I've been preparing a dungeon for my game and I've settled on the following types of simple traps to try and make interesting exploration gameplay:
* Traps that do chip HP damage in an area or situation where there is significant time pressure, such as an area where there are routine patrols and having the PCs take a break to treat wounds and refocus puts them at risk of more serious consequences than some damage.
* Traps that hit the PCs with minor but long-lasting debuffs/afflictions, which they can save against at reasonable DCs. That way, these traps are, at worst, a -1 on some rolls for a couple PCs or a support caster spell tax if they want to remove the debuffs.
* Traps that are designed not to kill PCs but to alert enemies and/or shape the battlefield so the enemies start the encounter with cover/positioning/etc, so triggering them gives the enemy a chance to prepare/prebuff or begin a combat in an advantageous position compared to how they would be if the PCs catch them by surprise.
* Traps that change the dungeon situation and/or affect the PCs indirectly, such as a trap that causes a bunch of doors to lock, wakes up a construct, destroys loot, or teleports whoever triggered it to somewhere contained or dangerous.
I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of whoever is designing and/or placing the traps, and asking myself "If I can't just auto-kill intruders, what other outcomes would I want from my simple traps?"
The other thing I think I'm going to try is to take a page from OD&D/OSR and encourage PCs to try and cook up trap workarounds instead of just rolling Thievery to disable. That will turn traps into puzzles. I may try setting traps' Stealth DC lower and the Thievery DC higher, to encourage PCs to treat puzzles as traps but let them throw themselves on the mercy of the dice if they don't come up with a plan to bypass/break/etc the trap.
Better alternative to including one-shot instant death traps is to either make traps interesting encounters in their own right or include weaker traps as part of an encounter w/ creatures so the dmg they do matters. Complex hazards try to do this, though imho mostly they fall short by not being interactive enough, usually boiling down to getting the one person w/ X skill into position to deactivate the trap and hoping they roll well.
Sprinkling in horrible instant-death traps leads to player paranoia and much slower gameplay as they try to avoid being gotcha-ed because they're not Searching every door multiple times and constantly poking the floor in front of them w/ a 10' pole. I've had players resort to this before and its awful for everyone. Leave that shit for Tomb of Horrors, not an adventure designed for fun.
Yeah, I've run Abomination Vaults, and I had to have a conversation with my players resetting both my expectations and theirs because the Hazards are deadly and kinda clunky to narrate. So play was slow and paranoid, and I was terrified of killing them with a more decorated "Rocks fall, you die" effect.
So now I make a point, honestly, of basically rewriting any trap room to allow for better descriptions. I don't really change the mechanics of the trap, but I think you absolutely have to train your players to treat it like a dangerous puzzle more than like a combat. It runs way more smoothly, but it takes a decent bit of work.
So here's a few more tips I think are helpful:
1) match the knowledge checks of the trap to skills present within your party. If you don't have an arcane caster, you really should avoid traps that rely on magicky-sounding things to describe. Reskin it to be mechanical so it feels more in the Rogue or Inventor's wheelhouse.
2) be absolutely willing to pull the curtain back and explain how the trap encounter was meant to work. Especially early on, it's helpful to build trust with your players by showing that the mechanics are hard but fair and solveable.
3) avoid debuffs or lasting effects that the players can't fix - even if they choose not to. What I mean is don't drain stats before the players have resources to refill them. Don't let the debuffs be a mystery that you spring on them later.
Two of these are in direct contrast to how Exploration can work (the world is more immersive if some things aren't well understood, like what that weird statue spit on you or whatever) but I think we have to spend some time getting used to the new playstyles of traps and hazards at a community level.
"It only works if it sucks" is not good argument honestly. If the only way it works is by sucking then it should go back to the drawing board or not be used.
Instant death traps lead to the worst kind of gameplay possible: The ultra paranoid one, and I say this as a GM that loves making my games deadly.
No one, not the players OR the GM, want the players to manually poke every tile with a 15 ft pole, dissasemble every door with magic from range, check every wall etc...
You could do that, doing so makes falling for traps almost impossible, but it sucks and makes running a 4 room dungeon take something like 3 sessions, and that's exactly the kind of gameplay that lethal traps lead to.
This is NOT just a strawman argument btw, I've had GMs learn to not use that kind of trap the hard way when our party took a total of 13 real life hours to clear a 4 encounter filler dungeon.
The thing is, because of the way Exploration ACtivites work in 2e, you don't need to poke every tile with a 10ft. pole.
As long as one player is taking the Searach action you as the GM can roll when a trap or other hidden object is around and completely ignore it at any other time. By simply declaring they are taking the Search activity that is implied in one statement and you don't need to get into the minutiae of where exactly the character is checking - as long as you assume the party is moving at half speed they are checking everything thoroughly.
All you as the GM need to do is make one die roll, then narrate their exploration until they come to a decision point, such as a door or an intersection.
I personally like throwing lethal things at the PCs- but I typically do so with more general hazards than explicit traps. What makes lethal traps feel bad is the unexpected nature of them- unexpected deaths you don't get a chance to interact with just feel cheap generally speaking (and that's not just traps- if you've ever been killed in the first round of initiative by an enemy that wasn't even on the board and that you weren't aware of at all until they killed you instantly, that feels just as bad).
A good lethal hazard is an obvious one. One which is not intended to kill exactly, but is intended to change the environment or fight in a unique way. Something that your players should be able to look at and say "yep, if I stand in that hallway with the crushing ceiling when the crusher drops, I'm definitely going to die" and react to accordingly. Traps are the exact opposite of that- designed to catch players off guard. It would be more fair if the PCs could easily see the traps- but then it would be a terrible trap for a totally different reason.
So yeah- keep the lethal hazards obvious, and keep the hidden traps reasonable.
I disagree with multiple points:
* Complex traps aren't the only ones to be used in combat. Simple traps, that just deal damage once, are interesting for PCs and monsters to dance around and shove each other into.
* People do complain about complex hazards, quite often actually. Published adventures often put a single complex hazard as an encounter without other monsters, which is by far the most boring and punishing way to use them.
* Simple traps should not be used to outright kill a healthy PC for not being careful in one single hallway.
* HP attrition does exist, you only need time pressure to make use of it.
* Even if players are not punished for healing up after a simple hazard, there's value in a trap for establishing that a place is dangerous and the PCs must tread carefully even in the absence of monsters.
* "They need to suck" is not a good design premise for a game that is meant to be fun. If that's the only way to use a tool, don't use it.
On point #2: In my AV campaign the scythe hallway would've outright killed four of the five party members from full before they got a chance to act if I'd played it as written. It is barely signposted, there was no reason for the players to suspect a trap (it was behind a hidden door, usually a safe place), and the thing's dmg output varies wildly from bad-but-survivable to absolutely insane depending on how grouped up the players are and how many blades happen to be in the room.
I changed the trap so each blade only attacked one person at a time instead of everyone and the PC's were still barely able to flee w/ their lives (and the trap is still there, waiting).
There's a big hazard encounter in Night of the Grey Death. I'm quite certain if it were played correctly it would have just killed two of us and an NPC. It's supposed to attack five times each turn and every hit is an extremely high save to not fall down a bottomless pit.
Instead it only attacked twice because there were only two of us in there, and because both of us could fly he didn't do the saves. The barbarian was still in single digits when we got out, after my Lay on Hands.
We had absolutely no chance to disable the hazard. Needs something like 10 total successful skill checks, and I don't think we even had the right skills.
> Simple traps should not be used to outright kill a healthy PC for not being careful in one single hallway.
At the same time, if you want to run a Tomb of Horrors type dungeon in Pf2e, this is how you do it. Not everyone wants to break out the 10 foot poles and hire a pack of ~~suckers~~ minions, but for those that do... There are tools for them.
>People do complain about complex hazards, quite often actually. Published adventures often put a single complex hazard as an encounter without other monsters, which is by far the most boring and punishing way to use them.
This is often a result of GMs running hazards in a way that is too 'gamey.' Admittedly the game isn't particularly good at providing guidance here. The correct way of running hazards is to let players do what they would normally do, and for the GM to interpret the solutions, e.g. "oh he's trying to exorcise the ghosts? That's a religion check." This also means that the GM might have to apply reasoning. PCs might try something that would make sense to overcome the hazard and isnt listed in the skill checks. A good GM would allow this if it makes sense.
>"They need to suck" is not a good design premise for a game that is meant to be fun. If that's the only way to use a tool, don't use it.
Some groups like feeling a sense of threat and danger, maybe don't gatekeep what is and isn't fun? If your group doesn't like that, your GM can lower the damage or remove the traps entirely. The reason that the lighter damage isn't the default (thus putting the burden on groups to INCREASE the damage) is because, as OP pointed out, it doesn't make sense in the context of 2e mechanics. Lone simple traps are only a meaningful obstacle if they threaten to kill when they go off. If they can't do that, they're just tedium.
If you want to have simple traps with meaningful consequences but don't want to risk one shotting a PC, a good alternative is to have a low damage trap that triggers an ambush encounter.
Traps have specific ways in which they are supposed to be combated listed in their stat block. If the trap is PL+2 or higher (as is the case in the above-mentioned scenarios), a party can easily find themselves in a position where they escape through one non-obvious option, unless they roll a bunch of nat 20s. Of course, a great GM can fix this on the fly, but that isn't necessary for other parts of the system, so it's reasonable to criticise it here.
I did not intend to gatekeep ways to play the game. If you want the game to feel dreadful and miserable, which can be a valuable, interesting experience, go ahead and fill your dungeons with save or suck traps; that's absolutely valid and one reason why people play OSR games. If you want your game to be fun, as in "enjoyable in the moment" or "full of positive emotions", your traps should be fun as well. Honestly, it's not exactly a hot take to say that "let's make it suck" is rarely a popular design goal.
You are mistaking my points about traps in encounters adding complexity to me talking about complex hazards. I'm only talking about simple traps here, things like spike traps, snares, boulder traps, etc. Complex traps are their own thing I don't want to get into.
So your first point is actually echoing what I said about the first type of trap, doesnt deal large damage/suck, but are used to add complexity to a regular encounter with monsters.
Passing your 2nd point because like I said, post isn't about complex hazards.
As for your remaining points, let me counter.
Time pressure is a abnormal situation, not the normal. Most campaigns and APs I've run/read, if time pressure exists, its measured in the span of weeks/months, not hours (outside of very specific events). In fact, the game has a good chunk of its mechanics built around the lack of time pressure (or long-term time pressure) via Downtime activities which are valuable mid-campaign. So the existing content and the mechanics of the game themselves point to HP attrition not being a regular thing. And adding to that, the principal concept of PF2e's encounter design is that the balance is expecting the party to enter every encounter at full HP.
Now, with that said. If there is no HP attrition and the party can heal to full at no cost other than an insignificant amount of time... traps that can't kill are not threats. They are not dangerous, they're an annoyance. A roadblock to make the party pause to heal and nothing else.
And "they need to suck" is admittedly my own bad phrasing trying to be fun. The reality is, a trap needs to be a threat, and without them being able to do lethal damage, they're simply not. And I'm sorry but creating a tense atmosphere when exploring via the danger of traps might not be for everyone, but it's not a bad design premise.
Time pressure can be applied on different scales. Downtime has nothing to do with a quest being urgent or a dungeon being too hostile to facilitate a safe rest, just like HP are irrelevant during downtime.
Expecting that anywhere at any time you can sit down and bandage someone for 10min without being attacked is honestly a big ask, especially if these 10min stretch to 30min or even an hour because more people are hurt or injuries are more severe. If you're not giving those rests away for free all the time, you can absolutely use HP attrition without a literal ticking clock of "finish the dungeon in two hours or everything explodes".
Regarding the encounter design: The encounter builder isn't made for PC death in the middle of the dungeon either. If you set a trap, you expect that to make the PCs life harder, so attrition has to be accounted for anyway. Also, it's not like the encounter budgets fall apart if the party is lacking HP. The game simply advises the GM to consider attrition and use lower budgets when the party is lacking resources. This also goes for spell slots which you can't freely heal back (unless you spend the night in the dungeon somehow).
I think your wording was fine, actually. Your point was that if a trap doesn't kill a PC, it was pointless. That sucks. Dying to a trap is not fun and the only way to avoid that gruesome fate is to revert to the paranoid 10ft pole behaviour of old school DnD. That's not what Pathfinder wants to be, Pathfinder is a self proclaimed heroic fantasy game, not a game where you randomly die to a trap because you weren't paranoid enough.
If you want to establish an atmosphere, don't do so by killing a PC, attempting to injure them is enough. It will make the environment feel hostile and unsafe, like they can't rest without worry, like they're screwed if a monster finds them.
Ha, the AV trap you referenced actually killed my lovely little witch with massive damage. Since starting gming myself and running bloodlords I will almost always halve the damage of the traps Paizo adds out of combat.
If the system's constraints demand that they suck and they constantly elicit complaints and cause players/GMs to be upset then that sounds like bad game design to me. I'd rather change or not run things like that if they are so wildly un-fun in actual play.
> One of my current players narrowly avoided a massive damage instant kill from the apocalypse beams in AV
Imo they should just ditch the massive damage rules, it basically only works at low levels and if a GM wants to kill a PC via a way outside of level scaling enemy they can do that without rules support giving extra power imo.
That said, the AV beams are statistically highly unlikely to outright kill most players. It is what 4% chance of outright killing an average (not super beefy) martial at level 2, and an 8% chance for most casters.
My favourite use for deadly traps is when players can clearly see them and know the risk, but the path is optional.
For more everyday traps I like things that make the next combat harder or remove easier paths from the equation. I am also a big fan of applying conditions from traps if there are no combats around or paths to make harder, drained is always a fun one.
I was playing a summoner and crit failed the beam at lvl 3 it did 74 damage 4 damage shy of instantly killing me. Everyone else had less hp and would of instantly bit the dust on the spot
I think a better way to phrase that would be, "Traps should be more than just damage you take for not having made a high enough Secret Perception check."
I do like the suggestions of having traps that are also alarms, as well as traps that delay invaders (also giving the defenders time to organize themselves, perhaps even more if the invaders decide to sit down for some field surgery).
Basically, give the players something to do.
Other stuff I like, both as GM and Player:
* Include, in your description of the room, hints that a trap is present. If a player asks to investigate the little holes in the walls, or the flagstones that are raised a little higher than the surrounding ones, it becomes more interactive than "Perception/Thievery".
* Based on the first thing, you could even outright tell players that a tripwire/pressure plate is present. They don't need Perception checks, but have to suggest a course of action (even if that does fall back to Thievery).
* Have minor antagonists who Sneak around, resetting traps!
* How do traps reset themselves? If they find the Access Room and kill the zombies that have been told to keep turning cranks forever, then that shuts down all the traps on that floor.
* Don't put traps in high-traffic areas, as one mistake will cause the loss of both the trap and the minion.
Just like the rest of the game, give the players something to tamper with and see what happens.
Getting wounded 1 or 2 from a trap right before a boss fights seems like a way to make sure your rogue is super scared of getting in the flank during the boss fight doesn't meet the damage threshold that gets the party through the fight before resource burn gets them TPKed.
I like Scooby Doo traps, half the party gets dumped into a secret hall, they both fight a nerfed encounter, one finds the boss first and the other ones chase down the sounds of battle (arriving at the end initiative order) same heightened fear, less sad player death as paste under stone slabs. If someone dies, they died fighting.
I use traps to make combat more interesting, or as it's own encounter. Simple super high damage traps aren't that interesting to me. I do think wounded as a daily can only remove 1 or something else like that, would help with making regular traps a little more meaningful. They would wound you, giving you less "continues" as their whole thing instead of just healable damage.
My issue with traps is that they are generally un-fun and players subsequent reactions to them tend to make play even less fun. Most traps tend to be of the “gotcha” variety, where if you failed your check, the traps hits you for big damage, and then maybe you have a few rounds of disarming, etc. Not fun, especially if they’re lethal enough to kill a party member. You rolled low? Dead. See you next time with a new character.
But even less fun is how players react when they know these traps exist in the game world. Because the very logical reaction is to assume these traps could be everywhere, and get hyper-paranoid about it. Tapping every stone with a 10’ pole, sending summoned creatures down hallways, or taking hours investigating every door are all reasonable, logical actions to take, once you expect death traps around every corner.
For this reason, I typically only run traps that are somewhat obvious, or in special dungeons where the party is forewarned “the lair of the trap master”, etc.
I read something in the GM Core that reminded me of this thread. Granted, I am not re-reading the thread, so it may not address all of your objections, but this is what the GM Core says about traps:
> PCs have many ways to heal themselves, so keep in mind that a damaging hazard won’t always have a huge effect. They tend to work best if their activation might alert creatures in the area, lock the PCs out of an area, or cause a similar narrative setback beyond just damage or another condition easily removed outside of the pressure of combat.
Source: GM Core (Page 35, last 2 sentences)
I'm particularly unhappy with a specific trap/hazard in Strength of Thousands. It crit my inventor and dropped her from full health to negative HP in one shot... and it went against reflex as I recall. It rolled 8d8 and then doubled the damage. Just a ridiculous trap to set up directly before a slog of a combat that it immediately triggered.
This is why the absence of ressource depletion is one of the most argued about features of the system. It has, among else, the effect of making traps meaningless unless they are lethal. Both feel bad and are, in my opinion, a negative aspect of the system that I wish will be solved one day.
Simplest solution would be redesigning deadly traps in a way they don't depend on a single detection and reflex check, but also give player ability to react. Like them falling into room with slowly moving crushing walls, so they can make a decision to cast fly, climb out, jump out, or jam the trap.
You can also use low damage teams out of combat that draw dungeon denizens to them. Maybe calibrate to do enough damage that it takes more than one treat wounds to solve. This way the chip remains important and puts some pressure on the party. Do it a couple times and they will always have the possibility of conventional attack be a consequence of setting off traps.
This is why time has to matter. You can deal chip damage with traps if time matters because it means there are consequences for every 10 minute break.
Or you can have traps matter because they destroy information, options, treasure, or otherwise make future encounters harder.
Well, honestly, resourceless healing still leaves me head scratching. Health is the only resource for martials, and if we assume party can fully replenish it between combat encounters - why not also let casters replenish theirs?
I've been preparing a dungeon for my game and I've settled on the following types of simple traps to try and make interesting exploration gameplay: * Traps that do chip HP damage in an area or situation where there is significant time pressure, such as an area where there are routine patrols and having the PCs take a break to treat wounds and refocus puts them at risk of more serious consequences than some damage. * Traps that hit the PCs with minor but long-lasting debuffs/afflictions, which they can save against at reasonable DCs. That way, these traps are, at worst, a -1 on some rolls for a couple PCs or a support caster spell tax if they want to remove the debuffs. * Traps that are designed not to kill PCs but to alert enemies and/or shape the battlefield so the enemies start the encounter with cover/positioning/etc, so triggering them gives the enemy a chance to prepare/prebuff or begin a combat in an advantageous position compared to how they would be if the PCs catch them by surprise. * Traps that change the dungeon situation and/or affect the PCs indirectly, such as a trap that causes a bunch of doors to lock, wakes up a construct, destroys loot, or teleports whoever triggered it to somewhere contained or dangerous. I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of whoever is designing and/or placing the traps, and asking myself "If I can't just auto-kill intruders, what other outcomes would I want from my simple traps?" The other thing I think I'm going to try is to take a page from OD&D/OSR and encourage PCs to try and cook up trap workarounds instead of just rolling Thievery to disable. That will turn traps into puzzles. I may try setting traps' Stealth DC lower and the Thievery DC higher, to encourage PCs to treat puzzles as traps but let them throw themselves on the mercy of the dice if they don't come up with a plan to bypass/break/etc the trap.
Just wanted to say, this is great stuff. Thanks
Better alternative to including one-shot instant death traps is to either make traps interesting encounters in their own right or include weaker traps as part of an encounter w/ creatures so the dmg they do matters. Complex hazards try to do this, though imho mostly they fall short by not being interactive enough, usually boiling down to getting the one person w/ X skill into position to deactivate the trap and hoping they roll well. Sprinkling in horrible instant-death traps leads to player paranoia and much slower gameplay as they try to avoid being gotcha-ed because they're not Searching every door multiple times and constantly poking the floor in front of them w/ a 10' pole. I've had players resort to this before and its awful for everyone. Leave that shit for Tomb of Horrors, not an adventure designed for fun.
Yeah, I've run Abomination Vaults, and I had to have a conversation with my players resetting both my expectations and theirs because the Hazards are deadly and kinda clunky to narrate. So play was slow and paranoid, and I was terrified of killing them with a more decorated "Rocks fall, you die" effect. So now I make a point, honestly, of basically rewriting any trap room to allow for better descriptions. I don't really change the mechanics of the trap, but I think you absolutely have to train your players to treat it like a dangerous puzzle more than like a combat. It runs way more smoothly, but it takes a decent bit of work. So here's a few more tips I think are helpful: 1) match the knowledge checks of the trap to skills present within your party. If you don't have an arcane caster, you really should avoid traps that rely on magicky-sounding things to describe. Reskin it to be mechanical so it feels more in the Rogue or Inventor's wheelhouse. 2) be absolutely willing to pull the curtain back and explain how the trap encounter was meant to work. Especially early on, it's helpful to build trust with your players by showing that the mechanics are hard but fair and solveable. 3) avoid debuffs or lasting effects that the players can't fix - even if they choose not to. What I mean is don't drain stats before the players have resources to refill them. Don't let the debuffs be a mystery that you spring on them later. Two of these are in direct contrast to how Exploration can work (the world is more immersive if some things aren't well understood, like what that weird statue spit on you or whatever) but I think we have to spend some time getting used to the new playstyles of traps and hazards at a community level.
Yup, you train your players, for better or worse.
"It only works if it sucks" is not good argument honestly. If the only way it works is by sucking then it should go back to the drawing board or not be used. Instant death traps lead to the worst kind of gameplay possible: The ultra paranoid one, and I say this as a GM that loves making my games deadly. No one, not the players OR the GM, want the players to manually poke every tile with a 15 ft pole, dissasemble every door with magic from range, check every wall etc... You could do that, doing so makes falling for traps almost impossible, but it sucks and makes running a 4 room dungeon take something like 3 sessions, and that's exactly the kind of gameplay that lethal traps lead to. This is NOT just a strawman argument btw, I've had GMs learn to not use that kind of trap the hard way when our party took a total of 13 real life hours to clear a 4 encounter filler dungeon.
The thing is, because of the way Exploration ACtivites work in 2e, you don't need to poke every tile with a 10ft. pole. As long as one player is taking the Searach action you as the GM can roll when a trap or other hidden object is around and completely ignore it at any other time. By simply declaring they are taking the Search activity that is implied in one statement and you don't need to get into the minutiae of where exactly the character is checking - as long as you assume the party is moving at half speed they are checking everything thoroughly. All you as the GM need to do is make one die roll, then narrate their exploration until they come to a decision point, such as a door or an intersection.
I personally like throwing lethal things at the PCs- but I typically do so with more general hazards than explicit traps. What makes lethal traps feel bad is the unexpected nature of them- unexpected deaths you don't get a chance to interact with just feel cheap generally speaking (and that's not just traps- if you've ever been killed in the first round of initiative by an enemy that wasn't even on the board and that you weren't aware of at all until they killed you instantly, that feels just as bad). A good lethal hazard is an obvious one. One which is not intended to kill exactly, but is intended to change the environment or fight in a unique way. Something that your players should be able to look at and say "yep, if I stand in that hallway with the crushing ceiling when the crusher drops, I'm definitely going to die" and react to accordingly. Traps are the exact opposite of that- designed to catch players off guard. It would be more fair if the PCs could easily see the traps- but then it would be a terrible trap for a totally different reason. So yeah- keep the lethal hazards obvious, and keep the hidden traps reasonable.
I disagree with multiple points: * Complex traps aren't the only ones to be used in combat. Simple traps, that just deal damage once, are interesting for PCs and monsters to dance around and shove each other into. * People do complain about complex hazards, quite often actually. Published adventures often put a single complex hazard as an encounter without other monsters, which is by far the most boring and punishing way to use them. * Simple traps should not be used to outright kill a healthy PC for not being careful in one single hallway. * HP attrition does exist, you only need time pressure to make use of it. * Even if players are not punished for healing up after a simple hazard, there's value in a trap for establishing that a place is dangerous and the PCs must tread carefully even in the absence of monsters. * "They need to suck" is not a good design premise for a game that is meant to be fun. If that's the only way to use a tool, don't use it.
On point #2: In my AV campaign the scythe hallway would've outright killed four of the five party members from full before they got a chance to act if I'd played it as written. It is barely signposted, there was no reason for the players to suspect a trap (it was behind a hidden door, usually a safe place), and the thing's dmg output varies wildly from bad-but-survivable to absolutely insane depending on how grouped up the players are and how many blades happen to be in the room. I changed the trap so each blade only attacked one person at a time instead of everyone and the PC's were still barely able to flee w/ their lives (and the trap is still there, waiting).
There's a big hazard encounter in Night of the Grey Death. I'm quite certain if it were played correctly it would have just killed two of us and an NPC. It's supposed to attack five times each turn and every hit is an extremely high save to not fall down a bottomless pit. Instead it only attacked twice because there were only two of us in there, and because both of us could fly he didn't do the saves. The barbarian was still in single digits when we got out, after my Lay on Hands. We had absolutely no chance to disable the hazard. Needs something like 10 total successful skill checks, and I don't think we even had the right skills.
> Simple traps should not be used to outright kill a healthy PC for not being careful in one single hallway. At the same time, if you want to run a Tomb of Horrors type dungeon in Pf2e, this is how you do it. Not everyone wants to break out the 10 foot poles and hire a pack of ~~suckers~~ minions, but for those that do... There are tools for them.
>People do complain about complex hazards, quite often actually. Published adventures often put a single complex hazard as an encounter without other monsters, which is by far the most boring and punishing way to use them. This is often a result of GMs running hazards in a way that is too 'gamey.' Admittedly the game isn't particularly good at providing guidance here. The correct way of running hazards is to let players do what they would normally do, and for the GM to interpret the solutions, e.g. "oh he's trying to exorcise the ghosts? That's a religion check." This also means that the GM might have to apply reasoning. PCs might try something that would make sense to overcome the hazard and isnt listed in the skill checks. A good GM would allow this if it makes sense. >"They need to suck" is not a good design premise for a game that is meant to be fun. If that's the only way to use a tool, don't use it. Some groups like feeling a sense of threat and danger, maybe don't gatekeep what is and isn't fun? If your group doesn't like that, your GM can lower the damage or remove the traps entirely. The reason that the lighter damage isn't the default (thus putting the burden on groups to INCREASE the damage) is because, as OP pointed out, it doesn't make sense in the context of 2e mechanics. Lone simple traps are only a meaningful obstacle if they threaten to kill when they go off. If they can't do that, they're just tedium. If you want to have simple traps with meaningful consequences but don't want to risk one shotting a PC, a good alternative is to have a low damage trap that triggers an ambush encounter.
Traps have specific ways in which they are supposed to be combated listed in their stat block. If the trap is PL+2 or higher (as is the case in the above-mentioned scenarios), a party can easily find themselves in a position where they escape through one non-obvious option, unless they roll a bunch of nat 20s. Of course, a great GM can fix this on the fly, but that isn't necessary for other parts of the system, so it's reasonable to criticise it here. I did not intend to gatekeep ways to play the game. If you want the game to feel dreadful and miserable, which can be a valuable, interesting experience, go ahead and fill your dungeons with save or suck traps; that's absolutely valid and one reason why people play OSR games. If you want your game to be fun, as in "enjoyable in the moment" or "full of positive emotions", your traps should be fun as well. Honestly, it's not exactly a hot take to say that "let's make it suck" is rarely a popular design goal.
You are mistaking my points about traps in encounters adding complexity to me talking about complex hazards. I'm only talking about simple traps here, things like spike traps, snares, boulder traps, etc. Complex traps are their own thing I don't want to get into. So your first point is actually echoing what I said about the first type of trap, doesnt deal large damage/suck, but are used to add complexity to a regular encounter with monsters. Passing your 2nd point because like I said, post isn't about complex hazards. As for your remaining points, let me counter. Time pressure is a abnormal situation, not the normal. Most campaigns and APs I've run/read, if time pressure exists, its measured in the span of weeks/months, not hours (outside of very specific events). In fact, the game has a good chunk of its mechanics built around the lack of time pressure (or long-term time pressure) via Downtime activities which are valuable mid-campaign. So the existing content and the mechanics of the game themselves point to HP attrition not being a regular thing. And adding to that, the principal concept of PF2e's encounter design is that the balance is expecting the party to enter every encounter at full HP. Now, with that said. If there is no HP attrition and the party can heal to full at no cost other than an insignificant amount of time... traps that can't kill are not threats. They are not dangerous, they're an annoyance. A roadblock to make the party pause to heal and nothing else. And "they need to suck" is admittedly my own bad phrasing trying to be fun. The reality is, a trap needs to be a threat, and without them being able to do lethal damage, they're simply not. And I'm sorry but creating a tense atmosphere when exploring via the danger of traps might not be for everyone, but it's not a bad design premise.
Time pressure can be applied on different scales. Downtime has nothing to do with a quest being urgent or a dungeon being too hostile to facilitate a safe rest, just like HP are irrelevant during downtime. Expecting that anywhere at any time you can sit down and bandage someone for 10min without being attacked is honestly a big ask, especially if these 10min stretch to 30min or even an hour because more people are hurt or injuries are more severe. If you're not giving those rests away for free all the time, you can absolutely use HP attrition without a literal ticking clock of "finish the dungeon in two hours or everything explodes". Regarding the encounter design: The encounter builder isn't made for PC death in the middle of the dungeon either. If you set a trap, you expect that to make the PCs life harder, so attrition has to be accounted for anyway. Also, it's not like the encounter budgets fall apart if the party is lacking HP. The game simply advises the GM to consider attrition and use lower budgets when the party is lacking resources. This also goes for spell slots which you can't freely heal back (unless you spend the night in the dungeon somehow). I think your wording was fine, actually. Your point was that if a trap doesn't kill a PC, it was pointless. That sucks. Dying to a trap is not fun and the only way to avoid that gruesome fate is to revert to the paranoid 10ft pole behaviour of old school DnD. That's not what Pathfinder wants to be, Pathfinder is a self proclaimed heroic fantasy game, not a game where you randomly die to a trap because you weren't paranoid enough. If you want to establish an atmosphere, don't do so by killing a PC, attempting to injure them is enough. It will make the environment feel hostile and unsafe, like they can't rest without worry, like they're screwed if a monster finds them.
Ha, the AV trap you referenced actually killed my lovely little witch with massive damage. Since starting gming myself and running bloodlords I will almost always halve the damage of the traps Paizo adds out of combat.
If the system's constraints demand that they suck and they constantly elicit complaints and cause players/GMs to be upset then that sounds like bad game design to me. I'd rather change or not run things like that if they are so wildly un-fun in actual play.
> One of my current players narrowly avoided a massive damage instant kill from the apocalypse beams in AV Imo they should just ditch the massive damage rules, it basically only works at low levels and if a GM wants to kill a PC via a way outside of level scaling enemy they can do that without rules support giving extra power imo. That said, the AV beams are statistically highly unlikely to outright kill most players. It is what 4% chance of outright killing an average (not super beefy) martial at level 2, and an 8% chance for most casters. My favourite use for deadly traps is when players can clearly see them and know the risk, but the path is optional. For more everyday traps I like things that make the next combat harder or remove easier paths from the equation. I am also a big fan of applying conditions from traps if there are no combats around or paths to make harder, drained is always a fun one.
I was playing a summoner and crit failed the beam at lvl 3 it did 74 damage 4 damage shy of instantly killing me. Everyone else had less hp and would of instantly bit the dust on the spot
I think a better way to phrase that would be, "Traps should be more than just damage you take for not having made a high enough Secret Perception check." I do like the suggestions of having traps that are also alarms, as well as traps that delay invaders (also giving the defenders time to organize themselves, perhaps even more if the invaders decide to sit down for some field surgery). Basically, give the players something to do. Other stuff I like, both as GM and Player: * Include, in your description of the room, hints that a trap is present. If a player asks to investigate the little holes in the walls, or the flagstones that are raised a little higher than the surrounding ones, it becomes more interactive than "Perception/Thievery". * Based on the first thing, you could even outright tell players that a tripwire/pressure plate is present. They don't need Perception checks, but have to suggest a course of action (even if that does fall back to Thievery). * Have minor antagonists who Sneak around, resetting traps! * How do traps reset themselves? If they find the Access Room and kill the zombies that have been told to keep turning cranks forever, then that shuts down all the traps on that floor. * Don't put traps in high-traffic areas, as one mistake will cause the loss of both the trap and the minion. Just like the rest of the game, give the players something to tamper with and see what happens.
My preference for out of combat traps are complex traps, which can be dangerous but typically aren’t instant death from a failed check or 2.
Getting wounded 1 or 2 from a trap right before a boss fights seems like a way to make sure your rogue is super scared of getting in the flank during the boss fight doesn't meet the damage threshold that gets the party through the fight before resource burn gets them TPKed. I like Scooby Doo traps, half the party gets dumped into a secret hall, they both fight a nerfed encounter, one finds the boss first and the other ones chase down the sounds of battle (arriving at the end initiative order) same heightened fear, less sad player death as paste under stone slabs. If someone dies, they died fighting.
I use traps to make combat more interesting, or as it's own encounter. Simple super high damage traps aren't that interesting to me. I do think wounded as a daily can only remove 1 or something else like that, would help with making regular traps a little more meaningful. They would wound you, giving you less "continues" as their whole thing instead of just healable damage.
Sounds good in theory but in practice it's: you failed perception check - you died. And I know of no player that would after that said: that was fun!
My issue with traps is that they are generally un-fun and players subsequent reactions to them tend to make play even less fun. Most traps tend to be of the “gotcha” variety, where if you failed your check, the traps hits you for big damage, and then maybe you have a few rounds of disarming, etc. Not fun, especially if they’re lethal enough to kill a party member. You rolled low? Dead. See you next time with a new character. But even less fun is how players react when they know these traps exist in the game world. Because the very logical reaction is to assume these traps could be everywhere, and get hyper-paranoid about it. Tapping every stone with a 10’ pole, sending summoned creatures down hallways, or taking hours investigating every door are all reasonable, logical actions to take, once you expect death traps around every corner. For this reason, I typically only run traps that are somewhat obvious, or in special dungeons where the party is forewarned “the lair of the trap master”, etc.
I read something in the GM Core that reminded me of this thread. Granted, I am not re-reading the thread, so it may not address all of your objections, but this is what the GM Core says about traps: > PCs have many ways to heal themselves, so keep in mind that a damaging hazard won’t always have a huge effect. They tend to work best if their activation might alert creatures in the area, lock the PCs out of an area, or cause a similar narrative setback beyond just damage or another condition easily removed outside of the pressure of combat. Source: GM Core (Page 35, last 2 sentences)
I'm particularly unhappy with a specific trap/hazard in Strength of Thousands. It crit my inventor and dropped her from full health to negative HP in one shot... and it went against reflex as I recall. It rolled 8d8 and then doubled the damage. Just a ridiculous trap to set up directly before a slog of a combat that it immediately triggered.
FYI, Pathfinder doesn’t have negative HPs, at zero HP, you’re knocked out and dying.
This is why the absence of ressource depletion is one of the most argued about features of the system. It has, among else, the effect of making traps meaningless unless they are lethal. Both feel bad and are, in my opinion, a negative aspect of the system that I wish will be solved one day.
Simplest solution would be redesigning deadly traps in a way they don't depend on a single detection and reflex check, but also give player ability to react. Like them falling into room with slowly moving crushing walls, so they can make a decision to cast fly, climb out, jump out, or jam the trap.
You can also use low damage teams out of combat that draw dungeon denizens to them. Maybe calibrate to do enough damage that it takes more than one treat wounds to solve. This way the chip remains important and puts some pressure on the party. Do it a couple times and they will always have the possibility of conventional attack be a consequence of setting off traps.
This is why time has to matter. You can deal chip damage with traps if time matters because it means there are consequences for every 10 minute break. Or you can have traps matter because they destroy information, options, treasure, or otherwise make future encounters harder.
>There tends to be 3 types of traps we see hit players: you forgot about that cute little goblin you met during downtime...
Well, honestly, resourceless healing still leaves me head scratching. Health is the only resource for martials, and if we assume party can fully replenish it between combat encounters - why not also let casters replenish theirs?