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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 648355" data-attributes="member: 3146">If the traps aren't supposed to kill PCs, what are they supposed to do? Make the PCs say "Gee, this place was trapped by a bunch of incompetents; let's take advantage of their poor tactics, kill them and take their treasure"? This is one of the major problems I have with how a lot of people design traps.As I see it, traps generally have several purposes:1. Kill intruders.  A hail of darts with wyvern poison on them can do this. A hail of darts with greenblood oil might do this. A single dart with greenblood oil on it won't. Neither will a single clvl 1 magic missile. That makes the last two really stupid traps.2. Incapacitate intruders until they can be dealt with. Sepia Snake Sigil does this. A single needle or dart with purple worm venom might do this. A single needle with Shadow Essence won't. (Which makes that a stupid trap to build). The same for Cause Fear or Hold Person in most cases.3. Alert guards to the presence of intruders. A bell or a glyph of warding (blast) set to sonic damage do this nicely. A targetted dispel magic, glitterdust, faerie fire, or invisibility purge triggered by invisible characters is another trap of this type.4. Punish thieves while giving them a chance to repent of their ways. Bestow Curse does this. So does Mark of Justice. (This is a pretty weak kind of trap since Removing Curses is easy in D&D land but I retained it because the Curse of the Mummy's tomb is a classic which deserves representation).5. Keep out certain classes of people. Holy Smite, Unholy Blight, Holy Word, Circle of Death, Undeath to Death, Slay Living, Antipathy, Anti-life shell, all fill this role.6. Alter the battlefield, luring attackers into a disadvantageous situation or creating a defensive position for defenders. A pit trap does this pretty well. A hidden pit trap filled with skeletons or ghouls in front of a low wall manned by rogues (who may sneak attack anyone climbing out of it) is even better for this. As I see it, traps of categories 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are overcome by surviving the damage and/or removing the effects.Traps of category 5 that are not meant to keep people of the PCs' type (good, living, elf, etc) out are non-encounters (unless they're designed by morons who think "I want to keep evil people out, let's put a Dictum spell in this trap.") Otherwise, they're traps of category 1, 2, 3, or 6 (depending upon what they do).Traps of category 3 are about the only ones that aren't overcome by surviving the damage. That's because they're not designed to do anything with damage; they're designed to let the bad guys know there are intruders in the area. If the bad guys are alerted, the PCs haven't overcome the trap.Did the trap do what it was supposed to do? (Which is certainly not nothing--traps cost money to build and undetectable traps which do absolutely nothing are free). If it didn't, the PCs overcame it whether they knowingly set it off, made some brash statements of braggadicio and then knowingly set it off, or blundered into it.</blockquote>

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