The Delta Theory of Meaningfulness

[Mordar]

It doesn't.

It's actually the only response to the build that preserves it.

There are three paths here.

1. Use normally difficult traps which have no effect because of this character.

2. Increase the difficulty of traps to challenge a party which contains this character.

3. Give up on traps.


The terrible secret is that 1 and 3 are the same, and they are both death for an entire aspect of the game (traps). If the player who has built their character to never fall into a trap never falls into a trap their build "works" but traps have become gameplay neutral as long as they are present. There is no difference between them being there and not being there other than that one player is occasionally told "oh you spotted a trap have a sweetie I guess?".

Nobody is overcoming anything at that point.

1 is the only legitimate response, IMO. This tiny aspect of the game isn't killed by a trap-breaking character. The player made a design choice - frankly one that doesn't impact a whole lot in the average game - and the GM, in response, punished the rest of the party while also invalidating the player design choice. You leave the standard trap difficulties right where they are because it is right, it still poses a risk for the other players in a reasonable array of situations, you get to give easy wins to the player while also taking advantage of the fact they are going to be less effective in other situations, and then you *still* get to have cool high-difficulty traps in situations where it makes narrative sense...like the Tomb of the Pharaoh, the Thief King's Lair, and Archimedes' Garden.

Unless you intentionally designed a trap-heavy campaign, and discussed this with the player before they made their design choices. That's a dart of a different toxin.

- M