If nobody in a game chooses to play the thief...

Trap spotting shouldn't be exclusively available to thieves anyway, its something all adventurers should have at least some knowledge about. Just have characters use a wisdom/perception roll and work from there.

Make the occurrence of traps rarer but ensure that they do encounter a few.

If you want the world to seem living and breathing instead of a themepark for the PCs to romp around in, you need to avoid building around their composition so obviously. Otherwise, verisimilitude is broken. If it makes sense for there to be a trap, put a trap down.

It's appropriate for the GM to not change how he makes dungeons based on the party composition.
If the world starts to warp and revolve around the PC party then no choices they make have any value.

TRAP TOWER TIME BAYBEE

No rogue? No survival

FIRST TRAP! SEALING DOOR!
THe party is now trapped... until they find the way out
THOUSAND ARROWS STORM TRAP GO! *twhippypoppidybangbang* thats fine fighter u block that with your shield you block that OH NO SURGING WATER MENACE TRAP ACTIVATED *glugglug* oh look at that one of you drowned that'd be real shame if a trap were to go off you know something like TEMPORAL ANNOUCEMENT TRAP JUST LIT UP THE ROOM AND TOLD EVERYONE WHERE U AT huh shit youre low on resources and shit oh look u see a trap gonna deactivate it ok you go ahead and touch that you touch OH ITS A MIMIC OH SHIT TPK BITCH.

Mosey on down to /osrg/, bub.
Thieves have a small chance to detect SMALL traps (explosive runes, poison needles, etc.) and a decent chance to remove them.
Any and every other trap (or those traps too, if you're so inclined) is detected and disarmed through roleplay. You explain how you look, and explain how you disarm.

>as a sign that nobody wants to deal with traps and adjust their dungeon design accordingly?

That one.

But it's more than just about traps and dungeons. It's the focus of the game. If everyone makes combat monsters and whips out the excel spreadsheets to minmax damage output.... you don't throw a dialog game of intrigue at them. If they spend 4 hours making a backstory and develop complex interpersonal relationships with the rest of the team, you don't randomly roll for death(no save) and wontonly tell them to roll up a new character.

The players and the DM should be on the same page when it comes to what sort of game they all want to play.

If that means infiltrating an ancient crypt with monsters and trap, someone wants to bypass said traps. If no one feels like dealing with traps, shit-can it. Or throw an NPC that quickly resolves or flubs the traps.

In short, everyone needs to play the same game.

Man, I remember that. Fucking sucked. Teaches the players to be paranoid and poke everything with a 10' pole.

>Do you enter the room?
I look in the room, what do I see?
>blah blah blah, do you go in
I throw a rock into the room, what happens?
>nothing.
I stab the door, is it a monster?
>NO
ok, I tie some meat to a rope, I throw the meat through the door, I'M NOT IN THE ROOM YET, does anything happen to the meat?
>Fuck it, the gazebo bursts through the door, wall, and ceiling attacking you for max damage.

I disagree. Tailor made dungeons because the party doesn't want to deal with something, or decided not to include a character type because "reasons" is a waste of time and energy.

I design dungeons and include traps, but I don't go out of my way to punish the players by stuffing in more traps, nor do I reward them by removing traps due to their choices.

This one. I could see it easily going either way, depending on the group, system, and campaign. You can still include traps, and just encourage them to look for alternative solutions (such as hiring an NPC when applicable, taking ten foot poles, etc., as mentioned above). Alternatively, I could see the players just not looking for a stealthy game or one where they need to be constantly wary, hence no one taking the class.

Have you considered talking to your players about what they want to see?

Just because the party was stupid enough to enter a dungeon without a trap-finder, doesn't mean that the people who built the dungeon were stupid enough to not build traps.

The world is bigger than the PCs. That's not "punishment", that's the facts of life. There are about a million other things they could do as a non-trapfinding party, but they're the ones who decided to specifically go dungeon-delving, a profession that is notorious for involving traps.

Pic all kinds of related.

this

Why can't the other characters look for traps?

They can, but rogues are typically the best at it, much as how priests are the best at healing, mages are the best at damage, and warriors are the best at tanking. It's the rogue's "thing".

That would imply the players are actually able to think that far ahead.

This.

I like to make a battery of NPCs that players can hire who can fill a role that is necessary. Works really well for games where you only have 3-4 players. I treat them kinda like squadmates from Mass Effect and ask the players what NPC they want to bring in each dungeon/mission/whatever. They usually have somewhat unoptimized damage so that the players get to do that, but might be tough enough to bail them out if things get too nasty. It also helps for if a PC dies and the player isn't ready to stat a new character yet, they can just pick up the NPC for the rest of the current encounter.

Precisely

The game gives notes for hirelings for a reason, including cost (2 sp a day for FNGs, 2 gp a day for experienced, and GM's discretion for party adjacent ones)

There should still be traps, but I would say they should be less fatal as a whole. Fewer bottomless chasms and more 10 foot drops into spikes. It'll wear then down with damage, but they should have a chance to react and play around that fact

You are asking if you should punish the party for not metagaming and playing the characters they want to play. Think about the question in those terms for a moment and you should have your answer.

This assumes the DM didn't plan for the party to dungeon delve and that doing something else would require him tossing what he had planned and starting over.

A little of both, just enough trappiness to make them think "we should've brought a theif!", but not enough to ruin everyone's fun.

With everything incolved in a campaign I'm sure the party will find ways to be usefull.
They might charm the king, but they can't unlock his undies closet.
They might storm a hideout front on, becuase none of them are capable of sneaking in and unlocking the storm drain.
They might fight their way into a buriel chamber, to discover the mechanisms guarding the actual treasure is WAY out of their grasp.
It should be like making a character in vidya. The world won't change for the character, but any character will be valid in the world.
And really, with no "theiving" abilities the party attempting to brake into the local merchants house would be plain stupid and should be punished.
Anyway trap mechanisms might have been studied by the alchemist or wizard. Maybe the paladin was a watch maker before his family and village where killed.
Maybe the barbarian can pick locks, he just looks obviouse as fuck and tends to yell "FINALLY" when he's done.
Maybe they just throw the tank down every mineshaft to make sure it's safe.

Depends. If the game was going to have traps anyway, and the party chooses to not have a rogue, then they suffer the consequences. Your persecution complex is just as bad as any DM trying to "punish" players.

>The game must match the party's desires.

Okay. I desire that we fight nothing but kobolds and get 2000 gp treasures in every room.

Nah.

Make the traps sparse but mildly annoying: a door they can see a chest behind but can't open, a trap that causes a mildly annoying but not serious negative status effect, a pit that drops the party to another slightly harder section than the one they were on.

Enough to make them think "Damn, maybe we should have brought a rogue?" but not dwell on it for longer than that.

Stop playing D&D.

>I desire that we fight nothing but kobolds and get 2000 gp treasures in every room.
Then you're boring as fuck, why are you even playing and who would tolerate your BS?

Yes.

In all seriousness, it's all about your group. Mine would likely see that they're walking into a series of deathtraps and work out a solution if they're out of their element. If yours doesn't like having to finagle with flaws in their party composition, tailor your game accordingly.

>tanking when there is no aggro system

What kind of retarded logic is that
>If the game was going to have traps anyway
>then they suffer the consequences
So if the players all want to have straight forward battles with an all-barbarian party and the dm was planning to have a modern hacker-oriented game "anyway" then the dm should just ignore the players and run the railroad story he wants without communication? And if the players complain they just have a persecution complex?

If you're not baiting then you're a retarded faggot.

"Hey guys. The dungeons in my game will likely have traps. Please take this into account during character creation or when adventuring."

Thats called cherry-picking a hypothetical. And in that scenario, the group itself finds a DM willing to fucking do that, rather than forcing a DM to go along with their retardation.

If you want to do something like that, you find a DM willing to roll with that specific idea. One that may even specialize in it.

But besides your hyper-specialized hypothetical group, an average game will likely have a good spread of melee, mid, and long range characters of various specialties. In this situation, where they didn't communicate well, i would say its fine to add traps. Just make them not as devastating as if they had a rogue or thief.

Some level of traps are to be expected. What fucking fun is a game where you aren't taken unawares by the environment at some point? it adds flair, it adds flavor. It adds the tension that you can't JUST be a bumbling fuck up.

And going back to your stupid specific hypothetical, even a barbarian can set a trap. The fuck do you call hunting?

Then they should do research and loot the dungeon of someone who wasn't a complete madman and decided to fill his lair with hundreds of pointless deathtraps.

What kind of traps were you putting in the game in the first place?

Because most traps are just a speed bump that slows the party down and taxes their HP.

>Thats called cherry-picking a hypothetical
It's not cherry picking faggot, any example of the dm planning something radically different from what the players want works becuase that's what you suggested.

The normal course of action for a functioning adult is that the dm should talk to the players to try to make some sort of compromise and if the dm just doesn't want to play the sort of game the players do or vice-versa then they should find another dm/group or play some other sort of game they all want.
You're literally suggesting dms should ignore what sort of characters and game the players want and do what the dm wanted "anyway".

>Some level of traps are to be expected.
>every game needs traps!
Maybe you're just another case of dnd brain-damage but not every game needs traps in the dungeon-crawl sense. That's something for the players and dm to decide together based on the sort of game they want.

> stupid specific hypothetical, even a barbarian can set a trap. The fuck do you call hunting?
Hunting in general and setting traps in an abstract sense of roles has nothing to do with actual game rules about skill checks and finding traps and is completely irrelevant to my example of players wanting straight-forward fights, you retard.

Judging by that wall of text you're not even baiting, you're just a retarded autistic faggot.

What about social traps? Philosophical traps?

Not all traps are arrows and poison user.

In the aforementioned barbarian party, perhaps they are chasing something and it leads them into an ambush? That would be a trap.

Maybe you are the braindead one, assuming all traps have to be some set piece in the environment.

>traps in the dungeon-crawl sense
>in the dungeon-crawl sense

>in the dungeon crawl sense
>led into an ambush

Pretty sure that still counts user. Again, not all traps are arrows and poison. Or built into the dungeon for that matter. Some are just reversing the expectations of the player.

Anything that catches the players unaware in even on a mildly premeditated fashion can count as a trap.

>priests are the best at healing, mages are the best at damage, and warriors are the best at tanking

There's no prize for winning internet arguments kid.
No need to be purposefully obtuse and misconstrue people's meanings so you have a nice safe strawman to beat on to display your genius and prowess.

The op is obviously referring to mechanical traps in the traditional dnd sense that can be detected/disarmed by a theif/rogue which is why their presence in the party was at all relevant and this thread even exists.

Also see
>The normal course of action for a functioning adult is that the dm should talk to the players to try to make some sort of compromise and if the dm just doesn't want to play the sort of game the players do or vice-versa then they should find another dm/group or play some other sort of game they all want
That applies regardless of the setting or system or rules.

Oh, im not debating that. My first statement is basically that, but with multiple people.

But take this into account. If the party has no rogue, you can simply keep the traps to what anyone can find with an appropriate check. And since these are barbarians, they can easily tank the majority of these kinds of traps.

Different methodology, but at the same time, they can easily still get past it. Rather than simply taking something out of the game, tone it down where it isn't punishing to not have that specific class.

Using DnD as an example, only traps with a DC of higher than 20 to spot or magical ones aren't capable of being seen by regular people. And once you have spotted a trap, you then try to figure it out. Maybe get a stick and poke it. If there are holes in the wall, stay out of the way of that.

Barbarians aren't literally retarded. Not in the sense that they can't deal with traps. Rather, your argument is fallacious to start with because barbarians specifically get better ability to sense traps.

instead of assuming an all barb party would be filled with literal retards, maybe you should just see how they react to things in the moment and adjust from there.

>your argument is fallacious to start with because barbarians specifically get better ability to sense traps
Do you have some sort of reading disability?
I only mentioned barbarians as part of a hypothetical scenario where the players specifically wanted just straight-forward battles and the dm wanted a modern hacking game. I didn't even mention traps in that case.

Either you lack reading comprehension or are being purposefully retarded and misconstruing my posts so you can play some internet debate game.

See
>That's something for the players and dm to decide together based on the sort of game they want.
and
>The normal course of action for a functioning adult is that the dm should talk to the players to try to make some sort of compromise and if the dm just doesn't want to play the sort of game the players do or vice-versa then they should find another dm/group or play some other sort of game they all want.
That is literally my argument.

The user I initially replied to suggested the players should "suffer the consequences" for their choice of characters if the dm "was going to have traps anyway" and any disagreement or complaint was just a persecution complex.

That's retarded and you're a retarded faggot too if you're defending it.

Don't mention a hypothetical, especially a cherry-picked one to your own ends, unless you want it torn apart until you are red in the face.

And if we're all of a sudden throwing shadowrun into this, that gets all sorts of fucked up, because thats got bits and pieces of every system imaginable and even rolling is a fucking slog till you realize you can parse down each roll to a couple of steps. and in that specific scenario, the DM should indeed tailor to the characters or they'd be rerolling every 10 minutes.

So far as the "suffer the consequences" thing, its more retarded to expect there to be no traps whatsoever than it is to assume the DM will be a functioning being and tailor some things towards your strengths and others toward your weaknesses. Not everything should be tailored to your special snowflake party. Expecting it to be is just as childish as anything the DM could do.

You can try to make it a black and white argument all you want, but at the end of the day it just doesn't work like that.

>especially a cherry-picked one to your own ends
Are you autistic?

You're really THIS obsessed with "winning" some internet argument?
Do you get some satisfaction or feeling of accomplishment from "beating" a strawman?

This is just pathetic.

It's just like real life. If you're going somewhere with traps, then you need a thief/rogue.

If everyone wanted to play a diplomat without the ability to attack, would you remove the monsters or allow them to talk their way pass every bear in the woods?

pssst, there were no rogues in od&d. The class was called thief, and didn't appear in the game until supplement I (Greyhawk).

Do you get some satisfaction from baiting out arguments then calling the other person autistic when he calls you on your shit?

Probably, yeah.

Regardless, my point still stands. The DM can and will do what they want, regardless of how good your party is against it, and expecting otherwise is being a child. Only when its impossible to deal with does it become an issue.

You should make the party glad about their character. Not, "Shit, I wish I chose something I wanted less for no reason."

>The DM can and will do what they want
Sure and if they're a douche about it then they'll lose their group for being an autist like you who can't just communicate with their players about what sort of game they want like a normal functioning human that's not on the spectrum.

They shouldn't "expect" to be "entitled" to players to play only the sort of game they want any more than you assume the players expect to be entitled to only what they want.

Thats just it. neither side should expect to be entitled to anything, players or DM. There is a certain degree of understanding that should be had that not every encounter will be tailored to your strengths as a party, and that the DM can and will occasionally throw shit at you that you might not be able to handle.

You make it sound like the DM is in the wrong for making a fucking game, but at the end of the day i have never EVER heard of someone complain about the concept of traps, at all.

At the end of the day, the party finds a DM that wants to do things they want, and thats the ideal scenario.

My entire point is that its a two way street. And there's another famous phrase, a good compromise leaves everyone unhappy. So unless you have the literal perfect DM for your needs, there will be times you are disgruntled, or outright ass-mad. But a functional person will accept this and move on, unless it completely destroys their character for no reason. Hell, i saw this happen one time, and he couldn't even be mad, it was so funny. He got punched so hard by a bloodhulk he tried to sneak past (and failed) that his character outright died in one hit, and he got splattered across the far wall.

>It's just like real life. If you're going somewhere with traps, then you need a thief/rogue.
Uh most people didn't have that many problems plundering tombs in real life because simply put the kind of death traps depicted in D&D are impractical. Now don't get me wrong, there were some traps in real life, but they really weren't that much of an issue especially after a few years with out maintenance. Not to say that's a bad thing for the genera, I'm just saying that particular argument doesn't hold water.

>Loot the dungeon of someone who wasn't a complete madman

Isn't that kind of a prerequisite to financing a dungeon in the first place though?

I give them forewarning, if they ignore it, fuck them.
When I'm told "beware of the dog" I don't go in expecting there to not be a dog.

>In dungeon
>It's impossible to continue without a rogue for some reason
>"Alright, I guess we just turn back around and leave."
Why would you want a game where that happens?

>impossible to continue

In what situation would this be the case? locked door? Have the fighter hit it till it caves. Pitfall trap? Carry some rope. Snake pit? i once saw a fighter get away with greater cleaving his way through the entire pit in a few attacks because he literally couldn't miss and couldn't not kill a snake. Not to mention any of these could be solved with magic in some fashion.

A rogue is simply the shortest route. There is almost never a situation where its "Required". In fact, i'd challenge anyone that says there is to come up with one that someone can't think of another way out of.

That raises the question what's the point of having the rogue class in the first place, if its entire niche is a matter of convenience?

Because there are unique circumstances in which those area's that others specialize in work better in 1 person doing them than 2 or more.

And to have a generic "dick ass thief" class that people can use. its to fill a niche really. they are also one of the few classes to excel in melee using dex or an equivalent stat, without taking 300 splats into consideration.

Keep in mind though, the average party is supposed to be around 4 people. If three are taken by the tank type, mage type, and maybe a healer, that leaves you pretty open on a lot of area's. They can fill a lot of these gaps by themselves, if not to the level another class would. They also generally have the ability to over-specialize, and still be able to do a lot of things in comparison to, say, a fighter.

Arguably, in 3.5, anything can be handled by a wizard, but if you take mage supremacy out of the equation, a rogue is a pretty good fill class for a party with some more balanced needs.

Came here to say this.

It all depends on what kind of game.ypur players want. Are they trying to take on the most hardcore dungeon crawl? Then yeah, fuck those guys up. Are they trying to play an RP heavy story based campaign? Then their party comp shouldn't dictate consequences nearly as much as their actions should.

I check for tRaps ICHECK FOR TRAPS

You are reading his analogy wrong, if tombs irl had traps then you would need a rogue or whatever, otherwise it's not 'somewhere with traps'.

>looks like this place is too dangerous for us, I guess we're leaving
There goes five hours of adventure planning for you and a night of gaming for them.

Dude, what are you even arguing for?

I usually give them some forewarning of what kind of dungeon I'm running. How they tackle it is up to them.

All my friends/players know I have a raging hardon for traps (buh dum tiss) and if they don't plan around it that's their fault. One guy loves cranking his perception out the ass so it works out alright

>Players who are too lazy to ever DM like only ever consider what the players want and never what the DM already put the effort into planning and demand DMs to make new plans whenever the dumbass players want to do something stupid and different
If you made a party of all barbarians why the fuck are you going in dungeons and not raiding villages? Dumb cunt.

The way I run, I create a world, then let the players play in it. I have an ongoing story, but the players are free to ignore it and do their own thing if they want (though the events of that story still occur, whether they're there to intervene or not).

As a side-effect of this, I don't plan based on party composition. That said, I also only use traps where they actually make sense, I don't just cram them into every area where they might be adventuring just because D&D is "supposed to have traps".

If everyone wanted to play a diplomat without the ability to attack, I wouldn't build the campaign around combat encounters-- it would be clear what my players wanted and, after a talk with them about what I wanted, we could easily find a campaign that is to mutual satisfaction.

There is no platonic ideal of a campaign, of which all campaigns are imperfect reproduction. There is no perfect ratio of combat to non-combat, traps to social challenges.

The players want to play A Thing, I want to run A Thing, we see if we can smush our Things together and have some fun.

OP's issue, however, seems to suggest something different. Namely, that the players rolled up a bunch of diplomats without any meaningful combat ability, but then have all collectively charged towards the front lines of a war.

Or in OP's proper case, rolled up a party without any kind of trapfinder, then leapt down into a dungeon anyway.

No. I feel like this devalues rogue somewhat, in the sense that it makes it so that the problems that they solve only exist because of their presence in the first place.

I'd be willing to make an exception for a solo or two man campaign, but a larger party that deliberately chooses not to have trap disarming skills is going to have to learn to deal with traps. It's not a tradeoff if you remove the negative consequences and build your campaign exclusively around the party's strength.

Plus I give my players full control over what they wish to do. If you don't want to step on traps don't enter the ancient trap filled maze.

I try to run my games party-makeup agnostic if I can help it at all and I like to think I'm at least a mediocre DM. If anything I try to give people something specific to do if there is an opportunity for it, but otherwise don't worry about it - ie, if there is a rogue then throw out a rogue-solvable trap or two.

Well in that case they die, then.