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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7292401" data-attributes="member: 6779196">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.</blockquote>

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