Trap Searching and Making Players Paranoid

[JonSetanta]

How should a DM handle trap threats in a classic dungeon?

I don't mean something like a green demon face that makes your hand vanish if you stick it in the mouth, but something more classic such as a swinging floor pitfall or hidden arrow hole.
Or moving walls.

Something that makes the players say "I search for traps" every 10 feet, which reminds me of HeroQuest and the Zargon role having to point to an area on the board and say "That spot looks suspicious", which is ridiculous.
At that point why bother even putting in traps if they aren't hidden (unless it's a trick)

Namely, I need a way to use traps wisely without leading to paranoia and timewasting.

[hogarth]

The first step is to decide why you want to have traps like "hidden arrow holes" in the first place. As you note, they're mostly just time-wasters.

[Cyberzombie]

Use traps very sparingly. The more you use them, the more paranoid your PCs will become and the greater chance you have of them going into "take 20" search mode, which brings your game to a crawl. I would advise a maximum of 1 trap per 3 dungeons.

Just make sure to make your traps memorable. That means cutting out the bullshit spear traps and having traps the party actually cares about, like dispelling traps at critical junctures, like lava pits the party likely tries to fly over. Also teleport or pit traps that separate the party work excellent as well.

Nothing makes your PCs more nervous than having one character dropped down an auto-sealing pit into a room full of ghouls or a black pudding. For added fun, have your trap require two presses of a pressure plate to trigger, so it gets the people towards the middle of the party, instead of the obviously heavily armored party leaders.

[Grek]

I disagree with Cyberzombie's suggestion of using a very small number of traps. If you and your players like traps, have lots of traps. If they don't like traps, don't use traps. You can use as many as fits your game if you use them correctly.

1. Trapsmith, not traps. The players aren't fighting the traps. They are fighting the person that set them. Just as you don't think of the breathe weapon as an encounter that you could face without also facing the rest of the Dragon, you don't treat individual traps as an encounter all on their own. Every trap should be paired with monsters, other traps or an environmental hazard.

2. Mix it up. The Search DC and the Disable Device DC don't have to match. Have some traps be subtle and some be blatant. Use the custom trap rules to make new traps if you have to. If the players roll their eyes at seeing yet another pit trap, make the next trap be a treasure chest full of tiny monstrous scorpions.

3. Combine Traps. Have a hallway full of giant swinging axe-pendulums requiring that you dodge between the axes and then make the "safe" squares have cunningly disguised pit traps. Have a room that fills with water, but has a lever that opens the drain and sets off an alarm to the guards if you pull it.

4. Mix it up again. If you always use "Obvious Trap, Subtle Trap" as your trapping schema, the players will catch on and look for the catch in every trap. Sometimes the trap should just be straightforward, like having a chute that drops a thoqqua and a sack of brown mold into the room. Sometimes there should just be a subtle trap, like a door that locks behind you.

5. Let players declare marching orders. Instead of having them make rolls, ask whether they want to take 10 or take 20 and adjust their movement rates accordingly. If they always want to take 20, give them some sort of timed objective or have monsters patrolling.

[Voss]

How should a DM handle trap threats in a classic dungeon?
...
Namely, I need a way to use traps wisely without leading to paranoia and timewasting.

Classic dungeon traps, though, are the epitome of paranoid bullshit and timewasting.

The secret trap-door in the floor at S (detect as secret door) leads via a staircase down into cellar area 21. A magic mouth spell is placed so as to be triggered by anyone coming within 5'of the trapdoor; a voice, coming from the ceiling above, will say "Welcome, fools — welcome to your deaths!" followed by a prolonged burst of insane and fiendish laughter. (DM's option: have each party member save vs. Spell, failure affecting them as would a fear spell. Subsequently each character failing the original save has a 40% chance of being too frightened to re-enter the room.)

Because fuck you. The optional part is nice, I guess, but this is nothing but a burden on everybody. The affected players with either be offended at the apparent DM fiat (and rightly so, because seriously magic mouth doesn't do that), or it mashes the 'real roleplayer' button and nothing gets done for the next 10 minutes because dramatic soliloquies. And if that entrance is necessary for the adventure to progress at all, then fuck.

Even worse (though less so than tomb of horrors 'Fuck you, you're dead' traps) are the random damage for no apparent reason in a random piece of hallway. Congrats, you've made the next 3 hours tedious beyond reason for the cost of a spell, potion or wand charge.

As part of encounters, they can be forced to be interesting. As random dickery, they should just be avoided forever.

[JonSetanta]

I was thinking once per session, with monsters included, as part of an encounter rather than the encounter itself.

The kind of obvious trap that doesn't require Zargon pointing.

[TiaC]

Yeah, traps as part of an encounter works better. When the vampire sets off a poison gas trap at the beginning of combat that actually makes sense.

[Seerow]

Dungeonscape actually has some good advice regarding when and where to use traps. Might be worth taking a look at.

[Voss]

Dungeonscape actually has some good advice regarding when and where to use traps. Might be worth taking a look at.

Isn't that the book with the acid sharks?

[Cyberzombie]

Yeah, traps as part of an encounter works better. When the vampire sets off a poison gas trap at the beginning of combat that actually makes sense.

I've never really liked traps as part of encounters, mostly because it makes a rogue trapfinding ability useless, since you don't have time to search. Then it basically just becomes a crapshoot if you step on the trapped area or not, because there's no way you'd know if there was a trapped area or not. Even if you thought enough to search, you just don't have time to do it.

At least with a standalone trap, you could remember to search for traps. With the encounter trap, there's really no way to avoid it.

[Username17]

I usually don't use traps. When I do use traps, I generally put them into an area with a time trial of some sort.

Example 1: In an Oriental Adventures game I was running, the heroes had discovered that a team of evil sorcerers had broken into the Tomb of Iuchiban and were well ahead of them (and throwing villagers ahead of them to find traps). The players were racing down to the bottom through a maze that was filled with traps. It was paranoia inducing, and also got a good haunted house vibe going.

Example 2: In a fantasy Earth game, the players had joined a group of Bugbears who were sieging a temple that had belonged to the Bugbears but had recently been taken over by an army of Troglodytes backup up by zombies and fiends. The battle in the temple had hundreds of people in it (we used a Zombies boardgame and one of the players' warhammer armies), and there were also traps in some parts of the complex. The Troglodytes had no special resistance to setting off the traps, they just moved around the trap squares, and sometimes players would knock them back and then they'd get rocks dropped on them or something. Also the players would sometimes get shot by an arrow or something if they went to spaces that none of the Troglodytes had run through. It got people into a more tactical mood, trying to guess why the Troglodytes were attacking in the patterns they were attacking in. Did they not have any more soldiers for that advance? Or was that flank guarded by snares?

Traps in a non-time sensitive exploration are just a waste of table time.

-Username17

[Cyberzombie]

I usually don't use traps. When I do use traps, I generally put them into an area with a time trial of some sort.

What's a good way to handle time trials in a way that will make PCs care? While it's not particularly hard to prevent them from resting with a time limit,
I've always had trouble imparting the philosophy that every minute counts.

Do you just straight up tell them they've got 50 round to solve the dungeon or what?

[Username17]

The standard way to set up a time trial is to do a race for an artifact. Like Raiders of the Lost Arc or whatever. The thing you have to do is to level with the players that you do in fact have an event planned in case the players are earlier, later, or roughly the same time as the villains. Too often MCs fall into the JRPG trap, where no matter how fast or slow you go through the quest, you still get to the final ritual just as it's being completed. And that just turns what should be a sense of urgency into a sense that you have plenty of time to breed riding chickens or whatever.

You even see this sort of bad advice being given out in official publications. In the DMG2 they advocate a "race" plot where the player characters lose the race no matter what they do. And that's crap. If the players figure out what you're doing or even suspect it, all the drama of everything turns to ashes.

Basically you need two things:

• A time sensitive goal.
• A credible promise from the MC to have the amount of time taken actually change the outcomes.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Concerning a race against time: Rolling dice is the TTRPG equivalent of the countdown clock on the screen. I find that nothing motivates players better than asking "that was three rounds of combat, right?" *roll dice* "Okay, what do you do now?"

When I want to have traps and not get everything bogged down in taking 20 to search everything, I stuff the dungeon with monsters who are expecting the party to do exactly that and will take advantage of it. A favorite of mine for low-level adventures is kobolds with a ton of small-size corridors which the usually medium-size party can only move around by crawling, so while they sit in a tunnel for five minutes solid poking to see if there's anymore dart traps, the kobolds loop around behind them and shoot at whoever's in back while they don't have DEX bonus to AC. If you use something beefier than kobolds, the shelf-life of this one goes up by a little bit.

[shadzar]

do you want traps or signs of traps? are you wanting to kil the character as the area is supposed to be protected by invaders with the traps?

a thing to always remember about traps is they often dont reset, unless someone resets them. if you have monsters wandering around, then they will likely set off some or many of the traps.

to make signs of traps, that is often more easily done in untrodden areas. statues with an open mouth. dragons often were used with mass dart fire as if dragon breath, or it could easily be fire itself they are breathing.

always be able to explain the rube goldberg running the trap.

some of the best signs of traps are glints of light or dust in the right places, aside from skeletal remains of course. but then those skeletal remain might be the trap rather than something that killed then.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Put the players in quicksand, but don't tell them they feel muck around their feet or anything, rather, vary one word in the description of a pile of gems. Remilia learned this one from Gygax and Monard back when she was a wee lass of 379.

[hogarth]

I can think of three possible situations where I might use a trap in D&D:
(1) intruder alarms in a high-security location
(2) booby traps as part of an ambush if the PCs were getting ambushed by someone
(3) a silly puzzle dungeon like the Tomb of Horrors, where the whole point is to figure out how to bypass all the traps

Note that none of those are the "wandering damage" type of trap mentioned in the original post, which is pointless and stupid.

[deaddmwalking]

I once ran a tomb of a pirate (not unlike Goonies) where the PCs knew that traps were absolutely filling the complex to the brim. The tomb would flood when the tide came in, so there was a time limit. Because they knew there were traps EVERYWHERE without even bothering to look for them, I think it made the place pretty fun.

The focus on these traps were often the mechanism and how to defeat the trap if triggered (like the crushing room in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom).

This complex was also very small. It involved a cave, two possible corridors, and it met up at the treasure room (guarded by the undead pirate).

The larger a complex and the more spread out the traps, the more frustrating frequent searching becomes.

Since traps SHOULD be fun, try to focus on traps that can be defeated AFTER they're triggered.

If a trap is MORE FUN if the players never even realize it was there, it's a bad trap.

Traps that don't exist are also good. Having a room with black and white tile floors that does NOTHING is a good way to slow down adventurers. The fact that they'll invent crazy dangers for the room is often sufficient for the defenders - it gives them more time to prepare.

[hogarth]

Traps that don't exist are also good FOR GMs WHO WANT TO WAVE AROUND THEIR MASSIVE GM PENISES.

Edited for clarity.

[Josh_Kablack]

There is one other potentially useful aspect of traps which has not been discussed yet:

Since traps are non-intelligent, repeating hazards, they can easily be used to as something the PCs turn from a threat in the first encounter into an ally in a subsequent encounter. If the PCs can figger out what sets off a given trap and how to avoid setting it off themselves, they can then lure future enemies into setting off those triggers. Whether this is by avoiding given squares on the map, or tricking pressure plates via things like Reduce Person, Spider Climb and Jump, or bypassing Blast Glyplhs by having a PC of the trap-acceptable alignment serve as the lure.


Doing this sort of thing requires that such traps be dangerous, but non-fatal, that traps follow logic the players can understand and that the traps not need any sort of resetting that the PCs are incapable of. And despite all that, it's only a potential tool for the PCs, you should never set up encounters where PCs need to figure this sort of thing out to win -- as that will inevitably be the week where the Rogue player who loves trap-solving can't make the game.

[Seerow]

Dungeonscape actually has some good advice regarding when and where to use traps. Might be worth taking a look at.

Isn't that the book with the acid sharks?

It is. Though it is a template that can be used on any aquatic creature. (Who doesn't want Acid Krakens?). Either way, not relevant to the discussion of traps (unless your trap is a pit trap that opens up into a pit filled with acid with a acid breathing shark in it....)


Some of the relevant advice:
-Divided traps up into several different roles. Killing, Softening, Combat Advantage, Discouraging Pursuit, Testing, Ejecting, Altering the Dungeonscape
--Killing Traps are the "Fuck you, die if you are not tall enough to ride" traps. These are recommended to be used at the start of a dungeon, rather than placed randomly. The idea of these is to kill weaker adventurers without wasting any minions' lives

--Softening traps are the typical resource draining traps. They do a few points of damage, deal some ability damage, etc. These are never intended to be lethal. These are recommended to be placed in relatively out of the way places, so they don't interfere with day-to-day operations, but can still annoy intruders.

--Combat Advantage traps are your booby traps that do stuff like stun for a few rounds, grapple, trip, blind, etc. These are going to be placed near monsters that can take advantage of when the trap is triggered, or with monsters capable of triggering the trap on adventurers they're fighting.

--Discouraging Pursuit is the category of traps used when you're at low enough level just teleporting away isn't an option. The evil vizier runs away through his secret passage, activating the traps behind him as he goes. These will slow down anyone attempting to follow, ideally buying him enough time to escape.

--Traps for testing intruders are shit straight out of those annoying as shit puzzle dungeons. The Door that comes to life and asks you a riddle to allow you to pass, and if you fail it blows up in your face. The book recommends these as placement for getting into something like the inner sanctum, a private temple, the hiding place of the ancient artifact, etc.

--Ejecting traps are exactly what they sound like. Intruders come in, trap launches them out. This could be a catapult trap that launches everyone standing in it, a teleport trap that teleports whoever's caught in it away, plane shift, etc. Anything that makes the intruders not there anymore.

--Dungeon Altering traps are the ones that change the terrain. The basic version is door slamming shut/locking or portcullis coming down, Zelda style. Other things can include modifying terrain, creating walls, making walls invisible... to some degree a pit trap probably also counts as this.


Dungeonscape is also the book that introduced Encounter traps, the traps that basically take over a whole room and keep attacking everything for 5-15 rounds until the group manages to shut it down (either by hacking away at it piece by piece, or by shutting down a central control spot, varying by trap).

[Voss]

It seemed relevant, actually, since between the acid sharks and the factotum, I got a good feel of the quality of the book.

And most of that 'advice' is yet another rewrite of the same tripe that was published and republished semi-annually in Dragon for about 30 years.

[Cyberzombie]

The standard way to set up a time trial is to do a race for an artifact. Like Raiders of the Lost Arc or whatever. The thing you have to do is to level with the players that you do in fact have an event planned in case the players are earlier, later, or roughly the same time as the villains. Too often MCs fall into the JRPG trap, where no matter how fast or slow you go through the quest, you still get to the final ritual just as it's being completed. And that just turns what should be a sense of urgency into a sense that you have plenty of time to breed riding chickens or whatever.

This is because modules do this almost all the time, and most PCs are mentally conditioned to believe the plot operates at the speed they do. So that they're either just on time or too late, depending on what the story dictates.

What techniques do you use to get the PCs out of that mindset? Because I've always found it to be a problem.

Also how do you have a race through a trap filled place? Wouldn't all the traps be disarmed or set off if one side already came through ahead of the PCs? And what if the PCs just decide to ambush the enemy when they leave? Because I imagine that's what most groups would decide as opposed to doing a speed run through a lot of traps.

I'm curious as to how your scenario works: Does team evil enter through a different way? How do the PCs know that team evil is already in there? And how do they know there's only minutes left on the clock?

[Voss]

The best way is to shake them out of the mindset completely. The first time they start fucking about, have the enemies get the stuff and go back to <whatever town/castle/place>, take over and entrench themselves. When the PCs finally get their act together they arrive at a tomb/dungeon/cave that is largely already cleared out except for the dead. Unless the other group wants to leave them gifts, which could include reanimating the corpses of the fallen (without orders to pretend to be dead until someone shows up, then eat them).

This can then either turn into a siege or the region turns on the PCs (with bounty hunters from the successful evil guys) or whatever. The are a lot of things you can do, depending on the overarching plot. It can even be fairly innocuous, with a different group of heroes being feted by the local town for solving the problem, and Team PC gets a reputation for not being reliable. Get them in the ego.

[Fuchs]

Assume they are taking 10 on spotting traps, mention how they defeated stupid traps in passing, while describing the scenery, and that should help making them not paranoid. Like telling them "I assume you're always on the lookout for traps, and you are being careful, you can simply say what you do and I'll assume you'll also look for traps" and so on.