Talk:Traps and Hazards

• traps are treated as one or more monsters in an encounter, and should be written up as pseudo-monsters (with special abilities for how their damage is applied, etc.)

all traps could be in like, 8 writeups, and scaled to any level by the MMM

• traps don't need to rely on normal triggers to attack (e.g. tripwires and pressure plates). Instead, they are often triggered via one of the defined 'senses' (and therefore can be defeated by anything that defeats that sense).

IE, most traps have a 'sense of touch' that triggers them...which begs the question, do we need to define a sense of touch?

This is tremorsense. A 'lesser' version of tremorsense would have a miss chance (which, given the new rules, isn't an extra die roll, so I don't HATE it...). Do we actually need this?

I gave it a good think, and for traps, i'm totally cool with using tremorsense. Do we want to define a sense of touch for general purposes? I'm kinda thinking not, but it might be useful for the utter rules lawyers out there :)

nah, I don't see much value add for this...

• in a world of magic, traps can behave more like golems than simple mechanical constructs, with some traps even exhibiting a modicum of intelligence.

• traps can be attacked via Disable Device or Sunder checks versus their Disable/Sunder DC.

• traps take no damage from normal attacks, including spells.

would a siege damage spell work?  i'd think it should....

yeah, sure. Example?

off the top of my head, there's a True Dweomer that can do some siege damage: Hex_of_Fissuring_(True_Dweomer)

it does, at max, 3 points. I'm cool with it.

• a successful Disable Device check inflicts 1d6 points of Siege damage (durability damage) to the trap, plus an additional 1d6 per 5 full points by which the Disable Device check exceeded the DC.

• some abilities, items, or feats could increase this, usually by a flat adder (e.g. a flat +1 regardless of # of dice rolled, scaling up to as high as +3 per die rolled at the VERY high epic levels)

the magic crowbar! :)

• this is likely self-balancing -- a party that has lots of people who can disable traps wouldn't invest as heavily in these things, while a party that only has one character who can deal with traps would likely invest pretty heavily here.

• a successful Sunder check only deals 1 point of siege damage on a normal success, +1 per 5 above the DC, so it is quite weak against traps.
• simple traps would have a durability somewhere in the 15 range (requiring 5 average hits), but more complex traps would need as many as 30 points to completely disarm (6 average hits with a +3 bonus each hit).

• while a trap could have as much as 50, it would need to have a MUCH lower disarm DC to compensate for this, even at the highest levels of the game.

• the disarm DC of the trap is based on the trap's CR (or the CR for the location), and can require anything from an Average to a Hard check, providing another angle for the difficulty to scale (essentially, it could have a higher "Armor Class" (target DC) or more "Hit Points" (Durability), but probably not both).

man, nice. i think i really like this mechanic, and how it is complementary to sunders but different. stops the 'sundering barbarian' trap solving syndrome :)

Designing Traps

• traps should behave somewhat like monsters, and deal damage roughly equivalent to monsters of the same CR. However, they generally don't move, and they can consequently be a little meaner.
• The trap's origin space should be placed on the battle map, but only after the trap is discovered

• traps begin in Stealth stance, and must noticed via Passive Perception (or active) to spot them before they attack; Stealth is always broken after they attack.

how would traps interact in an ambush? or would they ignore any attempts at ambush unless they were seen first? or just ignore ambushes altogether? (i'm thinking the latter)  or, or, would traps roll ambush chances automatically?  some might be 'sort of' sentient, after all...

Having all traps start from stealth seems to obviate the need for an ambush. In my opinion, an ambush requires intent and preparation, something traps can't do. I would rule that traps cannot initiate an ambush, but they can be a part of an ambush.  If a group of monsters successfully springs an ambush, and there's a trap in the room, the trap is allowed to act in the surprise round (breaking its stealth upon doing so).

simple, and makes mixed trap/mob encounters better. i like it!

• traps should have the following characteristics:

• Description
• Spot DC (the trap's stealth skill)
• Triggering Sense (the trap's perception and how it targets; it should be possible to stealth past some traps, or fly over others)
• Durability (the trap's hit points)
• Disarm/Sunder DC (the trap's AC)

• Default Attack: if ignored, trap does its best attack (max number of targets, best damage) -- ignore traps at your own peril!
• Anti-Disarm: if disarm check against trap, it deals a targeted attack against its disarmer
• Anti-Sunder: countermeasure against brute-force attempts to disarm the trap, more often an AOE than an anti-disarm attack
• On Destruct: on destruction, trap deals a final effect, often dealing harm to everything in the area (friend or foe)

• a fight could be designed to be won by defeating the trap(s) and killing the monsters with the On Destruct effects, for example -- this could be a fun way to bypass something like Incorporeal or Adamantine/Silvered Weapon requirements

• each attack should have a defined set of targeting information:

• number of targets
• whether it can differentiate friend or foe (i.e. all creatures vs. enemy creatures)
• either a to-hit bonus, or a save for half DC, per Monster Special Abilities variables.

• treasure and XP section for defeating it

Sample Traps

Note that these aren't necessarily thematically appropriate examples, just examples of some of the design space we can use.

Burninate! (CR 3; Goblin)

This crude trap is just as dangerous to the creatures that created it as it is to anyone who happens upon it!

• Triggering Sense: Standard Vision 60 ft.

• Passive Perception:

• Spot DC: 1d20+14
• Durability: 16
• Disarm/Sunder DC: 14
• Fire For The Fire Gods (Default): At the end of any round in which the Burninate! trap has taken no Sunder or Disarm damage, it unleashes a large swath of fire in a 20 ft. x 20 ft. area within 50 feet of the trap's origin space, inflicting 1d8+1 points of fire (energy, common) damage to all creatures within the affected area. All creatures in the area may make a Reflex save against a DC of 15 for half damage. Any creatures of type or subtype 'Goblin' in the affected area are treated as automatically failing their saving throws (taking full damage).
• Bomb-Diggity (Anti-Disarm): Each time the Burninate! trap suffers Disarm damage, it inflicts 1d6 points of fire (energy, common) damage on the Disarming creature. There is no save against this effect. In addition, at the end of any round in which the Burninate! trap suffered Disarm damage, it will inflict 1d10+2 on each creature that inflicted Disarm damage this round, as long as those creatures are within 10 feet of the trap's origin space. This end-of-round damage can be reduced with a Reflex save, versus a DC of 15 for half damage, and then further reduced by a number of points equal to the Disarm damage that each target creature inflicted this round.
• Self-Destruct (Anti-Sunder): Each time the Burninate! trap suffers Sunder damage, it flares out, inflicting 1d8+1 points of fire (energy, common) damage in a 15-foot cone that must include the creature that inflicted the Sunder damage. All creatures in the area may make a Reflex save against a DC of 15 for half damage. Any creatures of type or subtype 'Goblin' in the affected area are treated as automatically failing their saving throws (taking full damage).
• Fire Forever (On Destruct): Upon being reduced to 0 or fewer Durability points, the Burninate! trap explodes, inflicting 1d8+1 points of fire (energy, common) damage to all creatures within 40 feet of its space. All creatures in the area may make a Reflex save against a DC of 15 for half damage. Any creatures of type or subtype 'Goblin' in the affected area are treated as automatically failing their saving throws (taking full damage).

good god, this gobbo trap is great and awful all at once :)

question: should traps launch their default attack every round at the end of each round, as long as they haven't been damaged, or should they do it every round until they are destroyed, in addition to any anti-disarm and anti-sunder attacks they do?  Currently, the intent of the default attack is to punish the party for ignoring the trap. However, I'm worried the trap won't do enough damage if it isn't doing its default attack... what is your sense of the damage output? Too high? Too low? 

this is a very good point, and it strikes me that once activated, traps should be a HEADACHE. so i'd say the default happens every round, for like, pendulum traps, etc. BUT.... i think we could/should make up a new trait for traps, which is 'frequency'.  IE, does it activate once and it's done, or once a round, on even rounds, odd rounds, once a round at bottom of round, every round at an initiative number, every ten initiative ticks (holy crap), every TWO initiative ticks (HOLY CRAP), etc. This frequency could always default to a setting (attacks once a round after triggering), and changes could be a trap pattern, and faster traps do less damage as the CR is raised by the pattern, but SLOWER traps do more damage as they have negative CR mods.  thoughts? 

At first, I hated this idea, because it was complicated... but WHAT IF we dive head-first into complicated? We use frequency as another knob, BUT it's a knob that can be detuned by the disarming character, once step at a time? In fact, what if, instead of doing more damage when rolling 5 over the DC, we allow the player to deal just the base 1d6 (no extra damage; we'd probably reduce the overall durability to account for this) plus detune the trap in one vector or another (frequency of attacks, # of targets, range, amount of damage dealt, save DC, off the top of my head)...  This would make it a whole minigame for those times you crit the disarm, but it doesn't just destroy the trap outright, it just makes it less lethal... I could even see a way to mark certain targets as friend or enemy via this method (assuming the trap has friend or foe detection to begin with).  Too complicated? Or too awesome?

Impaling Terror (CR 8, Aranea)

This horrible monstrosity consists of dozens of 25-foot-long, bladed spider legs attached to the ceiling of the room, which stab down at nearby enemies with a malicious awareness.

• Triggering Sense: Lifesense 30 ft.

• Passive Perception:

• Spot DC: 1d20+25
• Durability: 18
• Disarm/Sunder DC: 25
• Stab In The Dark (Default): At the end of any round in which the Bladed Terror trap has taken no Sunder or Disarm damage, it performs a stabbing attack on all enemy creatures within 25 feet of its origin space. It performs a to-hit roll (1d20+13) versus each creature's Armor Class. If it hits, the creature suffers 2d8+6 points of piercing (physical, common) damage, and becomes Immobilized until the end of the next round, as the leg impales through them and into the ground. The Immobilized condition can be cleared normally, as described on the condition's "Ended-By" section. Creatures which are not struck are unaffected.
• Frantic Defense (Anti-Disarm): Each time the trap suffers Disarm damage, it lashes out with one of its bladed legs against its attacker in a desperate attempt at defending itself. It performs a to-hit roll (1d20+13) versus each creature's Armor Class. If it hits, the creature suffers 2d8+6 points of bludgeoning (physical, common) damage, and is pushed 1d4 spaces away from the trap's origin space.
• Sticky Webbing (Anti-Sunder): Each time the trap suffers Sunder damage, it spews out a blob of sticky webbing. The attacker must make a Reflex save versus a DC of 19, or become Immobilized until the end of the next round, or until the target suffers any amount of Fire (energy, common) damage. In addition, while Immobilized by the sticky webbing, the creature suffers a -2 penalty to its Armor Class versus all attacks.
• Death Throes (On Destruct): Upon being reduced to 0 or fewer Durability points, the trap thrashes its legs wildly, stabbing at anything it can reach. It performs a to-hit roll (1d20++13) against the Armor Class of every creature within 25 feet of its space (friend or foe). If it hits, the creature suffers the creature suffers 2d8+6 points of piercing (physical, common) damage, and becomes Immobilized until the end of the next round, as the leg impales through them and into the ground. The Immobilized condition can be cleared normally, as described on the condition's "Ended-By" section. Creatures which are not struck are unaffected.

Other Considerations

• origin point of the trap can greatly increase difficulty. If the Aranea trap above has an origin point that is on the ceiling of the room, and is 15 feet up, it will be very hard for most level 8 parties to deal with that usefully...
• there can be more than one trap in an encounter. In the Goblin trap example, having 2 or 3 of those in the room, along with a few goblins, would be a pretty scary encounter.
• most classes that are likely to be good at disarming are strikers, and traps will be effectively taking them out of the fight against HP-based monsters; this can have consequences for the party's damage output -- may need some playtesting

• on the other hand, ANYONE can take Disarm Device...

• If we embrace this mechanic as our 'official EP version of traps', I think we should write up a specific Disarm Trap maneuver that puts these rules in one place, defines the action type (I'm thinking attack action), and add some feat, item, and ability support (review rogue, prowler, barbarian trap-related abilities and update as needed)

• in particular, the rogue's ability to ret-con a trap's attack damage will need to be reviewed

Next Steps

• If we like the bones of how this works, the next step would be to build a 'Million Trap Machine' for it (but maybe without patterns and roles, since we'd have to make a whole new set of each, to make that go?)
• Easiest aspect of this would be to have a basic trap (like one of the above) and allow the CR to be set to anything. The above traps already do this, but putting them into a template would make this much easier.

• Traps can probably have a much wider range of potential CRs than monsters -- all traps can be any CR?

yes, see my note above about this

• status conditions would be statically tied to the trap type, but we could include some built-in scaling to make higher level traps inflict nastier versions of their conditions automatically, if we want.

• Next, I think the goal would be to put together a decent set of generic trap types:

• Elemental Spewer
• Room Full O' Darts
• Pit Traps With Wind Tunnel
• Drowning / Dissolving Room
• Collapsing Pillars / Crushing Walls
• Cantilevering / Rotating Floor
• Healing Trap (buffs/heals monsters until defeated)
• Absorbing Trap (negates all damage (or all common damage) against any monsters within 30 feet of trap until defeated)
• Giant Round Boulder That Chases You
• ... etc.

just as a note, these are all trapped rooms, we could also have trapped objects/items.  door and chest traps are the classic, along with trapped books, scrolls, swords in sheathes, suits of armor, etc. many/most of the above concepts could be incorporated, though. (touch the door/chest/suit of armor and it blows darts all around it, sprays acid, etc) 

this system is meant to make the 'spinning-blade-death-room' type encounters less of an "oh, the rogue rolls a die and it's over", and more of an "engaging fun for your whole party" kind of thing.  The whole "needle inside the lock" thing (i.e. trapped objects) seems like it should stay in the realm of "let the rogue fix it with a die roll", to me. Do you disagree? Do you feel that there's enough going on with a trapped object (or objects) that it should take the whole party a couple of real-time hours to resolve it?

hmmmm. ok, i see your point. that said, do we want to capture the whole 'trapped/cursed item' dynamic that the old EGG loved so much? IE, do we need a set of item traps, too? do we WANT a set of item traps too?   

• From those generic traps, we allow user to set CR, damage type, nudge the ratio of Disarm DC / Durability, nudge the base Spot DC, etc.
• If we wanted to make the UI a bit more complex (will depend on Ben's willingness to mess with it), we could allow things like altering the damage from Swift/Standard/Alpha for each attack (and dynamically adjusting CR accordingly)

i'd be leery of making that settable in a GUI, but I could also be persuaded that traps should hit harder than a plain old monster, since they are pretty static. although, they are non-trivial to get rid of....

I think they should probably deal as much or a little more damage than a same-CR monster, which could be 'they hit harder', or it could be 'they do more AOE', or 'they have more save-for-half mechanics'.  They're also another vector for status conditions, and can logically be used to inflict conditions that specifically give a nasty advantage to the monster that set the trap in the first place (e.g. something that makes flanks easier for Gnolls (who are good at flanks)).

man, i love that idea...  

Trap 'Roles'

Not really sure this makes a lot of sense. Making must hardier traps will likely result in needlessly long fights, where the one or two characters who can hurt the traps have to spend extra rounds beating on them, while the rest of the party stands around doing nothing.

Trap 'Patterns'

• add to the base CR of the trap (by reducing its starting CR, then adding the pattern, to get you to your net-target-CR)
• NOT used to change damage types, or make the trap harder, but instead used to add some odd twist to its theme -- basically replaces one of its attack types with a different one.
• Examples:

• improved targeting sense (the really good stuff, like blindsense, echolocation, perfect scent, etc.)
• trap cannot be damaged unless someone/something heavy is standing on a particular square on the other side of the room
• hard-to-reach origin point
• moving/changing origin point
• replace 'default' power with something specific and odd
• replace 'anti-disarm' power with something specific and odd
• replace 'anti-sunder' power with something specific and odd
• replace 'on-destruct' power with something specific and odd

 these are kind of awesome, i luv it.  even a few options can vastly increase the variety of traps, so this is great stuff