Trap changes

[Gorbad]

Originally Posted by CunningGabe

What would people think of removing all repeatable trap detection, and having scrolls of trap detection detect the entire level? (The scrolls would become deeper and rarer in this case.)

I'll restate my idea from earlier in the thread:

Assuming:

- Removal of all magical trap detection (with the possible exception Enlightenment)
- The s key is only effective once

Detect Traps effect:

- Timed effect
- Possibly an increase in passive detection radius.
- Larger area of effect (like ESP) in which you will receive a warning when a trap is present in that area (this could be a message, or a status effect on screen).

Including my earlier reasons:
"This would increase anxiety (a good thing!) and provide the player with a choice ("I've dropped consumables earlier on the level, better get them before I hit a trapdoor" or "How badly do I want to see what that unID'd potion is over there, I know the area is trapped")."

Cons:
You could 'game' the system by moving around in a pattern, to see where the warning activates, and triangulate the position of the trap... but in all fairness, this seems like a pretty realistic search pattern for a fantasy rogue anyway

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

While I'll admit that chest traps were fairly useless, having chests entirely unprotected isn't a good alternative. I hope chests are still locked, ideally locked better that they were pre trap removal.

Here's one approach for chest locks:

Roll for the potency of chest trap. You simply cannot open it until your Disarming skill is equal to the trap potency (no random chance).

There may be alternative ways of opening chests, like bashing, but they risk breaking stuff inside.

[CunningGabe]

Originally Posted by Gorbad

I'll restate my idea from earlier in the thread:

Assuming:

- Removal of all magical trap detection (with the possible exception Enlightenment)
- The s key is only effective once

Detect Traps effect:

- Timed effect
- Possibly an increase in passive detection radius.
- Larger area of effect (like ESP) in which you will receive a warning when a trap is present in that area (this could be a message, or a status effect on screen).

Including my earlier reasons:
"This would increase anxiety (a good thing!) and provide the player with a choice ("I've dropped consumables earlier on the level, better get them before I hit a trapdoor" or "How badly do I want to see what that unID'd potion is over there, I know the area is trapped")."

Cons:
You could 'game' the system by moving around in a pattern, to see where the warning activates, and triangulate the position of the trap... but in all fairness, this seems like a pretty realistic search pattern for a fantasy rogue anyway

I was a little resistant to this at first, just because I like the simplicity of just detecting traps on the whole level. However, it occurs to me that your proposal works nicely with monsters that can create traps. Maybe we could use the DTrap status indicator, and color it depending on how close the nearest trap is. Green means no traps within, say, 10 squares; yellow means a trap within 6-10 squares; red means a trap within 1-5 squares. I kind of like that that would force the player to slow down for a moment and walk especially carefully.

[d_m]

I think I still prefer the "if your search is at or over the trap's concealment number, you see it, otherwise you don't" just because it's simple and it would be hard to derive repetitive play from it.

But really, I'm easy. Excited to see this stuff get finalized!

[buzzkill]

re: trap detection.

What if, rather than traditional trap detection or even spidey-senses, magical trap detection gave the character a different type of insight. In addition to revealing all traps within LoS, it would reveal if a grid, within a larger detection area, was definitely not trapped and thus absolutely safe. It would have to be non-omnipotent, so lets say it only identifies 95% (chosen randomly) of the safe (non-trapped) grids in its detection area.

The other 5% could be traps, or could just be an odd rock formation that looks like a trap. It's blocking the corridor, and active searching didn't reveal a trap. Do you walk through it, tunnel around it, or backtrack and look for another way. This gets even more fun if traps and objects can occupy the same grid.

It's a little convoluted, but I'm trying to satisfy the nay-sayers lobbying against deadly trap types on the grounds than (newly revised) detection will be imperfect. Under this scheme trap detection will be imperfect, but you'll be never have to venture from a safe grid unless you choose to (and once precisely balanced, I think there will be occasions when you will choose to), and so deadly and sadistic traps can re-enter the mix.

Ideally, I think that about 20% of questionable grids should really be traps (about 1% of the typical dungeon). This gives players an incentive to risk it every once in a while. In vaults this could probably be bumped up to about 50%, meaning that once inside a vault you won't see many 'safe' grids (1/2 will be traps, the other 1/2 you won't be sure of, pending search results), so you had best be prepared with a combination of searching, detection and disarming.

Once again, just thought of it, so I'm just throwing it out there. It seemed interesting to me.

[CunningGabe]

Originally Posted by d_m

I think I still prefer the "if your search is at or over the trap's concealment number, you see it, otherwise you don't" just because it's simple and it would be hard to derive repetitive play from it.

That is the base mechanic. What we are discussing here is just the added benefit from a trap detection spell / scroll / whatever.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

What if, rather than traditional trap detection or even spidey-senses, magical trap detection gave the character a different type of insight. In addition to revealing all traps within LoS, it would reveal if a grid, within a larger detection area, was definitely not trapped and thus absolutely safe. It would have to be non-omnipotent, so lets say it only identifies 95% (chosen randomly) of the safe (non-trapped) grids in its detection area.

A variation on this: magical trap detection gives the character a sense of danger based on how many traps are in the area, but no actual locations.
This leads to interesting decisions based on risk vs reward.

This gets even more fun if traps and objects can occupy the same grid.

FA 1.2 has this

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by Nick

A variation on this: magical trap detection gives the character a sense of danger based on how many traps are in the area, but no actual locations.
This leads to interesting decisions based on risk vs reward.

Yep, that would be fun.

In Fay, I'm playtesting terrain features -- closets -- that often hold items but also have traps around them. The player has to think about risk vs. reward, and optimize for the least amount of squares travelled in the trapped terrain. There are also Scrolls of Protection from Traps for these situations, so there's some resource management going on, too. Fun!

Fay has traps and items in same grid, too.

[CunningGabe]

Originally Posted by Mikko Lehtinen

Fay has traps and items in same grid, too.

How do you display such a square? The current v4 code has traps and items in the same grid too, but not so much by design as by accident. Currently it only displays the trap.

[d_m]

Originally Posted by CunningGabe

How do you display such a square? The current v4 code has traps and items in the same grid too, but not so much by design as by accident. Currently it only displays the trap.

You piss off Magnate by supporting changing the background color of the square!

(I don't have a more serious answer than this one.)