D&D 5E Why traps in D&D usually suck

[DMSage]

That's meta-gaming. In a role-playing game, the PLAYERS don't exist.

If you think that traps and puzzles are boring, then you don't have to include them, but asking the PLAYER to do something rather than the CHARACTER is missing the whole point of a role-playing game.

Proficiencies exist for a reason. It is no more reasonable for a stupid barbarian to cleverly bypass a trap, in spite of low Intelligence and no training in thieves' tools, than it is reasonable for an ugly barbarian to negotiate passage from hostile guards in spite of low Charisma and non-proficiency in Persuasion. It shouldn't matter if the PLAYER is a mechanical engineer or a stand-up comedian, because the PLAYER isn't actually there!

HAHA. That is ridiculous. Your use of metagaming here has no meaning. Please define it.
Reasons your comment makes no sense:
1) Characters can't solve things except by a roll
2) Characters dont actually have brains... every thing the character does is controlled by the player
3) Putting yourself into a character's "shoes" IS role playing. (ie, how so you solve this trap. The barbarians player says, i smash it. The wizards player casts a find trap spell and avoids it and the rogue cuts the wires running to the trigger.
4) How is it better role playing to have a character say "i solve it by rolling" than to say, "i cover the arrow slits and then trigger the trap"

 

[psychophipps]

I have never felt powerless against traps. Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you. Traps are a natural part of dungeons because they are a natural part of warfare. It's all about inflicting as many casualties as you can passively before you engage the enemy on purpose. Modern explosive mines suck in real life just like Alchemist Fire traps suck in D&D. They serve the same basic purpose.

Having a skilled Rogue doesn't guarantee success against traps any more than having an EOD guarantees success against IEDs. It's just hedging your bets a bit by having a professional handy in case they become a factor.

To be frank, Adventuring is a pretty serious "%&$@ happens!" kind of job. If your players can't handle that they're walking into a place that for untold years has been telling everyone that has entered before them "GO AWAY" with the utmost sincerity and conviction, then maybe they should go rob caravans or something instead.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

HAHA. That is ridiculous. Your use of metagaming here has no meaning. Please define it.

Very traditionally speaking, metagaming is when a character uses knowledge that the player has, but of which the character should be unaware. Examples of metagaming include using fire spells against a troll (when the character has no knowledge of trolls), or specifically checking behind a certain pillar for a hidden treasure cache (which the player knows about from having read the module).

Likewise, if the player knows how to bypass a trap (either from having read the module, guessing how the DM plots, or personal understanding of how machines work), then the character does not necessarily possess that knowledge. The first two points are obviously just cheating. The fair and established way to determine what the character does or does not know, regarding that third point, is to roll for it. Instead of the player saying that she has her character position a shield in front of the firing mechanism in order to render the trap harmless, you roll to determine if the character can figure that out; and if he can, then the DM is free to describe how he bypasses the trap.

It makes no sense for an ugly barbarian to fast-talk a guard just because the barbarian's player is a stand-up comedian, when the barbarian has low charisma and no proficiency. If the player uses player knowledge about how to talk to people, instead of relying on character skill (as governed by the die roll), then that's pure meta-gaming. It's the opposite of role-playing.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you want to talk your way through finding and removing traps, or talking your way through a guard, then it's recommended to play games where these are not otherwise represented as character abilities. The trade-off is that you can never play a character that is more clever, in any way whatsoever, than the player controlling that character; nor is there any incentive for a player to play below his or her full potential.

This sort of thing is an important design consideration, when a game is being created.

 

[psychophipps]

Man, I can't even tell you how often i had to sit down and shut up in the Tiamat campaign. I'm a bit of a military history buff, especially the anti-insurgency conflicts of the late 20th century, so there were a few places where my INT 9 Paladin had to be clueless while I was all but vibrating in place at the gaming table.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think the key failure in this analysis is that assuming that spotting the trap is the puzzle.

I think that any trap which is 'solved' just by spotting it and 'not solved' by not spotting it is a bad trap.

Step 1 is find the trap. I personally think there's nothing wrong with a trap that isn't telegraphed: not every trap maker is incompetent, and not every dungeon is poorly maintained. Part of the trap design should be "how it is concealed". If your players suspect a trap, the fallback shouldn't be "I roll a skill" - it should be meaningful interaction with the trap components, which is impossible if your trap "detects a creature", for instance. You have to say how it detects a creature, otherwise the players can't do anything to prevent that from happening.

Failing to spot/deduce the existence of a trap should simply mean that it consumes resources. In my book that ranges from damage to curses to poisons to outright death (D&D is pretty easy on people who die - you can start coming back from mere death at 5th level). I recommend not killing characters if your party does not have some form of resurrection available. Unless you just want to be Darwinian about it.

After the trap is found (one way or another), meaningful interaction should continue.

Do you need to disable the trap or can you just walk around it? Do you want to disable the trap? Can you get treasure from disabling the trap? Can you make use of the trap?

These are all things that should happen after you find a trap. The trap should be potent enough (and the dungeon well enough designed) that it can be used against the dungeon denizens. The trap should be well enough designed that you can interact with it meaningfully with or without skills. If the only interaction with a trap is "I disable the trap *roll*", then you've failed to design the trap well.

Ideally disabling a difficult trap should require multiple party members each performing different actions, and does not fail on a missed check, but does consume resources. Basically the same way combat works.

If your barbarian is waiting to swing at the chain of the giant ball, while the rogue is jumping on the pressure pad and the wizard has used stone shape so that the ball will roll down the corridor into the Minotaur guard post, then you've done it right, even if the cleric had to resurrect the rogue because he failed his perception check.

 

[iserith]

The reason I thought this puzzle might work was because the true puzzle was for the CHARACTERS to solve. The orbs were hidden throughout the rubble of the abandoned castle and the characters had to go out and find them. The puzzle that I thought was being solved in my mind was the characters searching for the orbs.
The puzzle turned into a disaster. My players would search for the orbs in the rooms they were in, but I knew once they found all the orbs the puzzle was over. In an attempt to prolong the puzzle I made, I would withhold information that the characters should have noticed and ask them to make perception checks hoping they would fail to make my puzzle worth while. Inevitably they would fail a check and ask to make another. Of course I had to let them because if they didn't find it they couldn't move forward. Eventually I had to give up on the whole concept of this puzzle and just start telling them where the orbs were to move the game along. This puzzle failed on many levels and I have learned a lot since then.
My takeaway from this was that FINDING something is not a quality puzzle for players.

To make a quality puzzle you must give your PLAYERS something to solve.

To make a quality trap you must give your PLAYERS something to solve.

Imagine the king of your land is suspended above a lava pit by a rope which is slowly burning. Now that’s a puzzle. That is something your players have to solve by flying, using spells, stopping the rope burning to buy more time, or begging an NPC to swing him to safety. This puzzle gives lots of options to your players and makes them think. They can't just solve it with a roll of the dice.

I like how you looked to yourself as the problem here. Many DMs look to the players or the game system when something goes awry when it's often an issue with the DM's approach. So good on you for thorough self-examination and implementing solutions in light of what you found. Not enough DMs do this in my experience.

There are two ways a DM can shift the responsibility of finding the traps. He can make it the character’s responsibility by calling for perception checks, using passive perception, or rolling randomly to represent the characters searching for the traps using their abilities or the DM can make it the players responsibility to find the traps by requiring players to state where and how they are looking and requiring them to state the specific skill checks their characters are making.

There are positives and negatives to each:


Character’s responsibility

Negatives
Finding traps is random, based on dice rolls only
Getting hit by a trap feels unfair because there is no way to avoid it
Traps are either found or not found. It might as well be predetermined.
Players have no choices or tactics to employ. There is nothing to solve, traps are boring

Positives
Uses character’s skills
Allows for role-play and backgrounds to find traps
Exemplifies the rogue’s individuality, skills, and training in the game


Player’s responsibility

Negatives
Players don't have access to in game senses
Slows down the game with random checks everywhere
Doesn’t use character’s stats
Reduces character individualization if everyone can find traps regardless

Positives
Finding traps is not random
Feels more fair if the players can find traps
Players have something to solve
Players have choices to make

I'm not sure I can agree with how you lay this out and would like to suggest a simpler way of looking at it:

It's the player's skills and the character build that work together to determine the outcome of a challenge.

There is no "character responsibility." After all, the character is not real, so it's all on the player to place his or her character in the fictional position to accomplish its goals. When the player's stated goal and approach for the character falls short of certain success (or isn't quite certain failure), then the character's skills are used to resolve the uncertainty. Sometimes you succeed outright, sometimes you fail outright, sometimes the DM calls for a check and you hope that the die is kind and your character build is solid.

I also think there is an inherent assumption in the way you say things that indicates it's expected for players to ask to make skill checks. As others have pointed out upthread, leaving your fate to a 20-sided die is not a particularly good strategy, so why a player would ask to make a check when success without a check is possible is kind of baffling. Players do not ask to make checks at my table. That would just be silly.

But otherwise, I like where you're headed with this and look forward to the next article.

 

[Sunseeker]

One of the biggest problems I have seen is DMs attempting to challenge the wits of the characters. The only wit the characters have is their raw score, their trained skills and a die roll. Beyond that the characters wit is entirely upon the player. So no, don't challenge the characters they are, at least mentally, unchallengable, unless of course you want the challenge to be solved with XYZ rolls until they find whatever you're trying to get them to find.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

4) How is it better role playing to have a character say "i solve it by rolling" than to say, "i cover the arrow slits and then trigger the trap"

It is the disconnect between character knowledge and player knowledge. As a player, I don't know how to use a sword. That doesn't affect how well my PC fights. I do know how to use outdoor first aid, but that doesn't mean my PC can heal others. A player who has a silver tongue might be able to fast-talk someone but their 6 CHA character can't. A player who is excellent at mechanical engineering might be able to disarm a trap, but their character might not be able to, and vice versa.

Puzzles violate the disconnect for the purpose of keeping players entertained, rather than just rolling "Disarm Trap" and moving on.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Puzzles violate the disconnect for the purpose of keeping players entertained, rather than just rolling "Disarm Trap" and moving on.

Well put. Just because talking through a trap is meta-gaming, and meta-gaming is always bad, that doesn't mean the concept it's entirely without merit.

There are times where meta-gaming is justified as the lesser of two evils. One good example is in accelerating new character introductions such that a player need not sit out of the game for too long. In this case, it's just a question of whether your players would rather role-play it out based on their characters, or meta-game with their player knowledge in order to solve a puzzle.