Of variable difficulty traps, tool kits, and dungeoneering

[dragon5145]

I don't know if anyone else has opened a topic similar to this, I couldn't one that seemed similar using search. If so I apologize for stepping on your thought.
Anyway to the point, has anyone ever considered a system in which traps can have different levels of difficulty to disarm. This could serve two primary purposes, allowing another method for EWP to increase the difficulty/lethality of the quest and to promote the purchase of the tool kit even for the dwarf. By expanding on the basic disarm rules you can easily set up 5 I'm going call tiers of difficulty.
In the rules disarm attempts show what you fail and take damage on so I'm going to stick with that method.

Tier ->failure	Dwarf	Hero w/tool kit	Hero no toolkit
1			N/A
2			N/A
3			N/A
4		N/A	N/A
5		N/A	N/A

N/A indicates incapable of disarm.

I hope the table helps people see where this is going. With this let a Dwarf with a toolkit treat a trap as one tier lower than it is. Doing this would also allow for more and better toolkits for heroes to spend gold on. Granted even with this, a lot of the time the will be relegated to disarm traps most of the time but at least now an incentive to purchase toolkit. The only real way to try and force other heroes to buy tool kits, is to try and find ways to force characters to split up for a while in a quest, quests that start like "The Maze" would be one good example.

As for dungeoneering in the title, I was thinking about some of the other homebrew equipment like torches though I don't intend to talk about them or their uses or reasons to have them here. I instead want to look at pit traps, why would you not go ahead and place the pit trap tile after it is disarmed. Since they can be searched in NA rules a quest creator can use the pit open up other options especially using a secret door only locatable in the pit, to introduce optional side objectives, special treasure or a shortcut to the final quest objective. That being said for the dungeoneering, if the heroes don't want risk damage trying to jump the trap; let them enter, exit or both safely at double or triple the movement cost. This open the possibility of introducing new equipment like a sturdy length of rope or grapple that negates the increased moving cost. I am sure others can come up with more and most likely better ideas on this, but it was just my . If I come up with any other similar I may update. Or at least finish fleshing out the trap difficulty concept.

[Foilfodder]

Variable trap difficulty isn't something I have really considered, I have only made three original adventures (though I have GM ed many other games). I consider traps as a little extra flavor for dungeons rather than the main course. There are exceptions, infamously Tomb of Horrors by Gary Gygax for Dungeons & Dragons.

Since any Hero in HeroQuest can Search to find traps, a cautious player will discover traps. Cases where players typically fall into traps:
1) mistake, forgot to Search for Traps or thought they had already.
2) bloodlust, charging a monster in a room, the trap is directly in front of the monster
3) greed, there is a treasure chest and player wants first Search for Treasure chosen instead of Traps.
4) undetectable, the trap is the first square inside the doorway, tnus undetectable by Search
5) unavoidable, placement players cannot avoid, like multiple traps in a row, so they must disarm.

So increasing difficulty of disarming, would really only matter in case 5 which I try to avoid in design.

[dragon5145]

Yes situations 3 and 5 are really the only ones where a change of difficulty would be guaranteed to have an effect. Even needing to use one more potion or spell for healing earlier, can significantly change the difficulty of a quest. Used properly it opens up interesting quest design ideas, such branching paths to the final objective, one has harder traps to get through but ends up being a shortcut or leading to something that makes the boss battle magnitudes easier.