Idea for making DF Traps more challenging

[b-dog]

Traps are basically a roll to disarm it and either you fail or succeed. One idea to make traps more fun is to have traps need a certain number of successes in order to disarm it. For example a trap might need say 2 successes to disarm it so maybe the thief has skill 15 in traps so he would need to roll a 13 to disarm it completely. If he rolls a 14 then he must then roll another 14 or power to disarm it completely. If he rolls a 15 then the trap is not activated but the thief must try again until he ether activates the trap or disarms it. If he stops trying to deactivate the trap the trap remains set. A very well made trap may need say 20 successes to disarm so it will take time and there is the possibility of activating the trap due to failure or critical failure so this would add suspense especially if monsters are coming. There can be a modifier in addition to the number of success rolls needed so maybe the trap is -5 to traps skill and also needs 10 successes to deactivate it.

[Kromm]

The trend at gaming tables is to roll less often, not more often. Rolling 20 times would . . . well, everybody who isn't doing the rolling would be tapping their toes. For the most part, "You need N successes" is better handled by "You need one success at -X." You can normalize this to the plain-vanilla human thief built using the template, who has Traps-14. (People who raise IQ or Traps, play gnomes, splurge on good tools, etc. will obviously do better.)

Very roughly:

2 rolls = 1 roll at -1
3-4 rolls = 1 roll at -2
5-6 rolls = 1 roll at -3
7-8 rolls = 1 roll at -4
9-11 rolls =1 roll at -5
12-15 rolls = 1 roll at -6
16-20 rolls = 1 roll at -7

This won't scale perfectly with skill, but it's probably safe enough to use despite that.

Mixing penalties and number of successes is kind of doing the same thing two different ways.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The trend at gaming tables is to roll less often, not more often. Rolling 20 times would . . . well, everybody who isn't doing the rolling would be tapping their toes.

A lot of that depends on other things that are going on, though. For example, if the thief is disabling the trap while the rest of the party hold off the horde of monsters, if I were playing the thief I'd rather be rolling every round than be told "take twenty Ready maneuvers, then roll".

[b-dog]

Just imagine it this way, say a trap requires 15 successes. The thief succeeds by 1 the first time then the DM says the thief just barely loosened it then the thief decides again and succeeds by 9 the the DM says the trap is almost disarmed and needs 5 more success points to disarm. If the thief stops due to monsters or something else then afterwards he can resume trying to disarm the trap and only needs 5 more success points to do so instead of starting over completely.

[b-dog]

What if combat was like traps? You roll your Monster skill and if you succeed then you defeat the monster. A more power monster would require a roll of Monster -10 or something. If you succeed then the monster is defeated if not then you keep rolling.

Personally I feel Hit Points are more fun though. The PC injures the monster more and more until it is defeated. Successes for traps is more like this.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

A lot of that depends on other things that are going on, though. For example, if the thief is disabling the trap while the rest of the party hold off the horde of monsters, if I were playing the thief I'd rather be rolling every round than be told "take twenty Ready maneuvers, then roll".

For sure, but given that Traps rolls operate on the time scale of minutes while combats take seconds, it's rarely going to work out that way in practice. But I agree that if the experienced GM sets up a scenario like that, giving the thief something to do each turn would be more fun!

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by b-dog

What if combat was like traps?

Nothing says that a GM who loves house rules couldn't say that the thief and trap "attack" and "defend" with the Traps skill, with the thief's attacks inflicting points of disarming on the trap's Trap Points score but the trap's attacks inflicting actual injury on the thief.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

For sure, but given that Traps rolls operate on the time scale of minutes while combats take seconds, it's rarely going to work out that way in practice. But I agree that if the experienced GM sets up a scenario like that, giving the thief something to do each turn would be more fun!

My experience is that a trap with nothing else going on is boring no matter how many rolls it takes. However, a traditional cinematic/video game hallway of doom trap shouldn't actually be all that slow to deal with, because usually you either have to make your way down the hallway without setting off the traps and then turn them off at the far end, or make your way down the hallway setting off all the traps in a way that doesn't get you killed.

[b-dog]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Nothing says that a GM who loves house rules couldn't say that the thief and trap "attack" and "defend" with the Traps skill, with the thief's attacks inflicting points of disarming on the trap's Trap Points score but the trap's attacks inflicting actual injury on the thief.

I don’t know if you are just joking but I think that might be interesting. A deadly trap might be dangerous to disarm even if it doesn’t go off. Fingers could be crushed or hands cut or maybe even anywhere on the body if a cable is cut or some bar that has tension is released.

[(E)]

One option would be to apply other skills to traps. What are the skills on a the character's sheets that see little use?
"The mechanism for this trap seems to rely on a rhythm based trigger, roll against Dance to get through without triggering anything"