D&D 5E Why do (non-deadly) traps exist in your campaign?

[DMCF]

I think it is that the average person (commoner statistics) will die to just about everything. Hit points is a very "meta" concept. As a DM the tiers are just something used to scale the difficulty of the encounter and/or subsequent encounters.

From the Trap-Setter perspective much of the time I do want my trap to be deadly. Most will be...to a commoner. There are also numerous reasons to capture people i.e., preserving bodies for a more effective undead army, slave trade, feeding pets that like to play with their food etc.

From the DM perspective I may want there to be "close calls" to drive a setting and create a suspense in the arch of the dungeon crawl/story.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Sacrosanct is on the right track.

Hemlock, why do people use easily circumvented modern "trap" systems? E.g. Alarm systems, video cameras, dye-locks on clothing merchandise, etc?

In virtually every case a resourceful and dedicated intruder/thief/etc can overcome these nuisances. But they act as a cost-effective deterrent to basic thieves and burglars.

If a dedicated burglar easily overcomes your alarm system, motion sensor floodlights, and cameras... Well that's why you keep a gun by your bed. And why the wizard has an iron golem, or whatever.

Low level deterrents are an incredibly common phenomena in the real world, makes sense they'd exist in a fantasy world.

Nothing wrong with occasionally having the equivalent of a mansion with a panic room and hidden fiber optic surveillance in every room of course... But such people are the exception, not the rule, even amongst the population likely to be robbed.

Real-life weak deterrents function differently than "fun" traps which are designed to support player agency and be fun for players to discover. Real-life deterrents are weak in cost-effective ways, not interesting ways. (And often they rely almost solely on social factors, like police arrests and criminal records, which don't exist in D&D.)

Consider this scenario:

Sometimes, it takes players a few tries to figure out the patterns in my trap placement. Sometimes, they never stumble on it. But there is ALWAYS a pattern to my trap placement. And, right off the bat, I try to warn players about the traps. Sometimes, they will encounter a sprung trap and a corpse. And they can examine the trap carefully and figure out the clues. Other times, I will place a trap in a place where I know they can survive the trap and retreat if need be. That tomb trap was literally the first encounter in the tomb. It was basically just inside the door.

You can do this any number of ways.

For example, imagine you have a dungeon that contains traps. When the party walks between certain statues, spears shoot out of the floor and stab them. The trap isn’t in the statues. And the dungeon is full of statues. And many statues don’t have traps nearby. But the traps always come between statues. If the players examine the statues, they will discover that the ones near traps have their swords and shields reversed. They are left-handed. If they don’t ask about that detail, don’t reveal it outright. But they will probably be nervous about walking between ANY pairs of statues for a while.

Statues that subtly cue which areas are trapped. Sounds like fun, right? But why would anyone in the world ever build the trap to give itself away like that? That's not a security mechanism, it's a puzzle.

One idea I had just now was, "What if the area is designed to be navigable by successive generations operating on hereditary knowledge, instead of by individuals who already know the terrain?" Just as Jewish people automatically kiss the mezuzah, maybe Hephaestus's followers have it ingrained in them to always drag a leg behind them as they walk--and so if you want to build a temple which is accessible (only) to Hephaestus's followers, you can build in traps which go off if someone fails to trigger a tripwire.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

From the Trap-Setter perspective much of the time I do want my trap to be deadly. Most will be...to a commoner. There are also numerous reasons to capture people i.e., preserving bodies for a more effective undead army, slave trade, feeding pets that like to play with their food etc.

That's a good one. If you capture non-evil humanoids alive you can turn them into Shadows using other Shadows, but a dead body can only be turned into a skeleton or a zombie.

 

[DMCF]

Statues that subtly cue which areas are trapped. Sounds like fun, right? But why would anyone in the world ever build the trap to give itself away like that? That's not a security mechanism, it's a puzzle.

...

--and so if you want to build a temple which is accessible (only) to Hephaestus's followers, you can build in traps which go off if someone fails to trigger a tripwire.

I think it depends if the statue is intentionally a cue. If the statue functions as the "tripwire" to allow access to a secret room or disarm a trap then at the DM's discretion there could be a perception check to see if there are any visual cues e.g., less dust settled where an appendage is rotated to allow access.

I don't see this as a puzzle. A puzzle should not, whether obvious or once revealed, require a perception check. Nor should a perception check be required to pass it unless it is a puzzle critical to the story arc. That is, I would not allow an intelligence/investigate check to solve a puzzle to a side room containing a +2 long sword, but I would to free the princess. Of course there's always potential she loose her arm in the process *evil laugh*

 

[Blue]

1. Changes in pacing between encounters / hazards during encounters during "HPs matter" times. (Not RPing at a masked ball, etc.)
2. Because a player made a rogue good at dealing with them and I want to give them a chance to shine.
3. It makes sense. (The treasure chest is locked and trapped.)
4. To further plot / story.

 

[Uchawi]

In a fantasy game traps don't have to make sense, but from a realism standpoint puzzles and locks are deterrents and traps are for warfare, defense, or capture.

 

[Endur]

Dont forget that the wizard or his familiar or his flunkies may accidentally set the trap off. That wizard may be very happy that the trap is non fatal.
What if a fey creature casts an illusion on the wizard and he no longer looks like himself. You dont want to be killef by your own trap.

 

[FuelDrop]

"Fun" traps are part of the balance between security, usability, and cost. A trap that drops 10,000 tons of stone on the intruder and everything within 20 feet will undoubtedly be fatal. It's also very expensive, difficult to reset, and if you want to access your library after an intruder arrives then you have to move 10,000 tons of fallen stone. "Fun" traps tend to strike a balance between these three pillars.

 

[Eltab]

At one time (before he went to college), I was going to DM a mini-campaign with my son and some of his friends.

I decided to use some of the Grimtooth's Traps traps. Properly marked, of course: somebody long before you were born, went around in all these dungeons and carved their face into the walls. There is a trap nearby. If you are still alive after you trigger the trap, it changes expression based on how well the trap did. It is gleefully laughing if it killed somebody, smiles if somebody was injured, looks like Grumpy Old Men if you disassembled it, &c.

All of the traps I used were over-the-top, and intended to provide a moment of comic relief before facing the Boss Monster. One of the traps was an XL-giant-sized crossbow at the end of a hallway that fired telephone poles down the way (DEX Save for half damage). Another was a solid-lead door (looked like iron) that opened like a drawbridge, not on a hinge.

I never played the campaign, so I don't know how it would have gone over.

 

[Draegn]

Non lethal traps... sometimes people enjoy having one of those friendly conversations, even if it is merely along the lines of "You're such a nice kitty now, so soft and cuddly."