Traps and How to Use Them

[cailano]

Anyone who has been in one of my games can tell you that I love a good dungeon crawl. I go old school with them. I keep track of time spent underground, light sources, and, of course, I have traps.

I love traps. I love it when dungeons have a variety of ways to kill you: environmental hazards, combat encounters, and the occasional patch of green slime. Traps are an important part of the equation.

What I don't like is just randomly killing characters. While the luck of the dice is an intrinsic part of traditional RPGs, no one wants to have a character wiped out without warning just because they decided to walk down a hallway.

Yet, shouldn't traps have an element of surprise? Shouldn't players be constantly on the lookout for them?

My question for you is: what are some good ways you've seen traps handled? How do you like to insert them into your own games?

If you like to telegraph your traps, how do you do it?

Do you have ways to make traps more interactive?

How do you handle thieves/rogues as opposed to other character classes when it comes to traps?

Do you like perception checks and skill rolls or players interacting with the game world via their characters? A combination? Something else entirely?

 

Discussion Rules:

1. No judging other people's ideas. If you don't like another GM's way of handling traps, you are free to post your own way of doing things, but it's not necessary to disparage theirs.
2. No talking about how much you hate traps and how you think they should go the way of the die crayon. You're free to start your own thread about why traps should never be used, but that's not what we're talking about here.
3. Be excellent to each other.

[Kylia Quilor]

I would say that traps should never be a one-kill thing. Traps in general should be a resource winnower, something that eats at HP, or time, or spells or something. If you look at the standard dungeon crawl as a resource game, which in many ways it is, traps should be just there to weaken the players for the monsters.

I telegraph for traps by using them sparingly - chests, doors that are not regularly used, the sarcoughagi - places that players should be smart to check for traps anyway. Traps just wandering down the hallway are not to my tastes personally as a GM, as a general rule, unless it makes sense for that to be a thing for whoever lives in or built the dungeon. And if there are going to be more traps like that, I'd usually signpost that with an early trap that is less dangerous, or doesn't work or killed someone recently and hasn't reset yet. That way people know there's a chance.

I like perception checks of some form, because the mechanical engagement is a key part of it all for me.

[matt_s]

There's the classic "you hear a click" way of running traps - the PCs may have tripped the trap, but now they have a split second to react and that determines what they do. Freeze still? Hit the deck? Hold their breath?

I think traps should be an element that in particular challenges player and character sheet although if the wizard wants to throw "dispel magic" at the glyph of warding he found with detect magic or the rogue can brute force any Search/Disarm checks with a +20 modifier, let 'em win - they invested either expendable resources or character build options to do that.

Traps can also frame the encounter - sure, the PCs evaded the pit traps, but now they are split up with limited mobility and the kobolds showed up cackling and peppering them with crossbow bolts.

The default combat minigame is engaging but the key with traps is to avoid just passive "roll search, roll disarm, roll a save, take damage" gameplay. I think "OSR-style" gameplay where you let players do stuff like throw string to find trip wires, plug dart holes with corks, etc. work well for traps in particular.

Instant or effectively instant death traps is bad unless its a game where death is just a speed bump.

 

and in pbp....

back and forth can be slow, saying "I poke with a 10ft pole" and then the GM goes "you find nothing" "I send my familiar forward" "nothing happens" and so on works reasonably ok in realtime voice games, much less so when each post is spaced out by 24hours - minimum.

I like to build if/else ladders for the gm to work through, if the GM is ok with it such as...

On 12/20/2023 at 9:26 PM, matt_s said:

Stavard stares. Unnatural of course. But that was in fact natural in a place like this, a contradiction in terms as well as being. He could not fault that aspect of a place such as this just as he could not fault the sea for the swell of waves against a lee short or the clouds that spewed forth lightning as eldritch tentacles grasping at the damned from the ensepulchered sanctums of the heavenly firmaments.

The torch he held at arms length, waving it gently back and forth, seeing how the light and shadows played against the contents of the room. Then, a stone was gently skipped across the floor he being almost a kid tossing a pebble across the water and watching it bounce bounce bounce before it subsided and was lost to sight.

A toss of dust as well, to see if the cleanliness was sternly enforced.

Then, he glances quickly, not letting his gaze linger, at the contents of the box. Another pebble, plinking softly, not nearly enough to even scratch the glass, against the box. Then another against the leviathan, A few more against the chests for good measure.

Finally, a thorough examination of the door hinge. Is it wholly natural or is there foul sorcery to it?

He will empty one of the coin chests looted from the previous room and place it in the arc of the door as a stop. That should be enough to prop it open so we can pass, he said. Stavard feared that some foul act of devilry could seal them within at the moment of greatest peril. Seemed like something that could happen.

[Roughtrade]

I remember when the Dragon Magazine used to post a trap every month. Some were simple, some were super complicated.

 

I agree that traps should be a resource drain, not death. That said, once you get up in the middle teens, raise dead is a resource. But at those levels it is harder to figure how an instant death works. With a fighter who might have almost two hundred hit points, what sort of damage flat out kills them?

[matt_s]

i believe "horrifically massive damage" in 5e is something like 10d10 (e.g. full immersion in lava) and its probably similar numbers in 3.5/PF because hit die progression is pretty similar. so "instant death" has to be that sustained over about 20 seconds (55*4). Or there's nasty magical effects that cause permanent ability score damage/negative levels/amputation/what have you

[Roughtrade]

There is always the old standby, Rustmonster in a locked chest.

There is a series of webtoons where two mimics are competing for food. One is a traditional chest. The other looks like a damsel in distress, chained to a wall.

Guess which one all the adventurers go to first?

[Roughtrade]

David Hargrave's Arduin rules was fond of monsters as traps.

Kill Kittens. Harmless furballs that lured you in by mewing and when you picked it up, his three dozen siblings leapt out of the shadows to attack. I don't think they were poisonous, but they could bite through platemail.

Boxes holding a swarm of "Tunch Beetles" so named for the sound they made when slamming through platemail.

Swirling patterns on the floor which, when crossed without following the swirly pattern, would teleport players to random locations, splitting up the group.

Swirly patterns which when not followed summoned low level demons.

and, of course just to mess with PC heads.... Swirly patterns which -if you followed- did the bad things.

[roryb]

Part of the equation is likely the GM demonstrating that they are serious about the presence of traps. The first time a character is killed from a simple trap from negligent gamesmanship, I think it sends a resounding wake-up call to the players that the GM means business and to look out for them.

On the flip side, if a GM announces up front that they are going to feature a good amount of traps of the old-school "save or die" variety, it also falls upon their shoulders to follow through with the threat. Nothing worse than promising a certain paranoia-invoking sense of danger, and then not making good on the promise. If players have been forewarned, let the hammer fall.

From the point a PC finds himself a victim, going forward there are probably some simple and fair ways for the GM to telegraph the presence of such PC-ending devices. PBP is a text-based format. If the GM is relatively lean and efficient with prose, it is fair to say that if something gets mentioned in the narrative, a trap may incorporate or lurk within that setting. No fair-sies to the GM who puts a trap there without calling some attention to it.

"A section of floor devoid of dust"

"A virtually black corner of the room"

"A mouldering tapestry"

"A splotch of dried blood"

These are things a good old-skool GM is doing anyway. Those little things are important for crawls. Is it just a tattered tapestry, or does something lurk behind it? Why are there little perfectly drilled holes in the ceiling only just so?

A GM should be consistent with the concentration of descriptors and percentage chance of a trap to be present. Listing ten potentially interesting areas in a single location might be overkill.

[cailano]

3 hours ago, Roughtrade said:

David Hargrave's Arduin rules was fond of monsters as traps.

 

Arduin! Oh man, that's a blast from the past. Back in the day I knew a bunch of people who had played with Hargrave before he passed away. One of them still ran Arduin and I got a chance to play a few games with his group. Wonderfully gonzo setting, I've got a lot of fond memories of it.

[Actana]

I think an important but somewhat ignored question is "what is a trap?". What exactly counts as "a trap", compared to "a monster", "an environmental hazard", or something else entirely? And when is a monster a trap, and when does a trap turn into an environmental hazard? Or is there any difference between a trap and an environmental hazard?

In any case, the purpose of traps is also significant. For attrition based games, traps do operate on a purpose of causing attrition. But what about games where attrition based dungeon crawling is less important? What purpose do they serve there, and how can they be used well then?

When building a trap for a game, the best question I can ask (and often do of myself) is "what purpose does this serve, and how do I best highlight it?" That then informs me of the greater goal and gives me a sense of purpose for not just the trap but the entire scene it takes place in. The same goes basically for any and all elements in a game, and traps are no exception.

[Lord Foul]

3 hours ago, Actana said:

When building a trap for a game, the best question I can ask (and often do of myself) is "what purpose does this serve, and how do I best highlight it?" That then informs me of the greater goal and gives me a sense of purpose for not just the trap but the entire scene it takes place in. The same goes basically for any and all elements in a game, and traps are no exception.

This is the absolute heart of it. Well put. There's little worse than random traps with no rationale behind them, especially if they would make things nigh impossible for the creatures supposedly living around them. A little thought and planning goes a long way, and leads to ways a clever party can devise a solution too.

As an example (Arroogah! Gaming story ahead!), I've just run my regular tabletop group through a maze in an Egyptian-themed underground dungeon complex. The maze was there to be an obstacle between any interlopers and the principal tombs with all the treasure and so on, with traps and monsters designed to weaken and sap resources, and possibly kill if it all worked well. The maze was littered with three main features at 'random' places: 30' deep pits with spikes at the bottom (fairly heavy damage but not fatal for this party); pressure pads firing a jet of burning liquid from a nearby wall in a 30' stream; and ten Sons of Kyuss (mummies with worms and a fear aura). The idea being that they'd run into the mummies, fail against the fear aura and then run screaming through the maze into other traps.

But after a couple of traps they figured out that they could easily find the pits with the ranger's Detect Snares & Pits spell, and because the burning liquid wasn't magic the dwarf with a Ring of Fire Resistance was immune to it, so could just go around setting them off with impunity. And after the first couple of mummies the main cleric called a halt and cast a Heroes Feast, making the whole party immune to fear for 12 hours. They totally scuppered my cunning maze, in awesome style!

After the first couple of traps and encounters, which were a lot of fun, the party adapted and basically changed the terms of the engagement.

 

[Kuri_kun]

Personally I like traps that are also puzzles. The water trap room is a popular one I use where I put a riddle or maybe a multiple choice thing where its basicly put an object on a pedestal. 1st wrong answer: The doors lock and the room begins to fill with water (or if the PCs are higher level acid or lava) 2nd wrong answer: The water raises up to your knee's (assuming medium creature here halflings or other small races are now swimming) 3rd wrong answer: The water raises up to your chest and its really cold make a fortitude save to see if you get hypothermia 4th wrong answer: The water has now filled the room and there is no pocket of air. The PCs may drown if they dont figure out the puzzle quickly. Also all nonmagical lights like torches/lanterns are put out plunging them into darkness making finding the items to place on the pedestal harder

If youre players are musicly inclined put up some sheet music and an organ or stringed instrument. They must play the right sequence of notes in order. Each failure might release a poisonous gas or fire poison darts into their face or cause swinging blades to fall upon the player

Wall shifting trap/puzzles are also fun. A player manipulates a thing and it causes walls to suddenly raise or lower around the room splitting up the party as it releases beasts into the area or summons elementals. I particularly love those where the floor gives out and drops them into water where there are animals/elementals waiting to say hi (its also a chance for rangers/druids to make use of animal empathy and lets them shine a bit)

Pretty much anything thats save or die is boring to me and its not fun for most players either. However if somethings say save or get cursed or save or get debuffed, thats a lot more fun because its something they have to deal with both in and out of combat.

I also like building traps that synergize well with enemies. Imagine an Iron golem fight where there is a fireball (or maybe mutiple fireball) traps that go off every 1d4+1 rounds. Make it so a simple disable device check isnt enough, the players need to pry the thing open and make some complex actions to disable it but be careful, cut the wrong cord, remove the wrong gear, the trap will go off again! All while theyre fighting the big metal man who randomly switches targets. Another good one is a locked door at the end of a long hallway, the players need to pick the lock to get through and enemies are being constantly summoned putting them into a pincer attack till they get through

Another good one is tell the players they get a slight hint of a gaseous smell. If they keep walking into that room with an open flame the gas detonates for lots of damage. They are literally walking into that one and also they should hold their breath while in that gaseous area or inhale poison, toxins, potential diseases, etc. Better hope a fight with an ooze or something else with no need to breath doesnt break out in there

Unless youre players like them I suggest not using riddles as a part of traps because many riddles require you to get into the same headspace as the writer. Riddles are great but I tend to use them to give the players a bonus. Hey this divine agent will give you access to his armory if you get his riddle right. Hey this NPC will give you a cool item if you get his riddle right. If you dont get it right youre back to square one and its no big deal besides the players maybe feeling a bit dumb

Traps are an intregal part of the game but like combat encounters they are far more fun if you keep them interesting

[Kaelik]

My operative trap is if there's trap there's probably a reason for the trap, and the players might know that reason, but also, probably the first trap isn't an instant kill trap and then all the other traps, some of which might be instant kills, they have enough forewarning to start being paranoid.

[namo]

Something that's perhaps underused is traps as part of a combat encounter. This requires intelligent monsters to some extent - probably humanoid-ish - but then they can try to get the PCs to trigger the traps (e.g. pretend to be scared and run away, or start to edge towards a weapons rack or a big bell - obviously meant to sound an alarm right?).

This is somewhat "unfair" in a way (fewer chances for PCs to detect traps this way), but can give rise to interesting decision-making: who keeps on fighting, and who tries to disarm the trap that's flooding us with slowly rising sleeping gas? To me this seems more fun than the typical "rogue does their sweep, disarms anything bad, we advance, repeat".

If anything, that may make the PCs more hesitant in other encounters about just charging heads-on (or for casters to just hang in the back, in case opponents can trigger a trap there too), and forcing changes in tactics can be fun for all from time to time (repetition is boring).

[cailano]

I love the idea of adding traps to a combat encounter. That should keep the PCs on their toes!