Traps on the other side of the door

[Bareheaded Warrior]

My house rules for searching (spotting) traps, which I think resolves the situation with traps on the other side of the door and a number of other trap issues, for your perusal.

16. Traps
16.1 Spotting a trap
Traps are only placed on the board when they are triggered
If a player characters movement takes them through a space marked as containing a trap on the Quest map, then the evil wizard player must check the total of the movement dice rolled for that player character (not the spaces moved but the dice total) and if that total is six or less then the trap has been spotted before it is triggered otherwise the player character triggers the trap and suffers the consequences (see below)

16.2 The Dwarf spots traps if his total movement is seven or less.

16.3 Monster cannot spot or trigger traps. They may move freely though squares that contain hidden traps. Once a trap has been placed on the board, however monsters must follow the same rules as characters.

16.4 If the trap has been spotted, then the evil wizard player must place the player character’s miniature on the space, state "You have spotted a trap", the player character must then attempt to disarm the trap.

Trapped chests are an exception to the rules above, see the Treasure Chest section below.

16.5 Disarming a trap
Roll a standard die on a roll of four or more the trap has been successfully disarmed, otherwise the trap has been triggered.

16.6 The Dwarf and any player character equipped with a Tool Kit gets to add one point to his total rolled for disarming traps. This is cumulative so Dwarf players equipped with a Tool Kit gets to add two points to his total.

16.7 Disarming a trap does not count as an action but whether successful or not does end the player characters turn.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Further update following a year of play testing

For me, the real issue with the “Traps on the other side of the door” logic isn’t that it feels unfair (although that is true), it is more that it feels unintended. I don’t get the feeling that the designers of the game set out with the intention of creating this situation, they simply wrote the searching for traps rules and this situation surfaced through play as an unintended consequence that they highlighted in the rulebook so that players would have some guidance on how to handle the situation when they inevitably uncovered it.

I see this particular unintended consequence as negative and for me it indicates yet another flaw in the searching for, and general handling of, traps rules so I propose a re-write to eliminate this issue and hopefully various other issues with trap searching, some examples listed below, I would be interested to hear if there are other issues that I haven’t included with searching for traps and whether they have been resolved by my proposed change;

1. ‘Traps in a row’ flaw - You can search in a single square width corridor and find (without having to handle) numerous traps, even though it would logically be impossible to get to the subsequent trap squares without having dealt with the first one in some way – this could be resolved by stating that your search ends with the nearest trap found within your search area, this logic is used in certain Quest notes but perhaps should be a standard rule rather than an exception

2. ‘Poorly defined inconsistent search area’ flaw - Search area isn’t really defined (aside from the searching for traps in a room bit, i.e you have to be in a room to search for and locate a trap in a room), it isn’t clear whether you can be in a room – in the doorway for example – and perform a trap search and locate a trap on the (adjacent to you) first square in a corridor which is inconsistent but not prohibited expressedly as far as I can tell and the search area in a corridor isn’t well defined but I assume it is a single ‘straight stretch of any length’ but there is no information around standing on a corner or other intersection between two corridors and searching both simultaneously – this could be fixed by defining the search area but see below

3. ‘Assumed movement ignore movement limits’ - The assumed movement inherent in a trap search can be up to 25/26 squares long despite your maximum movement being 12, outside of potions, spells etc this is made even worst by the fact that you could, for example at a junction, presumably use your action ‘search for traps with assumed movement covering 26 squares in one direction and then roll and move up to 12 squares in another direction, your figure covering a total of 38 squares of movement (assumed and actual or more 42 I think if you consider the area of larger rooms) – this could be fixed by limiting assumed movement to a maximum of 12 squares (or a lower figure such as 6 squares) but see "limiting the search area" below

4. ‘Unrevealed Monster’ flaw - The assumed movement could cover a t-junction that has unrevealed monsters along the other arm of the T, you can discover traps through your assumed movement passed the junction but would fail to reveal the monsters that would be revealed if the movement was not assumed – limiting assumed movement would reduce the likelihood of this occurring but it would still be possible, paradox warning - you would need to search (and move – assumed not actual) that would result in the monsters being revealed and having revealed the monsters you would be unable to perform a search due to the presence of the monsters uncovered during your search

Limiting the Search Area

I could, and many better minds before me on this forum have tried to, better define / limit the search area, some examples below.

Limiting it to a maximum range / squares covered of 12 – your maximum movement - potential flaws in this is that 12 squares isn’t enough to cover some larger rooms in their entirety so you can either ignore that inconsistency, break larger rooms into smaller search areas – nasty, especially in terms of keeping track, or rule that a search of a larger area takes multiple turns – again increased complexity, what happens if a monster walks in halfway through your two-turn search, does it get abandoned, can you restart the second half of your search after you have killed the monster – again nasty).

Limit it to a lower figure, after all 12 is your maximum movement and you would imagine that movement whilst searching would be slower, for example let’s say 6 squares - this reduces the unrevealed monster problem (it still exists, but is less likely to occur), but doesn’t resolve the multiple traps in a line and increases the problems given above as the number of squares covered is reduced

Special Search Rule for Traps behind doorways – smacks to me of putting a Band Aid on a cut instead of treating the underlying symptoms (that is a shockingly poor metaphor!)

Attempts that I have seen so far to resolve these issues by trying to limit the search area, feel inelegant and complex. Applying quick fixes to mitigate the worst of the issues, like ‘search only finds the nearest trap’ and the ‘search behind the door from the doorway’, do work, but feel like patching up the holes in a leaking roof when a new roof is what is really needed (better metaphor)

The whole ‘search for traps’ logic for me feels very artificial, both thematically checking for traps in your path (or on a chest that you are about to loot) makes sense but you would think for Heroes with any experience and likely to survive long enough to get any experience the check would be automatic (NOT automatically successful, that would render traps pointless) but also in terms of the rules as written with the awkward ‘declaration’ mechanism and the Zargon indicates a dodgy square but no marker is placed, nothing similar is used anywhere else.

After all why would you search an entire room (or for that matter the other side of a two-square wide corridor) for traps if you aren’t moving through those squares (moving through those squares solely for the purposes of uncovering a trap sounds daft – “the trap in the corner of the room got me!”, “what were you doing in the corner of the room?”, “searching for traps!?". “Searching for treasure” makes a far more understandable response.

You search the path that you are travelling, room or corridor, and if you are searching a room (for example for treasure) then again you would search the path (of assumed movement) that you are taking as you search for treasure (and that path wouldn’t necessarily cover every single square in a large room, I would imagine that you are likely to focus your treasure search around features, furniture, fallen monsters and the room edges - walls - rather than the empty expanse in the middle)

My Proposal

Note: please reserve judgement until you have read it all, brace yourselves!

• Scrap the Search For Traps action
• Upgrade/Modify the Disarm Traps action to be a Detect & Disarm Traps non-action like ‘looking’ or, if you choose to, 'opening a door'.
• Expand this Detect and Disarm option so instead of being limited to only the Dwarf (or a Hero with the Toolkit), it becomes an option for ALL Heroes, but the Dwarf (or a Hero with the Toolkit) is better at it. This gives non-Dwarf Heroes something else to do, increases the reasons for buying the Tool Kit – and makes in useful for the Dwarf too.

Movement & Traps

When stepping onto a square as part of movement, your Hero checks for traps automatically and if one is present, indicated by Zargon, then they must immediately roll to ‘Detect & Disarm’ the trap (this can simply be referred to as ‘Disarm’ but I’m calling it out to make it more obvious)

This is a single roll that covers both the chances of them spotting the trap before triggering it and if they do spot it, the outcome of their attempt to make it safe – failing either, results in the same outcome, the trap being activated.

Roll a red die* if you score 5+ then you have successfully detected & disarmed the trap and it is now a safe square, otherwise you have activated the trap and suffer the consequences.

* I have a principle of using combat dice for combat, or other situations in which the outcome of the dice roll directly results in the potential loss of Body Points, and the red dice for anything else such as movement, jumping and this situation

• The Dwarf due to his unique skills around underground movement and mechanisms gets a +2 to this roll.
• Anyone (including the Dwarf) equipped with the Toolkit, gets a +1 (reflecting the fact that the toolkit may not help detect – possibly – but will help disarm).
• These are cumulative so Dwarf with Toolkit will be successful on a roll of anything but a 1.
• In Quests where the notes state that traps in the Quest are particularly well-hidden then make this a 6 for success rather than a 5 or 6

Searching (for Treasure) & Traps

Searching for Treasure (in a room) involves movement (although it is assumed) so if you are searching for treasure in a room that contains one or more traps, Zargon will move your figure onto the trapped square (the nearest if more than one exists) and you must deal with the trap as above, either outcome ends your turn and the search, allowing another Hero on their turn or your Hero on a subsequent turn, to perform a search ‘attempt’ on the room again.
Only one successful search can be performed on a single room (related to my house rule ‘one search per room limit’ NOT ‘one search per Hero per room’ discussed elsewhere on this site) but that successful search may comprise of a number of search attempts depending on the presence and number of traps.

Chests and Searching for Treasure and Traps

The astute will have spotted that, as you never actually step onto a square that has a chest on it, then the above rules don’t adequately cover trapped chests so…

Some of the trap placement in some of the official quests indicates some confusion around handling chests in relation to searching for treasure and traps as a result of this I have already excluded chests from the general (treasure) search and introduced a new action “Loot (a chest)”

Looting is the action that is used by a Hero when adjacent to a chest, to open the chest (probably force open as I assume chests are typically locked) and retrieve the contents.

This action is automatically successful, no roll required, however if a Hero attempts this action against a chest that is trapped then Zargon will inform them that the chest is trapped and they will need to make a ‘Detect & Disarm’ roll as indicated above.

Note: whether the ‘Detect & Disarm’ roll is successful or not, the contents are still retrieved so rest assured they will be secure on your corpse if the trap kills you!

[Kurgan]

The Milton Bradley (Hasbro) developers working on the Elf, Barbarian, etc. packs in '91-92 were aware of the trap problem (they were using a lot of traps in their very difficult quests too!) so they proposed two rule clarifications/additions/modifications that never made it into the final prints (1992):

Blind trap jumping. I call it that, but they were saying you do not have to have actually detected a trap on a square in order to jump the square. Some traps can't be detected or jumped, but in theory you could get lucky and leap through a doorway and over the trap using the same mechanic for jumping any other kind of detected trap.

Double jumping. This was specifically for the EQP as that had a lot of double traps (two in a row outside a doorway for example). A hero could choose to leap over TWO squares at once, and had to just roll a white shield on one combat die. Failure means they landed on the first square and took whatever consequences.

I thought these were interesting and could be useful in the actual game so I've been implementing them into my sessions on twitch.tv/heroquestfans . Still risk, but some chance of avoiding those pesky (and frankly cheap) hazards.

How would the rabbit boots affect the double jump? That's up to you. Maybe it would be ANY SHIELD in that case for success?

Otherwise it'd be the same as the base rules printed in the 1990 instruction booklet.

It seems they were possibly toying with the idea of allowing one search per piece of furniture in a room as well (with I suppose the hero choosing which one) but this is less clear to me yet, though there are clues this is the route they were going even in the finished version. By default the entire room is searched and furniture is just decoration (what matters are the quest notes, and if no specific note then you always draw a treasure card, each hero searches the entire room once).

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Not sure about Rabbit Boots but I think all Heroes would need to be equipped with Frog Boots to handle all this jumping.

I agree that it is A way to resolve the problem, but for me jumping is what you do to get safely across a pit or chasm, not a way to hop around a dungeon to avoid traps (who says a tripwire cannot be placed at chest height).

I think that, whilst as a general principle I prefer the minimum changes to fix an issue, a surgical approach rather than a wrecking ball, but the topic of searching (in general and for traps in particular) is one of only a few areas within the official rules where there are so many issues, that patching them all is cumulatively a bigger change that a scrap and rewrite.

Having recently completed a rewrite of the search rules for my own house rules I was surprised, after tweaking and playtesting on and off for five years, how small and simple the new rules are compared to the original ones and how backwards compatible they appear to be.

[Kurgan]

If you wanted to make a blind jump even less likely to succeed (due to lack of intel) sure, you could do that. I going to go with the draft idea for now.

Frog Boots!

[j_dean80]

Someone needs to write a Quest in the Fimir swamps where you find the artifact Frog Boots.

[Kurgan]

Swamp tiles (restrict movement). Some swamp type trap tiles (good time to re-use those vine traps from Joe's Crypt of Perpetual Darkness).

[Farwatcher]

I give heroes the option to either do a Broad Search that covers an entire room/corridor (as long as there are no monsters present) or a Narrow Search that only tells them about adjacent squares. A Narrow Search can be done even if there are monsters present, as long as no monster is adjacent to the hero, and works through open doorways.

Also, bring on the swamp quests! Vine traps, poison mushrooms, quicksand from the EQP -- sounds like the perfect basis for a Quest Pack for the Druid

[TheLastChaosWarrior]

I'm planning to do a swamp based quest pack which will be based in the Fimir homelands, and the Hero's goal is to find out more about the origins of the new Abominations, who clearly come form marine based creatures!
I'll be using the excellent jungle room tiles from Mound of the Beastmen, Fimirs, the vine traps from the Crypt of perpetual darkness, Fimirs, Carrion Crawlers (which I have four miniatures of and have made a monster card for), Fimirs, a Giant spider, and of course the new Abominations. Oh, and some Fimirs.
I love Fimirs!

[Kurgan]

Exploding swamp gas, mire men... many possibilities!