So I know the old adage that if there's a problem, and you think everyone else is being That Guy, you're being That Guy...

I think your group overreacted. I forced our Paladin into death saves this morning but that's because he got smashed twice by a flesh golem without rallying/being healed in between its turns.

Everyone, especially the paladin's player, agreed the encounter was well-balanced because everyone felt threatened but nobody was just steamrolled.

Plus I had (smartly!) provided some healing potions prior to this fight, so they used one to get the paladin back on his feet.

If you're setting up fights the players aren't supposed to win, you need to be clear about it up front. I tend to dislike doing that, but I've done it in a couple campaigns to reasonable outcomes.

And fights /are/ regularly scheduled in D&D and alikes. That's a feature, not a bug. I like to get a big fight in every couple of sessions and at least one other encounter type in between fights.

No, I'm a different user.

I'm not really sure what we're talking about anymore, either. I think that meant more along the lines of the type of mentality that the encounters must be lock-step with the party's capabilities. Everything encounter must be CR+0 or -1 or +1 or whatever the books say they should be. Going outside of this is "breaking the rules," and I'd be inclined to agree with that if CR meant much, but it usually at least indicates things like AC, saving throws, HP, and damage. Because of D&D's math, those things being off really can make an encounter too hard.

I think the player in OP was out of line, but I'd like to know more about what happened. How did the spider manage to grapple what should theoretically be a mid-to-backline character? Did the party members try to save them? Was the player making bad choices?

Being killed by something multiple CRs below you sucks, but it probably isn't due to the encounter being too hard, since low CR things are typically one attack or spell away from being out of the fight from most PCs. It probably resulted from bad choices or bad rolls.

>I'm not really sure what we're talking about anymore, either.
At least what I was thinking, rightly or wrongly, is that previous user was making an accusation that DnD fostered an unhealthy mentality that encounters should be balanced. Sure, you can straitjacket yourself too far in that direction, but ultimately, the notion that the sorts of hazards the PCs are up against should be more or less within their capabilities, and I hardly think that's a bad thing, no matter what system you're playing.

>I think the player in OP was out of line, but I'd like to know more about what happened. How did the spider manage to grapple what should theoretically be a mid-to-backline character? Did the party members try to save them? Was the player making bad choices?
Well, I'm the OP, so if you want a bit more tacsit, but I'll put it in the next post because it goes a bit over the character limit.

>They found out about a Drow slaving operation, and were moving to shut it down.
>Drow have a primary base/warehouse in the town, but a fallback position in some cave complex a few miles from town.
>PCs know the caves are there, but have not explored them in any great depth.
>Leave the town guard, numberig in the hundreds, to raid the warehouse, while their smaller, lighter team that can move more stealthily takes the caves out when the Drow fall back.
>Exploring/fighting through the cave system
>Some other battles before this one, but nothing too hairy
>Run across a trio of drow rangers, who flee from the party , firing crossbows as they go.
>Chase. Sorc has Protection from Arrows and Stoneskin up, so not much to fear from these guys. Hangs to the rear, but still moving forward along with the rest of the crew.
>They pass along near a large crevasse, when the trio of drow are joined by a 4th, and turn to fight stand up.
>The new guy is a spider-handler, and has a trio of Large Spiders living in the crevasse.
>Sorc is now separated from his meatshields, so they just climb right up at him, charge, grapple, and drag him back down, where he's pretty quickly mauled, as he can't get any of his spells to work grappled like that.

To their credit, the other players were trying to interfere, but didn't quite manage to get back in time before Sorc was dragged down the crevasse, and none of them took the sort of stuff that would let them both climb down after him and fight at the same time. And I wouldn't say it was the Sorc per se making a bad choice, but the pursuit in general, which was a party wide decision, was kind of a dumb one, and led them to this; I also want to re-iterate that this wasn't just some spiders, it was a trio of 3rd level rangers and a 4th level Adept and the spiders, for a fairly ugly total encounter.

Did they have a chance to hear/spot the new combatants before they were in melee range of them? If they didn't, that might be where any 'unfairness' lies. It would be rather upsetting as a squishy backliner to suddenly find yourself in close proximity to a bunch of grapplers without any warning.

I openly told them about the signal the beastmaster (although I want to stress that they didn't know he was a beastmaster) made, a whistle combined with the spending of a cantrip spell. I described the crevasse, and gave a secret listen roll, but they flubbed that.

I would like to point out though, although you didn't ask, that Gary's complaints weren't about being jumped like that, but rather that the spider was able to grapple him once in range, and that a character of his level "ought" to have something like a ring of freedom of movement, which would prevent him from being grappled at all.

Welp, then assuming everything you have said is true and there's nothing else to the situation, they're just butthurt. A ring of Freedom of Movement is a hugely powerful item and is costed as such. Maybe that player is used to games that go far beyond WBL? Either way, sounds like player entitlement to me.

>gimme a Ring of Freedom of Movement at level 7!
Player is an utter mong.
>voted out of GM chair by rest of group
DM is a sissy that let himself get walked over.

They really did let themselves get baited into a death trap and there's plenty of terrible bullshit that could have justifiably popped out of that hole.

That all depends on the person running the game, rather than the game itself. Clever players can figure out a way to completely demolish something several levels above them without a scratch, where stupid players can get their shit kicked in by things a fraction of their level using clever tactics.

player power is only one part of the equation, you also have to account for how outside the box they think, how well they work together, etc.

I learned long ago that my players need things scaled up by several levels, and trying to avoid any boss fights from happening in or near large structures capable of being easily toppled by a few well placed explosions. It... MOSTLY works...

Anyways, I digress, I was getting to a point. In my experience, since everything usually has to be scaled up anyways, I can use whatever enemies are appropriate for the story or setting, within reason.

I actually like games like that, running away from something can be as exhilarating as fighting it, with the right DM. I'm also an old school DnDer, but i'm not a shitbird i guess.
this is how i operate as a DM. Everything is story and narrative for me, and the players are pieces in the over arching plot. often i have events playing out in background that another PC party would be doing, or just advancing the timer on the plot. evil doesn't sit around and unless they are the only hope, other parties are out there.

Op is a decent DM, he was trying to maintain balance in the party, the party is being bitches about not winning (i personally love it when one of my characters die, and in the case with spider, would have just laughed and laughed at my own misfortune.).

But as a rule, the players can always advance the plot, they just have to look. That big fuck off dragon guarding the mcguffin? You probably can trick it, bribe it's goblins, gather an army, murder it with rocks, or find yourself a bigger, fuck offyer dragon to tie it up. something other than grouping up and hitting it until it dies. There are always options, some might require moon logic, but they are there.

Monsters also have an ecology and generally balance out pretty decently in numbers and frequency. I like making it take a much longer time to gain lvels later in the game because it makes each time it happens more rewarding. Plus, i'm lazy as shit sometimes and go 'well the fought a bear last time, and won pretty handedly for their level, i guess this thing will bearish stats and they should do fine. I'll change it to a Bir, make it out of wood or something and not bear shaped'

But most, if not all, encounters are plot based so.... eh?

I'd counter the statement against WBL by saying that Sorcerers are a fucking Tier 2 class. They absolutely don't need more money to function, especially not a Ring of Freedom of Movement.

>Making sure that encounters (of any sort, not just combat) have some way of getting a favorable and fair resolution isn't a DnD thing, and it's certainly not a problem. To even have a game worth mentioning, you need to keep the means and ends more or less lined up, otherwise you just have a shitshow. And you can make that shitshow, no matter what system you're in, simply by making a setting or plot web that by its own internal logic puts the PCs in a hopeless situation.

So if the level 1 PCs breeze into the Dragon King's Lair, they can confidently expect a level-scaled dragon that they can beat in a straight fight?

This is the mindset that DnD teaches: don't evaluate whether you can win or not, just bloody-mindedly fight to the death and whine about 'muh CR' if you lose.

How and why would level 1 players breeze into the dragon king's lair? What kind of shitty campaign are you running when that's even possible?
And of course they'd get their shit kicked in if the dragon king was home, I don't think anyone's saying that. But I can think of about a dozen different ways you could make exploring the dragon king's lair a cool 'encounter' without just kicking their teeth in, possibly ending with the big man himself coming home and scaring the fuckers away.
I've been playing D&D for a couple of years now, and I've never encountered a group that acts the way you described.

>How and why would level 1 players breeze into the dragon king's lair? What kind of shitty campaign are you running when that's even possible?

So if players choose to do something crazily dangerous of their own free will in DnD, I should railroad them away from it so they don't suffer the consequences. Got it.

Are you retarded, user? What you have quoted says that BREEZING into the dragon king's lair shouldn't be possible. It does not say that they shouldn't be able to try to get in.

But he's right. Picking at the particulars of the chosen example is unproductive, so dragon lair aside, if they players ignore warning signs and stomp their way straight into an encounter that they have no way of winning, it's not the GM's responsibility to fudge shit in their favor.

The GM's responsibility is to provide adequate warning and then let nature take it's course.

Not him, but now we're really just arguing about GM'ing style rather than any flaws inherent to D&D. These debates apply to most systems I've played.

>So I know the old adage that if there's a problem, and you think everyone else is being That Guy, you're being That Guy
That only applies to game style, not personality. For example, normally shoving in your magical realm is being That Guy. However if 3 people like fetishbait and one person turns puritan on them rather than just leaving, he's being That Guy.

It's entirely possible for multiple people to be That Guy if they're all assholes in one way or another.
For example, a cheating munchkin, playing with a railroader, playing with a loud furry.

>when you were being a faggot (wbl
I disagree that using a stated rough measure of gear and trying to keep the group near to the same footing "makes him a faggot", it makes him a GM that is trying and doesn't already know all of the pitfalls of 3.PF.
>not appropriate in high- fantasy "Big Damn Heroes" kind of game
Nonsense statement based on what? We don't know what kind of game OP was running, and even then, terrible deaths can and do happen even in, or especially in, big damn heroes games because those kinds of games often come with higher stakes than surviving and grabbing loot. Go big or die trying is a theme in them.

Which is why your statement was silly in the first place.
There are places in a lot of settings with serious shit that low level creatures should not try to fuck with. The Troll Warrens in FR are absolutely lethal to low level pcs, but the players have the right to go there if they wish.
The GM also has the right to dispense with battles that are "appropriate for the party" and set up encounters that are "appropriate for the world", so long as the players know this beforehand.

>These debates apply to most systems I've played.
Yeah, they do, but certain systems encourage certain ways of playing while other systems encourage different ways. Additionally, players have different expectations depending on the system they're playing and their experience level.

In my personal experience, D&D encourages a more tiered, dungeon-y adventure style where players have a mostly linear path to follow from encounter to encounter, and the player choice is more about "How do I approach this encounter" rather than "Which encounter should I approach next," thus encounters are expected to be balanced to player difficulty. Additionally, D&D is the most popular and known system and will thus have a larger proportion of new players who are still in the "I'm the hero of the story and nothing bad can happen to me" phase.

I see nothing wrong with the play style D&D is built for, but I think that trying to play a different game in D&D and then complaining that it doesn't work that well is a bit stupid.

You are probably playing the game wrong.
The way you described the sorcerer dying wold take at minimum 3 turns.
And if a level 7 party can't deal with a monster with 22 hp to save a member's life in 3 turns, then I guess the drow were too high level.

>In my personal experience, D&D encourages a more tiered, dungeon-y adventure style where players have a mostly linear path to follow from encounter to encounter,

That's literally what the games is. This isn't an opinion.
Try reading the books. It's a dungeon crawling combat-adventure game.
Certain aspects encourage role playing, but the main focus is obviously on clearing out dungeons and killing shit.
Anything you choose to do beyond that is beyond the scope of the game.

This is assuming the group was both willing and able to retrieve the sorcerer.
Multi-legged creatures with grapple/snatch can grab a thing and scuttle off, and it can crawl on walls/ceiling to escape.

It has a regular speed of 30, and climb speed of 20.
And it only moves half speed when grappling, so at the very most it moved 15 feet in a round. Which is all the time it has to move in a 3 round kill scenario.

Where are you seeing that it had 3 rounds?
I see
>sorc was alone
>jumped by 3 spiders
>dragged down and mauled by them
No mention of "it took 3 rounds". It could have been far longer, we just know that they had squirreled the sorc into their hole and ate him, and the party was unable to rescue him.

There is a world of difference between "established bit of a setting where bad shit lives and the players chose to go to anyhow" and "encounter that the gm threw at the players as part of an adventure." Unless you're playing a complete sandbox with an extremely passive yet talented GM that can make that sort of thing work, scenario 2 is going to be your average combat encounter, and that shit needs to be balanced. If the players CHOOSE to go fist fight the king of the cyclops then sure, I'll kill their shit, but the plot hooks I dangle aren't gonna lead to party-wipe traps.

Except when the party decides to ignore how dangerous it actually is.
I had kicked off a D&D game some years back, and told the players from the word go this was going to be an old fashioned murderous dungeon crawl like 2e days, so bring the S++ game.
Ingame, I regaled them with what happened to adventuring parties and mercs hired to storm this bandit hole, the injuries of the few survivors who made it back literally giving away all of my major traps.
So they sally forth, and it goes bad immediately. I had 4 traps leading to and upon the door of the mine the bandits had taken over, and they triggered 3 of them. It proceeded to get worse as they ran my rat maze of death.
Several hours later, we were having a cigar break, and I asked "Why didn't you guys prep better, you had the money and time?", no joke, the unofficial leader of the group said to me, "The DM always lies, tho".
That player ended up ragequitting later, and of 6 pcs, 1 made it out alive, with all the bandits dead. Because I'm a liar, I guess.

To be fair, I've had the "Fear my daemonic fortress" speech off DMs in the past. The resulting adventures have ranged from cakewalks to wipes. You never know what they mean by "deadly" until you play a little.

I try and make sure there is a mini-dungeon at the start of any first adventure with a new group, so they can get a hold on my style and the expectations of the world. It's almost always an "orc fort" type thing so they don't have TOO much exotica to see but still...

Traps? Sounds lame as fuck. Unless they just didn't search for traps, all a trap is is a skill roll. Either you pass or you don't, no tactics or planning involved. What do you want them to do when they fail, roll harder? Roll like they really mean it? All the while everyone is bored to tears and they move through your slog of a game at a glacial pace rolling perception over and over and over again, devoting hours of play time to what is arguably the single most boring aspect of the game. Good job, masterfully crafted encounter.

Yeah man, traps blow, just add more XPinatas.

He's right though. Just throwing buzzwords around doesn't change that.

I am seething with envy at your group. I wish I could just once have a DM that killed me off in some way other than "You die" with no explanation.

>I wish I could just once have a DM that killed me off in some way other than "You die" with no explanation.

Story time please.

Depends. If you can throw a room where there's obviously traps in play, and they PCs must figure out the mechanism/principles of the room and how to use their resources to beat them, that's brilliant.
Didn't roll = poison needle shit can just go DIAF though.

Pretty much. The game may claim to hold itself to three pillars (combat, exploration, social), but even by just looking at the character sheet you can tell how those pillars are going to be distributed. The game leans towards at least half combat (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are the only stats that directly involve themselves in combat), one third exploration (Intelligence and Wisdom for navigating and interpreting the dungeon), and maybe one sixth social interaction (Charisma, obviously).

Yeah, I hate traps.
As a GM I announce at char gen that I really don't use traps so don't sink points into-
>I wish I could just once have a DM that killed me off in some way other than "You die" with no explanation.
Wait.
Forget traps talk.
What the actual Floridian fuck?

>>The encounter was 'way too hard'. And that it's "fucking bullshit" that he could be grappled by a mere giant spider with a CR less than 1/3 his level.
>Bullshit! No way can one piece of straw break a camel's back!
Bitch, please.
A kobold can kill a level 18 wizard on a really good day.

>>If you gave us decent loot, I could have bought a Ring of Freedom of Movement, and this would never have happened.
>I am entitled to more treasure! Specifically, the treasue that I could've used in hindsight!
Mewling crybaby gets no bottle from me.

>>Many nodding heads around the table, voted out of GM chair by rest of group.
And nothing of value was lost.

First DM:

>Half the party gets bitten by zombies
>They become zombies and we have to kill them
>One party member tries on a pair of golden pantaloons with a brown stain near the crotch
>He is eaten alive by the brown stain
>One player names his character ludd lubb
>He dies of dysentery in character creation
>Go on a ship
>Half the party dies of dysentery
>I go to eat some food at one tavern
>I die of dysentary
Second DM:
>DM: "You have aids."
>Me: "I invite the holy spirit into my body to to purge the corruption."
>DM: "The spirit of DEUS VULT possesses you and you kill the entire party for being heretics."
I don't so much mind these previous DMs, since we were just starting out. It's just that we never got any warning nor were we allowed to roll to resist whatever happened. Combat was the least dangerous part of the game because of this. Exploration and social interaction were death sentences. This last DM is actually the worst offender, especially since this DM had more experience than all my previous DMs combined.
Last DM:
>Me: "I would like to use my downtime to build a war machine that would one day assist the party in the final confrontation. I have proficiency in all the necessary tools and I have a background as a siege engineer. What else would I need to accomplish this?"
>DM: "You don't know anything about engineering and you are frightened."
>Me: "Then what does my background mean? And what am I frightened of?"
>DM: (ignores my first question despite repeated attempts) "You are frightened of the DM, which means you are frightened of everyone and everything including yourself. You can't do anything."

Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma are often tied to combat mechanics as well (Save DCs, class features, etc).

Do you actually run games, because it sounds like you don't know what the purpose of a trap actually is.

Yes, but Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are the only ability scores that can directly affect combat before accounting for magic or class features.

However, with perhaps the Rogue (Although then,UMD relies on a passable charisma mod as well), every single class that only relies on its physical stats for combat is underpowered to shit in terms of power at a specific level.
This starts mattering once people get a minimal grasp of the game's mechanics.

This.

This guy gets it.

Other people are balance fags and need to be shot.

True. I was trying to stick to a surface level correlation.

>He dies [...] in character creation
Uh, what?

It was actually possible to die during character creation in Traveller. Also, Dungeon Crawl Classics, character death during character creation is a very real threat. They specifically tell you to make multiple characters because the probability of them all surviving to level one is that low.

>>Playing DnD 3.5

>fights are regularly scheduled and built around the players power rather then dependent on the story and plot.
>implying that depends on the game on not on game master

Those first two sound pedantic in the extreme. With them I can at least understand their thought process though, unlike this last guy:

>"You are frightened of the DM, which means you are frightened of everyone and everything including yourself. You can't do anything."

I can't even grasp what's going on here. I don't understand how someone could be this retarded. It's literally painful to think about this.

So I'm just joining in this thread to ask;

why?

Seconding this, you have to foreshadow unwinnable fights.

Here's an example; one of my players is experiencing vague visions of the future, and the party was trying to find another woman he saw in his visions who is experiencing the same thing as him.

They're also being pursued by Big Bad Guy.
The player foresaw his friends all dying in a dungeon.
They explored a dungeon carefully due to said vision, found the woman, and she was screaming at them to run because Big Bad Guy is coming and this is how they die.

Big Bad Guy arrives.
They flee, because I've hinted twice that this will wipe the party easily.

>I actually like games like that, running away from something can be as exhilarating as fighting it, with the right DM. I'm also an old school DnDer, but i'm not a shitbird i guess.

But running away is a response to a challenge that in and of itself can lead to some kind of progress, even if it's just the limited "we need to come back with more power or a better plan" progress.

You can easily make the game so horribly unbalanced that all PC actions are guaranteed to fail, which I bring up in the giant continent idea. And it would definitely be fitting into the "story and narrative", it's just a narrative that would be boring as fuck to play/suffer through.

Because some people have a very strange idea of good mechanics. Later editions of Traveller tend to change out 'you die' for 'you received a crippling injury and had to retire from [profession]'.

I think the problem is with creating a character that can die in character creation at all, because, why would you create a dead(or useless) character before anything actually happens

>creating a character that can die in character creation at all
I'm not sure about how DCC does it, but Traveller requires you to pass a Survival check for each term of service you do, which can get a modifier (+1 or 2 on 2d6) for having a high stat. Failing this check results in your character dying (or being maimed if you're playing an edition with a bit more sense).

Luckily, early Traveller character creation is really quick to run through, which is how it managed to get away with it.

>Luckily, early Traveller character creation is really quick to run through, which is how it managed to get away with it.
I guess that'd do the trick

That DM detected. Starving your players of loot in Dungeons and Dragons is literally worse to them than chopping off each character's left hand. Play you dickweasel, you're not ready to run anything.

ITT: a lot of really bad GMs arguing about how shitty their game management style is.

>this fucking thread
my god
so many things wrong I don't where to start

OP
you need to realize 2 things
a) The challenge rating system is utter crap
b) D&D 3.5 is not balanced
c) the wbl guidelines are only meant to be used during character creation, also they're crap because they don't account for different classes needing more or less loot
Which leads to the conclusion: If you are trying to make "balanced" encounters, as is your preference, you need to actually eyeball things based on your party abilities, not whatever the book tells you. Cause the book is likely to be wrong.

>all a trap is is a skill roll
>trap is a skill sink

Holy shit
I cannot believe more people didn't call you out on this
You fucking imbeciles, do you even know why D&D still has "10ft pole" on the equipment list for every edition? You really think that you cannot find trap in any other way besides a skill roll? Traps aren't some "fuck player" button, they're physically there, they have triggers, they have specific ranges.

All a search or find traps roll is to allow you to find them instantly. But you can still find them manually.

your "island of giants" shit is a strawman you're trying to beat to death. Taking an argument to the extreme to the point of absurdity doesn't actually prove it wrong you know. "not balancing the encounters to suit the players" doesn't actually mean "rocks fall everybody dies" and you should know that.

>All a search or find traps roll is to allow you to find them instantly. But you can still find them manually.
I'll be honest, that still sounds boring as hell, so the first guy's point still stands. Take a few steps forwards, say 'I check X' for every part of the room/hallway the dm described, then walk forwards and either get fucked or don't.

>that still sounds boring as hell
in that case that other guy comment stands out even more

>Yeah man, traps blow, just add more XPinatas.

Also
>Take a few steps forwards, say 'I check X' for every part of the room/hallway the dm described
that's not how it goes tho. I get you never had a good dungeon crawl in your life, nor have you bothered to read any of the classic ones (and no, tomb of horrors is not a normal example of a dungeon crawl, that one was specially designed as a bullshit), but stop trying to argue about things you know nothing about

Traps are good shit, but you have to use them sparingly. That's why the check for traps shit every 5 feet happens. Just play/run better games.

>You couldn't possibly understand my patrician tastes
Well explain how it goes then faggot. Give the the unwashed masses some recommendations instead of just wanking off about how superior you are.

I've played campaigns with GMs who pulled the ebin traps meme, and it proceeded exactly as I described. What makes yours so amazing?

Traps are gay.

>But you can still find them manually.
Great.
Why are they there in the first place?
What do hidden traps add to the game?

This.

>Traps are good shit, but you have to use them sparingly.
This is a good point.
The occasional puzzle trap with multiple solutions can be fun.

The idea for Traveller is that going through more and more years of your character's career would give you better starting stats, balanced out by the fact you're more likely to die over the course of it.

>Taking an argument to the extreme to the point of absurdity doesn't actually prove it wrong you know.
Except it's not an extreme, it is literally what is stated.

>"not balancing the encounters to suit the players" doesn't actually mean "rocks fall everybody dies" and you should know that.
It doesn't always mean that. It very easily CAN mean that. It often does mean that, and as evidence, I'd offer up every crappy railroad game where the players get dragged along from impossible encounter to impossible encounter to be saved by the DMPC that form the staple That Guy Thread here.

If the encounters aren't balanced so that the players can have an impact, what the fuck is the point?

Rollplayer 3.5fag detected.

Stick to wargames, kid. Leave the RPGs to the mature adults in the room.

>Why are they there in the first place?
>What do hidden traps add to the game?

What do ambushes add to the game? What do hidden passages add to the game? What do concealed plots add to the game? What do characters with secrets add to the game?

A well made trap is a problem to be solved. It's not something simply spotted and disarmed with two skill checks. It should conist of several elements and even require multiple party members to disarm (or at least benefit from teamwork) that rewards creative thinking, while spotlighting the trap-disarmer specialist of course. It should also have effects that aren't an immediate "you failed your Reflex save, take 2d6 acid damage". Even a plain alarm is more interesting than that. Traps can be damaging but it should itself involve a seperate stage, like a little turret emerging that sprays acid until destroyed, or a rolling giant stone ball comes down the corridor, or the floor starts to shake and then folds downwards to try to pour the PCs into a pit (which need not be a death pit full of poisoned spikes, but could be a holding cell). Traps that teleport, traps that confuse, traps that place a 'dungeon' into a kind of high security mode with extra defences and areas sealed off until it can be deactivated. There's so much more to it than "roll to spot, roll to disarm, roll save, lol u tek damage XD".

>What do ambushes add to the game? What do hidden passages add to the game? What do concealed plots add to the game? What do characters with secrets add to the game?
What do hidden traps add that none of the above, or anything else, also adds?

>A well made trap is a problem to be solved. It's not something simply spotted and disarmed with two skill checks. It should conist of several elements and even require multiple party members to disarm
You are describing a puzzle trap, which the post you replied to acknowledged can be fun sometimes.
A number of anons have marked the difference.

If there could be hidden traps that can hurt the party, then they need to slowly search for them.
If it is not something that can be simply spotted and disarmed with two skill checks, why have those specific skills?
Why even leave the possibility of rolling every five feet for every dungeon ever?
Why have "Didn't roll = poison needle shit"?

Not sure if I did the right thing here but,

>Party of six
>Fairly basic setup: fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard, bard, ranger
>pursuing a dragon lord who's trying to perform a ritual that will grant him immortality and purge everywhere within a few hundred miles of all non-dragonkin life
>party clears the way to the dungeon, theyre expecting a 6v1 beatdown
>roll 4 sets of initiative dice
>they're all for the dragon lord
>Proceed to have an interesting encounter where the boss spends its turns fighting two people, buffing/debuffing, and healing itself if necessary
>party manages to get it down, they've spent all their resources and are in pretty bad shape overall
>they liked the fight a lot, but said it was way harder than anything else I'd ever thrown at them

I don't know if I did the right thing trying to make a single-enemy encounter that way. If I had not constrained myself to having to use the turns to fight on several points and just focus fired instead I would imagine they wouldn't have been able to beat it.

>7th level sorcerer couldn't buttfuck the entire ambush party by himself
I think your players are retarded.

Solution: stop playing D&D.

Problem solved!