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Nehru the Damaja posted:Do traps even have any reason to exist as they do? I can't think of a system that feels less necessary and more harmful to the progress of the game. As implemented, you're telling your players "there's a mechanic that for the most part does not exist and will rarely exist. But if you forget that it actually *does* exist, I'm going to punish you. The only way to avoid this is to bring up the mechanic that functionally does not exist in every room when you go through a dungeon. Occasionally I'll decide if the mechanic exists and give you a *chance* not to get hurt by it." One way (that I usually use) to avoid a lot of the issues here is to just not demand constant checks. If I do use traps, I'll either roll the check to spot it secretly, or just ask the relevant parties to make a check when it actually becomes relevant. I 100% agree that requiring players to actively make checks to search for traps, and punishing them when they don't, is a recipe for disaster in most situations. It's also really hard, because some games (especially D&D) are still very torn between being games about at least somewhat cinematic heroism, fantasy and adventure on one hand, and on being gritty, grindy dungeon-crawlers on the other. Encumbrance and traps can actually be interesting or cool if they're a fundamental part of the game, in a way that they could be for the latter, but encumbrance is almost always dreadful for the former. I think a lot of the issues in D&D come up because it tries a lot to be things it isn't, or at least because people try very hard to make it what it's not.
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Dec 24, 2018 08:31
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The strongest argument for the necessity of having someone detect traps is that AFAIK organized play scenarios and published modules still use them because dungeon design in those spaces is still very traditional, even if you could make a good case that the way traps are used traditionally makes them an unpleasant distraction and only marginally interesting gameplay mechanic that could be handled much better
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Dec 24, 2018 08:43
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I put the question to a DM group on reddit and unsurprisingly they all missed the goddamn point and gave answers about when traps make narrative sense, rather than how to make them not create a bunch of unnecessary drag on the 99% of the game without traps or how to make the payoff worth that drag.
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Dec 24, 2018 14:26
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In terms of removing the drag on the game, I’d suggest that you use passive perception for detecting traps immediately and tell your players you’ll always have them roll active perception at the last second before the trap is triggered. If they succeed, you tell them they’ve spotted the trap, if they fail, “click”. That way players never need to say “I’m checking for traps” and players don’t need to read into a request for a perception check, there’s an immediate consequence.
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Dec 24, 2018 14:42
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I've always wondered why rangers weren't just as good at dealing with traps as rogues. You'd think that a hunter, who may spend a lot of time trapping animals, would have some kind of expertise on them.
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Dec 24, 2018 14:47
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Reveilled posted:In terms of removing the drag on the game, I’d suggest that you use passive perception for detecting traps immediately and tell your players you’ll always have them roll active perception at the last second before the trap is triggered. If they succeed, you tell them they’ve spotted the trap, if they fail, “click”. I want to put this in the reddit thread and just scream "WAS THAT SO loving HARD" But yeah I like this. It also kind of matches how I handle stealth, which is we assume anyone who's declared they're trying to sneak or be quiet is using their best effort to stay hidden. Dice don't come out until there's a chance they might be seen. edit: I guess my only issue here is we'd have to track passive Investigation too, which the Observant feat insists is a thing but who's ever used that? Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 24, 2018 14:48
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I want to put this in the reddit thread and just scream "WAS THAT SO loving HARD" A lot more people than you think, it's one of the things you SHOULD be keeping track of as it's meant to provide a static number you can use for reference Edit: whoops, thought you meant passive perception, what I said is true but not nearly to the same degree Raar_Im_A_Dinosaur fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 24, 2018 16:15
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Nehru the Damaja posted:edit: I guess my only issue here is we'd have to track passive Investigation too, which the Observant feat insists is a thing but who's ever used that? One of the nice things about the DnDBeyond character sheet is that, by default, it pulls out Passive Perception, Investigation, and Insight into a "Senses" block, which is a nice reminder that the other passive skills should get more play. For example: https://ddb.ac/characters/3408615/QNlbYA
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Dec 24, 2018 16:29
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Master Twig posted:I've always wondered why rangers weren't just as good at dealing with traps as rogues. You'd think that a hunter, who may spend a lot of time trapping animals, would have some kind of expertise on them. Excellent point.
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Dec 24, 2018 16:41
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I put the question to a DM group on reddit and unsurprisingly they all missed the goddamn point and gave answers about when traps make narrative sense, rather than how to make them not create a bunch of unnecessary drag on the 99% of the game without traps or how to make the payoff worth that drag. you have got to link the thread
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Dec 24, 2018 16:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:you have got to link the thread It's not really entertaining.
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Dec 24, 2018 17:21
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Reveilled posted:In terms of removing the drag on the game, I’d suggest that you use passive perception for detecting traps immediately and tell your players you’ll always have them roll active perception at the last second before the trap is triggered. If they succeed, you tell them they’ve spotted the trap, if they fail, “click”.
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Dec 24, 2018 18:36
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:What do you mean by using passive perception in this case? Do you roll stealth for the trap or something like that? Passive perception seems weird to me because, in a lot of cases, it's indistinguishable from DM fiat. There's no way for me to unlearn my players' passive perception score to make good faith DC judgements. Rolling stealth makes sense when it's stealthy monsters rolling against them. Official modules have explicitly proscribed DCs for traps. For instance, Dungeon of the Mad Mage effectively has 3 tiers of trap: DC15, DC17, and DC20. I think those largely map to the level range of the particular floor of the dungeon that the trap falls on. So, if you've got the DCs planned out, it's a simple comparison at the time they enter the room. This falls apart a bit if you are making the traps up on-the-fly, but if you are prepping a homebrew in advance, you can largely work within a similar framework. For example: 
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Dec 24, 2018 18:40
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Toshimo posted:Official modules have explicitly proscribed DCs for traps. For instance, Dungeon of the Mad Mage effectively has 3 tiers of trap: DC15, DC17, and DC20. I think those largely map to the level range of the particular floor of the dungeon that the trap falls on. Okay but a DC 15 trap that I know in advance will be seen and not not something I could ever see myself putting in a dungeon. Why would I bother? Making my players think "ahh, a trap, I must be in a dungeon"? I get the point of traps in a game where you gotta explicitly talk about how you search the room, 10 foot pole and all that, but not this. So either I'm making a trap that I know 100% will be spotted or I'm making one that requires a DC 20 roll? Does everyone get to roll? If so, that's still practically guaranteed to be spotted. If not, that's a pretty harsh check depending on how I choose who gets to roll. In general I'm making stuff up or converting it on the fly but I'm definitely choosing to use any given module and using traps as written seems like mostly an exercise in describing traps they can't possibly trigger, at least using those rules as described.
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Dec 24, 2018 18:55
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Okay but a DC 15 trap that I know in advance will be seen and not not something I could ever see myself putting in a dungeon. Why would I bother? Making my players think "ahh, a trap, I must be in a dungeon"? I get the point of traps in a game where you gotta explicitly talk about how you search the room, 10 foot pole and all that, but not this. So either I'm making a trap that I know 100% will be spotted or I'm making one that requires a DC 20 roll? Does everyone get to roll? If so, that's still practically guaranteed to be spotted. If not, that's a pretty harsh check depending on how I choose who gets to roll. You can put stuff in that you know will get spotted. However, the marching order of the party will largely determine if and when they get to see it. You don't just plop people down in a room and go "Traps are here, here, and here". If the fighter is going first, he might eat the trap before the rogue or cleric can see it. If the rogue goes first, then that could be problematic for combat. There aren't perfect answers to every situation, but throwing things at a party to make their marching order matter makes trap-finding have an opportunity cost. That said, we could argue all day whether Passive skills should be a thing, how traps should be found, etc. But I think the better discussion is "how can we do traps better within the framework of the system?".
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Dec 24, 2018 19:00
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I like puzzles more than straight traps. If you fail the puzzle then the trap goes off. If you pass then you’re safe. If you feel like skill rolls are important then it can give clues based on how high you roll.
nelson fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 24, 2018 19:10
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I joined a campaign running Dragon Heist and one PC checked for traps in every 5 foot square and I think that sums up the problem with traps. The best idea I've heard re: traps is the "click" rule, you tell PCs they hear a click as they trigger a trap and then the PCs have a split second to respond. If they noticed that there are holes in one of the walls, they might have time to put their shield up and hide, or some such thing. Other possibilities: -Traps are only obvious things that are hard to avoid, like blades swinging from the ceiling over a narrow path, or a really conspicuous pressure plate but it's hard to not trigger and you can't tell what the trap is. -The PCs say how they're checking for traps and you assume they're doing that for the whole dungeon, only notifying them when there's actually a trap.
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Dec 24, 2018 19:17
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Technically, although it's stupidly squirreled away in a feat, characters only need to indicate that they are moving slowly to be able to passively detect traps, so there's never a reason for repeatedly rolling. Basically, the general version goes:
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Dec 24, 2018 19:35
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Tetracube posted:I joined a campaign running Dragon Heist and one PC checked for traps in every 5 foot square and I think that sums up the problem with traps. I feel this needs either a five second egg timer, or a very loud and sinister stopclock.
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Dec 24, 2018 19:40
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Traps get really confusing when you tack in Barbarian's danger sense. Advantage to avoiding traps you know are there. But if you know they are there then you'd avoid them. Became a dead rule for my regular group.
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Dec 24, 2018 19:44
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For_Great_Justice posted:Traps get really confusing when you tack in Barbarian's danger sense. Advantage to avoiding traps you know are there. But if you know they are there then you'd avoid them. Became a dead rule for my regular group. What? No. Danger Sense posted:You have advantage on Dexterity saving throws against effects that you can see, such as traps and spells. To gain this benefit, you can't be blinded, deafened, or incapacitated. It's advantage to avoid the effects of a trap unless the effects are somehow undetectable. Like you didn't know the pressure plate was a trap, but you sure notice the barrage of arrows it triggered, and get advantage on the ensuing DEX save.
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Dec 24, 2018 20:01
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Anyone seen hags done especially well? I keep seeing people say they're weak and should be plotting story antagonists more than mere monsters but nobody seems to elaborate on it
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Dec 24, 2018 20:17
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Anyone seen hags done especially well? I keep seeing people say they're weak and should be plotting story antagonists more than mere monsters but nobody seems to elaborate on it Once I had a coven of sea hags attack my party, and I filled their spell list with spells that do fun things like polymorph and enlarge/reduce (also lightning bolt so they couldn't get too comfortable). It ended up being one of the most memorable parts of the campaign, although I still feel I didn't really do hags justice because they just showed up and then died. Also I had a oneshot revolving around a hag but I never got to run it. Read the Volo's guide section if you haven't already.
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Dec 24, 2018 20:27
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I feel like I wanna do a short campaign (like up to 5 sessions) about a coven of Night Hags terrorizing a village and along the way give the group the chance to seize, misinform, and strategically destroy a Hags Eye.
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Dec 24, 2018 20:34
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Volo's guide Hag section is great. Tons of alternate and extra abilities. The weird magic is also cool being effectively one shot magic ingredients and items that can do pretty much anything else you want the Hag to have.Nehru the Damaja posted:I feel like I wanna do a short campaign (like up to 5 sessions) about a coven of Night Hags terrorizing a village and along the way give the group the chance to seize, misinform, and strategically destroy a Hags Eye. In pure fun facts. I only recently learned that Night Hags are directly based on the depiction of some original hag folklore. Namely hags reportedly straddled you in your sleep making you uncomfortable and granting nightmares. And you would wake up unable to breathe and paralyzed for a short bit. The state is called sleep paralysis now, but used to be known and is still sometimes referred to as being hagridden MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 24, 2018 20:40
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Anyone seen hags done especially well? I keep seeing people say they're weak and should be plotting story antagonists more than mere monsters but nobody seems to elaborate on it Individual Hags are weak in a straight up fight, but if their coven is together they're collectively a PITA 12th level spellcaster that can spam Hold Person and Lightning Bolt, 3 Counterspell reactions to gently caress your own casters, and on top of that Night Hags are particularly horrible since they can, at will, decide to gently caress off into the Ethereal plane if they feel they're losing the fight, and then haunt your loving dreams for semi-permanent damage until you find a way do deal with them.
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Dec 24, 2018 21:00
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Traps are some serious cargo cult design. Originally they were there because D&D was a pure dungeon crawler game where your goal was to loot as much gold as you can carry and then get the gently caress out of the dungeon. Traps were a pacing and resource management mechanic, because almost everything was a pacing and resource management mechanic. Losing HP to traps meant you'd have to bail on the dungeon sooner, and spending too much time looking for traps meant your torches were going down and you were risking random encounter rolls. But D&D hasn't been that in like, a loving while. The days of gold to XP are long since passed, and with it went most mechanical incentives connected to traps. Traps are now mostly just a petty annoyance, because healing and resting mid-dungeon are far easier, and random encounter rolls much, much more rare. People complain about traps because there actually is no real mechanical reason in the game to have them in their current state - beyond "but D&D always-" and such garbage arguments to tradition. The way to make traps interesting is to fold them into your encounters and otherwise trim them away. Traps aren't just vaguely there, traps are a part of ambushes and fights. Since the original conflict of traps is gone, you kinda have to make your own; rather then just putting random trip wires here and there, put the trap right alongside the kobolds sniping you with arrows and trying to lure you into them. You have to create your own time limits and ongoing stressful situations to apply to the party to make traps actually matter. A lot of these arguments apply to the rogue at large, really. Locked doors used to be how you gated away loot, and loving with locked doors again meant the clock kept ticking. But when the clock doesn't matter anymore, locked doors only really exist for the rogue to justify their own existence. Stealth has frankly always been hosed in tabletop games because it's an individual skill rather then a party-wide one, which means trying to sneak around turns it into a single player narrative, and besides which, D&D has pretty much never given good advice on how to do sneaking missions, so it rapidly turns into Super Disadvantage, where you're rolling over and over and over to accomplish your singular goal (in the guise of multiple steps), and just one bad roll means you failed. Now, rogues have almost never been a great class in D&D (outside of 4e), and modern fiction has absolutely moved away from rogues as getting one good stab in then running away, so is it really any wonder why people turn to trying to make them into a "DPS" class instead of a "skills" class?
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Dec 24, 2018 21:08
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Conspiratiorist posted:What? No. Yeah that is very clear. Thinking about it it may have come to DM of where it applies despite it being clear. It may have been an issue of not wanting dex advantage 90% of the time for traps. Party did the overly thorough checking of traps. Or I'm wrong an a dumb idiot. More likely that.
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Dec 24, 2018 22:15
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For_Great_Justice posted:Yeah that is very clear. Thinking about it it may have come to DM of where it applies despite it being clear. It may have been an issue of not wanting dex advantage 90% of the time for traps. Party did the overly thorough checking of traps. If a barb just straight got advantage on DEX saves vs traps with no restrictions, that would still be ok and not overpowered.
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Dec 24, 2018 22:24
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Yeah Barbs have a bad time as it is, don't also take their toys away.
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Dec 24, 2018 23:51
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I want them to have more toys, I played one for I want to say around five years. "I Rage" was pretty much in almost every session, understandably, an I think my combat thing was shield because I was the defender. More toys for Barbarian please.
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Dec 25, 2018 00:28
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Yeah, I feel like there's a pretty universal agreement among DMs though to the effect of "gently caress it, you get a Haversack or a Bag of Holding. I don't want to have to track this poo poo." And for some reason, this doesn't hurt Muscles Malone's feelings the way removing traps makes your Resident Thieves Tools Expert feel unwanted. I think, classically speaking, this can be traced back to encumbrance being dumb as hell. Nobody sets out to build a hero whose cool gimmick is 'I can carry a lot of stuff', and worrying if your dude in heavy armor can carry it, his weapon, and some food without keeling over is lame.
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Dec 25, 2018 01:35
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Carrying a backpack with dungeoneering tools, rope, tents, ladders, etc. makes complete logical sense for adventurers, because they have no idea what they'll run into, but it also makes terrible thematic sense, because Hercules isn't going to fight while carrying a giant camping pack on his back no matter how strong he is. And nobody imagines their character with weapons and armor and spell flourishes, with 100lb of bulky gear towering over him all day every day. If encumbrance is supposed to make any kind of sense except as a resource to manage, any sane characters wouldn't leave home without wagons and wheelbarrows to carry their expedition gear, even if they were strong as hell.
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Dec 25, 2018 02:24
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Infinite Karma posted:Carrying a backpack with dungeoneering tools, rope, tents, ladders, etc. makes complete logical sense for adventurers, because they have no idea what they'll run into, but it also makes terrible thematic sense, because Hercules isn't going to fight while carrying a giant camping pack on his back no matter how strong he is. And nobody imagines their character with weapons and armor and spell flourishes, with 100lb of bulky gear towering over him all day every day. This Hercules?  or the OG always-naked one?
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Dec 25, 2018 02:28
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Infinite Karma posted:Carrying a backpack with dungeoneering tools, rope, tents, ladders, etc. makes complete logical sense for adventurers, because they have no idea what they'll run into, but it also makes terrible thematic sense, because Hercules isn't going to fight while carrying a giant camping pack on his back no matter how strong he is. And nobody imagines their character with weapons and armor and spell flourishes, with 100lb of bulky gear towering over him all day every day. Going to write an adventure called Bothies & Barrows where the PCs use their backpacks to LARP as hikers in the Scottish Highlands.
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Dec 25, 2018 02:38
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Infinite Karma posted:Carrying a backpack with dungeoneering tools, rope, tents, ladders, etc. makes complete logical sense for adventurers, because they have no idea what they'll run into, but it also makes terrible thematic sense, because Hercules isn't going to fight while carrying a giant camping pack on his back no matter how strong he is. And nobody imagines their character with weapons and armor and spell flourishes, with 100lb of bulky gear towering over him all day every day. I mean, it's not all that far off what a modern soldier carries, weight wise. A modern infantryman is often hauling 70-100lbs of poo poo into a fight.
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Dec 25, 2018 03:51
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Encumbrance makes a lot of sense when you're playing a dungeon crawler where your main goal is "loot as much as possible" and loot has, you know, weight to it, and bags of holding are less common. Like so much else in D&D, it now exists as a vestigial organ.
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Dec 25, 2018 04:24
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I like traps that are more like puzzles or tests, and generally optional but offer a reward if you figure them out. For example run a “trap” where it’s obvious it’s a trap, and the players can just ignore it. But there’s a magic item of obvious value in it. Simply walking in there and grabbing the object causes a magic door to close, trapping the players in there with angry ghosts untill they put the object back. They have to be more inventive than “run up and grab it” to get the item. Note I simplified this a bunch but that’s the gist.
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Dec 25, 2018 04:43
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Numlock posted:I like traps that are more like puzzles or tests, and generally optional but offer a reward if you figure them out. This is the most famous example of the kind of trap you’re talking about and I agree it is great. https://youtu.be/Pr-8AP0To4k
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Dec 25, 2018 05:05
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"To your left, 'Room full of bees'. To your right, 'Room full of gold'. Choose wisely." Have both signs tell the truth. You will get away with at LEAST once, having both doors lead to the same room.
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Dec 25, 2018 05:17
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