D&D General Want to use traps? Make them obvious

[MatthewJHanson]

There are those that want their traps to make sense in the fiction, which has a whole lot of cascading consequences but usually lands on "traps should kill intruders and secure locations."

I find this one amusing because what actually makes sense is to not have traps. If you look at real world history, the tropes we see so much in D&D of trapped chests and trapped doors are just not a thing. It's too easy for the wrong person to trigger them, and they aren't actually great deterrents. Maybe magic helps a little, since spells like glyph of warding allow you to set who won't trigger the spell, but still I think "realistic" traps are going to be pretty rare.

Your best best if you want "realistic" traps that target PCs are probably made by intelligent creatures that eat humanoids, since historically traps are actually used to catch or kill animals.

 

[Reynard]

I find this one amusing because what actually makes sense is to not have traps. If you look at real world history, the tropes we see so much in D&D of trapped chests and trapped doors are just not a thing. It's too easy for the wrong person to trigger them, and they aren't actually great deterrents. Maybe magic helps a little, since spells like glyph of warding allow you to set who won't trigger the spell, but still I think "realistic" traps are going to be pretty rare.

Your best best if you want "realistic" traps that target PCs are probably made by intelligent creatures that eat humanoids, since historically traps are actually used to catch or kill animals.

I did not say "realistic" I said "make sense in the fiction" and in D&D's pulp inspired fiction, traps do make sense.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I don't use a lot of traps anymore. Back in the day, the players would be incautious, I'd get to tell them some horrible thing occurred to them, they'd be annoyed, start religiously checking every 5' square of the map for awhile, slowing the game down to a halt and there'd be a long string of "you don't find any traps", they'd get careless again, etc. etc..

4e came along with passive Perception and things got easier, people didn't have to check every 5' square and if you had a good group spotter, you'd never run afoul of a trap. But occasionally this tactic would fail as there are really hard to find traps. So it came to pass that my 4e group sprung a trap and...

They took a little damage and just healed up. Which is when I realized that most traps don't have the same sting they once did. I wrestled with this for awhile, thinking maybe I should make traps more lethal, but then I was like, "do I really want a TPK because a tripwire made rocks fall for 5d10 damage? Is that as much fun as them encountering whatever hellish beasts lie ahead?", so I didn't change anything.

When I ran the 5e "converted" Sunless Citadel, there were tons of traps, and because I enforced the dim lighting rules, the party who thought they could sneak around everywhere because everyone had darkvision blundered into quite a few traps (mostly because the DC's were set too high for 5e, IMO) but all it did was drag out the proceedings, or make the party want to rest and eat up...well time that wasn't valuable at all, since the dungeon wasn't built on a clock, and if it was, it'd have been a disaster "we failed because some kobold set up a hallway full of crossbows".

Plus, as we went on, the players started asking the one question these trap-filled dungeons never seem to have an answer for- why are all these traps perfectly ready to go off every time? Why do you rarely encounter a trap that some giant rat or goblin set off? Who is maintaining these traps in this dank dungeon anyways, especially in areas "that have been sealed off for centuries"?

Sure a glyph of warding can last a long time, but why is it always the PC's that blunder into them, and you don't find any that were triggered by some other hapless fools?

Hence where I am now. Using traps pretty rarely because unless I make them super lethal, it's at most a speed bump in the adventure, and worse, usually a speed bump one guy gets to interact with "I roll an x, do I beat the trap or do we lose another healing spell?".

I could get the same result with more engagement by having the party enter a room with four orcs.

Well you have a few options with traps making sense.

Nothing has been by to trigger them. They magically reset. Something resets them.

They are put in place and things walk on them but don’t trigger them for “reasons” may not be what I choose.

Though I know open and stuck doors in the way back machine were a thing…

I think traps used sparingly create some variety or in some Cases set pieces for encounters.i have been in some combats in which it made terrain difficult and was another factor. I am not in favor of traps issue going away in the game. And of course they are site dependent a lot of time.

If we can get past giant buried inhabited complexes, some traps don’t seem a step too far given how far we have already gone.

You raise some good points though; being on autopilot with traps is not the best option. In that I agree but also think they have a place and can be fun or add challenge/drama.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I did not say "realistic" I said "make sense in the fiction" and in D&D's pulp inspired fiction, traps do make sense.

I agree! but am also OK with the occasional DnDism as it is a game.

I think about Raiders and still think the opening scenes where Indy dodges a boulder for a gold idol are cool too.

Not sure if history has much like that!

 

[James Gasik]

I find this one amusing because what actually makes sense is to not have traps. If you look at real world history, the tropes we see so much in D&D of trapped chests and trapped doors are just not a thing. It's too easy for the wrong person to trigger them, and they aren't actually great deterrents. Maybe magic helps a little, since spells like glyph of warding allow you to set who won't trigger the spell, but still I think "realistic" traps are going to be pretty rare.

Your best best if you want "realistic" traps that target PCs are probably made by intelligent creatures that eat humanoids, since historically traps are actually used to catch or kill animals.

A story I heard a few years back was about this guy who kept being robbed when he would leave his house for a length of time, so he set up a shotgun to go off if someone opened a door. A robber was badly injured, and sued, and won the court case, because the judge ruled that the robber "had no expectation of his life being in danger" or somesuch.

Apparently if you want a deathtrap in your house you have to warn people about it!

 

[Reynard]

I agree! but am also OK with the occasional DnDism as it is a game.

I think about Raiders and still think the opening scenes where Indy dodges a boulder for a gold idol are cool too.

Not sure if history has much like that!

I like the Earthdawn idea that there is a Horror (a demon, essentially) who slithers through ruins and makes D&D style traps. They don't make "sense" because they are the creations of a malevolent entity.

But, then, I also really like the idea of the dungeon as an Other Realm, a place where things don't make sense and where monsters and tricks and traps and treasure are all a part of a nightmare realm touching the real world. The old ruins on the surface might have been a castle once, but what lies beneath was never wrought by man.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I like the Earthdawn idea that there is a Horror (a demon, essentially) who slithers through ruins and makes D&D style traps. They don't make "sense" because they are the creations of a malevolent entity.

But, then, I also really like the idea of the dungeon as an Other Realm, a place where things don't make sense and where monsters and tricks and traps and treasure are all a part of a nightmare realm touching the real world. The old ruins on the surface might have been a castle once, but what lies beneath was never wrought by man.

I could be fabricating this but is seemed that early D&D and maybe Gygax in AD&D did discuss the general malevolence of some
Dungeons. I don’t have the source…may read up for fun.

I think there was a general rationalization for game components that are not “logical” but so many years and ao
Much beer….i might be wrong

 

[James Gasik]

Well you have a few options with traps making sense.

Nothing has been by to trigger them. They magically reset. Something resets them.

They are put in place and things walk on them but don’t trigger them for “reasons” may not be what I choose.

Though I know open and stuck doors in the way back machine were a thing…

I think traps used sparingly create some variety or in some Cases set pieces for encounters.i have been in some combats in which it made terrain difficult and was another factor. I am not in favor of traps issue going away in the game. And of course they are site dependent a lot of time.

If we can get past giant buried inhabited complexes, some traps don’t seem a step too far given how far we have already gone.

You raise some good points though; being on autopilot with traps is not the best option. In that I agree but also think they have a place and can be fun or add challenge/drama.

I'm sure some people have fun with traps, but they've always felt like a burden. Mostly because traps are fairly binary.

It's like a flowchart. Did you notice the trap? N? Take damage/trip an alarm/have progress slowed or stopped.

Y? Great, does anyone have the skill to remove the trap? N? Try to find another route or go back to "take damage" etc..

Y? Great, make a die roll. Was it high enough? Proceed. N? Go back to "take damage".

Cinematic traps, where you have to figure out clues sound like fun, until I've run one, and then it comes down to "make a die roll or use player knowledge".

Complex "National Treasure" death traps where the party has to work together? Worked better was a 4e style "skill challenge", but it's not the kind of thing I'd want to use often.

The best use for traps I found was during a combat- in an Eberron game I was playing in, we were in a Warforged construction facility (I think the droid factory sequence in Attack of the Clones inspired this) and while we were dealing with guards, we'd have to interact with very deadly aspects of the factory that basically functioned like traps. It was a great setpiece, but it took hours to navigate through, lol.

I recall a lot of early D&D traps really didn't come down to die rolls, and were more like playing Dragon's Lair. "Oh you made a bad choice, you die. Maybe you'll do better next time." It was fun at the time, but I don't think dusting off my copies of Grimtooth's Traps would go over so well now, lol.

The bottom line is, as traps are now, they're too simple and don't really engage the players. Making them deadlier doesn't make them more interesting, just raises the stakes on whether or not the group has the luck and skills to deal with it. And all that will do is force people to optimize their way beyond traps, which can lead to the kind of "arms race" that is a plague on the game.

If you make them more complex though, it leads to the Shadowrun "Decker problem", where more of the focus is placed on a few characters, while the rest stand around, unless you make each one a team effort, which not only takes time, but begs the question of why there's never goblins shooting at you while you and your mates are navigating some complex puzzle that really would work better in three-dimensional space, like, say, video game puzzles.

It just feels (to me) like the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

 

[James Gasik]

I could be fabricating this but is seemed that early D&D and maybe Gygax in AD&D did discuss the general malevolence of some
Dungeons. I don’t have the source…may read up for fun.

I think there was a general rationalization for game components that are not “logical” but so many years and ao
Much beer….i might be wrong

I recall reading about this before, that dungeons are living, malevolent things that constantly shift around (like Jim Henson's Labyrinth, or anime dungeons like the one in "Delicious in Dungeon") and the place is actively fighting against you. It's a neat concept, but it's also kind of meta as to what's actually going on, and why the guy running the game is called a "Dungeon Master", lol.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I'm sure some people have fun with traps, but they've always felt like a burden. Mostly because traps are fairly binary.

It's like a flowchart. Did you notice the trap? N? Take damage/trip an alarm/have progress slowed or stopped.

Y? Great, does anyone have the skill to remove the trap? N? Try to find another route or go back to "take damage" etc..

Y? Great, make a die roll. Was it high enough? Proceed. N? Go back to "take damage".

Cinematic traps, where you have to figure out clues sound like fun, until I've run one, and then it comes down to "make a die roll or use player knowledge".

Complex "National Treasure" death traps where the party has to work together? Worked better was a 4e style "skill challenge", but it's not the kind of thing I'd want to use often.

The best use for traps I found was during a combat- in an Eberron game I was playing in, we were in a Warforged construction facility (I think the droid factory sequence in Attack of the Clones inspired this) and while we were dealing with guards, we'd have to interact with very deadly aspects of the factory that basically functioned like traps. It was a great setpiece, but it took hours to navigate through, lol.

I recall a lot of early D&D traps really didn't come down to die rolls, and were more like playing Dragon's Lair. "Oh you made a bad choice, you die. Maybe you'll do better next time." It was fun at the time, but I don't think dusting off my copies of Grimtooth's Traps would go over so well now, lol.

The bottom line is, as traps are now, they're too simple and don't really engage the players. Making them deadlier doesn't make them more interesting, just raises the stakes on whether or not the group has the luck and skills to deal with it. And all that will do is force people to optimize their way beyond traps, which can lead to the kind of "arms race" that is a plague on the game.

If you make them more complex though, it leads to the Shadowrun "Decker problem", where more of the focus is placed on a few characters, while the rest stand around, unless you make each one a team effort, which not only takes time, but begs the question of why there's never goblins shooting at you while you and your mates are navigating some complex puzzle that really would work better in three-dimensional space, like, say, video game puzzles.

It just feels (to me) like the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

That can be the case. But that case has been made about combat, exploration and almost everything else. Over reliance and poor design on any of these components can make them a “drag” I suppose.

But then I wonder: “what am I trying to race toward? When I stop fast forwarding, where do I land?”

So much of this is a taste thing. Combat, traps and exploration are what we do a lot of, happily. I know that is not close to universal anymore. The narrative game market alone tells us that!

What you said about traps in a set piece combat is interesting.

One of the biggest 5e thrills I have ever had we being knocked into a pit full of ghouls
Due to a trapped bridge. No trap and no fall would have meant a much less exciting session.