Wild Traps

[the_mighty_agrippa]

Maybe I'm missing it (I don't have my books with me, just the SRD), but how are traps in the wild created, etc?

According to the SRD, a well-camoflaged pit trap costs over 4000 gold, which is insane, considering we are talking about a hole with leaves over it dug by orcs.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

 

[Ilium]

I've often wondered about this myself. When I was generating the PCs for my current campaign (pre-builds because the players hadn't done 3.x before) I gave the ranger Craft(traps) on the assumption that there would be rules like you describe.

It hasn't come up in the campaign yet, but the house rules I'm planning to go with are something like this:
Roll Craft(Trapmaking) with a synergy bonus from Survival if applicable. Take 10 and Take 20 both available.
The Spot DC for any such trap will be the Craft(trapmaking) result - 10 (rolled secretly). It's just not that easy to hide something like this convincingly. The Disarm DC is kind of irrelevant in most such cases, since you can generally just go around the trap. If someone does want to disarm it, the DC would be the same as for Spot.

Cost is negligible, but several hours of hard labor or an appropriate spell will be needed for making the actual pit, of course. Base time to hide it 10 minutes.

Snare traps would work the same way, and I'd say it would take about 10 minutes to set one up normally (assuming all the materials were available in the environment). Plus another 10 minutes to hide it.

Just a suggestion.

 

[Infiniti2000]

The well-camouflaged pit trap is:

Well-Camouflaged Pit Trap
CR 2; mechanical; location trigger; repair reset; DC 20 Reflex save avoids; 10 ft. deep (1d6, fall); Search DC 27; Disable Device DC 20. Market Price: 4,400 gp.

The rules on costs are:

Mechanical Trap Cost
The base cost of a mechanical trap is 1,000 gp. Apply all the modifiers from Table: Cost Modifiers for Mechanical Traps for the various features you’ve added to the trap to get the modified base cost.

The final cost is equal to (modified base cost × Challenge Rating) + extra costs. The minimum cost for a mechanical trap is (CR × 100) gp.

We modified the base cost as:

Repair reset: -200
Search DC 27: +200 * (27-20) = 200*7 = +1400

Modified Base Cost = 1000-200+1400 = 2200
Total cost = 2200 * CR 2 = 4400

Now, whether the formula is too much or not is a separate question.

 

[Ilium]

Right, that's the RAW, but that's just nutty. 4,400 GP to dig a big hole and cover it with a cloth, dirt and some leaves. Man, I'm in the wrong business.

We're clearly in the realm of house rules, of course, but one big limiting factor that the formula doesn't address is the trap's lifetime. A pit trap or even a snare like I described would quickly become obvious and/or stop working. A single rainfall or a good breeze would reveal the pit, while a passing bit of wildlife will set off the snare, or whatever. So I'd say such a trap would only stay viable for a day at most. The traps described in the DMG are, I think, intended to stay viable for a long time in a dungeon setting.

 

[Sejs]

According to the SRD, a well-camoflaged pit trap costs over 4000 gold, which is insane, considering we are talking about a hole with leaves over it dug by orcs.

You do not want to mess with the Orcish Trapdiggers Union. You should just pay 'em the gold, or things could get ugly.



...well, okay, they're orcs. Uglier.

 

[the_mighty_agrippa]

Damn it! I did not think of the unions.

No wonder the orcs always fail when it comes time to go hordin'. They can't get out of the plunder negotiating committee.

I'm going to ad hoc it. Since these are jungle traps, I am going to allow either Spot or Survival checks to detect the traps. There's no reason a seasoned ranger would just walk into a pit trap.

 

[Abe.ebA]

I operate under the assumption that the costs for traps assume that they're being built into a dungeon. 4k is sensible if it's a 50ft pit dug in an already underground tunnel then lined with ashlar to prevent people climbing out and covered with very thin stone plates or disguised cloth/wood. For a pit in the forest I'd probably give it the same DCs but not actually charge any money if they did the work themselves. It'd be a lot of work, though... I've dug 10ft deep pits before and that was enough work that I'd not want to contemplate a 50ft deep one. Not to mention carting the dirt away somewhere out of sight and disguising the entire work area so that it's not obvious someone just dug a great big hole in the ground.

 

[Infiniti2000]

There's no reason a seasoned ranger ...

I prefer 'em with rosemary and garlic, some fava beans, and a nice chianti.