Trap Master Build?

Hello,
My friend and I have been looking through the rules and he really wants to create a character around creating traps, and using them effectively as combat tools. However, we cant figure out a way to do this with the current rule set due to a few factors. The big one being the time it takes to set traps.

What I'm wondering is, if anyone has managed to go a trap master type build while still being effective in a fight with the traps. Kind of looking for tips and tricks. Thank you to anyone who replies.
 
I believe the current iteration of the rules is intentionally designed to make active trap use as part of combat a difficult endeavor. This is because pretty much any time a trap goes off a Hold gets called to resolve the area of effect damage, and Holds in combat are generally not a desired thing.
 
I believe the current iteration of the rules is intentionally designed to make active trap use as part of combat a difficult endeavor. This is because pretty much any time a trap goes off a Hold gets called to resolve the area of effect damage, and Holds in combat are generally not a desired thing.
There has to be something that can be done with out taking 3 hours for a single combat, due to holds being called.
 
The 2.0 rules (which are not yet in use, see your local chapter for when they'll be playtesting it) have some changes to traps that you might like to review.

I doubt you'll find quite what you're looking for there. On the plus side, area-effect traps are a little simpler now because they always affect everyone in a particular "game room" (or only the person who triggered it, when not in a game room). There's also a ritual for making magical traps called "Instant Trap" that allows you to set them as fast as you can physically set up the trap. But you're probably not getting out of holds. Even single-target weapon traps still need a hold to figure out who it hits.

But not all is lost. While setting traps effectively is still going to be very situational, it feels like trap-focused characters are less punished (mechanically) for focusing on it. Trapmakers can produce items called "trap globes" which basically work like thrown alchemical items - hit enemy with packet, do effect to enemy. They don't feel anything like what you want in terms of flavor or tactical trap placement or area effects, but at least it gives them a (theoretically) viable thing to do with that skill outside of the narrow circumstances where set traps are useful.

Traps and alchemy also count as stealth skills, so they help your advancement in terms of skills that scale based on how much stealth XP you've spent.
 
There has to be something that can be done with out taking 3 hours for a single combat, due to holds being called.

Not really, at present.

As Ken points out, there are options in the rules being currently playtested, however in 1.3 traps are generally something that is part of a puzzle mod for the players to disarm. Otherwise, they seem to be something that has to be extensively pre-planned, set up, and still fails to do enough damage to be worth all that effort. :)

My rogue has had ledgerdemain for almost a decade now, and has had to disarm a total of two traps in that time. I generally get my use out of Alchemy with a couple of globes for emergencies (since it is rare that I encounter an enemy worth spending gold to take down that has a metabolism) and coating heavy crossbow bolts.
 
The current playtest for the 2.0 rule set make being a master trapsmith (with around 40-50 levels in Create Traps) an extremely dangerous character and if you go Hobling, it's a third off (if you go go Artisan or Rogue). In today's ruleset, you cannot be effective in combat. You can be very effective BEFORE combat, setting up a kill zone before anyone gets into range but that requires pre-planing and knowing that the bad guys are coming your way.
 
A Trap-focused character works very well in theory (at least in 2.0), but lacks practicality for most situations.

As discussed above, you're incredibly deadly to just about everything if you have ample setup time and can lure or otherwise force the target(s) into your traps, and being able to use Trap Globes is a nice way of assisting on the battlefield (they use the Elemental qualifier, so very little is going to resist more than one if the creature is vulnerable to the effect you're throwing at it in the first place). Your sleeping quarters and storage is also very well protected, if only by the idea that a wrong step into your bunk could blow everything up.

It also has a lot of glaring drawbacks, primarily that required setup. Outside of battles you're aware of and can prepare for, you have very limited ability to actually contribute to a skirmish; setting traps on the fly is prone to interruption, and you may catch yourself or allies in a blast and make them easy pickings for whatever you're fighting. If you're travelling to a battle (which, at least in our chapter, is basically every single time you go on a mod), you have either a) no time to set anything up, or b) no space to set anything up; you can't set traps ahead of time (because they technically wouldn't "be there"), and it's unreasonable to expect or demand that the rest of your group hold off the enemy while you get set up.

If you want to be a "Trap Master", your best bet is to get enough ranks of Create Trap to be able to make whatever traps you want, then invest heavily in either Alchemy (Gas traps) or Create Scroll (Scroll traps), and supplement all that with Stealth skills (Evade/Dodge, Doom Blow, etc.). Weapon choice makes little difference at this point, since your primary offense is going to be Gas Globes/Scrolls and Trap Globes, but Staff is cheap and not a bad choice (you can block with only one hand while chucking Globes), and Archery will keep you at a distance (but it requires two hands to use a bow/crossbow, so switching between arrows/bolts and Globes could prove more difficult that it's worth). Alchemy counts towards your Stealth Skill XP, and Scrolls pretty much require two hands, so take that into consideration when deciding how to supplement your traps.
 
Looking through the rules again. (The newest official rules that is) I could make it work if I could ignore the "traps cant move more then 5 feet after being armed" rule. Because then you could carry around a bunch of "pre-armed" traps that just have a simple safety pin or something. Then you could lay them out, literally as fast as you can, remove the pin and wait. But, the problem still becomes calling hold every 5 seconds.
 
Thank you everyone who commented. It was an interesting idea that we had. But it doesn't look like it can work, not with the current rules anyway.
 
I'd build a single trap while combat was going on, with the object being trapped being something distinct but portable. A shiny box on a stump, whatever. Or maybe a single trap area that happens to have a whole bunch of traps within it. Whatever. Call it "Death Valley." I'd also make sure it was a good distance away from the fight so that you're confident that combat won't accidentally wander into it.

Once Death Valley is built, you go Charm every enemy you feasibly can. Command them to follow you until you're satisfied you've collected enough prisoners.

I'd then command them all to go pick up the box at once.

Obviously this is a complicated process, but I don't think setting up traps inside a combat area itself is very workable. I do think, however, setting up a trap area in a quiet area and then Pied Pipering your victims into it is completely feasible.
 
I'd build a single trap while combat was going on, with the object being trapped being something distinct but portable. A shiny box on a stump, whatever. Or maybe a single trap area that happens to have a whole bunch of traps within it. Whatever. Call it "Death Valley." I'd also make sure it was a good distance away from the fight so that you're confident that combat won't accidentally wander into it.

Once Death Valley is built, you go Charm every enemy you feasibly can. Command them to follow you until you're satisfied you've collected enough prisoners.

I'd then command them all to go pick up the box at once.

Obviously this is a complicated process, but I don't think setting up traps inside a combat area itself is very workable. I do think, however, setting up a trap area in a quiet area and then Pied Pipering your victims into it is completely feasible.
Love the creativity.
 
My biggest issue with trap master is it doesn't really accomplish much more than an average Joe with legerdemain.

You can buy 2-3 alchemy traps and reuse them. You can buy a handful of weapon traps and reuse them. Explosive/acid traps are too expensive for constant use and destroying the dropped loot is a bad way to pay that premium.

So you could spend 60xp for master trap Smith, but the only real difference is a 30 second set timer.
 
My biggest issue with trap master is it doesn't really accomplish much more than an average Joe with legerdemain.

You can buy 2-3 alchemy traps and reuse them. You can buy a handful of weapon traps and reuse them. Explosive/acid traps are too expensive for constant use and destroying the dropped loot is a bad way to pay that premium.

So you could spend 60xp for master trap Smith, but the only real difference is a 30 second set timer.

To be fair, if I wanted to use my Pied Piper strategy, as above, that 30 second timer is actually a pretty awesome difference, when dealing with stacked traps.
 
then again, if you hit them with a charm gas, couldn’t you just hit them with a sleep and accomplish the same thing faster?
 
then again, if you hit them with a charm gas, couldn’t you just hit them with a sleep and accomplish the same thing faster?

Sleep doesn't give you bodyguards/healers up until you're ready to dispose of the garbage, though.
 
That is a fair point. It would be most effective if you could lead them through a “game room” to get aoe on the traps.
 
That is a fair point. It would be most effective if you could lead them through a “game room” to get aoe on the traps.

That’s the intent with “Death Valley,” yeah. :)
 
I'd build a single trap while combat was going on, with the object being trapped being something distinct but portable. A shiny box on a stump, whatever. Or maybe a single trap area that happens to have a whole bunch of traps within it. Whatever. Call it "Death Valley." I'd also make sure it was a good distance away from the fight so that you're confident that combat won't accidentally wander into it.

Once Death Valley is built, you go Charm every enemy you feasibly can. Command them to follow you until you're satisfied you've collected enough prisoners.

I'd then command them all to go pick up the box at once.

Obviously this is a complicated process, but I don't think setting up traps inside a combat area itself is very workable. I do think, however, setting up a trap area in a quiet area and then Pied Pipering your victims into it is completely feasible.

Yeah, the issue is that unless you've spent a metric ton of gold on the trap in that box, the answer will be 'HOLD! All y'all are inside that radius right? 50 Flame!' 'Got it' 'LAY ON' 'Ow, what now boss?'

Plus the OOG issue that you're tying up a mod's worth of NPCs and probably a marshal for that underwhelming moment.
 
Yeah, the issue is that unless you've spent a metric ton of gold on the trap in that box, the answer will be 'HOLD! All y'all are inside that radius right? 50 Flame!' 'Got it' 'LAY ON' 'Ow, what now boss?'

Plus the OOG issue that you're tying up a mod's worth of NPCs and probably a marshal for that underwhelming moment.

2 gold for 100 damage isn’t underwhelming, and that’s without the discount.
 
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