[.11] Trap Triggers

Muir

Muir

Fighter
So I'm doing a bit of downtime design, and something struck me. Given Room Traps no longer hit just the person setting them off, is there any reason one could not construct a timed trigger on a trap?

Say a trap that fires off in 30 seconds or so to represent a slow match being lit when it is tripped, or the need for a binary chemical agent to mix and start reacting to make a gas trap work?
 
Ummm... I'm not sure, honestly. I don't have a book in front of me, but as far as I recall, any and all traps have to be disarmable, whether that's just preventing the conditions for the trigger (weighing down a pressure plate trap with a bag of rocks) or disconnecting the trigger entirely (removing a battery or snipping a string); provided the trap and timer are set up in such a way that it's possible for another person to find and disarm it before the trap goes off, I don't see why you couldn't set one on a timer, but I suspect that the minimum time would be much higher than 30 seconds (likely 5 or 10 minutes, to keep consistency with other timers in the game).
 
Given that this is not a counted ability, and the trap would be perfectly valid if it fired immediately on being tripped, why would it follow that a longer time would be needed?
 
Hmm.

How do you incorporate a timer into a trap, exactly? You use examples like a “slow burn,” but unless you’re using something that’s actually burning, I can’t imagine how you’d run this without using a Trap Marshal who’s basically serving as Plot for this situation.

Basically, if your question is “Can I set up a trap that doesn’t go off immediately but instead gives characters X time to disarm the trap before it actually fires,” then I’d say, sure, that’s something within Plot’s ability to do, but that’s less a trap mod and more of a puzzle mod that has a trap element.

I do not think PCs could reasonably do this, no.
 
@Muir The rules say that all traps have to be disarmable, so as long as the trap is set up with a reasonable chance that it can be successfully disarmed if it's found in time, I don't see any reason you couldn't set a time bomb or whatever; but 30 seconds is simply not enough time, in my opinion, to allow a reasonable chance of finding and successfully disarming the trap unless the method is very simple (such as the timer being quickly and easily removable without the use of a tool). Since the only other standard timers in the game are 60 seconds (still too short, in my mind), 5 minutes, and 10 minutes, those would likely be the minimum time required on your timer.

Piggybacking onto Draven, though, I agree that this is overall rather impractical for PCs to do, and depending on the circumstances could even be considered a violation of the "Good Sport" rule.
 
The chance to disarm it is before triggering it, honestly. The design I'm looking at could be disarmed during the spindown on the mechanical timer, but that would require knowing you set it off.

Note I'm not talking a set and forget timebomb, but a standard trap trigger that has a delay between activation and going off.

I don't think outright time bombs would be good for the game, as much as I can see an in-character desire for them.
 
Oh, okay, I misunderstood what you were going for, sorry. Hmm, in that case... I would say that you'd have to demonstrate disarming your trap within the time limit to at least one of the Marshals in your chapter, and let them have final say on whether it's enough time for someone to blindly disarm it; I'm assuming they'd likely set a minimum time of 60 seconds, anyway, for timing conventions noted above.

On a side note, having a trap trigger, but having a delay before the effect actually goes off, is something you'd likely have to clear with a Marshal in the first place; the rules say the trigger on a trap has to have either a visible (blinking light) or audible (a beeper or snapping mechanism) means to convey it's been tripped, so if you use a wind-down or other timer that only starts once the trigger goes off, the person disarming it needs to be told that they have time to disarm it before the effect happens, and in theory only a Marshal should be giving them that information. If that's not the case, and the timer sets off the trigger for the trap when it reaches the end... Personally, I wouldn't allow that trap into game, unless the timer ticking down is VERY obvious (like a stopwatch or a ticking sound).
 
((Not sure why it double-posted, edited to remove the block of text.))
 
I would say yes. A trap is generally approved with it's trigger. If your trigger is a pressure plate of some sort, then the simplest timing mechanism is sand. If you have a tripline or something that pulls a plug from a sandbag such that it begins to empty, then players would have whatever time it took for the weight of the sand to reach the necessary pressure to trigger the trigger.
 
Alavatar said:
I would say yes. A trap is generally approved with it's trigger. If your trigger is a pressure plate of some sort, then the simplest timing mechanism is sand. If you have a tripline or something that pulls a plug from a sandbag such that it begins to empty, then players would have whatever time it took for the weight of the sand to reach the necessary pressure to trigger the trigger.
Click to expand...

I like electronic triggers, so I was thinking a simple tripwire attached to a pin that holds a swing arm up. When the pin is pulled by the tripwire being hit, the arm drops with enough resistance that it will take ~30 seconds to reach the other side and close the circuit, sounding the alarm. The disarm would be the same as nearly all electronic trap triggers, simply either prevent the circuit from closing (say by stopping the arm with a finger) or remove the battery clip so that closing the circuit does not sound the alarm. Easy peasy.
 
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Muir said:
I like electronic triggers, so I was thinking a simple tripwire attached to a pin that holds a swing arm up. When the pin is pulled by the tripwire being hit, the arm drops with enough resistance that it will take ~30 seconds to reach the other side and close the circuit, sounding the alarm. The disarm would be the same as nearly all electronic trap triggers, simply either prevent the circuit from closing (say by stopping the arm with a finger) or remove the battery clip so that closing the circuit does not sound the alarm. Easy peasy.
Click to expand...

I would rule this to be an illegal trap, because the trigger is not necessarily detectable to an impartial observer, as the trigger is considerably separated from the trap.

While the tripwire is detectable, the full extent of the trigger isn’t.

If the trigger was a weapon trap that set off a second trap? I’d have less an issue, but I don’t think that would accomplish what you want.

Edited to clarify my issue.
 
I'm not sure how that is any different than the description of the clothespin with two thumb tacks in it that is in the rulebook - other than it taking half a minute for the clothespin to snap shut. A person sees the tripwire, follows it back to the pin, sees that the pin is holding something up and that the arm of the trap will descend to a connection point if the pin is pulled. I mean, it's not a common design but if someone has the ability to disarm traps, they should be familiar enough with the idea of a closing circuit trap.

With a slow descent of 30 seconds before the trap is set off though, couldn't a character with ledgermain simply take the arm and move it back up since the 'buzz' hasn't denoted the trap has been set off. Now if this is suppose to represent the stereotypical timebomb that cannot be deactivated, that's different and really such a thing, IMO, would be against the rules.
 
They certainly could, and that would be a clever way to do it. A timebomb that can't be deactivated is much more in the realm of a plot trap, as PC traps are required to be disarmable.
 
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