

In between you've got variations based on how competent at using safeguards the normal denizens of the area are (ie - goblins aren't going to have many fatal traps, because the consequences and chance of screwing up are too high, but the demilich literally never walks through his dungeon, so traps can be fatal and easily triggered by accident), what the denizens are immune to (ie - an Azer base is probably full of environmental fire, with some deliberate fatal poisons thrown in, since azers are immune to both, while their foes the Efreeti, are not immune to poison), and how much time, effort and skill at trapmaking the denizens have (ie - azers are highly disciplined master craftsmen, constantly in a state of war, so expect traps).

 

[Charlaquin]

Yay, with the caveat that they need to be properly foreshadowed so players have a chance to respond to them. Notice how, in Indiana Jones, Indy usually sees the skeleton of some poor sap who got screwed over by the trap, or else the traps are clearly telegraphed by decorated tiles, or a pedestal that screams “something’s gonna happen if you pick up this idol.” That doesn’t mean the party has to be directly told when their are traps in the room, but they should be able to figure it out just by environmental context cues. It should feel like a Dark Souls game, where when you walk into a trap, your reaction is “I totally should have seen that coming!” and not “wow, this game is really unfair.” Part of how those games do it is by using consistent tells, so after the first time you walk into one, you know what to look for to avoid walking into another. Maybe in this dungeon, spear traps always come out of statues. But not every statue is a spear trap. And there's a boatload of statues in this dungeon. Now, as long as players see that first skeleton impaled by a sprung spear trap near a statue at the beginning of the dungeon, the’re going to be real cautious around statues. Or if they’re not, they definitely will be after the first time one of them gets nailed by the exact same trap that got the skeleton. They can learn from the environment, ok, statues in this dungeon mean there might be a spear trap. Now they have the tools to avoid them. Now it’s not just a gotcha or an hp tax, it’s a dungeon-wide incentive for players to pay attention to the environment.

Also, traps need to give the players a split second to react. It should never just be “You stepped on a pressure plate, make a Dexterity save or take 5 damage.” It should be, “You feel the tile of the floor sink slightly beneath your weight and hear the click as some unknown mechanism settles into place. What do you do?” Then, based on what they do, maybe give advantage or disadvantage on the save.

 

[cbwjm]

I like to use them and like others they need to make sense so I don't typically have a lot of them usually. I hate it when people throw in traps for seemingly no reason at all except to have a trap. I'm happy to have a trapped chest or a tomb loaded with traps to keep out tomb robbers but that orc lair probably isn't going to have traps along their heavily travelled tunnels. I also like them to include puzzles in the traps that let the players work out the trap instead of the characters although perhaps with some clues as to how to resolve it with skill checks.

The signature of champions.

 

[KRussellB]

I definitely use traps! But I tend to reskin them as other dangers. For example, a rickety bridge is definitely a trap. A collapsing room is a trap.

I also like to introduce traps in isolation, and then bring them into the combat environment to make things more exciting. So the characters pretty easily avoid a hidden pit trap. But in the next combat versus a swarm of kobolds, anyone larger than small size will have to be careful of pit traps hidden throughout the field of battle.

 

[Arilyn]

I sprinkle traps around very sparingly because I find them boring. If I have a player, however, who has made a character who focuses on trap disarming, I will plunk in more of them. I do try to make them interesting, but I could never wrap my head around those room sized traps than spin about or launch players down elaborate chutes. Reading long complicated traps in modules that require several steps to disarm make my eyes glaze over, and there's no way I'll run them accurately.

 

[cmad1977]

Yay.


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[Saeviomagy]

Yay, with the caveat that they need to be properly foreshadowed so players have a chance to respond to them. Notice how, in Indiana Jones, Indy usually sees the skeleton of some poor sap who got screwed over by the trap, or else the traps are clearly telegraphed by decorated tiles, or a pedestal that screams “something’s gonna happen if you pick up this idol.”

Actually, the temple sequence that ends in the giant rolling boulder has no such thing for most of the traps. Indy just appears to be extraordinarily suspicious of... everything. The first trap is a ray of sunlight, and it's previous victim is only visible after it is triggered. The next is a hidden pressure plate, again with no victim or odd decorations.

Even the pedestal gives no clue as to what is actually going to happen - Indy is just paranoid enough to expect a problem.

OR

He researched the complex beforehand and knew exactly where each trap was.

It's hard to say which.

Also, traps need to give the players a split second to react. It should never just be “You stepped on a pressure plate, make a Dexterity save or take 5 damage.” It should be, “You feel the tile of the floor sink slightly beneath your weight and hear the click as some unknown mechanism settles into place. What do you do?” Then, based on what they do, maybe give advantage or disadvantage on the save.

Traps should never deal 5 damage and have no other effect, period. It's not enough to kill anyone outright, it's not enough to knock out most characters, and even the few people that have 5 hitpoints are likely to survive it (even if they're on their own!), so unless the denizens regularly patrol their traps, it's not going to be useful at all.

If you have a damage dealing trap, either make it actually deadly (and telegraph it if you are unwilling to kill characters), or give it secondary effects (like a loud noise that prompts denizens to take action).

Don't have a trap that is "cross off hitpoints and continue like nothing happens".

 

[Charlaquin]

Actually, the temple sequence that ends in the giant rolling boulder has no such thing for most of the traps. Indy just appears to be extraordinarily suspicious of... everything. The first trap is a ray of sunlight, and it's previous victim is only visible after it is triggered. The next is a hidden pressure plate, again with no victim or odd decorations.

Even the pedestal gives no clue as to what is actually going to happen - Indy is just paranoid enough to expect a problem.

OR

He researched the complex beforehand and knew exactly where each trap was.

It's hard to say which.

K, I misremembered the scene, but my point still stands.

Traps should never deal 5 damage and have no other effect, period. It's not enough to kill anyone outright, it's not enough to knock out most characters, and even the few people that have 5 hitpoints are likely to survive it (even if they're on their own!), so unless the denizens regularly patrol their traps, it's not going to be useful at all.

If you have a damage dealing trap, either make it actually deadly (and telegraph it if you are unwilling to kill characters), or give it secondary effects (like a loud noise that prompts denizens to take action).

Don't have a trap that is "cross off hitpoints and continue like nothing happens".

Umm... What the trap actually did had nothing to do with the rest of my point. Imagine it did 500 damage if you like, or 1d4+1 and made a noise like you said, whatever. The point is, you should give your players that “oh naughty word” moment to take a reaction instead of just going immediately into the results.