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Deth Muncher
2010-03-01, 08:57 AM
So, I'm not really familiar with the 3.5 trapmaking rules, but I was wondering: Is it possible to trap traps?

For example, Bob the Rogue spots an axe-pendulum trap, ready to be sprung. A quick search reveals a trigger and the disabler tiles. Smart adventurer that he is, he pulls out his 10ft pole and taps the disabler tile. Smart trapmaker that they were, the one who laid the trap made it so that if it were to be disabled, that square would get zapped, and thus Bob gets smacked with some electricity.

Not a perfect example, but I hope you see what I'm asking.

EDIT: Also, apologies for the horrid spelling in the title, but one must preserve the meme, you know.

Tinydwarfman
2010-03-01, 09:02 AM
Well yea, but the rogue would get another check to spot the second trap.

Iferus
2010-03-01, 09:07 AM
Yes, that is possible. You just have to be precise when determining the trigger of your second trap.

dspeyer
2010-03-01, 09:40 AM
I recently DMed a dungeon crawl where some pit traps contained secret passages in their bottoms. Eventual statement from our rogue: "I check the trap for traps."

The Tygre
2010-03-01, 09:40 AM
That's disturbingly brilliant. :smallsmile:

Lapak
2010-03-01, 10:27 AM
The defunct webcomic Absurd Notions did a riff on this kind of thing once, where a trap consisted of an all-too-obvious tripwire linked to a hidden crossbow aimed at where someone would be if there were fiddling with the tripwire 'from a safe distance' with a long pole or such.

Greenish
2010-03-01, 10:30 AM
Smart adventurer that he is, he pulls out his 10ft pole and taps the disabler tile.Smart adventurers have 12ft pole and a hired/summoned/dominated chump to operate it. :smalltongue:

Khatoblepas
2010-03-01, 10:36 AM
Smart adventurers have 12ft pole and a hired/summoned/dominated chimp to operate it. :smalltongue:

Celestial Monkeys: The Summoned Simian Trapfinder for the Discerning wizard.

I imagine this is very possible, and you could probably make an entire encounter out of trapped traps trapped by trapped traps trapping traps. Epic kobold trapmaker, paranoid about everything to the point of insanity, and the party must evade a few dozen traps set off like a rube goldberg machine. Maybe even fighting a few of the traps as they come down, round by round.

That's if the rogue doesn't get canny about trapfinding.

Kaiyanwang
2010-03-01, 10:37 AM
That's disturbingly brilliant. :smallsmile:

Seconded. Just be sure that your players have a good sense of humor and sportmanship..

JeminiZero
2010-03-01, 10:47 AM
Smart adventurers have 12ft pole and a hired/summoned/dominated chump to operate it. :smalltongue:


Or Summon Elemental Reserve feat. Or Warlocks with BoH full of corpses.

faceroll
2010-03-01, 12:25 PM
I trapped a trap once, but it made the rogue sad, so I stopped doing it.

Jack_Simth
2010-03-01, 06:08 PM
So, I'm not really familiar with the 3.5 trapmaking rules, but I was wondering: Is it possible to trap traps?

For example, Bob the Rogue spots an axe-pendulum trap, ready to be sprung. A quick search reveals a trigger and the disabler tiles. Smart adventurer that he is, he pulls out his 10ft pole and taps the disabler tile. Smart trapmaker that they were, the one who laid the trap made it so that if it were to be disabled, that square would get zapped, and thus Bob gets smacked with some electricity.

Yes it is possible to trap traps. HOWEVER:

Searching for traps is done by map square, not by what's trapped. So if Bob the Rogue is traveling down the hallway, searching for traps, as he goes, and the electrical trap is targetting the square two down from the button for the axe-pendulum trap (to get the rogue who pushes the button), the Bob's first Search check targets the electrical trap, not the pendulum trap - with no complicated actions on Bob's part required. A simple diagram:


BS E P

Bob (B) is searching along, checking the square in front of him for triggers and effect zones as he goes (S, right in front of him). As he's traveling down the hallway, the first trap he encounters in his search is the electrical aspect, E - as that's the trap effect zone, even if the trap trigger zone is at the pendulum trap, P. So when Bob gets to E, he doesn't enter it until after he's made his search/disable device on it. Then when he gets to the pendulum trap, he's already dealt with the electrical trap (unless he blew the roll, of course), so it doesn't matter.

Barbarian MD
2010-03-01, 08:32 PM
Ah, but what if the trap is actually a long distance away? If there's a really tall shaft with a giant boulder 50' up, the rogue's not going to spot that trap at the very top of the shaft unless he makes an effort. In the meantime, there's an obvious trap less than 10' away.

JeminiZero
2010-03-01, 08:41 PM
Ah, but what if the trap is actually a long distance away? If there's a really tall shaft with a giant boulder 50' up, the rogue's not going to spot that trap at the very top of the shaft unless he makes an effort. In the meantime, there's an obvious trap less than 10' away.

Btu what is the boulder's trigger? It should be something on the ground level to be triggerable by the rogue.

Greenish
2010-03-01, 08:45 PM
Btu what is the boulder's trigger? It should be something on the ground level to be triggerable by the rogue.It would be the obvious tripwire that also triggers the (decoy) pendulum blade.

Barbarian MD
2010-03-01, 08:54 PM
It would be the obvious tripwire that also triggers the (decoy) pendulum blade.

Exactly.

Or, you could get more complicated. The boulder is released when you disable the pendulum. Behind the boulder is a lake. That's right, a lake. You just disabled the pendulum? Congratulations, you just flooded the tunnel.

JeminiZero
2010-03-01, 09:07 PM
Exactly.

Or, you could get more complicated. The boulder is released when you disable the pendulum. Behind the boulder is a lake. That's right, a lake. You just disabled the pendulum? Congratulations, you just flooded the tunnel.

It doesn't quite work like that. The Disable Device skill abstracts away the complex mechanics of how trap triggers are disabled. Having a complex multi-trigger trap like that will make the DC higher, but a rogue of sufficient skill should still be able to render the entire setup ineffective.

(Perhaps he jammed the pendulum trigger so that it still appears to be working to the rest of the system, and hence won't trigger the boulder-lake, but the pendulum also no longer triggers when the party dances on the trip wire. )

Jack_Simth
2010-03-01, 09:35 PM
It doesn't quite work like that. The Disable Device skill abstracts away the complex mechanics of how trap triggers are disabled. Having a complex multi-trigger trap like that will make the DC higher, but a rogue of sufficient skill should still be able to render the entire setup ineffective.

(Perhaps he jammed the pendulum trigger so that it still appears to be working to the rest of the system, and hence won't trigger the boulder-lake, but the pendulum also no longer triggers when the party dances on the trip wire. )
Alternately, it's multiple checks, rather than a higher DC. Still the same mechanism, though.

Besides:
If you did have a trap that couldn't be disabled by a rogue, the trap maker would soon be assassinated by the Guild, and you wouldn't have traps that can't be disabled by a rogue anymore.

Barbarian MD
2010-03-01, 09:39 PM
So there's no way to make the act of disabling a trap a trigger? That takes all the fun out of it. :smallbiggrin:

What about setting a trap with a low DC and a high DC? Would it be possible for the rogue to miss the higher DC trap after finding the lower DC one for lack of looking? Or does a rogue automatically know there're two traps with a single spot check or whatever it is they use?

Greenish
2010-03-01, 09:39 PM
It doesn't quite work like that. The Disable Device skill abstracts away the complex mechanics of how trap triggers are disabled. Having a complex multi-trigger trap like that will make the DC higher, but a rogue of sufficient skill should still be able to render the entire setup ineffective.The real trap would be that the decoy trap is so obvious and simple that PCs rather stand in "safe" place and trigger it than waste time disarming it.

[Edit]:
What about setting a trap with a low DC and a high DC? Would it be possible for the rogue to miss the higher DC trap after finding the lower DC one for lack of looking? Or does a rogue automatically know there're two traps with a single spot check or whatever it is they use?Search. Rogue will know of all the traps whose DC he beats. If there's a harder trap there that he fails to find, he can't even attempt to disarm.

Anyhow, there's bound to be a clever way to use the fact that disable device check is secret.

Jack_Simth
2010-03-01, 09:46 PM
So there's no way to make the act of disabling a trap a trigger? That takes all the fun out of it. :smallbiggrin:

What about setting a trap with a low DC and a high DC? Would it be possible for the rogue to miss the higher DC trap after finding the lower DC one for lack of looking? Or does a rogue automatically know there're two traps with a single spot check or whatever it is they use?

Two traps with different DC's would work quite well... but then, the higher DC trap has to be missed, which means the rogue has to botch the roll for it to matter, and you're pretty much back to square one.

Rather, it works well if PC's normally just take ten when they see a suspicious area, and only take 20 if they don't find anything taking ten. But then you're metagaming rather heavily to hurt the rogue....

JeminiZero
2010-03-01, 09:49 PM
What about setting a trap with a low DC and a high DC? Would it be possible for the rogue to miss the higher DC trap after finding the lower DC one for lack of looking? Or does a rogue automatically know there're two traps with a single spot check or whatever it is they use?

If both traps are in the same tile so to speak, then if simply walking along, the rogue should get 2 search checks, one for each trap. If the rogue is being paranoid and takes 20 every step of the way, then so long as his take 20 check meets the DCs, he should notice both traps with a single take 20 check.

Whether it is possible for a rogue to notice one and miss the other, depends entirely on high the DCs are relative to his search check. Certainly, it is possible for both traps to be so well hidden, that he can't find them even if he takes 20. But thats just being cruel.

Greenish
2010-03-01, 09:56 PM
If both traps are in the same tile so to speak, then if simply walking along, the rogue should get 2 search checks, one for each trap.Rogue won't notice any traps by just strolling along: searching 5x5 square is a full round action. It'd be a pretty paranoid rogue (or Tomb of Horrors) that take 20 and spent two minutes for 5ft.

Anyhow, during said full round action (or two minutes), rogue would find all the traps whose DC he beat. No need for several search checks.

Lycanthromancer
2010-03-01, 10:42 PM
The best traps are those designed so that there technically is no trap.

Take my explanations on Tucker's Kobolds. Most of the traps require the intervention of one or more creatures to even be considered 'traps.'

Imagine a hallway, sloping down at a 30 degree angle, toward a pit with a wide wooden plank across it. There are wooden boards running the width of the ceiling, transverse to the hallway itself. It's not really that dangerous, and the characters can move freely in the hall with no real trouble. The encounter starts when kobolds, in the ceiling, pry up boards and toss down handfuls of marbles, while some others pry up boards and drop a makeshift portcullis behind the PCs, while others, farther on past the pit, pull the plank bridge back, while still others start firing arrows from murder holes and from across the pit. A sorcerer casts silent image to cloak the hallway in darkness (through which the archers fire blindly, hoping for some lucky hits).

If one of the PCs falls into the pit, they find a 15' wide shaft a couple of hundred feet long, with spikes and/or acid and/or piranha in the bottom, with sleep-poisoned razor wire crisscrossing the pit, and a couple of 1st level sorcerers with actions readied to counterspell attempts at casting feather fall. Any ledges that could be used to catch oneself are covered in spikes and/or lard and/or poison, and are designed to break away if someone tries to catch themselves.

Thing is, this can be a lethal encounter for even high-level PCs, and requires nothing more than 1st level resources. Furthermore, aside from the pit (which there's a plank bridging over), there's nothing that indicates that there's an actual trap there (and there isn't, if the kobolds aren't around).

JeminiZero
2010-03-01, 10:57 PM
Technically, thats not a trap, thats an ambush.

Greenish
2010-03-01, 11:00 PM
Technically, thats not a trap, thats an ambush.http://swg.stratics.com/content/lore/personas/images/ackbar.gif

Lycanthromancer
2010-03-02, 01:41 AM
http://swg.stratics.com/content/lore/personas/images/ackbar.gifWhat, you have Ackbar on standby?

Also, technically, the kobold ambush above won't even give any XP for higher level groups, since they're a bunch of CR 1s and a pit trap.

magic9mushroom
2010-03-02, 02:23 AM
Way to make a trap unavoidable:

Have a vertical passage (10 ft.) in the dungeon. AMF prevents flying down, sharp edges cut ropes. So no checking for traps before going down.

Entire landing area triggers an Apocalypse From The Sky trap as well as turning off the AMF.

faceroll
2010-03-02, 02:39 AM
Way to make a trap unavoidable:

Have a vertical passage (10 ft.) in the dungeon. AMF prevents flying down, sharp edges cut ropes. So no checking for traps before going down.

Entire landing area triggers an Apocalypse From The Sky trap as well as turning off the AMF.

Is there an overkill macro?

magic9mushroom
2010-03-02, 02:56 AM
Is there an overkill macro?

There are several.

Eldariel
2010-03-02, 05:08 AM
Is there an overkill macro?

For a second there, I thought you were talking about the SC-term "macro" which I felt was incredibly creatively used in D&D-context with a spontaneous summoner "macroing it up" with infinite summons to ensure it's safe. Then I understood you talked about nothing of the sort and was greatly disappointed.

Superglucose
2010-03-02, 05:28 AM
This came up in a game today. We were going through a kobold layer where one of the party members mentioned, "I don't think they'd trap the bed if they were planning on using it."

I said, "They're kobolds! They trap everything! Seriously, they'd trap their forks if they thought someone else might touch it."

He said, "Yeah, they'd trap it with a knife so that whoever picked it up would cut himself."

I said, "And then they'd trap the knife with a fork to stab whoever triggers the knife"

He said, "Kobold silverware drawers are just one really well-trapped fork."

AtwasAwamps
2010-03-02, 11:20 AM
This came up in a game today. We were going through a kobold layer where one of the party members mentioned, "I don't think they'd trap the bed if they were planning on using it."

I said, "They're kobolds! They trap everything! Seriously, they'd trap their forks if they thought someone else might touch it."

He said, "Yeah, they'd trap it with a knife so that whoever picked it up would cut himself."

I said, "And then they'd trap the knife with a fork to stab whoever triggers the knife"

He said, "Kobold silverware drawers are just one really well-trapped fork."

and sigged.

Zeta Kai
2010-03-09, 11:47 AM
This came up in a game today. We were going through a kobold layer where one of the party members mentioned, "I don't think they'd trap the bed if they were planning on using it."

I said, "They're kobolds! They trap everything! Seriously, they'd trap their forks if they thought someone else might touch it."

He said, "Yeah, they'd trap it with a knife so that whoever picked it up would cut himself."

I said, "And then they'd trap the knife with a fork to stab whoever triggers the knife"

He said, "Kobold silverware drawers are just one really well-trapped fork."

I LOL at this greatly. An internet is bestowed unto thee, good sir.

bosssmiley
2010-03-09, 12:31 PM
That's disturbingly brilliant. :smallsmile:

Kindergarten stuff. The best traps aren't Grimtooth-style "Gotchas!", but rather Green Devil Faces (http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2009/02/green-devil-face.html); the kind of trap that gives the players enough rope to hang themselves while telling them that's exactly what it's doing. GDFs are obviously dangerous, but provoke the nosy, greedy little dungeonmonkeys into tampering with them anyway.

Jewel/idol under a glass bell jar set atop a pedestal on a dais in the centre of the room. Wires running from the bell jar into the ceiling above. What do you want to do? :smallwink:

arguskos
2010-03-11, 01:34 PM
Jewel/idol under a glass bell jar set atop a pedestal on a dais in the centre of the room. Wires running from the bell jar into the ceiling above. What do you want to do? :smallwink:
Dude... that's cruel. Now I want to include it in my game, just for kicks. :smallamused:

jiriku
2010-03-11, 02:25 PM
It's difficult to set a trap trigger condition such as "trap B triggers when trap A is disabled", because the trapmaker can't anticipate how trap A might be disabled, and some methods of disabling trap A might not be perceptible to trap B.

A more reliable method of multiple-trap delivery is simply to place several traps in close proximity to one another in such a way that the first trap will drive player behavior that is likely to trigger succeeding traps.

For example:
I recently used a trapped room which, when triggered, activated a combination crossed swords and rolling boulders trap, turning the room into a zone of stabbity crushing death. The players entered the room via a shaft in the ceiling (via falling down the shaft, actually, since the ladder in the shaft was also trapped), but the room also allowed egress through two archways and a door.

Now, naturally when the room filled up with gigantic blades and crushing stones, a natural reaction on the part of the players was to immediately try to flee to safety through one of the three unexplored exits -- and all three of them were trapped with traps that would damage you, fling you back into the room, and knock you prone, thus leaving you vulnerable to the blades and stones for at least another round. Good times.

Edit: Also, try the Incredible Bouncing Trap(TM) as a means of chaining traps together in an entertaining (for you) way. The "bounce" is an AoE spell with the Explosive Spell metamagic applied to it, which, with careful placement, can be used to toss victims into the trigger zone for a second trap. A "bounce" can also be triggered by a pressure plate at the bottom of a pit trap. For example, attempting to open a door at the end of a long, narrow hallway could trigger an explosive lightning bolt that will blast victims back into a wall, which is actually a pressure plate triggering a spiked pit trap and a collapsing ceiling. The floor of the pit is a pressure trigger for a reverse gravity trap. Targets take lightning damage, push damage from the explosive spell, falling damage from the pit and spikes (twice, due to reverse gravity), then bludgeoning damage from falling debris.

Roderick_BR
2010-03-11, 03:03 PM
Ah, but what if the trap is actually a long distance away? If there's a really tall shaft with a giant boulder 50' up, the rogue's not going to spot that trap at the very top of the shaft unless he makes an effort. In the meantime, there's an obvious trap less than 10' away.
Then he doesn't set off the trap. Simple. When he gets close to the 2nd trap, then he can try to search the new area.

I've done it before though. A trap in the door, an obvious trap in the middle of the room's floor, and a VERY well hidden trap on the walls. All players that tried to hold on the walls to bypass the floor trap, well..

I would say that to make traps inside traps, you could make one with an higher DC than the other, making you find every trap that falls within your rolls.
So, Bob rolls good enough that he just finds the electric trap over the wire trap, or he finds the wire and misses the eletric one, or misses both and is screwed in the next round when he sets off both.
Either way, a room full of traps can be searched over and over by a rogue till he feels safe enough (or tell the fighter it is safe enough).

If you try to make a trap set off without allowing a search, it'll piss off players.

Jayabalard
2010-03-11, 03:08 PM
Rather, it works well if PC's normally just take ten when they see a suspicious area, and only take 20 if they don't find anything taking ten. But then you're metagaming rather heavily to hurt the rogue....It's not really metagaming. That particualr reasoning works both in character and out of character.


It works well if you expect people to normally just do a brief search when they see a suspicious area, and only do a really thorough search if they don't find anything in that brief search.

Jack_Simth
2010-03-11, 05:46 PM
It's not really metagaming. That particualr reasoning works both in character and out of character.
Let me rephrase that:

If your players regularly roll the dice on search checks (do not Take 10, do not take 20), then having two traps with different DC's in the same spot has essentially no additional effect beyond requiring an additional Disable Device roll and having a greater failure penalty - you might as well just have the "tough" trap there, and skip the lesser trap. It is *only* useful in the case where a player takes 20 after not finding anything. And even then, after the first few (how many it takes depends pretty much exclusively on the rogue player - this may happen with as little as one single instance), all it will do is slow down the game as the rogue will become quite paranoid in regards to traps, and pretty much always take 20 (if he doesn't, he gets hurt). Once that happens, you've got a problem:

If you make a trap he can't find by taking 20, it's arbitrary damage.
If you make a trap he can find by taking 20, it's useless.
If you force him to roll the dice on his search (distraction/threat, time pressure), then the use of the double-trap is removed (see above).
If you force him to reduce from taking 20 to taking 10 (time constraints), then you've got the same arbitrary damage / useless trap as you got from him taking 20... just on a different DC threshold.

Double-trapping may improve the game - if done once. After that, you're STUCK doing metagamy stuff that can only be to the detriment of the rogue.

Munchkin-Masher
2010-03-11, 06:07 PM
Memes? In my Playground?

It's more likely than you think.

PersonMan
2010-03-11, 08:13 PM
Well, you could just trap everything. If, say, you made every piece of floor a pressure plate, which activated a firing system, sending a dart flying out of the wall at a nearby square, the PCs would probably not spend time disarming every five foot square. Just have one of them trigger the normal dart and prepare a mechanism that actives, say, 10 minutes later to floor the dungeon, while setting off some sort of mechanical alarm in a command bunker in the center of the dungeon.

Another thing you could do is trap monsters. If you have a kobold, for example, standing in one place, firing crossbow bolts at the PCs, and attached a wire to the back of its neck so that when it died and fell, the wire activated the trap.

Rainbownaga
2010-03-11, 10:33 PM
Another thing you could do is trap monsters. If you have a kobold, for example, standing in one place, firing crossbow bolts at the PCs, and attached a wire to the back of its neck so that when it died and fell, the wire activated the trap.

Wow! That one had me laughing out loud. It's so crazy, so evil, so awsome and so... kobold. Great work.

PhoenixRivers
2010-03-12, 12:38 AM
My favorite is Gust of Wind traps. The sand on the floor conceals Several symbols. The wind reveals them.

Traps are made generally to protect things. As such, there should be a viable means to bypass them (for example, a burrowing creature may have earth floors, so as to burrow around, another would be a hidden disarm switch, or an item that attunes you to the trap).

That said, a really good trap must be clever. Put a reason for moving quickly along with a trap halfway down the 3rd hallway of the dungeon, and you've got effective placement.

The key for a devious trap isn't to hit em when they're alert. It's to hit them cause they didn't check.

And that, friends, is a primer on the Gygax school of trapbuilding.