Trapping Large Rooms

A

Alex319

Artisan
I'm a little unclear on the rules for trapping an area that is bigger than 1 game room. If I understand it correctly, there's no restriction on where the traps can be placed in the room, and the wording about "when the traps go off" seems to imply that all the traps go off at the same time; i.e. that they're on the same trigger. So does that mean that if a large tavern is 5 game rooms, say, that I can put 5 identical traps in a disused corner of the room, then set them off and affect every single person in the tavern?

If so, that seems potentially broken. Consider the following scenario. Someone comes into the tavern during the night, when nobody is there, and puts a batch of explosive traps under a cabinet in a disused corner of the room. Then when everyone is in the tavern during breakfast, he "accidentally" walks into the cabinet, setting off the traps, and destroys literally everything non-indestructible in the tavern. The only way for the playerbase to prevent this would be to search the entire tavern for traps every morning.

While it's certainly possible to do this under the current rules (I think I saw a story on the forums of someone actually doing that) it seems much harder to do it undetectably because you would have to spread the traps around, including in places 5 feet or closer from where you expect players to be, so it would be much easier to find. With the new change it seems like you could put a trap in a near-impossible-to-find place and still have a good chance of affecting lots of things.
 
As it seems to be using the same rules as wards in this sense, wouldn't the traps need to be placed in each "room" of the large tavern? The ward needs to be clearly marked for each door so I assumed this was the intended way. However, By the rules they could have them in unused parts of the tavern with very short triggers so as to be nearly impossible to trip without the "accident" as long as it is spread evenly. The representation being that one bomb sets off the next in quick sequence.
 
I was thinking more about a big tavern which is only one physical room, but it's really big. So there wouldn't really be an "in each room of the tavern."

Now that I think about it, my main point isn't really specific to the case of a "building that counts as multiple game rooms" scenario. The idea is mainly that if you're standing in a game room, you can be affected by any trap going off anywhere in the game room, even if it's 30 feet awy in a completely inaccessible location. This definitely seems like it could definitely increase the chance of a party wipe caused by a trap, and make it harder to get through trapped areas.

I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing; in fact, I think it could be fun if it's easier to hit multiple players with a trap. Right now the only traps that are really threatening are flame/acid/explosive traps (since they destroy your equipment) and maybe death gas - pretty much anything else is trivial to fix with a healing or status removal spell. The possibility of a whole party getting hit with, say, a Sleep gas trap might really make the players have to think up new countermeasures and really present a threat that's not about destroying your stuff. In the hands of Plot, I'm not too worried because Plot can just not set up mods that use traps in "unfair" ways.

But I do think the rules need to be "stress tested" i.e. playtesters need to be thinking about how players might be able to "break" the system, and make sure there isn't a way for a player to set up traps in a way where they can set them off and hit lots of targets in a way that's very difficult to prevent. the way i was describing here is just one way, but there are likely others I haven't thought of. One I just thought of now while writing this is a "Trap Grenade." Make a trap with a trigger that's very difficult to actually set off by moving it. When you're about to invade a building, stand right next to the door and arm the trap in your hand. Do the 60-count to arm it (right now you haven't contacted the enemy yet, so you're okay.) Then open the door and throw the grenade in. The grenade will auto-detonate after it's moved 5 feet as per the normal rules, at which point it's be inside the building, and hit everything in the building but it won't hit you.
 
Sorry I was unclear, but I agree I said rooms in quotes as I believe it currently requires 1 in each section of the 1 large room you are describing, but what I am saying is each trigger doesn't need to be accessible, just armed. So in this example, you could strap 3 along a long table with no easy way to accidentally trip it, and one trigger in the corner of the room. I trigger the explosive in the corner and the chain reaction triggers the rest. I am not a rules marshall, but that seems to be the intended way to trap a large room that constitutes 2-3 trap "rooms" without actual walls separating them.
 
I believe to affect larger areas (so a tavern) you just need to place the same tag (ie Acid, Scroll etc) by the multiple of the room. So, if your tavern is deemed to be 6 game rooms, you would have 1 trap, 1 trigger and 6x identical tags to effect the whole area.
 
You are correct that this represents a very large increase in the power of traps. This is intended. Trap making was regarded nearly universally as a dead part of the game, and a significant improvement was considered necessary to make it a viable use of build, on par with the other production skills.
 
Alex319 said:
One I just thought of now while writing this is a "Trap Grenade." Make a trap with a trigger that's very difficult to actually set off by moving it. When you're about to invade a building, stand right next to the door and arm the trap in your hand. Do the 60-count to arm it (right now you haven't contacted the enemy yet, so you're okay.) Then open the door and throw the grenade in. The grenade will auto-detonate after it's moved 5 feet as per the normal rules, at which point it's be inside the building, and hit everything in the building but it won't hit you.
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This would be illegal. You would be "trapping" a person (yourself) at this point. I believe that this will continue to be part of 2.0.
 
norman b said:
This would be illegal. You would be "trapping" a person (yourself) at this point. I believe that this will continue to be part of 2.0.
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Ah, but -you- aren't the trigger. The trigger is an armed trap being moved more than five feet.

That said, same question, just with the trap being set on the ground outside the door then hucked through so that it hits the 5 foot limit inside the room.

Edit : Or set outside then carried in with a 5' tripwire that will trigger the trap manually once it hits that distance.
 
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It feels to me like you'd just set it up just inside the door, attach a few feet of fishing line to the trigger, step outside the door, and trigger the trap. Since you're not in the room where it happened (the trap itself activating) you'd avoid the effect.

EDIT: never mind, this is not allowed per the rules.

I too would expect some serious marshal wrath if someone moved a trap as you described.
 
It is not intended for someone to ever be able to set off a trap and not be affected by it. Even if the wording of the rules doesn't expressly forbid this, the spirit is intended to. If you want to blow up a room, you blow up with it. Use a CoP.
 
That's why I'm asking the question. I'm not worried about someone dodging the effects, I'm wondering with the new room rules how long it'll be until we see our first equivalent of a bomb vest, where some trapsmith decides to 'buy' a mod win by blowing himself up and having one of his groupmates (outside the room and thus outside the AOE) drop a cure light on him.

Or just burns a Resolute.
 
I'm fairly certain that the rules forbid arming a trap attached to a person straight out to prevent these kinds of Shenanigans©. I know there was an intention for this to be the case. If you want a trap to go off in a given game room, it should be armed in that game room; maybe we can put some language to that effect in the rules. That's why I mentioned CoP. If you want to do something legit crazy and cold, you drop a Circle of Power in the doorway to prevent escape and allow you to be within the room without getting pummled.
 
That leads to another good question to ask. With the 'everything in the room' rules, does a trap in a COP in a room hit the COP, the room, or both? I was of the opinion that COPs were inviolate, but the new Massive rules my chapter is using make me question that.
 
A CoP specifically states that nothing but air goes through it, other than those invested or recognized into/out of it; weapons, gasses, spells, etc. are blocked by . Therefore, I would say that under no circumstances would a trap of any kind affect anything on the other side of a CoP, whether it was set off inside or outside of it.

On a side note, what rules for Massive is your chapter using? Because that sounds like a direct violation of the wording of CoP.
 
Sorry, the train of thought is that you put your circle rep into the building, ideally in such a way that it fills up the doorway so people can't get out. You step in and cast the Circle, then set up the trap inside the room while protected by the circle, DROP THE CIRCLE and trigger the trap. Otherwise the Circle would prevent the trap from hitting anyone but you.
 
I would like to see a little better description of how one rigs up a trap intended for large area (2+ game rooms). Do you have to set each trap individually? Do all the traps have to be contiguous to each other / linked together ? Do I have to rep each trap?

If I'm arming one of the traps and the others just need to be there, what happens if some manipulates / removes / destroys a non armed trap that is present to fulfill the 2+ game room requirement?

Could someone who has set up a trap just inside the room and is standing outside throw a rock or something at the trigger to set it off? If so would they avoid the effect?
 
A two-person team could do a tavern wipe.

One guy goes into the tavern when nobody is there and sets up a supertrap under a table, then leaves.

Later, he goes in and blows it up, while his buddy sits outdoors, ready to heal him.

They take everything that survives and is lootable, and Amnesia everyone. If they know who can Rebirth, they can just First-Aid those guys.

That's pretty...terrible. But, a few people can put a circle up around a cabin and intentionally backlash a ritual to destroy all your rits/components, so, I'm not sure how concerned I am about this.
 
They don't even need to waist those Amnesias but yea...all that you said. Traps are going to be Very VERY deadly.

Well i guess i can use my Resolute on a trap then if its just Dmg right Dan?
 
Gilwing said:
They don't even need to waist those Amnesias but yea...all that you said. Traps are going to be Very VERY deadly.

Well i guess i can use my Resolute on a trap then if its just Dmg right Dan?
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You know....that's...actually really true.

But there's no reason the trapper wouldn't also have Resolute. You're still at 1 Body, and there's a fully healed jerkwad coming into the room looking specifically for people like you as his first target.

You're holding your fork in your hand, wondering what the heck just happened.

This isn't going to go well for you.
 
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