v0.10 Traps

[DiscOH]

In 1.3, weapon traps apply coatings on hit. Do .10 weapon traps apply coatings in an AoE? Can I potion coat a weapon and then give everybody cure mortal wounds in a 75" circle?

Do traps really have no maximum damage (5 gold buys you a 1000 damage weapon trap)?

If we're going to make area traps only operate indoors, why don't you just take the ability away from PCs? It's basically useless for doing anything other than trolling (explosive traps in the corner of a room destroying the weekend loot split for instance).

If area traps were changed to avoid holds during combat etc, why are weapon traps (a trap that you can reset without spending any resources) now AoE?

 

[MaxIrons]

So, just re-read the traps section and came away with the following:

You could make a 1,000 point weapon trap, if you could find someone that can single batch 500 pp (100 ranks of make traps, or, 50 with a workshop), for 5 gold, and is willing to sell that at cost.

Good catch on potion coating interacting with weapon traps. That should be looked at. From my reading, the potion coating ritual must target a weapon, not a weapon trap, and is therefore an ineligible target for the potion coating ritual.

As for why weapon traps are AoE? I can't answer that of course. To simplify, I'd call them dart traps, make them strike the person triggering the trap, and make them cheaper (1 pp per damage, min 5). I'd be open to them being expended on use as well, but that is a bigger change.

Also, game room area traps do work outdoors, but only on the one who triggers the trap. You can still mine / tripwire an outdoor area to slow/thin out an advancing force... It just requires much less in the way of holds for field fights as the person who sets it off just needs to find the trap within five feet (max outdoor trigger line), be hit by the effect and play continues without the hold.

 

[Sage of Legaia]

On area traps outdoors: the mod could simply have directions for the marshal to say "this area counts as one room, if the trap goes off it affects everyone in the space". We've been doing "game room"-style traps this way in Calgary for... about as long as I've been playing (~2.5 years), I think, and as long as everyone is clear on where the boundaries lie, it works pretty well without much issue (I personally don't consider calling a hold to resolve a trap an issue, but YMMV).

 

[MaxIrons]

Missed what Sage said in my analysis. +1 to that!

 

[DiscOH]

You could make a 1,000 point weapon trap, if you could find someone that can single batch 500 pp (100 ranks of make traps, or, 50 with a workshop), for 5 gold, and is willing to sell that at cost.

Weapon traps are permanent and can travel. If any location had a player or plot member who makes one of these, it will be in the game forever, dealing arbitrary high amounts of damage.

I think that's an issue.

From my reading, the potion coating ritual must target a weapon, not a weapon trap

My understanding is that weapon traps do not come with a free weapon, and providing one is part of the trap process. That's why 1.3 weapon traps scale sub linearly with damage:cost

"this area counts as one room, if the trap goes off it affects everyone in the space"

While this could be a great solution, I'd rather just correct the printed rules instead of relying on house fixes.

I'd call them dart traps, make them strike the person triggering the trap, and make them cheaper (1 pp per damage, min 5).

0.10 has weapon traps dealing 2 damage per pp spent.

Since weapon traps are the only repeatable trap and the trapmaking capstone has been more or less overtaken by ritual magic, what if weapon traps damage depended on the trap skill of whoever set it up? (Example, weapon traps deal 10x setter's crafting level)

This would also fix the traveling 1,000+ damage traps.

 

[Sage of Legaia]

While this could be a great solution, I'd rather just correct the printed rules instead of relying on house fixes.

It's on page 30 of the playtest packet. They're applying the rules for Ward/Wizard Lock room size to Area Traps and calling areas of this size a Game Room, and at the very end of the paragraph describing this is the following:

Keep in mind that this is an in-game thing – so if a Marshal on a module says “Treat this glade as an underground cave room” it should be treated as a Game Room even though it’s an OOG outside location.

All I was saying is that we've been doing this for a while up in Calgary without issue.

 

[Sage of Legaia]

Um... Having read the trap and coating rules a little more closely in the packet and being a semi-recently approved Marshal for the Calgary chapter, I'm going to just weigh in on my thoughts re: coatings and weapon traps, and how I'd rule them if I was running a mod; if someone with more experience (or ARC, or an owner) says I'm wrong on this analysis, then I would probably take their word on it over mine.

Unless something is changing from 1.3, DiscOH is correct in that a weapon trap requires a weapon be supplied by the person who originally sets the trap, and that a coating can be applied.

In 1.3 it states that only the person who sets off the trap is hit, and coatings are used up after only one strike, so there are no issues regardless of whether you're hit by the trap or not.

In .10, weapon traps rely on a pivot point to determine who is hit (thus can hit multiple targets), and coatings last "until they connect". As a Marshal, I would probably rule that the coating affects only the first person hit by the trap who does not call a Dodge, Parry, or Riposte against it, and all others hit would take the non-coating damage and effect. This sounds a bit odd, but if the idea behind these defenses is "you moved your body/weapon in such a way that the incoming thing didn't actually hit you", then, to me, the weapon didn't actually "connect" with the target, and so the coating is technically still on the weapon.

I'm fairly certain this is more of a oversight-in-wording loophole than the way they are supposed to interact, as the "until they connect" wording isn't used anywhere else in the playtest packet or 1.3 rulebook that I could find; all other similar things note that they can't be re-used or Meditated if a defense is called against them (including Parry, Riposte, and the various Shields), but based on what's written and with no other cases of "until they connect" that I could find, that would be my ruling at the time.

On the topic of Potion Coating, it's worth noting that they are delivered with the Spell qualifier, and so I would rule that they would affect the first target that didn't call a Dodge as usual (Spell Cure Wounds 20, for example), but would pop a Spell Shield as usual before changing to whatever the trap's damage would have been without the Potion Coating against everyone else (who could then call Parry and Riposte against it, as it's now a weapon qualifier).

That's... fairly complicated to do, and I'm really unhappy with the ambiguity present in the unique wording of coatings in the packet now.

 

[MaxIrons]

@Sage of Legaia Ugh.... I think you're interpretation is the most correct and it breaks my brain. Better off to just have "Weapon Traps" just target the person who sets off the trap (similar to Area Traps outside) to eliminate all the corner cases. I'd aim to make them one use as well to keep with all non-equipment items. Make them cheap, one shot weapon damage attacks and then there aren't really any problems.

 

[Sage of Legaia]

I actually think it's fine if weapon traps hit everyone/thing in radius and can be reset? But what I think needs to happen for that is that coatings (standard Alchemy or Potion) need to affect all targets the first time it's set off, and that needs to be unambiguous in the description of the trap.

Bear in mind that Plot can arbitrarily dictate that a trap can't be taken for some reason, so I don't think there's any more danger that a 1000-point weapon trap will get passed around the player base in .10 than a 1000-point Cause Damage Gas trap is in 1.3. I mean... I think both are hilariously funny ideas as a concept, but the application strikes me as a bigger pain than they're worth, and I can't see anyone sinking the time and effort into either one.

 

[DiscOH]

Bear in mind that Plot can arbitrarily dictate that a trap can't be taken for some reason

It was my understanding that only NPC items could be non-salvageable. Once something gets built or enters loot policy I don't know why it would spontaneously disintegrate.

If weapon traps become single use, I expect they'll never be used because of how terrible the weapon delivery is compared to spell/explosive/mechanical/etc. Nobody really uses traps anyways though, so I'm not terribly concerned about game balance one way or the other.

 

[Sage of Legaia]

I worded that badly, but what I meant was that Plot doesn't technically 'need' to put a tag into any trap they put out (within reason, I assume), so even if they did put out a 1000-point weapon trap for whatever reason, there's no guarantee a PC could take it even if they successfully disarmed it. I used this for a mod that used gas traps, with the mechanism able to be disabled but the trap itself was embedded in the chest in such a was that neither the trap nor the gas inside was salvageable by the PCs if they successfully disarmed it.

I will say that in my experience PCs use traps significantly less often than Plot teams do, but the results can be highly devastating and amazing when they do.

 

[Warran Eversor]

As a new player who is interested in building a trap maker the changes look interesting however did they drop the Fire/Acid traps and area traps feel like they are ripe for abuse by clever players since they could be used to easily be turned on fellow players. Additionally area traps aren't viable to be used in game with out having some way to phase the damage/effects. I would honestly like them to do a small area and a room area but only at the game masters digression because that volume is too easy to abuse. Since I plan on building a trap maker this rule set basically gives me the option to blow up the entire chapter at once.

Please realize I have only been to one game, but I my character could take out an entire chapter all at once with a area trap after I put together the resources, not planing to but I could

 

[Avaran]

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[Muir]

As a new player who is interested in building a trap maker the changes look interesting however did they drop the Fire/Acid traps and area traps feel like they are ripe for abuse by clever players since they could be used to easily be turned on fellow players. Additionally area traps aren't viable to be used in game with out having some way to phase the damage/effects. I would honestly like them to do a small area and a room area but only at the game masters digression because that volume is too easy to abuse. Since I plan on building a trap maker this rule set basically gives me the option to blow up the entire chapter at once.

Please realize I have only been to one game, but I my character could take out an entire chapter all at once with a area trap after I put together the resources, not planing to but I could

This is one of those things you just have to talk yourself down from as a player. There have been events when my Rogue has -definitely- had dark thoughts of stacking his explosive trap load under the tables in the tavern and just blowing the loot split and everyone at it sky high as an act of economic terrorism, but I have to metagame away from that because it would absolutely not be fun for anyone else in the room, and would rapidly become a huge customer service issue that would hurt game attendance.

 

[DiscOH]

This is one of those things you just have to talk yourself down from as a player. There have been events when my Rogue has -definitely- had dark thoughts of stacking his explosive trap load under the tables in the tavern and just blowing the loot split and everyone at it sky high as an act of economic terrorism, but I have to metagame away from that because it would absolutely not be fun for anyone else in the room, and would rapidly become a huge customer service issue that would hurt game attendance.

Does the risk of this abuse case validate the "joy" of room wide traps?

I'd be happy either way, but as a player I also wouldn't mind somebody trying to blow up everything I've ever worked towards.

 

[Avaran]

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[Graham Wolsey]

I think if this were actually a concern, they would make PVP against the rules.

My general opinion is that if people can't handle that possibility, they should take steps to avoid it happening in-character (search under tables/chairs, etc. when concerned), or just don't play. Pretty simple.

I feel pretty strongly that not considering the potential for effects to ruin other's game is bad game design.

I agree with your analysis once the mechanics "go live", but why design something that is likely to create an experience that isn't fun for others? This is one of the reasons I was strongly in favor of removing the Selunari curse ability from players arsenals. Imagine if someone could forcibly spirit link a 200 pound weight to a character and the character couldn't choose to take a death instead of suffer the effect.

 

[Draven]

I feel pretty strongly that not considering the potential for effects to ruin other's game is bad game design.

Is Amnesia bad game design? Because lemme tell you, it’s all I need to ruin someone’s game.

(I’d bring up Love #9, but I hate that effect and believe it has no place in Alliance.)

 

[Muir]

I think if this were actually a concern, they would make PVP against the rules.

My general opinion is that if people can't handle that possibility, they should take steps to avoid it happening in-character (search under tables/chairs, etc. when concerned), or just don't play. Pretty simple.

If you want to see mass PVP become against the rules in a chapter, a rogue with enough levels in create trap could probably arrange it for you in a couple months. Explosive and acid traps still act as a shatter effect, after all, and after a few well-placed bombings most of the chapter isn't going to be able to play the game because there won't be enough equipment left to use and all their consumables are trashed. Especially the lowbies, who are less likely to have rendered/enchanted weapons and AA, and who are also less likely to be able to easily replace a mass loss of gear.

I've played that event, in Northern Minnesota, where there was one non-shattered weapon in town. It sucked buttermilk and I never went back. I suspect the same would be true of a lot of players, given an event where they lose most of their character's accumulated stuff.

There's a reason several chapters have sleeping or eating areas that are specifically non-PVP.

 

[Muir]

I am, in all full consideration of the above, still of the opinion that traps outside of noisemakers should be NPC only if we're operating on the design theory that the intent of Alliance is for parties of adventurers to go dungeon-crawl. They need to be treated as an environmental hazard to be overcome on mods. That seems to be how the class balance is being built, and where the intent of the .10 rules seems directed.

If the intent is instead to build a balanced potential for free-for-all PvP, well, we need to have a long talk about class balance.