Thread by @hexcrawl

I hadn't, actually. Giving Xanathar's a proper cover-to-cover read is still buried on my To Do list.

But you've prompted me to do a very quick live-tweet response.

https://twitter.com/valiant_judge/status/1295391070201745410

We're talking about traps in the context of this article for those coming here from a different angle.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4502…

This really emphasizes why I think 5E's passive Perception is dumb.

Step 1: Note passive Perception scores.
Step 2: Arbitrarily set a Perception DC.
Step 3: Compare your arbitrary Perception DC to the passive scores you already know.
Step 4: Why the fuck are you doing this?

Larger discussion about this: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4030…

Short version is that it's just GM fiat with pointless number juggling. Either just use fiat or roll the dice.

This advice effectively moves the interaction up the player expertise hierarchy. "How do you do that?" is a GM signal that the player needs to engage more with the game world.

It also points out that if you, as a GM, NEED more information to make a ruling (where are you positioned?) then you need to ask for more specificity.

Good, fundamental advice that builds off the good advice from the DMG.

Mandatorily grouping together ongoing effects and multi-step disabling is silly.

For example, the Breath of God trap in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is an ongoing effect that Indy disables by tying a rope to the gear works.

That whole sequence of traps, puzzles, and puzzle-traps.

In the context of a complex trap the “make skill check to figure out what you’re supposed to do” makes sense because there’s a cost associated with it. The statue keeps belching flame while you’re trying to figure it out, right?

My skepticism of skill checks being used to tell players what they should be doing vs. players having a "please send help, I will pay a cost" button is discussed at more length here.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4458…

I generally want to focus on "this skill check is the character figuring out the thing the player wants to do" (i.e., which runes to smudge out) rather than "this skill check tells the player what they should declare as their next action" (i.e., you need to smudge out runes).

Note that "player uses skill to get more information that they can use to make a decision" is different than "player uses skill to have GM tell them what to do" and VERY different than "GM requires skill check so that they can tell the player what to do."

Keeping that distinction in mind is, IMO, useful for the GM: Instead of saying, "You can disable the statue by smashing its eyes." You can say, "The magical effect seems to be limited to its rune-etched glass eyes, not the statue as a whole."

It seems like a subtle distinction, but the player deciding to smash the eyes based on that information feels very different than the player just doing the thing they were told to do.

I also frequently find that players come up with completely different ways of using that info.

Using initiative to determine whether or not someone can act between a trap being triggered and the trap taking effect is an interesting technique.

"The gargoyle's mouth pops open, revealing a rusted nozzle! Give me initiative checks!" is a clear adrenaline punch.

But since Initiative and Dexterity saving throws receive bonuses separately, it creates some weird mechanical artifacts.

Like, characters who are really good at dodging a blade that scythes out of the wall just once, but 40% worse at dodging a blade that repeatedly scythes out.

And also vice versa.

It also seems to require that any trap with an ongoing effect be very large in scale: You can't just have a single blade scything through a corridor and posing a hazard, because PCs can just stroll past it on their turn.

The Path of Blades, for example, is 160 feet long because if it was 30 feet long the PCs would basically just ignore it.

This is solid mechanical advice. There’s also a lot of good, practical discussion about how traps might work and how they might be dealt with throughout this section of the book.

My gut, however, says that this is over-designed. Specifically, they're wasting time designing contingencies.

If you think of these as examples discussing how a DM might adjudicate a trap in response to player actions, great.

If you think of them as examples of how you should actually design your traps (which is, IMO, how the book presents them), I don't think they're good examples.

This is stuff that you can improvise in play, and therefore shouldn't be prepped.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3988…

A deeper discussion into avoiding contingency-based prep. This goes well beyond traps, which I think may actually make it clearer what it means in the specific context of traps.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3742…

So, I guess my general take-away is:

- Some good advice and some very interesting mechanical approaches that can be added to your toolkit.

- But mandatorially grouping those tools together is weird.

- Passive Perception is just a bad mechanical base for trap interactions.