Traps have been a big part of D&D since its inception. So why do the rules for searching for them suck so much?
>>46141643
They really fucking do!
Baseline 10% chance of finding one... c'mon - seriously?
Bullshit man.
Whenever I DM, I'm always allowing better odds - up to 50%. Mkes for more interesting smoother, and less deadly gameplaying.
Because the majority of DnD players, having never played anything else (much as a child would scream for having to get Chinese food instead of McDonalds for the first time) tend to shriek whenever something changes.
The best solution with the rules as they are is to kill 'actively searching for traps' entirely. Passive perception like it is in 4e and 5e, that's it. You either see it coming or you don't.
>>46141643
Originally it was supposed to be a pixel hunt with players declaring for very specific actions (Check the hinges, the frame, forgot the doorhandle, DEAD).
Then we got Search checks which killed off this bullshit but replaced it with the five-foot square procedure.
>>46142482
Exactly. And from that came "take-10" and "take-20" which didn't exactly solve anything cuz for the most part unless DM goes out of his way to make time matter - PCs have all the time in world to take 20 on each fucking square in a dungeon. Making traps below 25 DC automatically found of player obuse this rule OR impossible to find if they don't.
And passive perception seemed like such a good idea ... until you try to manualy search for traps and half the time you are better off just relying on passive!
Maybe instead of a d20 roll for search it's better to take your passive perception and add a d6 roll. Or actually a +3/-3 dice of some sort just to keep things interesting and uncertain.
>>46142249
Yeah that's just fucking annoying cuz I like D&D and I hate how we get the same broken perception system and the same old spells for example.
I think I heard there a system for running a game where all PCs are thieves/rogues. Maybe it has a better system for these kind of things.
>>46143167
Passive perception should only work with certain traps that can be plainly seen, like a tripwire or raised pressure plate. I run passive perception as being able to notice something just by standing in one place, so for example someone with 28 passive perception would see nothing where a person who rolled a perception of 11 would find the knife hidden under the blankets of the bed. So passive wouldn't work on things like leveled pressure plates or behind-the-door-crossbow traps.
>>46141643
>So why
Because traps aren't a hazard to PCs when authors put them in books where they can be easily found with a quick search, they're a hazard to PCs when GMs put them in a game where they CAN'T be found with a quick search. GMs - not rules writers - also decide what a trap's effect will have on your party, so it doesn't matter if you think the rules "suck." They don't affect you. All that matters is how your GM thinks his traps will affect you, and you just have to deal with it.
Not crying about it on 4chan is optional, but recommended.
Isn't the idea that you're supposed to have Spot and Search together? Spot passively alerts you that you need to Search and then you find the trap.
>>46143167
I've generally decided to solve it by skipping small traps altogether.
I put terrain hazards like pits in combats, some as flavour description (i.e. so obvious you'd have to deliberately jump down it) and the traps that are encounters themselves are usually no-save to trigger but then have very slow effects and the whole party are doing things to stop them (cut all the mechanisms, trim weight to balance a tipping platform, etc.)
They make perfect sense in AD&D and version before 3.0
Right now it's just vestigal rules
>>46141643
Traps are shit all around. Nobody likes to get killed out of the blue because he failed a single roll, so you either end up building ridiculously overthought contraptions of the "You vill not ezcape, Mizter Bond!" variety with absurd trigger mechanisms that are actually terribly inefficient at killing and let your PCs react (which can be an interesting and tense puzzle but just doesn't work if you're going for believability), or you end up training a bunch of paranoid broken shells of a man who prod every floor tile with a stick and buy a bunch of goats in the village just to herd them through the dungeon.
>>46145540
Yeah, I pretty much do this as well. Even in OSR games.
It just never seems to add anything.
I think maybe I've telegraphed traps well in advance.
>legend has it that the tomb entrance is boobytrapped
>you see a dessicated corpse laying in the corridor, filled with arrows
But yeah, overall I just don't enjoy the slow "guess what the DM is thinking" style of exploration.
I think LotFP does the whole trap thing fairly well--it just has a search skill, and a tinker skill that covers lockpicking and any other mechanical fiddling you might get into.
>>46141643
I don't really like dnd traps at all.
>spot the trap
>deal with it, nothing happens, move on
>don't spot the trap
>something unfortunate happens
>best case, you lose insignificant resources to RNG
>worst case, RNG instakills you with no player input
And they usually don't add much to the game's lore or themes either. Most of the time they're just filler used to erode player resources while breaking a pattern of violence and theft.
I use traps for three main purposes:
>my players are expecting traps and I can use "you find the X is trapped" as a way of conveying that they are in a potentially dangerous situation
>the players are reacting emotionally instead of rationally and charge recklessly into a situation, and I either want to be a dick or want them to stop and think before proceeding
>for some reason I need the rogue to be present and/or leading the way before the party proceeds
Having traps as a routine aspect of a dungeon isn't terribly interesting, to me or the players. Do people actually still do that?
>>46141643
I'm so fucking sick and tired of trap threads, why don't you faggots get your own containment board already?
Oh, wrong traps.
>>46152067
I lol'd a little.
>>46143341
Perception isn't just sight.
>>46143167
>unless DM goes out of his way to make time matter
As a general point, if the DM is giving the players as much time as they need to accomplish their objective, he's a shit DM. The players can almost always handle problems if they're given the luxury of hitting whatever their first obstacle is with all of their temporary resources, resting to restore them, and clearing the next room. If it takes a month to do a dungeon, so be it.
ALWAYS impose limitations on time. The employer wants the McGuffin before he leaves for the next city in two weeks. The goblins notice that someone's been chopping up patrols and are looking actively for the culprits. The Lich's lair slowly drains the life out of the living; a process that can only be halted by killing the undead boss or by getting at least 50 miles away from the lair.
Now I agree that where traps are concerned it's annoying and kills a lot of the game's interest by just having a dull "I take 20 to look for the traps", but you should always be keeping track of how long things take and what's likely to happen in that time. Always.
>>46152645
>The players can almost always handle problems if they're given the luxury of hitting whatever their first obstacle is with all of their temporary resources, resting to restore them, and clearing the next room. If it takes a month to do a dungeon, so be it.
While this is true, it's not exactly the point of why Take 20 is shit.
Taking 20 is a shit rule because if the task is, say, unlocking a door, the door has a DC (since locks by definition have a DC), but taking 20 allows you to bypass it. Not necessarily spending any resources on it, but still just having the party basically sit in front of that door for however long it takes, whether it be an hour or a day.
And I agree, obviously, the DM should theoretically always be imposing a time limit, but that isn't always the case. What happens if there isn't a McGuffin and the dungeon inhabitants haven't been alerted yet? What happens if there's no collapsing roof or prisoner in imminent danger? How do you tell a party "You can't take 20 on this, because even though YOU don't know of an imposing, imminent danger, you can't act like it".
>>46152804
>Taking 20 is a shit rule because if the task is, say, unlocking a door, the door has a DC (since locks by definition have a DC), but taking 20 allows you to bypass it.
But it won't allow you to bypass it any more than whomever is doing the picklock check trying again and again until he succeeds at it. Unless you want to go (and have some kind of explanation for it) tell the rogue he can't try again, taking 20 saves out of character time.
>ot necessarily spending any resources on it, but still just having the party basically sit in front of that door for however long it takes, whether it be an hour or a day.
And again, characters shouldn't have that luxury.
>And I agree, obviously, the DM should theoretically always be imposing a time limit, but that isn't always the case
Why isn't it the case? At the very least, I assume whoemver is employing them wants whatever task they hired the adventurers done finished by some sort of date.
>What happens if there isn't a McGuffin and the dungeon inhabitants haven't been alerted yet?
Well, let's see. Going by the old 3.5 rules, it takes 2 minutes to take 20 to search a 5' by 5' space. If you want to check out a 30 foot corridor for traps taking 20 all the way, that's 6 segments, assuming it's 5 feet wide, for a total of 12 minutes. Unless the place is virtually deserted, the odds are pretty low that nobody is going to wander by in 12 minutes, just on whatever ordinary business is going on in the area.
>How do you tell a party "You can't take 20 on this, because even though YOU don't know of an imposing, imminent danger, you can't act like it".
I would never presume to tell the party any such thing. I would just arrange circumstances so that if they do take 20, that time will cost them. Their short term buff spells will wear off, they'll run the risk of someone spotting them, they'll take longer.
>>46152581
Those niggers aint gonna smell the knife, not going hear the knife, not gonna feel the knife and tehy aint gonna taste the knife.
>>46152067
Isn't that what >>>/cm/ is?
>>46141643
My favorite example are the Pathfinder Beartraps. DC 20 to find, deal a large amount of damage, yet are quite low CR. Best part- it's not a single beartrap. It's like ten of them. At DC 20 to spot.
>>46153249
>disable device dc20
It's SO HARD to stick a stiff branch into it.
>>46152909
Well, they might smell the oil it was cared for with. Shit can sometimes be smelled meters away, even if there isn't much.
Granted, your point still stands (especially since people rarely oil a blade every night unless they used it), but there can be exceptions.
>>46146295
But a trap doesn't have to kill.
Take the bear trap OP posted. It will hurt one member of the person, probably produce a fair amount of noise, and slows down one member of the party. Which can be used, if you want. Your party got the loot, but is now hunted by a horde of whatever lives down there as they run out... what do they do with the (temporary) cripple? Carry him? Leave him?
A tripwire might do nothing more than alert enemies you might have surprised otherwise.
Or if you're playing something high-magic, you can throw debuffs. Their blades dull, they become slower or more easy to spot.
I've never found a method of trap detection I really like.
>Oldschool poking things with sticks, checking hinges, throwing rocks at walls etc.
Fun for a while if you have people into that but it's mentally exhausting and it's really easy to fuck up. Also slows down the game to a crawl and any players who aren't sexually aroused by trapfinding will zone out.
>Just roll a skill and assume your PC is doing that shit for you.
This is faster but it also means that sometimes you're just going to get fucked by RNG. A trap is going to hit you and there's nothing that you, the player, could have done to stop it. Also taking 10 or 20 can make things really silly.
>Passive perception
Now you're just playing Darkest Dungeon.
>>46153616
>>Oldschool poking things with sticks, checking hinges, throwing rocks at walls etc.
>Fun for a while if you have people into that but it's mentally exhausting and it's really easy to fuck up. Also slows down the game to a crawl and any players who aren't sexually aroused by trapfinding will zone out.
>>Just roll a skill and assume your PC is doing that shit for you.
>This is faster but it also means that sometimes you're just going to get fucked by RNG. A trap is going to hit you and there's nothing that you, the player, could have done to stop it. Also taking 10 or 20 can make things really silly.
Consider that AD&D thief skills were supposed to be saving throws if you couldn't figure out where a trap was supposed to be.
>>46153616
Maybe combine it? Assuming that by the way of room setup or passive perception or rumor or whatever else they know the rough area a trap is supposed to be. Give your players a couple minutes (or maybe even less) to spitball, to think about where traps could be, how they could find or outright evade it, and then roll, the check being influenced by how good/precise/intersting/amusing their ideas were.
It would still be dependent on chance, but that's why you're playing with dice at all, right?
