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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6795084" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I was reading <a href="http://theangrygm.com/traps-suck/" target="_blank">AngryDM</a> on traps and thinking about how fun traps and diseases can potentially be, and how hard it is to do traps in a sandbox campaign.See, the thing is that a trap which is designed to be fun in D&D has at least two characteristics that make it unrealistic:1.) It's not instantly fatal if you accidentally trigger it.2.) It can be detected and disarmed.A realistic trap would be "evil wizard's library, behind the locked door; anyone besides a tall male elven necromancer who mutters 'Galooshka' before opening the door will set off Glyph of Warding x5, one with Hypnotic Pattern and the other four with Conjure Elemental VI (Invisible Stalker)." That trap is designed to secure a resource, even in the face of intruders who are strong enough to defeat the wizard himself.A fun trapequivalent would be designed to provide the appearance of securing a resource, without actually doing so effectively. For example, "evil wizard's library, inscribed on the door in the shape of a man's face and faintly visible to anyone who succeeds on a DC 17 Investigation check; anyone besides the wizard who opens the door will set off Glyph of Warding (Stinking Cloud) and another Glyph of Warding (Earth Elemental)" [note: due to absence of two-factor authentication, this glyph can potentially be spoofed by illusion magic; see Nystul's Magic Aura final paragraph on PHB 263 for precedent]. That trap is designed to be a speed bump, novel and inconvenient but not deadly to anyone who can defeat the wizard himself.I feel the desire to use traps more often to give even more of an old-school variety feel to my campaign, and so I'm considering introducing a barely-sentient species of "trap monkeys" (ancient biotech, like many of my monsters) who infest out-of-the-way places and build bizarre, non-deadly, circumventable traps out of commonly-available materials in that location. Then the answer to "why does the evil wizard have all these lame traps" will be "because he hasn't bothered to deconstruct them recently" instead of "because he spent time and effort building these instead of better traps."Why do fun traps exist in your campaign world?</blockquote>

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