Over and over I hear people say, "traps that just boil down to rolling perception...

Buy a cheap puzzle at a toy store. Hide it somewhere near your game table, like in a drawer or something.

Lock their characters in a room and say a complex mechanism prevents their escape.

Give them the puzzle, set a timer. They are allowed to work together.

>what does a GOOD trap look like?

Thinking of handling them like I handle stealth - basically a one-strike-then-roll system, where a character notices setting off a trap/getting spotted and gets to do one simple, immediate action before they're full spotted/the trap requires a saving throw.

Sort of like "you feel the stone under your foot shift as you step on it, and an audible click sounds through the room do you stay still, jump away, drop to the floor, raise you shield etc...?"

Because basically nobody has read those books.

maybe they should do so if they want to know more about traps

Agreed.

But most people have never even seen a book like grim tooth's (for example) so they have no idea how to do it well.

I've only ever skimmed them, but I almost never include traps, and don't run dungeon crawls.

The "complex traps" in this 5e article are pretty decent, I think.
media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/0227_UATraps.pdf

I think traps are a shitty outdated meme from oldschool d&d.
>lol this 800 year old castle still has a functioning trap
>lol these badguys just evidently live in a house with a fucking spike trap in their hallway and manage to not trigger it by accident just doing house stuff

It's one thing if you're in the woods and find things like hunters traps or tripwires hooked to bells but I think needing to look for bullshit pressure plates in ancient-ass ruins is just a needless chore for no result but
>lol failed your save, enjoy your lost HP

>Guerilla warfare
>Why would these kobolds have all these death traps
>>/Vietnam war history book/

>doesn't even wear a dress

He's just a gay twink for homos.

>what does a GOOD trap look like?
A good trap is one that doesn't reveal itself by mechanics (which isn't the trap's fault, but the system's or the DM's). The players should search by asking and doing. It should be freeform. There should be a way to turn it off or bypass it. There should be a way to trigger it. The trap should be logical (unless it's magic in which case whatever).

I've only used traps in a handful of locations. A bad dude who knew he was being pursued hastily tossed one down, a less than legit business had some around as security measures in addition to rotating guards, but ancient ruins? Some legit lord's castle? The fucking infested lake? It's like Legend of Zelda treasure chests, you don't just find those lying around for no reason and it'd be weird if the adventures all always somehow fit some oddly specific formula or context that makes those old staples believable.
Environmental hazards are a step up but need a lot more variety and system support than they tend to get.

saved

Hey look, it's That Guy

Mimics that pretend to be traps?

If that makes it a Reverse Trap, count me in.

Generally you want to specify some sort of clear mechanism of action and then allow players to take actions to negate the trap. Stuffing arrow holes with some sort of sealant, or deftly swapping a weight for the treasure keeping the pressure plate down, for example.

If your system has a discrete traps skill, consider allowing such disarming methods to either bypass the roll or provide a large bonus to it.

That falls under the purview of "in the woods, hunters traps". Kobolds make traps, its their schtick. Im talking mostly about arbitrary traps in locations it makes 0 goddamn sense just because the DM couldnt think of anything better for that hallway.

That sarcophagus kinda looks like a grand piano

>nobody has read those books.
This is the defining difference between someone with a serious interest in this hobby, and a fucking tourist.

Been gaming for 17 years. I'm aware of those books. I've yet to ever actually use them or read through them in depth. I have never needed them.

I've only really used traps in a published dungeon crawl beer and pretzels campaign. Many games dont use traps at all, or it might come up once in a year, and it's more puzzle than trap.

A good trap needs a pretty dress.

Most traps are shit, because traps are an extension of combat, not security.

o-oh my

Good traps can be interacted with by the players

This is why perception is garbage. There is information that you want the players to know, information that you don't want the players to know, and information the players can come to know by interacting with key features in the environment.

Obfuscating that with a roll is dumb. It's also why a dissociated surprise mechanic is a good idea.

Well yes, D&D ostensibly a game about dungeon crawling, doesn't tell you much about how to run a dungeon crawl anymore. It's no wonder you have to go a bit far afield when the game doesn't give practical tips about running a dungeon.

D&D is really more of a bootstrapped high fantasy adventures game now.

Bootstrapped as in it's become more and more its own thing as weird d&d quirks move more front and center to what the game is about.

Good traps are the ones when your players are on a time limit of some kind. And not just the '24 hours before the ritual is complete' kind. I mean 'actively running out of a collapsing temple' or 'fighting angry monsters'.

It's boring if your players just go inch by inch looking for traps and take 20 minutes to pick each one clean.

It's exciting when that pitfall trap shows up at a bad moment when they need to hurry or do something, and it isn't just a simple amount of damage to heal away.

If a trap isn't going to be in a stressful situation, then it needs to be a piece of a larger puzzle

Grimtooth's is a bad example, because the traps are overtly convoluted and rarely make any sense. They're more comical reliefs that kill you than actual traps.

Most of the time I run perception like a saving throw. It applies for things you aren't looking at, or details that go beyond simple examination.

If you're looking at a specific thing, you notice whatever's there, no roll required. If you half-ass a glance about the room, that's a perception check. If you specifically look under the rug, the key that's there is always found. If there's an orc a hundred yards out that you aren't really looking at, a perception check might notice it anyway.

Traps and locks have some sort of cues. Sometimes they're red herrings, so the player doesn't automatically know that detail = trap. A perception check won't tell you how to solve it, but might give you more information.

Say it with me, random encounters.

Perception rolls folks
>DC 10, there's a gold trimmed chest in the back of the shadowy hidey-hole
>DC 20, it's trapped! The cracks in the stone below show hints of some kind of pressure activated mechanism
>DC 30 (CR 4 mimic disguise), it's not a trap at all! The trap is a mimic disguised as a trap. He knows the chest is too obvious, but if you think there's a trap you will come close and try a disarm roll
>DC 40 That mimic is hiding a "chest" of her own

For me the actual gameplay and atmosphere are way more important than the mechanics. At the end of the day rolling plastic dice is a poor substitute for goblins anyway. Traps make me feel like I'm back in the days of yor when used as they would be logically in the game world. Everything doesn't need to follow the logic of a modern movie. I like that sometimes shit just happens and someone gets pendulemed in a barrow because the fighter was too brash. That's what barrows are for. I want my players to feel like real adventurers in another physical world not like they're trapped in some clockwork world that ebbs and flows due to game mechanics and media conventions.

Doesn't help. You roll once per hour for them to fight something if they're taking too long, but all that means is they'll just have the fighter walk in front and then take 10 seconds to heal him if he trips something bad.

It still doesn't make the traps themselves interesting or anything, and now you've added a bunch of uninteresting encounters on top of that.

You've taken one bad thing and added another bad thing and just made everything worse.

>Once per hour

Try 3 times per hour.

>and then take 10 seconds to heal him

Which is why it's helpful to abstract out of combat stuff into 10 minute turns which count down to the possibility of another random encounter.

>What? You guys are being careful and taking your time
>No! You've got to fight 2d6 goblins every hour!
>Too easy? Every twenty minutes!
>And all your spells that take 6 seconds normally take 10 minutes now!

Yeah, you're right. That seems like a lot of fun and not fucking garbage tedious bullshit.

D&D has moved away from a dungeon crawler thing a long time ago

It's more like you're creating a fantasy novel full of people for your players to ruin because they always seem to ignore plot hooks

Boils down to storytelling and how rewarded the players feel after investing in it.
>They are warned beforehand that there are traps.
Signs, corpses or warnings from the village outside should mentally prepare them.
>Never do the route of traps as multiple arbitrary obstacles.
Leave that shit in video games, where it's already sickening enough.
>Consistent small traps at the start, like an entire corridor of spike walls, are resolved as a single trap so players can quickly get into the mood.
>Disarming traps requires the skills of several players and for them to work together.
Each player is catered to and no single player should feel idle or useless for the entire trap encounter, even if they're just reading a book trying to figure another plot point out. For economy of storytelling, every character should have the chance to be affected by a trap encounter.
>Failing a trap results in a change of choices or a consolation rather than outright penalties
Change of route, loot, combat encounters or motivations. There should always be a way for a good and creative player to overcome the odds or turn a bad situation to their advantage.
>Traps can become a help in fucking over enemies
Leading enemies into a dungeon trap or hijacking one to turn against the dungeon boss is rewarding and will feel like a Chekov's gun to the players later.

As a DM, I don't allow traps to be disarmed by roll.
They have to figure out how to either turn it off or bypass it or similar.
This may involve jamming it in some way, or disarming it through roleplay.
For instance, my party came into an area with a dart firing trap, they took a table from another room and blocked it with the table

Fair.

The only ones I've really looked at are grimtooths, dungeonscape, and 3.0 book of challenges.

What book would you suggest for good traps?

>What? You guys are being careful and taking your time
>No! You've got to fight 2d6 goblins every hour!
>Too easy? Every twenty minutes!

Yes, because the point of random encounters in a dungeon is to put the players in a time crunch so they can't be perfectly cautious 100% of the time. And furthermore, you're doing your game a disservice if you aren't using reaction tables so that you can interact with monsters outside of hitting them with your sword.

>And all your spells that take 6 seconds normally take 10 minutes now!

They have a casting time. So just mark it off as something you do along with examination, moving, etc during the turn; it's the party's resources to spend as they see fit. Or whatever conversion factor you like for your game.

The turn isn't a strict timeframe; it's just a way of doing exploration stuff (eg. the crawl) more conveniently outside of the combat round structure.

Ask the OSR General.

>using reaction tables so that you can interact with monsters outside of hitting them with your sword.

Great, so now the party just pays the goblins some money to tell them where all the traps are and how to avoid them, since they've been wandering around this place without triggering anything.

All you're doing is piling on more and more pointless stuff in order to make random pitfall traps in hallways work.

Instead of having a bunch of goblins show up randomly while the party is searching or recovering from the damage of that pitfall trap, why not make it an actual battle, and have the goblins plan an ambush around the pitfall trap in the first place?

hackslashmaster.blogspot.cz/p/trick-trap-index.html

hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-set-design.html

I love Courtney's stuff about encounter design and how to write a room in a way that's more useful in play

Bookmarked. Thanks user.

Wow, she's pretty cute!

>Great, so now the party just pays the goblins some money to tell them where all the traps are and how to avoid them, since they've been wandering around this place without triggering anything.
>Players trying to haggle with the goblins to get intelligence about the dungeon
>A fun roleplaying opportunity
>bad

Alternately, the goblins are explicitly supernatural, and the way they move around the dungeon isn't the way the party can do so.

>Instead of having a bunch of goblins show up randomly while the party is searching or recovering from the damage of that pitfall trap, why not make it an actual battle, and have the goblins plan an ambush around the pitfall trap in the first place?

That would be a keyed encounter, not a random encounter. If you want to go to all the work of setting up sentry patrols, paths, and layers, that's cool.

>All you're doing is piling on more and more pointless stuff in order to make random pitfall traps in hallways work.

I'm trying to play a game. I'm willing to sacrifice realism for playability.

If it bothers you so much, make your wandering monsters things that don't really fit into the factions of your dungeon ecology, so lone powerful monsters, things like gelatinous cubes, etc.

OR, I just won't have wandering monsters and random traps, and I'll set up my dungeon in a way that encourages the players to move forward and be challenged in less tedious ways.

>random traps

When did I ever mention that.

> I'll set up my dungeon in a way that encourages the players to move forward and be challenged in less tedious ways.

You can only search a given area in a turn. Do you search exhaustively and potentially run into a wandering monster (which you really don't want to fight because their XP is a pittance versus getting the treasure - this is why Gold-for-XP is a good mechanic) or do you risk the possibility of a trap?

That's an interesting decision.

>When did I ever mention that.

Sorry, it was implied when you replied to my original post that was all about only including traps in places where they would mean something, and then you show up and suggest random encounters as a way to make traps in places that don't mean anything mean something.

It comes across as a little condescending.

>That's an interesting decision.

No it isn't, and you've taken steps to ensure it's even less interesting by removing options.

No point in talking to the random monsters because they teleport past the traps.

No going balls to the wall and just running through all the traps to not waste time, because healing wastes even more time when you're not in a fight.

The options are 'take your time and take damage, or hurry up and take damage'

That's not interesting.

>suggest random encounters as a way to make traps in places that don't mean anything mean something.

You place the traps when you design the dungeon. What is there to say?

>It comes across as a little condescending.
What? Because I'm not calling you a faggot and trying to just explain my point of view? I can be more antagonistic if that makes you feel better.

>No point in talking to the random monsters because they teleport past the traps.

So? Sacrificing realism for playability is a handwave I'm happy to make, as I stated. Actually read my posts.

>No it isn't, and you've taken steps to ensure it's even less interesting by removing options.

Read that fucking post again. You use reaction tables so that you have options besides take damage slow and take damage fast.

How about you stop constructing this ridiculous strawman

> because healing wastes even more time when you're not in a fight.

Eat a dick. I fucking told you to tweak that to whatever level you like.

It's obvious that you have no interest in any sort of constructive discussion since all you do interpret things in the most uncharitable manner without actually reading the all the times where I encourage you to play with things to your preference.

It's your game at the end of the day, so run it how you like.

>There is information that you want the players to know, information that you don't want the players to know, and information the players can come to know by interacting with key features in the environment.
I find this issue a lot with mental skill rolls.
>"I go to the local priest to ask him about how to deal with the vampire spawn in the area" becomes "I roll religion to figure out what vamprie spawn are weak to."
>"I carefully use my 10 ft. pole to prod at the strange looking mark in the floor" becomes "I roll perception to search for traps."
>"I pull out some amber that I found and offer it to the shopkeep as a bonus while asking for another 15% added onto the selling price" becomes "I roll persuasion/diplomacy/barter/etc. to convince the shopkeep to give us more money.
The problem is, you can't get rid of them because casters need these stats to use their spells too, so you're just kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Best trap

The whole goddamned dungeon should be the trap. Forget the pitfalls and acid drops, those are just there to distract people from the fact that they are standing in one goddamned giant kill box. A guy I work with is DM'ing a group of relatively new players and was asking me for suggestions and feed back on a quest they were going to undertake.

He said he always wanted to do a labyrinth kind of thing but was having trouble with getting it all together. With a little encouragement I got him to homebrew up a race of rat people that reside in the maze that use it to lure adventurers in so they can steal their food and starve them to death, thus leaving their equipment free for the looting. It was an important lesson to the green players as well since 10 days of rations is no where near enough food for a 10 day adventure.

In the end they learned a powerful lesson, and they killed and ate the party barbarian to survive.

I've found the best thing is you can't make a trap, the whole of an encounter. Use them to complicate other situations.

You're not just dealing with a couple hidden pits, where you can smack at the floor with a ten foot pole. You're doing that while fighting a floating elemental that won't trigger the pits, and you have to be wary of the traps as you fight. Even combine them with other traps. You're in a long hallway that has a door slowly closing on the other end, and also has a bunch of traps down it. You can only disarm so many before you run out of time, so which ones are you going to disarm, and which ones are you going to try your luck with?

>Casters need them for spells
There's an easy fix for that:
"Spellcraft" is now a skill. It is the skill used any time a magical ability calls for one of the skills which has been removed.

Why does someone who might already know what vampires are weak to need to go find someone else to tell them?

Why does spotting a trap prevent a player from activating it from a distance using their 10 ft pole?

Why does offering to sweeten the pot not simply modify the barter check rather than override it entirely?

These sound like GM/player problems, not system problems.

I have a player that, anytime he comes across something magical, immediately rolls arcana and acts like it's a detect magic spell. If I ask him how he's performing that he shrugs, goes "iunno" and then gets buttmad at me.

>the problem is shit players
>the system is never the problem
I'm getting really fucking sick of this meme.
Yes, a good GM can make any system play well, and a shit GM can make every system suck. But regression to the mean is a thing.

If a system actively encourages a certain style of play, and all the rules are built around a stupid style of play, and the system actively inconveniences anyone who tries to go around that style of play. Guess what? It's the system's fault that most people play that way.

The style of D20 D&D is "roll first, ask questions later". It actively discourages people from engaging with the game world in a meaningful way. It encourages murderhoboism, it encourages minmaxing and statcdunching, and it encourages rolling over exploration. Look at this thread. How many people here are favouring 'Roll perception, 35' over any sort of meaningful exploration because exploring "wastes game time"?

Finally, if system doesn't matter, why play anything besides GURPS or FATE? Veeky Forums goes on and on about how important system is for flavor. If the system matters then the problem CAN be the system.
QED.

>The style of D20 D&D is "roll first, ask questions later"
No, it isn't. That's simply the style most GM's use. And this is true regardless of the system.

I think DnD is terrible. None of the issues you described are related to the rules, as written.

You're missing the point slim, the point was that what would've been roleplay interactions between the players and how they interact with the world to gain boons and information is now relegated to a single roll where either they get what they want or they don't, leading to them spinning their wheels until you just give them an out to move the story along.

It's the difference between acting out an interaction between your cleric and the local priest in the midst of Strahd's rule and going "I roll religion" to get the same information while ignoring the world around you, which makes the world feel less substantial and makes it harder to immerse yourself into the game.
Adding to this, within the CRB of most WotC era D&D games, it boils skill rolls down to a binary outcome and anything more that you could do only gives you circumstantial modifiers (or [dis]advantage) towards your success on the roll. You're encouraged to roll first and ask questions later.

Maybe they should stop being such casuals then.

How does playing a cleric with proficiency in religion who doesn't know a thing about the undead such that he always needs to seek outside help better immerse a player in the world? Are player characters not a part of the world?

>You're encouraged to roll first and ask questions later.
This doesn't follow at all. Explain what binary outcomes has to do with this at all. Explain what you mean by binary outcomes when official campaigns often include multiple DCs with the explicit intention of providing a greater or lesser degree of success depending on the role.

>Trolley problem trap

Who's strapped to the rails? NPCs or PCs?

Traps are trash that are literally designed to penalize the team by forcing one of the characters to play a less fun character just so they can disarm traps.

Best way to do traps is to not.

Roleplaying every moment of the negotiating process makes you about one-quarter as bad as hitler.

>tfw wasting half the session listening to the GM and a player arguing in-character over the in-game price of marbles
>i just came here to adventure

So every single cleric out there knows every single thing about every single undead in the world, whether or not they've encoubtered them AND to such an extent that they understand the problem better than the loval priests who have been dealing with the issue for months, from first level on up?

Immersion comes from exploration of a universe. You sound like the type person that likes to run mindless hack and slash games, and that's fine, but I want my players to feel invested in the world around them. That can't happen if they know everything from the word go.

Immersion is a process of discovery. Try it out sometime. You might like it

>How does playing a cleric with proficiency in religion who doesn't know a thing about the undead such that he always needs to seek outside help better immerse a player in the world?
Because while the Cleric might know how undead work in, say, Forgotten Realms, they won't know how undead work in planes such as Barovia.
>Explain what binary outcomes has to do with this at all.
Either the PC in question passes their roll and gets information from the requisite knowledge check (meaning that they bypass a lot of the roleplay opportunities that could come about by putting in the research themselves) or they don't, causing the GM to either let them reroll or risking a potential TPK as they move forward without having the information required to progress in the story.

Even if multiple DCs are used, the outcome more or less boils down to whether or not you passed the DC or not, which would be time focusing on rolling rather than on actually interacting with the world.

>Calling roleplay a waste of time
I think you're in the wrong place kiddo, this place feels like more your speed.

>So every single cleric out there knows every single thing about every single undead in the world
No, that's why you roll for it. I'm not understanding what you're having trouble with. Your solution is instead to make it such that no cleric ever knows how to deal with undead because somehow a character actually making use of his in-universe abilities can only serve to divorce the player from that universe.

>Immersion comes from exploration of a universe.
Part of that is exploring where they as characters fit in that universe. You're advocating a system in which players essentially play themselves, and all knowledge must be delivered through NPCs as though they were in game google searches.

>Immersion is a process of discovery
For someone so concerned with binary results you seem very eager to attach binary concepts to something as nebulous as immersion.

>Because while the Cleric might know how undead work in, say, Forgotten Realms, they won't know how undead work in planes such as Barovia.
Then you factor that into the difficulty check or into the information provided. If the cleric rolls especially well, they might have explored information on the differences between undead on various planes. If they roll acceptably, the might only recall information from their plane of origin. Given that vampires still have many common characteristics regardless of the plane they reside on, this would still provide useful information.

>meaning that they bypass a lot of the roleplay opportunities that could come about by putting in the research themselves
Yes, and sometimes combat doesn't require hours of planning because the PCs are fully capable of handling the challenge before them head on.

>or they don't, causing the GM to either let them reroll
Or the GM doesn't let them reroll and they are forced to seek information in the manner you prefer. As I said before, that's a problem with the GM, not the system.

Oh, almost forgot. As an add in to .
Almost as if to prove my point comes out of the woodwork. This is what the D20 system encourages people. Binary solutions, no rp, no interest in doing anything beyond rolling dice and attacking the first thing they see
Imagine if we were like this with music
>ugh, this Hendrix guy spends way too much time on the guitar, just start singing again
>ugh, I hate how much time this Eminem guy wastes on rapping, why don't they just get back to the chorus so I can hear Rihanna again
>god, this vivaldi guy blows, there's not even any words on this album
The build up is what makes something worthwhile

What role do you see knowledge skills/abilities playing in that case?

>Binary solutions
You keep saying this, but as I've already said, you can set as many variable DCs as you want. This is specifically what they do in many official books. The system can be as binary or granular as you want it to be. As such, it falls on the GM, and any deficiencies are on them, not the system.

>Your solution is instead to make it such that no cleric ever knows how to deal with undead because somehow a character actually making use of his in-universe abilities can only serve to divorce the player from that universe.
Well just because you live in America doesn't mean that you know everything there is to know about Europe. Taking things further, just because you live in NJ doesn't mean that you know how life goes in NY either.
>You're advocating a system in which players essentially play themselves, and all knowledge must be delivered through NPCs as though they were in game google searches.
No, I'm advocating a system in which players actually go through prepwork to figure out how the local area works, rather than abstracting several minutes of roleplay to a single die roll that effectively allows every character ever to know everything about everything, even in situations where that wouldn't be the case.
1/2

>If the cleric rolls especially well, they might have explored information on the differences between undead on various planes.
Even if the plane that they're in is something like Dark Sun or Barovia, where inter-planar travel is either barred or made virtually impossible due to the nature of how the setting works?
> Given that vampires still have many common characteristics regardless of the plane they reside on, this would still provide useful information.
Unless you discover that vampires can potentially wander during daylight hours due to the sky of Barovia being under a constant overcast or you discover that vampires like Strahd have the power to control the souls of the dead.
>Yes, and sometimes combat doesn't require hours of planning because the PCs are fully capable of handling the challenge before them head on.
Even if we're talking about uncommon threats that aren't going to be well documented, like an Aboloth or a Kraken?

>Well just because you live in America doesn't mean that you know everything there is to know about Europe. Taking things further, just because you live in NJ doesn't mean that you know how life goes in NY either.
I fully agree. That's why you roll. The result of the roll will tell you the depth of the character's knowledge. Again, I don't understand what you're having trouble with.

>rather than abstracting several minutes of roleplay to a single die roll that effectively allows every character ever to know everything about everything
Do you think that every DC must be achievable by every character? If the character has no way of knowing, then they fail the roll. That's why characters can't just make an intelligence check to instantly divine the precise plot of their primary antagonist.

But that isn't the situation you were describing. You were describing a scenario in which a cleric recalls information about a fairly common undead monster that he would have a good chance of knowing about on account of his studies or past experiences.

You're saying that knowledge skills don't do anything. Somehow a character knowing things about the world in which the exist is an affront to immersion. This is a baffling position to take. You seem to think that every character must be in some sort of fish out of water scenario and completely oblivious to everything around them.

3/3
>Or the GM doesn't let them reroll and they are forced to seek information in the manner you prefer.
Because players are conditioned b the system to roll first and ask questions later, they're not going to go out of their way to search for the answers, they're just going to sit around with their thumb up their butt until the GM either gives them an answer or let's them reroll.
>As I said before, that's a problem with the GM, not the system.
The way that a system works inspires players to perform certain actions as those actions are the most optimum strategy to not dying. In CoC for example, players are conditioned to avoid any and all eldritch bullshit as they can to avoid losing sanity but the game also creates situations where players HAVE to confront these elements in order to complete their investigation, either because of survival or because the eldritch shit is the cause of the investigation itself.

The system determines the way you play, not the GM.

Even if you have multiple DC's to cover multiple proficiencies, it still boils down to rolling and gaining more info from a success than you would by roleplaying the situation and figuring out what's up through play.

It doesn't matter if the DC to climb a wall is 15 or 20, because the outcome will still be the same, either you climb the wall or you don't.

Some of those suggestions are painfully dumb.
>the portcullis has a map of the dungeon on it!
>Because the first thing you want any invader to see is the exact lay out of your defenses!

or
>All the green stuff is trapped and dangerous
>We color coded it so that invaders know what to avoid!

>Even if the plane that they're in is something like Dark Sun or Barovia, where inter-planar travel is either barred or made virtually impossible due to the nature of how the setting works?
Vampires in Barovia share almost all of the same characteristics as vampires not in Barovia. Ergo, they'd still recall useful information. If you want to withhold Barovia specific information you, as the GM, are more than free to do so. Or you could set a higher DC if you want to give them a chance of having that rarer knowledge.

Again, this is something the GM decides, not the system.

>Unless you discover that vampires can potentially wander during daylight hours due to the sky of Barovia being under a constant overcast or you discover that vampires like Strahd have the power to control the souls of the dead.
Different checks might reveal this information, absolutely. A religion check will tell you about vampires, not necessarily the unique characteristics of any given plane. Again, this is simply a matter of setting an appropriate DC. If there is no way for the character to know, then the DC is sufficiently high enough that they'll always fail the roll.

>Even if we're talking about uncommon threats that aren't going to be well documented, like an Aboloth or a Kraken?
Higher DC. Though it depends on the character. You might make it easier for a sailor/pirate to recall information about a Kraken, for example.

None of this is describing a problem with the system, though.

>That's why you roll.
No, that's why you should do some research and figure out how things work in that particular area of the world/plane/whatever. Think about it, I know that NYC is called "The Big Apple," is densely populated, and is generally a cornerstone of American commerce but I wouldn't be able to tell you which areas are safe to go at night, the local cuisine, or how the people are unless I do the legwork and look up that shit online.

In a fantasy setting, this is where you'd go to ask the local tavern owner for jobs before going to the local priest to talk about the local vampire spawn situation.
>You're saying that knowledge skills don't do anything.
No, that's not what I'm saying, don't put words in my mouth.

The best traps are ones that make sense for the setting.

If it's in an inhabited place, it has to have an easy way of getting around it. Like a key, or remembering to skip the first step.

>Again, this is something the GM decides, not the system.
Yet your solution to every other one of my questions is "just raise the DC so they can never know" or something to that effect. If it were up to the GM, wouldn't that generally mean that the GM could choose how to give that information beyond just artificially inflating the numbers so they couldn't theorhetically know everything about everything?

>Because players are conditioned b the system to roll first and ask questions later
You haven't demonstrated this. You still haven't even answered what you think knowledge skills ought to do.

> they're just going to sit around with their thumb up their butt until the GM either gives them an answer or let's them reroll.
So you're admitting the problem is with the players and the GM, then. As again, the system says nothing about giving players whatever they want for free.

>The way that a system works inspires players to perform certain actions as those actions are the most optimum strategy to not dying.
What does that have to do with knowledge rolls? There's no risk of death from rolling to see if you know something versus seeking out the local priest and asking them for the information. Each are equally benign. You've simply decided that players cannot have any foreknowledge of what they might face, which seems highly arbitrary.

The Grimtooth's Traps books have some pretty good traps. They aren't presented with stats, just diagrams and descriptions, so it's up to the GM to adapt it to whatever system they're using.

>it still boils down to rolling and gaining more info from a success than you would by roleplaying the situation and figuring out what's up through play.
A character having knowledge of things is roleplaying. Do you believe every adventurer enters a campaign blind? They have no history? No prior experience? No training? Failure to reflect this is failure to roleplay that character. Roleplay encompasses for more than planning and NPC interaction and you've decided to cut all that out because it isn't interactive enough for you. If that's your only source of interaction, then it would seem the problem very much is with the GM.

>It doesn't matter if the DC to climb a wall is 15 or 20, because the outcome will still be the same, either you climb the wall or you don't.
Or it takes you longer to climb the wall. Or you fail, but manage to land well enough that you don't twist your ankle. Or you supplement your poor climbing with better gear or a helping boost from an ally. Not to mention that it's trivially true that different DCs absolutely do matter for success rate.

Regardless, this has nothing to do with what we were talking about. That being, knowledge. Unless you also have problems with hits and misses, I don't see the point in bringing up every single instance in which failure can exist.

I honestly really like that trap. It's pretty easy to work around, You just have to pull with enough force to get the rope taught in the right place.

Bonus points if a small halfling/kobold party member swings across first, no problems.

>but I wouldn't be able to tell you which areas are safe to go at night, the local cuisine, or how the people are unless I do the legwork and look up that shit online.
Yes, I see now. Saying, "I search the internet," is far more dynamic than a character possibly ever knowing anything useful about New York city.

Regardless, this isn't what we're talking about. You gave a specific example of a cleric rolling to see if he knew anything about vampires and said this shouldn't be allowed. As if a cleric knowing basic undead information is a bridge too far. Either defend that position or admit that it holds no water. Your constant shifting of the goal posts to completely unrelated scenarios is irrelevant. I have absolutely zero problem with a GM ruling that something is impossible for a character to know if that's truly the case. But that isn't what you're doing. You're saying it shouldn't happen because of some extremely narrow and arbitrary definition of immersion.

>No, that's not what I'm saying, don't put words in my mouth.
Then what should they do? You still haven't answered this. If you can't rely on a knowledge check to recall useful information than what possible purpose does a knowledge skill serve?

>If it were up to the GM, wouldn't that generally mean that the GM could choose how to give that information beyond just artificially inflating the numbers so they couldn't theorhetically know everything about everything?
The GM can do anything they want. That doesn't mean it's a good choice or an appropriate ruling. I don't think I've been unclear on this. If something can't be known, then it can't be known. If it can, but the knowledge is rare, then you set a high DC. That DC might be high enough that no character in the party would be able to roll well enough to succeed. But that isn't the scenario described above, and that's the one I was responding to.

>You haven't demonstrated this.
It's pretty self-evident the moment you spend an hour playing with randos on roll20. Players will either roll until they succeed and know what they need to know or they'll fail and bitch about not knowing how to do anything or trying to coax out extra rolls from the GM. If you don't believe me, try running a campaign for 3.PF with randos and seeing how they'll always gravitate towards rolling before actually interacting with the world around them. For posterity, record these sessions as well.
>As again, the system says nothing about giving players whatever they want for free.
It does say that if they pass a knowledge check by a certain amount, they know a piece of information relating to the question asked.
>d20srd.org/srd/skills/knowledge.htm
So if they pumped knowledge up by enough, they could even know abilities for monsters that are older than recorded history.
>3
If they don't know to bring magic for vamp spawn, they'll die.

Grimtooth's books had a lot of great stuff.

Take, for example, this seemingly abandoned fishing rod, line still in the water, enticing delvers to take a break and fish...

>A character having knowledge of things is roleplaying.
A character having knowledge, even when they have no means of knowing that knowledge, is not roleplaying, it's just another means to game the system due to how poorly written the RAW is. There's no reason for a character to ever go to a library or consult with specialists or even bring along a lexicon anymore because anything they know is either known the moment they roll the die or it isn't.
>Not to mention that it's trivially true that different DCs absolutely do matter for success rate.
What's the difference between passing on a DC 15 check and passing on a DC 20 check? More to the point, what's the difference between passing a DC 20 check because you rolled 20+0 on your roll and passing because you rolled 10+10?

Nothing, because as long as you pass, it doesn't matter how proficient you actually are at doing the skill.

>Yes, I see now. Saying, "I search the internet," is far more dynamic than a character possibly ever knowing anything useful about New York city.
Way to totally miss the entire point of the argument.
>Either defend that position or admit that it holds no water.
I've been defending it, you've just been doing everything in your power to try deflecting from the actual argument itself just to pull the focus back on your assertion that the system is blameless in how the GM/Players approach the way that knowledge is gained.

If you want to continue this argument civilly, you're going to need to take a step back, reread what I, and the other user, have said, and be a bit more open-minded to positions that aren't your own.