End of the weekdays means random stuff!
- So, this comic was exactly how I was running Handsome. Well, except for spending money on bow-related stuff, he literally looted everything else combat-related after character generation.
The Weekly Roll #150
- I like this line of thought - making traps totally obvious and force you to engage with traps. I may need to do more of this.
Don't Hide Traps
I'm not sure how I'd implement it to makes Traps a still-useful skill, but still.
And I do like hidden traps enough to keep them around.
And it does mean it's pitting my knowledge of engineering vs. my players that include folks who are actually engineers, one architect, a guy with a degree in materials science . . . which is extremely challenging vs. just putting a Link spell with an offensive spell on it. Because honestly I suck at the very things they're good at, and pitting my knowledge vs. theirs in a way sure to consume time and then bitching about turning dungeon exploration into physics and engineering problems . . . well, it seems like a poor choice for me.
Still, I like "the more dangerous it is, the more obvious it needs to be." And I do find the hazards I put in the dungeon - and the "trap here, beware!" encounters - generally create the most fun.
- Why the weird wizard garb?
I like this a lot.
Showing posts with label traps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traps. Show all posts
Friday, May 10, 2024
Friday, September 8, 2023
Friday Random Thoughts & Links 9/8/2023
- I'd only heard a few bits about Yggsburg, a later Gary Gygax publication. I'm curious, for sure.
- I love Grimtooth's Traps, but I sure don't need stats for them as in this upcoming product. They're all comically overengineered and lethal. Stats seem superfluous, if only because that implies you could survive the traps. Dude, if you fall for the Closet of Caltrops or fall down the Amazing Ginzu Chute, just make a new guy and move on. It's that kind of game. But your interest may vary, and you have over 53 days to think about it from today's post.
- Ah, stupid Hit Point Jokes and a great spin on healing - The Order of the Stick at its finest. "So . . . healing just allows for more violence?" That's the basis of dungeon delving!
- Sunday we are playing in Vic's Felltower Adjacent game. Apparantly we've picked up an NPC ally . . . huh. Handsome already covers the "savage violent outsider with a tendency to kill" niche, do we really need another?
- I'm not around Saturday, and we game Sunday, so I can't promise a post until Monday.
- I love Grimtooth's Traps, but I sure don't need stats for them as in this upcoming product. They're all comically overengineered and lethal. Stats seem superfluous, if only because that implies you could survive the traps. Dude, if you fall for the Closet of Caltrops or fall down the Amazing Ginzu Chute, just make a new guy and move on. It's that kind of game. But your interest may vary, and you have over 53 days to think about it from today's post.
- Ah, stupid Hit Point Jokes and a great spin on healing - The Order of the Stick at its finest. "So . . . healing just allows for more violence?" That's the basis of dungeon delving!
- Sunday we are playing in Vic's Felltower Adjacent game. Apparantly we've picked up an NPC ally . . . huh. Handsome already covers the "savage violent outsider with a tendency to kill" niche, do we really need another?
- I'm not around Saturday, and we game Sunday, so I can't promise a post until Monday.
Thursday, August 6, 2020
Dungeon Fantasy 21: Megadungeons - Author Notes
Here are some random little notes about DF21: Megadungeons.
Special Thanks:
In addition to my players, and the people who helped me fit 14 pages of wordy mess into 10 clean pages of actual content, I made sure to thank two other people:
Gary Gygax is probably pretty obvious. It it wasn't for him, I doubt I'd have been gaming. Based on what I've read Dave Arneson probably wasn't going to evangelize and publish and sell in the way that Gary Gygax did.
I also made sure to thank James Malizewski, because it was posts like this that made me decide to use a megadungeon in my DF game. (And yes, I told him that directly, because I don't think he reads my blog.)
James's blog led me to a lot of other places that influenced my decision as well. But his was the decisive influence. This book wouldn't have happened if I didn't run Felltower, and Felltower happened in part thanks to him.
Dungeon Stocking:
That's not the only way to randomly stock a dungeon, of course, but it's an oldie and a goodie and it's what I use when I'm randomly stocking some crazy level.
But using the 1d system, you can skew the results towards monsters and other stuff with a simple method. Add +1 for especially monster-filled or dangerous areas, or for smaller dungeons where 1/3 empty space (and another 1/3 monster-free) is not appropriate. A simple +1, and adding "or more" to the final entry, means you'll end up with 1/6 empty, 1/6 special, 1/6 traps, and 3/6 monsters.
You can always make your own, too. Have a trap happy dungeon? Make it 1/3 empty, 1/3 traps, 1/6 each monsters and special. And so on. You just want to get a rough idea of how many of each component you want in your dungeon and set the dice rolls to give you those. Then you roll and find out where it's all distributed.
I originally stocked Felltower with a second roll for treasure based on the first roll - straight out of D&D - but I found later that I really preferred that loot was tied to type and power of monsters, not just to chance. A broke Boss hanging out near wealthy Fodder, or unguarded loot next to critters sure to find it, and other weirdness prompted me to change my approach. I find the one in the book much more satisfying.
Spell Modifications
I use many of these modifications myself. I wish I used others - the same cost to maintain as to cast on Wizard Eye would be huge. I can't see anyone raising it to level 30 just to maintain it for free; 25 for 1 to maintain is possible, but that's about it. People would like hesitate a bit, otherwise.
One that I thought of later was to put a range limit on Dark Vision. That is, you can see in the dark, but only out to a specific range. That's for a very old-school feel - make it 20 yards or 40 yards, depending on what edition of D&D you'd like to draw inspiration from.
Point-Based Profit
Right now, I use a modified system. I may at some point shift to the one written in DF21, which I think is flat-out superior.
If you find calculating 20% of loot to be annoying, though, just make it "next tier down." If you earn enough for the previous tier, you get 2 xp. If you earn for your tier, you get 4 xp. For the first tier, you can establish an amount (20-25% is fair) or just say that any loot is sufficient loot at first, and you get 4 xp as long as you get a single copper out of the delve. Hey, life's tough at that tier anyway, especially in a megadungeon.
Why up and down on the placement tables?
Why are low monster rolls more dangerous monsters and high loot rolls more loot?
Essentially, it's patterned on the Reaction Roll Table, like it says, which isn't a new idea for results in GURPS. The higher the roll, the more positive it is for the PCs. An ideal roll would be a 19+ on monsters and 19+ on treasure - a few rat swarms guarding $100K worth of loot. Very unlikely, but hey, it's a great result for the PCs. Also importantly, though, it means a penalty is always bad for the PCs. -6 means the same thing on both tables, but why you get them isn't always the same.
I could have reversed it so +10, say, means very good loot and very nasty monsters. But that felt weird to me that a 19+ was awesome loot but you didn't want that roll for monsters. I like low roll results being bad . . . like most results rolls in GURPS.
And now you know.
Life would be easier if boss, worthy, and fodder were labels on monsters, but the terms are basic enough to DF that I felt secure using them. I use them that way in my games, so I know it does work. It just takes some thinking what "Fodder, Tough, Many" means on level 6 of the megadungeon when there is a "Boss, Tough" next door and a few traps scattered around. Are those guys hiding from the boss? Servants? Just neighbors? You really need to to give that some thought. And I think that's a positive outcome of the way things are now.
Sequels?
I do have more material for megadungeons and dungeoneering, so a sequel of some kind is a possibility. I have nothing more than very vague plans for one, though, so don't start making space on your hard drive for it just yet. But material does exit that could go into it.
Additional Thanks
And thanks to all of you who joined the Kickstarter to get my book, and to those who get it later and enjoy it then. I appreciate that greatly. I hope the book is useful to you!
Special Thanks:
In addition to my players, and the people who helped me fit 14 pages of wordy mess into 10 clean pages of actual content, I made sure to thank two other people:
"This book couldn’t have been written without the influence of Gary Gygax and James Maliszewski,"
Gary Gygax is probably pretty obvious. It it wasn't for him, I doubt I'd have been gaming. Based on what I've read Dave Arneson probably wasn't going to evangelize and publish and sell in the way that Gary Gygax did.
I also made sure to thank James Malizewski, because it was posts like this that made me decide to use a megadungeon in my DF game. (And yes, I told him that directly, because I don't think he reads my blog.)
James's blog led me to a lot of other places that influenced my decision as well. But his was the decisive influence. This book wouldn't have happened if I didn't run Felltower, and Felltower happened in part thanks to him.
Dungeon Stocking:
That's not the only way to randomly stock a dungeon, of course, but it's an oldie and a goodie and it's what I use when I'm randomly stocking some crazy level.
But using the 1d system, you can skew the results towards monsters and other stuff with a simple method. Add +1 for especially monster-filled or dangerous areas, or for smaller dungeons where 1/3 empty space (and another 1/3 monster-free) is not appropriate. A simple +1, and adding "or more" to the final entry, means you'll end up with 1/6 empty, 1/6 special, 1/6 traps, and 3/6 monsters.
You can always make your own, too. Have a trap happy dungeon? Make it 1/3 empty, 1/3 traps, 1/6 each monsters and special. And so on. You just want to get a rough idea of how many of each component you want in your dungeon and set the dice rolls to give you those. Then you roll and find out where it's all distributed.
I originally stocked Felltower with a second roll for treasure based on the first roll - straight out of D&D - but I found later that I really preferred that loot was tied to type and power of monsters, not just to chance. A broke Boss hanging out near wealthy Fodder, or unguarded loot next to critters sure to find it, and other weirdness prompted me to change my approach. I find the one in the book much more satisfying.
Spell Modifications
I use many of these modifications myself. I wish I used others - the same cost to maintain as to cast on Wizard Eye would be huge. I can't see anyone raising it to level 30 just to maintain it for free; 25 for 1 to maintain is possible, but that's about it. People would like hesitate a bit, otherwise.
One that I thought of later was to put a range limit on Dark Vision. That is, you can see in the dark, but only out to a specific range. That's for a very old-school feel - make it 20 yards or 40 yards, depending on what edition of D&D you'd like to draw inspiration from.
Point-Based Profit
Right now, I use a modified system. I may at some point shift to the one written in DF21, which I think is flat-out superior.
If you find calculating 20% of loot to be annoying, though, just make it "next tier down." If you earn enough for the previous tier, you get 2 xp. If you earn for your tier, you get 4 xp. For the first tier, you can establish an amount (20-25% is fair) or just say that any loot is sufficient loot at first, and you get 4 xp as long as you get a single copper out of the delve. Hey, life's tough at that tier anyway, especially in a megadungeon.
Why up and down on the placement tables?
Why are low monster rolls more dangerous monsters and high loot rolls more loot?
Essentially, it's patterned on the Reaction Roll Table, like it says, which isn't a new idea for results in GURPS. The higher the roll, the more positive it is for the PCs. An ideal roll would be a 19+ on monsters and 19+ on treasure - a few rat swarms guarding $100K worth of loot. Very unlikely, but hey, it's a great result for the PCs. Also importantly, though, it means a penalty is always bad for the PCs. -6 means the same thing on both tables, but why you get them isn't always the same.
I could have reversed it so +10, say, means very good loot and very nasty monsters. But that felt weird to me that a 19+ was awesome loot but you didn't want that roll for monsters. I like low roll results being bad . . . like most results rolls in GURPS.
And now you know.
Life would be easier if boss, worthy, and fodder were labels on monsters, but the terms are basic enough to DF that I felt secure using them. I use them that way in my games, so I know it does work. It just takes some thinking what "Fodder, Tough, Many" means on level 6 of the megadungeon when there is a "Boss, Tough" next door and a few traps scattered around. Are those guys hiding from the boss? Servants? Just neighbors? You really need to to give that some thought. And I think that's a positive outcome of the way things are now.
Sequels?
I do have more material for megadungeons and dungeoneering, so a sequel of some kind is a possibility. I have nothing more than very vague plans for one, though, so don't start making space on your hard drive for it just yet. But material does exit that could go into it.
Additional Thanks
And thanks to all of you who joined the Kickstarter to get my book, and to those who get it later and enjoy it then. I appreciate that greatly. I hope the book is useful to you!
Friday, June 26, 2020
Friday Links Post for 6/26
Random links for Friday!
- Ever wonder how a pressure plate works? Courtney might be able to help out. On the Thursday Trick, Triggers Pressure Plate. That's helpful to me, because I can design nasty traps but I don't really know enough to describe how they work. I might just be pulling stuff out of my imagination. Warning: Does not apply to combat footwork or grappling.
- After the Ogre talks about Allies vs. Hirelings. I like the limit on Allies. We've never had someone ask for a second Ally, but I think that's a good guideline.
- Hans wrote a nice article on the G11.
- Totally non-game related, but gamer related. Apparently there was a brief thing about picking a fight with someone 31 years older than you. Do you know who is 31 years older than my gaming buddy since high school, Tom? Chuck Norris. I don't like his odds. I'd tell Tom to take it to the ground, as Chuck is a Tang Soo Do expert . . . and Tom has both Ground Fighting (Wrestling) and the Ground Guard perk. But Chuck Norris is a black belt in BJJ originally from Jean Jacques Machado, so I'm not sure that's any better of an idea.
- This post reminds me of the book Queen Victoria's Little Wars. There are just so many small but interesting conflicts - either visually or tactically interesting or both - in this time period. The book is a good starting point for the whole series of wars that Edmund Blackadder mentioned involved saving people from particularly sharp slices of mango.
- I find treasure-rolling systems fascinating. I personally use a value-based system, so I get a total and back-fill what makes up that value. But still, I like them in general - AD&D for sure, Rolemaster had a great one that inspired me a lot, and everyone in the world liked rolling on the found objects table in Gamma World. One system I played around with and didn't like was 5e. I think this post explains why.
- I haven't played around with it, yet, but there is a GCA file for DFRPG. Since my campaign is more of a hybrid, I need to see if just adding that file on is a good idea. I suspect not. I might need to rebuild my data set around it, and add in my own changes (and imports from Basic Set and Magic, plus Wizardry Redefined) into their own file. I'd overlooked this file a while back, but a recent post on the thread alerted me. I don't hang around the forums anymore, but I do like to get pinged when GCA posts are up.
- This one is Felltower related - one of my players asked about fencing masks. We're not using them. Just getting that out there. I may have a whole post on why, at some point, but for now, no fencing masks from Denizens: Swashbucklers.
- Ever wonder how a pressure plate works? Courtney might be able to help out. On the Thursday Trick, Triggers Pressure Plate. That's helpful to me, because I can design nasty traps but I don't really know enough to describe how they work. I might just be pulling stuff out of my imagination. Warning: Does not apply to combat footwork or grappling.
- After the Ogre talks about Allies vs. Hirelings. I like the limit on Allies. We've never had someone ask for a second Ally, but I think that's a good guideline.
- Hans wrote a nice article on the G11.
- Totally non-game related, but gamer related. Apparently there was a brief thing about picking a fight with someone 31 years older than you. Do you know who is 31 years older than my gaming buddy since high school, Tom? Chuck Norris. I don't like his odds. I'd tell Tom to take it to the ground, as Chuck is a Tang Soo Do expert . . . and Tom has both Ground Fighting (Wrestling) and the Ground Guard perk. But Chuck Norris is a black belt in BJJ originally from Jean Jacques Machado, so I'm not sure that's any better of an idea.
- This post reminds me of the book Queen Victoria's Little Wars. There are just so many small but interesting conflicts - either visually or tactically interesting or both - in this time period. The book is a good starting point for the whole series of wars that Edmund Blackadder mentioned involved saving people from particularly sharp slices of mango.
- I find treasure-rolling systems fascinating. I personally use a value-based system, so I get a total and back-fill what makes up that value. But still, I like them in general - AD&D for sure, Rolemaster had a great one that inspired me a lot, and everyone in the world liked rolling on the found objects table in Gamma World. One system I played around with and didn't like was 5e. I think this post explains why.
- I haven't played around with it, yet, but there is a GCA file for DFRPG. Since my campaign is more of a hybrid, I need to see if just adding that file on is a good idea. I suspect not. I might need to rebuild my data set around it, and add in my own changes (and imports from Basic Set and Magic, plus Wizardry Redefined) into their own file. I'd overlooked this file a while back, but a recent post on the thread alerted me. I don't hang around the forums anymore, but I do like to get pinged when GCA posts are up.
- This one is Felltower related - one of my players asked about fencing masks. We're not using them. Just getting that out there. I may have a whole post on why, at some point, but for now, no fencing masks from Denizens: Swashbucklers.
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
"Harmless" and "Fun" Traps
This is only partly in jest.
What if you want traps, but entirely non-lethal ones? Still super-annoying, even debilitating?
The Dungeon of Three Fools has a good start right here:
"Goblin snot" would be a great band name. So would "Fragile Love Potions."
Both are pretty excellent.
Let's see what we can add.
Vomit - and mucus, and effluvia, and so on. Empty the chamber pot, the vomitorium's tub, or the spittoon on anyone who sets off the trap. It doesn't kill, but it should induce rolls against HT to not get sick, yourself, and Will rolls to go on without cleaning up. The stink will attract the attention of hostile creatures, but may also in fact disguise you. The otyugh will probably mistake you for what you're dipped in and not attack.
Gaseous Alcohol - breathe it in, get drunk. Make a HT roll; success means you're tipsy. Failure means you are drunk. Effects last one hour unless a variable amount of time is funnier. Critical failure means you're drunk and you fall noisily asleep right on the spot; you'll be hung over for 20-HT hours.
Glue-Coated Weights - Nothing too nasty here . . . just a lot of rocks, all coated with glue. Why don't they stick to each other? Because the wizard who set it did blah blah blah magic so they won't. But they'll stick to you. The glue is only removable with universal solvent or a good, long soaking in vinegar - like, a bath of it, for at least an hour, before you can pry off the rocks one by one. This adds immensely to your encumbrance, and interferes with free action of any limbs affected (at least -2 * encumbrance in penalties). May or may not stick to skin; it's kind of funny either way.
Padded Crossbow Bolts - oh sure, you've padded the tips. They couldn't possibly cause any real harm. But soak those tips in pheromones for voracious, wild creatures. The bolts drop away harmlessly, but now you're marked with the scent of a monster in heat for 1d hours. You can't smell it without Discriminatory Smell, so you probably just laugh off the hits. Until that heart-eyed electric jellyfish or love-lorn giant ape or randy dragon comes along, that is.
What if you want traps, but entirely non-lethal ones? Still super-annoying, even debilitating?
The Dungeon of Three Fools has a good start right here:
1 Falling rock Or acid or goblin snot or....
2 Crossbow in wall Or spears or swords or fragile love potions or....
"Goblin snot" would be a great band name. So would "Fragile Love Potions."
Both are pretty excellent.
Let's see what we can add.
Vomit - and mucus, and effluvia, and so on. Empty the chamber pot, the vomitorium's tub, or the spittoon on anyone who sets off the trap. It doesn't kill, but it should induce rolls against HT to not get sick, yourself, and Will rolls to go on without cleaning up. The stink will attract the attention of hostile creatures, but may also in fact disguise you. The otyugh will probably mistake you for what you're dipped in and not attack.
Gaseous Alcohol - breathe it in, get drunk. Make a HT roll; success means you're tipsy. Failure means you are drunk. Effects last one hour unless a variable amount of time is funnier. Critical failure means you're drunk and you fall noisily asleep right on the spot; you'll be hung over for 20-HT hours.
Glue-Coated Weights - Nothing too nasty here . . . just a lot of rocks, all coated with glue. Why don't they stick to each other? Because the wizard who set it did blah blah blah magic so they won't. But they'll stick to you. The glue is only removable with universal solvent or a good, long soaking in vinegar - like, a bath of it, for at least an hour, before you can pry off the rocks one by one. This adds immensely to your encumbrance, and interferes with free action of any limbs affected (at least -2 * encumbrance in penalties). May or may not stick to skin; it's kind of funny either way.
Padded Crossbow Bolts - oh sure, you've padded the tips. They couldn't possibly cause any real harm. But soak those tips in pheromones for voracious, wild creatures. The bolts drop away harmlessly, but now you're marked with the scent of a monster in heat for 1d hours. You can't smell it without Discriminatory Smell, so you probably just laugh off the hits. Until that heart-eyed electric jellyfish or love-lorn giant ape or randy dragon comes along, that is.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Rot Grubs in GURPS DF
Here is how I implemented rot grubs in my DF campaign. I statted them as a trap, not a monster, because you don't fight them so much as detect/disarm them, or suffer the effects of them. They're far less of a monster than, say, leaping leeches.
Rot Grubs
Detect: Vision-based Per-2. This assumes a search! A quick glance while, say, searching for treasure is at -5, for a net Per-7.
Disarm: Burning the infested corpse, or using Cleansing (Magic, p. 94) will remove any rot grubs; they are easily killed (or harvested) after this . . . unless they find another victim to burrow in to.
Avoid: None.
Steal: Eww, but yes. Takes some creativity and a Animal Handling-5 roll (unless the character is a worminger with the appropriate Animal Handling expertise.
Effect: Usually 1d rot grubs will burrow into a target; each causes 1 HP of injury immediately as it furiously burrows into the flesh of the victim. Each inflicts another 1 HP of injury every 3d seconds, and requires a HT roll at -1 per rot grub in the victim. On a failure, the rot grubs have reached the vitals and inflict x3 damage from this point on. On a critical failure, one has reached the heart, killing the victim. Success means damage as before; critical success means the grubs take twice as long before they inflict injury again. Application of flame to the burrowing holes before the second round of damage kills the rot grub but also inflicts the usual fire damage for the source. Each burrowing hole must be cleaned separately. Cleansing will remove all rot grubs immediately.
Enjoy, if that's the sort of maggoty thing you like to enjoy.
Rot Grubs
Detect: Vision-based Per-2. This assumes a search! A quick glance while, say, searching for treasure is at -5, for a net Per-7.
Disarm: Burning the infested corpse, or using Cleansing (Magic, p. 94) will remove any rot grubs; they are easily killed (or harvested) after this . . . unless they find another victim to burrow in to.
Avoid: None.
Steal: Eww, but yes. Takes some creativity and a Animal Handling-5 roll (unless the character is a worminger with the appropriate Animal Handling expertise.
Effect: Usually 1d rot grubs will burrow into a target; each causes 1 HP of injury immediately as it furiously burrows into the flesh of the victim. Each inflicts another 1 HP of injury every 3d seconds, and requires a HT roll at -1 per rot grub in the victim. On a failure, the rot grubs have reached the vitals and inflict x3 damage from this point on. On a critical failure, one has reached the heart, killing the victim. Success means damage as before; critical success means the grubs take twice as long before they inflict injury again. Application of flame to the burrowing holes before the second round of damage kills the rot grub but also inflicts the usual fire damage for the source. Each burrowing hole must be cleaned separately. Cleansing will remove all rot grubs immediately.
Enjoy, if that's the sort of maggoty thing you like to enjoy.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
GURPS and the Unminded Trap
Over in Castle Whiterock, the PCs hit into a fairly dangerous trap.
It's a good illustration of something I noticed in using D&D-style adventure approaches to GURPS - traps, unattended and unminded by active, intelligent, and hostile forces, are not as lethal as in D&D.
One thing about D&D that GURPS doesn't have is the attritional aspect of most resouces. In D&D, especially AD&D as I've played it, resources bleed away from a finite pool. You only have so many HP, so many spells, so much healing. Extra time doesn't help much - you can lose more HP in a 20' pit than you can heal back by rest in a week.
Because of this, traps left unminded generally just cost replaceable resources - you lose HP, but that can be healed with magic that costs FP that come back in minutes. Repeated healing penalties mean this spigot isn't endless, but it's not nearly as limited as in D&D.
For a trap to have a solid, lasting impact in GURPS, it needs to be lethal, crippling, destructive (to equipment or resources), or all three - and a good way to make it so is to connect it with active threats.
A reverse gravity trap with a force wall is nice, but if there are foes who can take advantage (perhaps fighting on the ceiling, and you can only reach them by "falling" up to them), or who have effective ranged weapons unimpeded by magic, or area effect attacks - then it's a real threat. A pit is good, but a pit that drops a few PCs in and covers them up as foes swarm in to attack the rest - that's a winner.
Such traps have a real threat, not just a sigh, puzzling out of the most efficient way to solve them, and then a solution followed by a short rest - perhaps even no rest if your spellcasters rely mostly on Energy Reserve.
For GMs prepping old-school style traps for GURPS, my advice is to keep in mind that they don't really act like much of a resource attrition as they do in D&D-based games. They're much more of a threat coupled with actual active threats. Because of this, it's worth mixing in both unattended traps and attended ones. This way PCs have to treat all of them like a combined-arms attack by foes with a dangerously slanted battlefield, which adds to the fun of dealing with them. If they don't, they'll get caught out by foes waiting for the trap to spring - which also adds to the fun of dealing with them.
It's a good illustration of something I noticed in using D&D-style adventure approaches to GURPS - traps, unattended and unminded by active, intelligent, and hostile forces, are not as lethal as in D&D.
One thing about D&D that GURPS doesn't have is the attritional aspect of most resouces. In D&D, especially AD&D as I've played it, resources bleed away from a finite pool. You only have so many HP, so many spells, so much healing. Extra time doesn't help much - you can lose more HP in a 20' pit than you can heal back by rest in a week.
Because of this, traps left unminded generally just cost replaceable resources - you lose HP, but that can be healed with magic that costs FP that come back in minutes. Repeated healing penalties mean this spigot isn't endless, but it's not nearly as limited as in D&D.
For a trap to have a solid, lasting impact in GURPS, it needs to be lethal, crippling, destructive (to equipment or resources), or all three - and a good way to make it so is to connect it with active threats.
A reverse gravity trap with a force wall is nice, but if there are foes who can take advantage (perhaps fighting on the ceiling, and you can only reach them by "falling" up to them), or who have effective ranged weapons unimpeded by magic, or area effect attacks - then it's a real threat. A pit is good, but a pit that drops a few PCs in and covers them up as foes swarm in to attack the rest - that's a winner.
Such traps have a real threat, not just a sigh, puzzling out of the most efficient way to solve them, and then a solution followed by a short rest - perhaps even no rest if your spellcasters rely mostly on Energy Reserve.
For GMs prepping old-school style traps for GURPS, my advice is to keep in mind that they don't really act like much of a resource attrition as they do in D&D-based games. They're much more of a threat coupled with actual active threats. Because of this, it's worth mixing in both unattended traps and attended ones. This way PCs have to treat all of them like a combined-arms attack by foes with a dangerously slanted battlefield, which adds to the fun of dealing with them. If they don't, they'll get caught out by foes waiting for the trap to spring - which also adds to the fun of dealing with them.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Nested Encounters - Monster and Trapped Treasure
I was reminded of this possibility thanks to some annoying ants. We had some ants causing an issue where I live, so I put up an ant trap. Basically, poisoned bait.
The bait attracted ants and the poison killed them. But when it came time to freshen the trap, I found a spider had set up shop directly over and around the trap. The ants headed for the bait, but instead got caught by the spider. I just left this alone, figuring, well spider, you do you. Net effect is the same to me.
This makes for an interesting encounter as well. Predators, especially ambush predators, will lurk near a form of bait that will attract prey.
But that's not the say the actual bait must be pure, healthy, and rewarding. The bait itself can be another trap and the ambusher just piggybacking on it. This behavior can explain a lot of "monster with trapped chest" situations where the monster isn't the kind of being that would hoard and trap treasure.
Here are a few I can think of offhand for a typical fantasy game:
- "gold" coins that are actually cheaper coins dusted with yellow mold, paint plus contact poison, or which trigger a trap when approached (a pit, wall-shooting spears, whatever) plus an attack-from-above monster like a spider, obsidian jaguar, lurker above, quasi-intelligent ooze or slime, etc.
- a covered pit, with a mimic pretending to be a section of wall about 15' back, to better come out from behind delvers who stop 10' out when the lead character taps and hears a hollow sound back.
- an illusion of treasure set up over a trap (pit, slide, chute, deadfall trigger, etc.) with a charging ambush predator lurking down the hallway, hoping to ram someone into the trap and retrieve them later.
- an Avoid spell meant to discourage moving down a safe path and into a trapped area (or a dead end, or down the wrong maze path) combined with a Living Pit that sweeps under the delvers when they move into the area.
None of this is really new; nested encounters like this have been common since the modules made for 1st edition AD&D. But it's a good framing to keep in your mind - the monster might actually be piggybacking off of someone else's trap. They might inadvertently be saving you from the trap - a spider snagging giant rats on their way to poisoned water is keeping them from being poisoned, after all. And it'll help confound delvers who'll logically reason that Monster A couldn't set Trap B so Treasure C must be safe. It might not be - it's a nested encounter not originally planned for by the trap setter.
The bait attracted ants and the poison killed them. But when it came time to freshen the trap, I found a spider had set up shop directly over and around the trap. The ants headed for the bait, but instead got caught by the spider. I just left this alone, figuring, well spider, you do you. Net effect is the same to me.
This makes for an interesting encounter as well. Predators, especially ambush predators, will lurk near a form of bait that will attract prey.
But that's not the say the actual bait must be pure, healthy, and rewarding. The bait itself can be another trap and the ambusher just piggybacking on it. This behavior can explain a lot of "monster with trapped chest" situations where the monster isn't the kind of being that would hoard and trap treasure.
Here are a few I can think of offhand for a typical fantasy game:
- "gold" coins that are actually cheaper coins dusted with yellow mold, paint plus contact poison, or which trigger a trap when approached (a pit, wall-shooting spears, whatever) plus an attack-from-above monster like a spider, obsidian jaguar, lurker above, quasi-intelligent ooze or slime, etc.
- a covered pit, with a mimic pretending to be a section of wall about 15' back, to better come out from behind delvers who stop 10' out when the lead character taps and hears a hollow sound back.
- an illusion of treasure set up over a trap (pit, slide, chute, deadfall trigger, etc.) with a charging ambush predator lurking down the hallway, hoping to ram someone into the trap and retrieve them later.
- an Avoid spell meant to discourage moving down a safe path and into a trapped area (or a dead end, or down the wrong maze path) combined with a Living Pit that sweeps under the delvers when they move into the area.
None of this is really new; nested encounters like this have been common since the modules made for 1st edition AD&D. But it's a good framing to keep in your mind - the monster might actually be piggybacking off of someone else's trap. They might inadvertently be saving you from the trap - a spider snagging giant rats on their way to poisoned water is keeping them from being poisoned, after all. And it'll help confound delvers who'll logically reason that Monster A couldn't set Trap B so Treasure C must be safe. It might not be - it's a nested encounter not originally planned for by the trap setter.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Review: Traps & Treachery
Traps & Treachery
Fantasy Flight Games
169 pages + some ads and the OGL
MSRP $24.95 ($5 on RPG Now)
This book is d20 System supplement centered squarely on traps - often very elaborate traps.
It's kind of a cousin to Grimtooth's Traps, but much less ridiculously lethal. These traps range from relatively simple, to complicated but technically simple, to complex and over-engineered. The conceit is that they are from the workbook of an increasingly-erratic trap designer, who started out a bit practical and clever but who got crazier and let it show in his traps.
The book is broken up into five chapters.
Chapter One: Way of the Rogue - This chapter talks about the profession of the rogue, and not just traps. It covers theft, Thieves Guilds (with advice for both player and the DM making them),
It has prestige classes and new thiefly feats as well, which I can't judge because I don't play 3.x D&D. It also has new gear, new poisons, and new magic items - all of which are good inspirational fodder for a game with a little conversion. I especially like the Urchin Ring, which lets you attract 1d6 kids under 12 and order them about, and which gives them some thief skill bonuses while under your influence. Hah.
It's got practical advice, like not worrying about silent lockpicking after a noisy fight, using Silence spells to sneak a noisy group around, when it's useful to re-set a trap and when to just permanently disable it. It also makes the assumption that the player must describe how he or she is disarming, disabling, circumventing, or setting off a trap. It's not just "You make a Traps roll, move on." The latter is a common stereotype of modern gaming, but it's certainly not the case here. That makes it a useful supplement for folks who do purely descriptive (player skill centered) trap disarms as well as those who do description-assisted die-based (character skill centered) trap disarms.
Chapter Two: Trap Design - this chapter goes into the details of traps.
It covers them both game mechanically (CR x, y GP, etc.) and descriptively. It covers construction, activation (triggers, magical and non-magical), the trap's trapping mechanism, effects, and so on. The detail is solid, too - you get both roll modifiers and descriptions of the way it works. You get detecting traps penalties, but also descriptions of ways you might describe that - which naturally doubles as ways you might spot the trap descriptively, too.
Especially nice is are the sections "Traps As Challenges," "Traps As Security Systems" and "Traps As Special Effects" - covering the gamist, in-game, and verisimilitude-boosting aspects of traps in a game. It's all straight-up useful advice. Some of it might be obvious to a long-time referee, but it's well presented.
Oddly (to me), there is also a new monster in this chapter. A trap-loving monster, of course, but still, it just seems jarring. Still, new monster = potential source of good ideas.
Chapter Three - Mechanical Traps - This chapter is just an extensive catalog of mechanical traps (as opposed to magical ones - Chapter Four). Each trap gets a full writeup of type, construction, activation, trigger, mechanism, effect, attack rules (to hit, damage, save), DC for searching and disabling, CR, and construction time. They also get a very detailed description of the trap, with color text you can really use. It also has descriptions of how a trap could be spotted or disarmed, too - sometimes one is easy but the other hard, especially for traps with remote triggers.
Each trap also gets a picture, showing how the trap physically looks (great for the complex area traps) and works. Extremely useful.
Chapter Four - Magical Traps - Another catalog, this time of spell-based traps. It's exactly like the prior chapter but the effects are less "rock falls on your head" and more "spell kills you."
Chapter Five - Puzzles - The third and final catalog section, this time of puzzles. Some of them are trap-like, others more like obstacles, others more like IQ tests to achieve a reward. They're all pretty interesting and very inspirational even if you don't use them straight-up.
Like I mentioned before, it's very Grimtooth's Traps, but without the killer DM aspect to it. Many of them are overly elaborate, but it fits the conceit of a progressively less-sane designer.
Overall, I really like this book. It's OOP, but you can get it for less than cover used. If you like traps, I think it's worth reading. It's useful to me running GURPS, despite a completely different rules set, because of the extensive descriptions of the traps. Spells are all up on the D20SRD, too, so it's not hard to figure out what some obscure spell does, either. Recommended.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Traps & Trap Lethality in DF
Traps are an important part of dungeon fantasy gaming.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, p. 19-20 outlines clearly how DF handles traps. It's the usual stuff you need to know (or just end up needing to know):
- Detect - how hard to detect?
- Disarm - how hard to disarm?
- Circumvent - how hard to get around?
- Evade - how hard to evade it after it goes off?
- Effects - what happens?
- Shots, Rearm, Steal - How many shots, can it be rearmed, can you steal some or all of it?
Here is roughly how I handle the first five.
Task Difficulty
Douglas Cole has often said, "If the answer isn't the Speed/Range Table, you're not asking the right question." For me, though, I often think the Task Difficulty rules are the way to go. They're on p. 345-346 of GURPS Basic Set, and then range from +10 to -10, centered on a normal use at 0.
+10 is for a task so trivial you probably shouldn't require a roll unless there are other circumstances involved.
0 if for average adventuring tasks - the example is a Driving roll in a car chase (and a high speed car chase is only -1).
-10 is impossible, or nearly so.
You can run a whole game with nothing but this kind of range in hand - in fact, one of my favorites, Yaquinto's Pirates & Plunder, did just that.
I'm also a big fan of the ". . . With Spikes" ruling in DF that says that every horrible qualifier attached to a situation is a further -1 (or potentially, a +1). Extending that means walking on a slick, narrow ledge is -2, but walking on a wide, coarse ledge is +2. I extend that right into traps in at least one place.
So with that ruling and the Task Difficulty rules in mind, here is what I do.
Detection
Ask, how hard is it to detect?
Will the normal Per-based Traps roll to spot it find it easily (as much as +10 to see it for being in plain sight) all the way down to nearly impossible to spot (-10 for fiendishly well hidden). In the middle is are ones you expect a fairly average skill to have a reasonable shot of detecting.
Is it invisible and requires special detection? If the trigger is magical and you can't detect magic (no Magery or Mage Sight or Mage Sense), or invisible and you lack See Invisible, you might not even get a roll. Magical traps especially can call for Per-based Thaumatology or Per+Magery, because there is no non-magical component to see. These are trivial for wizards to detect and are just Wandering Damage for those lacking Magery. Moral of the story: have a Scout with Magery or throw the right spells on him.
Think about both the trigger, and the trap. They might end up with separate numbers in a complex trap. It might be very easy to see the trap, but fiendishly hard to see what triggers it.
You want to keep in mind that by default GURPS DF parties are looking for traps, and get a Vision-based Per-based Traps roll to see a trap. The base Thief and base Scout both have a 15 or less to spot a trap. So they spot easy traps on a 25 or less (i.e. automatically) all the way down to a 5 or less to spot a really well-concealed trap (the example crossbow trap in DF2 is -9 to spot). The others, no so much. A Knight with Per 10 and default traps has a 5, so he'll spot a pit on a 15 or less, while his Wizard and Barbarian buddies have a default of 7 and spot one on a 17 or less.
In any case, they don't even need to ask for these rolls, because the default movement mode is slow enough to allow this roll and assumes you're on the lookout for danger. Remember, though is is -5 when rushed, so only trivially detectable traps are going to be automatically spotted by them, and what's "average" difficulty to spot is going to be missed half the time! Moral is, don't run through the trapped dungeon.
Disarm
How hard is it to disarm? I use the same range of penalties as above, from "trivial" and +10 up to nearly impossible and -10.
I consider two parts of the trap for disarming:
Trap
How had is it to disarm the trap itself? Does it require some trivial expenditure of resources (break a poisoned needle, stuff up the dart launcher holes, erase the magic runes? Does it require some complex skill to disarm?
If the process is complex, give it a high penalty, up to a -10. If it's easy, up to +10.
In any case, you need to know if a failed disarm sets it off.
Some of the issue with disarming might be purely mechanical. It might be impossible to disarm a big rolling boulder or a deadfall - you can't just spike them in place or bend them back with a dagger. Disarm on the trap itself might be "N/A." The best way to deal with such traps is to avoid them entirely, set them off safely (think of a bomb squad here), or disarm the trigger.
Trigger
If stopping the trap from going off is all that's important, disarm the trigger.
One thing to consider is, how does the trigger work? If the trigger is your basic deadman switch, it's hard to render it harmless without potentially setting off the trap. If it's a tripwire or pressure plate that depends on mechanical pressure to set it off, cutting it/lodging it in place might be enough to stop it from working. This is largely going to be a straight-up DX-based Traps roll, or, if the fix is merely go all Alexander-and-the-Gordion-Knot on it, just smacking it and seeing if it goes off.
In any case, you need to know if a failed disarm here too sets it off.
For a whole series on trap and triggers, take a look at The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, especially down a few posts.
Circumvent / Evade
Or as I put it, Avoid. How hard is this to avoid? Both Circumvent and Evade have related questions - how do I get past it without setting it off, and how do I avoid getting hurt if I do set it off?
The first is best deal with using the Task Difficulty modifiers or the ". . . With Spikes" ruling, by treating it as an obstacle. You need to know how hard it is to pick your way around the trap triggers (think Raiders of the Lost Ark, avoiding the blowgun dart triggers). In many cases traps will be combined with channeled movement to make it harder to avoid even if you know it's there.
The second is where Resistance Rolls, Dodge, etc. comes in. It's an attack and it's incoming, how do you avoid it? Penalties should be applied like any other attack. Magic effects should get a resistance roll (if appropriate), weapon-like effects a Dodge or Block or even Parry, poisons a resistance or avoidance roll, etc. I don't use the Task Difficulty numbers here because a -10 to resist or -5 to Dodge means a whole different thing that -10 to detect or -5 to disarm.
Effects
How much damage does this do?
Here I skip the Task Difficulty rules because they don't apply.
What I do instead is consider the range of damage as a minimum, average or mean, and maximum. That helps determine its lethality. I put them in three ranges, which roughly correspond to "Fodder, Worthy, or Boss."
Mostly Harmless: If the maximum damage of a trap is going to put 0 damage past most of the DR of the group as a max, it's mostly harmless. For example, a shuriken launcher that sprays a dozen shuriken doing 1d-2 cutting is mostly harmless against a group sporting mostly DR 4+. It's possible a high damage roll or two against a low DR hit location might happen, but the odds are it'll do 0 damage. If it can inflict actual damage, like say a 6' pit (2 yards, 1d+1), but not enough to threaten a major wound, it's still Mostly Harmless. Unless you fall on your hand or foot and roll maximum damage, it's not going to slow you down.
Non-damaging effects with a high resistance bonus, low skill, or minimally disruptive effects (you're sprayed with paint, you're at a -1 at most on some or all stats, etc.) are Mostly Harmless.
Dangerous: If the average/mean damage of a trap is going to put some significant damage past the average DR of the group, the trap is dangerous. Now it matters. A 15' pit (5 yards, 2d) with spikes does 2-12 impaling damage, average 7. Against that same DR 4 average, that's 6 damage to whoever falls in. Not a lot, but it's the same as getting hit with a good whack in combat and it'll require a potion or spell to get rid of. On a normal person (HP 10), it's a major wound. A crossbow trap doing 1d+5 impaling (6-11, average 10.5) is similarly dangerous. Basically, if there is a threat of a major wound or crippled limb or extremity, it's dangerous.
Non-damaging effects that can potentially kill, or inflict a non-lethal but annoying effect, and/or which have a normal resistance (spell roll of 15, straight-up HT rolls, etc.) are Dangerous.
Lethal: If the minimum damage of a trap is going to inflict a crippled limb or major wound, the trap potentially lethal. If the maximum damage can kill outright (or at least force 1+ death checks), it's potentially lethal.
Something that's causing 10+ net damage is very serious; 20+ is potentially lethal. 50-60+ is a serious threat of lethality. The upper end of lethality in DF2 is a 100 yard pit doing 9d+1 (10-73, average 32.5) or lava at 8d+2 burning damage per second. You might not die immediately, but dying is coming at you quickly.
Non-damage effects that can easily kill belong in this category. Drowning, suffocation, the incapacitating afflictions, etc. are all potentially lethal.
These are pretty broad categories, but that's because so many factors impinge on them. DR of the party members, HP of the person hit, resistance rolls, effects, special circumstances, etc. Even a Mostly Harmless trap can turn out to be lethal if it's combined with a monster encounter that takes advantage of the trap (you're dealing with avoiding falling in dozens of little pits that slow you down while the monster kills from afar, say). A trap that is Mostly Harmless to the 20 HP DR 10 knight might be Lethal to the 10 HP 2 DR Wizard. "Only 12 impaling? Okay, 2 gets through and I take 4 injury, I'm down to 16 but bandaging will get me back to 18." vs. "12 impaling? I'm at -20 and I need to make a death check." The net effect of the circumstances matter.
Putting it together
You need to look at the sum of the parts. The teleport over water full of razor fish in my game was easy to detect (but not blatantly trap), hard to disarm, and potentially lethal = very dangerous. The water itself was easy to detect, easy to avoid, and potentially lethal. So all in all it was dangerous but unlikely to TPK the group - yet it almost did because they pushed their luck too far. All in all, that was a potentially lethal trap.
Some other traps have been trivially dealt with, because for all of their damage they were easy to detect, easy to disarm, or easy to set off with no harm to the PCs. Most of the ones set off recently in my game with Create Servant were like that - a more recent linked "bear trap on a deadman switch for a deadfall" one was potentially dangerous (category 2, above) but easy to deal with.
Consider the parts and then the sum of the parts, and see how dangerous that looks to be. How likely are they to blunder into it, get out of it, and/or survive it? Remember DF delvers aren't fragile, but aren't supermen either. You don't need traps to be hard to detect, hard to disarm, impossible to circumvent, difficult to resist, and highly damaging all at once.
Trap Notation
Finally, I like stat lines, so I'll boil it down in my adventure descriptions to things like this:
10 x 10 x 10' Spiked Pit (Detect +10, Disarm N/A, Avoid -2 (precarious narrow ledges), 1d+2 imp)
Poisoned Needle (Detect -3, Disarm -1, Avoid HT-2, 4d/2d toxic no delay no cycles)
Lightning Runes (Detect Per+Magery or Per-based Thaumotology, Disarm N/A, Avoid DX-5 to walk around and Resist vs. 15, 3d burning w/surge, metal is DR 1)
Further trap resources:
Steve Winter's 36 Trap Triggers
Steve Winter's 36 Trap Effects
C's Traps and Tricks Index
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, p. 19-20 outlines clearly how DF handles traps. It's the usual stuff you need to know (or just end up needing to know):
- Detect - how hard to detect?
- Disarm - how hard to disarm?
- Circumvent - how hard to get around?
- Evade - how hard to evade it after it goes off?
- Effects - what happens?
- Shots, Rearm, Steal - How many shots, can it be rearmed, can you steal some or all of it?
Here is roughly how I handle the first five.
Task Difficulty
Douglas Cole has often said, "If the answer isn't the Speed/Range Table, you're not asking the right question." For me, though, I often think the Task Difficulty rules are the way to go. They're on p. 345-346 of GURPS Basic Set, and then range from +10 to -10, centered on a normal use at 0.
+10 is for a task so trivial you probably shouldn't require a roll unless there are other circumstances involved.
0 if for average adventuring tasks - the example is a Driving roll in a car chase (and a high speed car chase is only -1).
-10 is impossible, or nearly so.
You can run a whole game with nothing but this kind of range in hand - in fact, one of my favorites, Yaquinto's Pirates & Plunder, did just that.
I'm also a big fan of the ". . . With Spikes" ruling in DF that says that every horrible qualifier attached to a situation is a further -1 (or potentially, a +1). Extending that means walking on a slick, narrow ledge is -2, but walking on a wide, coarse ledge is +2. I extend that right into traps in at least one place.
So with that ruling and the Task Difficulty rules in mind, here is what I do.
Detection
Ask, how hard is it to detect?
Will the normal Per-based Traps roll to spot it find it easily (as much as +10 to see it for being in plain sight) all the way down to nearly impossible to spot (-10 for fiendishly well hidden). In the middle is are ones you expect a fairly average skill to have a reasonable shot of detecting.
Is it invisible and requires special detection? If the trigger is magical and you can't detect magic (no Magery or Mage Sight or Mage Sense), or invisible and you lack See Invisible, you might not even get a roll. Magical traps especially can call for Per-based Thaumatology or Per+Magery, because there is no non-magical component to see. These are trivial for wizards to detect and are just Wandering Damage for those lacking Magery. Moral of the story: have a Scout with Magery or throw the right spells on him.
Think about both the trigger, and the trap. They might end up with separate numbers in a complex trap. It might be very easy to see the trap, but fiendishly hard to see what triggers it.
You want to keep in mind that by default GURPS DF parties are looking for traps, and get a Vision-based Per-based Traps roll to see a trap. The base Thief and base Scout both have a 15 or less to spot a trap. So they spot easy traps on a 25 or less (i.e. automatically) all the way down to a 5 or less to spot a really well-concealed trap (the example crossbow trap in DF2 is -9 to spot). The others, no so much. A Knight with Per 10 and default traps has a 5, so he'll spot a pit on a 15 or less, while his Wizard and Barbarian buddies have a default of 7 and spot one on a 17 or less.
In any case, they don't even need to ask for these rolls, because the default movement mode is slow enough to allow this roll and assumes you're on the lookout for danger. Remember, though is is -5 when rushed, so only trivially detectable traps are going to be automatically spotted by them, and what's "average" difficulty to spot is going to be missed half the time! Moral is, don't run through the trapped dungeon.
Disarm
How hard is it to disarm? I use the same range of penalties as above, from "trivial" and +10 up to nearly impossible and -10.
I consider two parts of the trap for disarming:
Trap
How had is it to disarm the trap itself? Does it require some trivial expenditure of resources (break a poisoned needle, stuff up the dart launcher holes, erase the magic runes? Does it require some complex skill to disarm?
If the process is complex, give it a high penalty, up to a -10. If it's easy, up to +10.
In any case, you need to know if a failed disarm sets it off.
Some of the issue with disarming might be purely mechanical. It might be impossible to disarm a big rolling boulder or a deadfall - you can't just spike them in place or bend them back with a dagger. Disarm on the trap itself might be "N/A." The best way to deal with such traps is to avoid them entirely, set them off safely (think of a bomb squad here), or disarm the trigger.
Trigger
If stopping the trap from going off is all that's important, disarm the trigger.
One thing to consider is, how does the trigger work? If the trigger is your basic deadman switch, it's hard to render it harmless without potentially setting off the trap. If it's a tripwire or pressure plate that depends on mechanical pressure to set it off, cutting it/lodging it in place might be enough to stop it from working. This is largely going to be a straight-up DX-based Traps roll, or, if the fix is merely go all Alexander-and-the-Gordion-Knot on it, just smacking it and seeing if it goes off.
In any case, you need to know if a failed disarm here too sets it off.
For a whole series on trap and triggers, take a look at The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, especially down a few posts.
Circumvent / Evade
Or as I put it, Avoid. How hard is this to avoid? Both Circumvent and Evade have related questions - how do I get past it without setting it off, and how do I avoid getting hurt if I do set it off?
The first is best deal with using the Task Difficulty modifiers or the ". . . With Spikes" ruling, by treating it as an obstacle. You need to know how hard it is to pick your way around the trap triggers (think Raiders of the Lost Ark, avoiding the blowgun dart triggers). In many cases traps will be combined with channeled movement to make it harder to avoid even if you know it's there.
The second is where Resistance Rolls, Dodge, etc. comes in. It's an attack and it's incoming, how do you avoid it? Penalties should be applied like any other attack. Magic effects should get a resistance roll (if appropriate), weapon-like effects a Dodge or Block or even Parry, poisons a resistance or avoidance roll, etc. I don't use the Task Difficulty numbers here because a -10 to resist or -5 to Dodge means a whole different thing that -10 to detect or -5 to disarm.
Effects
How much damage does this do?
Here I skip the Task Difficulty rules because they don't apply.
What I do instead is consider the range of damage as a minimum, average or mean, and maximum. That helps determine its lethality. I put them in three ranges, which roughly correspond to "Fodder, Worthy, or Boss."
Mostly Harmless: If the maximum damage of a trap is going to put 0 damage past most of the DR of the group as a max, it's mostly harmless. For example, a shuriken launcher that sprays a dozen shuriken doing 1d-2 cutting is mostly harmless against a group sporting mostly DR 4+. It's possible a high damage roll or two against a low DR hit location might happen, but the odds are it'll do 0 damage. If it can inflict actual damage, like say a 6' pit (2 yards, 1d+1), but not enough to threaten a major wound, it's still Mostly Harmless. Unless you fall on your hand or foot and roll maximum damage, it's not going to slow you down.
Non-damaging effects with a high resistance bonus, low skill, or minimally disruptive effects (you're sprayed with paint, you're at a -1 at most on some or all stats, etc.) are Mostly Harmless.
Dangerous: If the average/mean damage of a trap is going to put some significant damage past the average DR of the group, the trap is dangerous. Now it matters. A 15' pit (5 yards, 2d) with spikes does 2-12 impaling damage, average 7. Against that same DR 4 average, that's 6 damage to whoever falls in. Not a lot, but it's the same as getting hit with a good whack in combat and it'll require a potion or spell to get rid of. On a normal person (HP 10), it's a major wound. A crossbow trap doing 1d+5 impaling (6-11, average 10.5) is similarly dangerous. Basically, if there is a threat of a major wound or crippled limb or extremity, it's dangerous.
Non-damaging effects that can potentially kill, or inflict a non-lethal but annoying effect, and/or which have a normal resistance (spell roll of 15, straight-up HT rolls, etc.) are Dangerous.
Lethal: If the minimum damage of a trap is going to inflict a crippled limb or major wound, the trap potentially lethal. If the maximum damage can kill outright (or at least force 1+ death checks), it's potentially lethal.
Something that's causing 10+ net damage is very serious; 20+ is potentially lethal. 50-60+ is a serious threat of lethality. The upper end of lethality in DF2 is a 100 yard pit doing 9d+1 (10-73, average 32.5) or lava at 8d+2 burning damage per second. You might not die immediately, but dying is coming at you quickly.
Non-damage effects that can easily kill belong in this category. Drowning, suffocation, the incapacitating afflictions, etc. are all potentially lethal.
These are pretty broad categories, but that's because so many factors impinge on them. DR of the party members, HP of the person hit, resistance rolls, effects, special circumstances, etc. Even a Mostly Harmless trap can turn out to be lethal if it's combined with a monster encounter that takes advantage of the trap (you're dealing with avoiding falling in dozens of little pits that slow you down while the monster kills from afar, say). A trap that is Mostly Harmless to the 20 HP DR 10 knight might be Lethal to the 10 HP 2 DR Wizard. "Only 12 impaling? Okay, 2 gets through and I take 4 injury, I'm down to 16 but bandaging will get me back to 18." vs. "12 impaling? I'm at -20 and I need to make a death check." The net effect of the circumstances matter.
Putting it together
You need to look at the sum of the parts. The teleport over water full of razor fish in my game was easy to detect (but not blatantly trap), hard to disarm, and potentially lethal = very dangerous. The water itself was easy to detect, easy to avoid, and potentially lethal. So all in all it was dangerous but unlikely to TPK the group - yet it almost did because they pushed their luck too far. All in all, that was a potentially lethal trap.
Some other traps have been trivially dealt with, because for all of their damage they were easy to detect, easy to disarm, or easy to set off with no harm to the PCs. Most of the ones set off recently in my game with Create Servant were like that - a more recent linked "bear trap on a deadman switch for a deadfall" one was potentially dangerous (category 2, above) but easy to deal with.
Consider the parts and then the sum of the parts, and see how dangerous that looks to be. How likely are they to blunder into it, get out of it, and/or survive it? Remember DF delvers aren't fragile, but aren't supermen either. You don't need traps to be hard to detect, hard to disarm, impossible to circumvent, difficult to resist, and highly damaging all at once.
Trap Notation
Finally, I like stat lines, so I'll boil it down in my adventure descriptions to things like this:
10 x 10 x 10' Spiked Pit (Detect +10, Disarm N/A, Avoid -2 (precarious narrow ledges), 1d+2 imp)
Poisoned Needle (Detect -3, Disarm -1, Avoid HT-2, 4d/2d toxic no delay no cycles)
Lightning Runes (Detect Per+Magery or Per-based Thaumotology, Disarm N/A, Avoid DX-5 to walk around and Resist vs. 15, 3d burning w/surge, metal is DR 1)
Further trap resources:
Steve Winter's 36 Trap Triggers
Steve Winter's 36 Trap Effects
C's Traps and Tricks Index
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