Traps on the other side of the door

[TheLastChaosWarrior]

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

I also want to try and add Mudmen as a foe in my Quest pack, something inspired by the scary creatures of the same name in the old computer game called 'Moonstone', there is so much I loved about that game, all of the monsters were amazing, Baloks, Trolls, Troggs, Mudmen and a Dragon! They had such good kill actions. It was a very gory game though, not for young'uns! Look it up on YouTube!

[HispaZargon]

For traps placed in the other side of the floor, for me the solution of such dissapointing situation for many players is easy, playing as the Japanese Edition rules say for it: Japanese Edition allows searching inside a room if the Hero is placed just in the outside square adjacent to the door.

To avoid the dissapointing situation of seeing a hero falling into a trap just at the other side of the door in a room with monsters (so the room cannot still be searched fro traps), I just would allow the heroes to jump the square, following the standar rules for jumping traps, even if they dont know if there is a trap there or not.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

For traps placed in the other side of the floor, for me the solution of such disappointing situation for many players is easy, playing as the Japanese Edition rules say for it: Japanese Edition allows searching inside a room if the Hero is placed just in the outside square adjacent to the door.

That would work for me, although I am considering these changes as part of a trap search and disarm rewrite as I think that would result in a smoother approach than fixing individual flaws as there are so many in this area, but I'll see how that pans out.

Presumably this would also work if you are in a room, on the square adjacent to a passageway, you could search for traps in the entire passageway too?

To avoid the disappointing situation of seeing a hero falling into a trap just at the other side of the door in a room with monsters (so the room cannot still be searched for traps), I just would allow the heroes to jump the square, following the standard rules for jumping traps, even if they don't know if there is a trap there or not.

I don't agree with this approach for 2 reasons.

1. Falling into a trap because you can't search due to the presence of monsters applies everywhere, whether the trap is located the other side of the door or not, so in this instance I don't think the problem applies therefore no fix is needed.

2. For me "jumping" is a method of getting across holes in the ground/floor (pits and chasms and similar obstacles) not unsprung traps and if you allow "blind jumping" through doorways then you'd have to allow it everywhere and I'm not keen on having heroes bouncing all over the dungeon like rabbits!

[HispaZargon]

About flaws in the searching rules like the one discussed, I think we should try to cover as many as them as posible!

About allowing 'blind jumps', you are right with point 1, but I think not with point 2. If we follow the same rules described in the rulebook for jumping traps, a hero trying to jump an unsearched square is taking the risk of finishing his turn just there if the jump is unsuccesful (rolling a Skull, 50% chance), so he could finish his turn too exposed to the enemy, being something likely undesired for him. In other words, I think the heroes will not be jumping everywhere through the board because it implies potential risks to them, so I think they will only do it when they really suspects a trap could be in front of them.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Except, failing a jump doesn't end your turn, in the rules (and this may not be true across editions but I think it is) you are always jumping either a pit (SE) or a pit or unsprung trap (NA) so failing a jump leads to you ending up in a pit or springing a trap, it is the falling into a pit or springing a trap that ends your turn not failing the jump. So if you went down this route you would probably need to add another rule to say that failing a jump ends your turn, but to be honest I don't think you need to go down that route at all.

Your suggestion paraphrased below is a perfectly good 'fix' for this problem and one that I was using for many years until my latest batch of players.

You may search the room or passageway that you are in or that you are adjacent to

Couple of questions on this though

1. Does this apply to searching in general, that is searching for treasure, searching for secret doors and trap (or searching for secret doors and searching for traps), or only searching involving traps?

2. Could you search a room for traps if you are on the square outside the door of the room and the room contained monsters (but none on the square on the other side of the door), if so then the restriction around searching when monsters are present may need a tweak, depending on your edition.

[Kurgan]

The heroes are bound to forget (or miscalculate) so I don't mind if they want to keep rolling and rolling extra dice to possibly avoid getting killed. Their rolls won't necessarily always succeed. If they are hop scotching their way around like Indiana Jones I don't see the problem, really. Mostly it's going to be used in expansion packs whenever they go through a new door. It's not guaranteed protection...

The other thing about jumping a square: if it's successful, they won't know if there was really any trap there to begin with! It takes some of the sting out of the "cheap shot" traps that are put into open doorways (especially instant hit traps), especially when there are monsters visible in the room already. At least if they fail they know they had a chance.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

My issues with 'blind jumping' are:

1. It isn't needed, the issue that brought it up, traps the other side of doors, can be resolved using other methods, one of which is the one under discussion at the moment

You may search the room or passageway that you are in or that you are adjacent to

2. It is inefficient, introducing a new "mechanism", that characters could use many times on every single turn of the game, just to address an issue that crops up only once every few quests, or even quest packs isn't very efficient

3. It doesn't really solve the original problem it just expands it, if you allow 'blind jumping' to resolve the issue of handling a trap on the square directly the other side of a door, then a Quest Designer might choose to put a trap one square back from the square the other side of the door, or a double length trap behind the door, and now you have a variant of the same problem for which the resolution no longer works. Then you have to make rules for 'blind-double jumping". So our Quest Designer then chooses to place a monster the other side of the trap behind the door so now you have to make a rule to cover "blind jumping onto a square occupied by a monster" and so on, it never ends.

[Kurgan]

You could (as Zargon) just ignore traps on the other side of the door (and don't create new quests that put traps there).

[Stoner81]

I have been wondering about this situation for a little bit since the wife is really starting to complain about this mechanic...

Somebody above mentioned about instant hit traps etc being an issue so one thought would be to replace ALL traps behind a door with a spear trap since that requires a die roll to see if the trap hits. This way then takes the "cheat shot" aspect from it but still involves some risk when entering a room.

Another option I thought of was having the trap tied to the door itself so as Heroes can/could search the door (specifically) for traps and would thus grant them a chance to disarm it. We can already search other bits of furniture for traps like chests etc so why not a door



Stoner81.

[wallydubbs]

I have no objection to implementing a rule of searching the next space behind the door. Melar's Maze have heroes the official warning by giving us 2 doors to the same room. Heroes may often neglect that search and take damage, but by the time they're maxed out on armor, traps can be more dangerous then any monster.

So I'd give the heroes the option to search.

I recall playing Quest 7 Lost Wizard with a group and when they opened the door to the room with chest holding the Potion of Mystery the Barbarian player blurted out "That's definitely a trap!"
The Dwarf, taking no heed of this statement stepped through and into the pit trap.
The Barbarian then jumped in, took a step, looked at me for reassurance, took another step towards the chest, looked at me...
"Pit trap!" I call out.
The Elf jumped in next and decided to walk around the wall, assuming no traps would be in a corner, got to the chest, opened it and was struck by the poison gas!
The Wizard stood out the door and said "I'm not going in there."

I laughed, "He just said it was a trap, why did nobody search for traps?!"

The one thing I don't stand behind is falling block traps behind doors that could potentially trap a hero forever. In cases such as that I will work out a way to get them out of there, preferably separating them from the group.