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<blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9677009" data-attributes="member: 7026594">I think this was pretty common, yeah, to multiclass if you were going to have a thief character, so you brought other abilities to the table.&nbsp; No, not always.&nbsp; There was no &quot;Find traps&quot; ability in OD&amp;D or Holmes Basic.&nbsp; It wasn't introduced until the 1978 PH.&nbsp; It's a pretty common position in the OSR to argue that hidden traps tend to result in boring play, with players incentivized to spend a lot of time &quot;pixel-bitching&quot;, exhaustively checking for them, or just resigning themselves to periodic &quot;gotchas&quot; which zap them for random damage.&nbsp; A lot of folks advocate for a combination of A) obvious traps, which are visibly dangerous and encourage players to engage with them using logical problem solving and the dialogue loop, and B) making hidden traps infrequent, and signposting/hinting at them in some way, which makes them less of a gotcha.I found this myself in my three year 5TD &amp; B/X game, where I had a lot of hidden traps and it did slow down play.&nbsp; My players got trained to be really cautious.&nbsp; I've since cut down on them and the games flow better and play faster.&nbsp; That makes perfect sense- you guys found a way to run it, probably due to smart DMs, which didn't necessitate running the terrible odds (a 7th level human Thief has a 50% chance to succeed at either skill, which of course means a 25% chance of passing both in any given instance) of just having to make both percentile rolls.&nbsp; That &quot;risk disarming&quot; bit, though, implies that you guys run it that a failed disarm roll automatically sets off the trap?&nbsp; I know neither edition of AD&amp;D says that happens.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mannahnin, post: 9677009, member: 7026594"] I think this was pretty common, yeah, to multiclass if you were going to have a thief character, so you brought other abilities to the table. No, not always. There was no "Find traps" ability in OD&D or Holmes Basic. It wasn't introduced until the 1978 PH. It's a pretty common position in the OSR to argue that hidden traps tend to result in boring play, with players incentivized to spend a lot of time "pixel-bitching", exhaustively checking for them, or just resigning themselves to periodic "gotchas" which zap them for random damage. A lot of folks advocate for a combination of A) obvious traps, which are visibly dangerous and encourage players to engage with them using logical problem solving and the dialogue loop, and B) making hidden traps infrequent, and signposting/hinting at them in some way, which makes them less of a gotcha. I found this myself in my three year 5TD & B/X game, where I had a lot of hidden traps and it did slow down play. My players got trained to be really cautious. I've since cut down on them and the games flow better and play faster. That makes perfect sense- you guys found a way to run it, probably due to smart DMs, which didn't necessitate running the terrible odds (a 7th level human Thief has a 50% chance to succeed at either skill, which of course means a 25% chance of passing both in any given instance) of just having to make both percentile rolls. That "risk disarming" bit, though, implies that you guys run it that a failed disarm roll automatically sets off the trap? I know neither edition of AD&D says that happens. [/QUOTE]

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