How to Traps work?
Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2012 11:57 pm
Normally, I pretty much ignore traps. I TRZP them if I have to. But I ran a campaign with no magic users, and I had to deal with them some more. Now I'm curious. Let me post what I think and see what you guys can add to my findings.
I built a party to do some tests, and here's what I found out so far.
There are two kinds of Traps. One you step on, and the other is attached to chests. This is about the kind on chests:
In the first level of the Cellars, the only kind of trap I found was Poison Needle.
Even at level one, I seldom had to worry about this trap if I had 18 luck. (I know it isn't normal to have 18 luck at level one. I didn't want my trap testing party dying too much so I raised them a bunch of levels and then went and insulted the Specter until they were all back to level one. That way I have decent hit points. But now all my tests start with 18 luck.)
Sometimes there is no trap on the chest. In which case you always are able to disarm it, even if you type in garbage for the trap guess.
If there IS a trap on the chest, I was only able to set it off about one time in 20 when typing in garbage for the trap guess. If I ever typed in POISON NEEDLE, it was always disarmed successfully.
Examining the chest was successful about a quarter of the time. This is consistent with what Drifting posted once in another thread.
If I went down one level, I was able to sometimes get a DARTS trap.
My guess is that there is a level associated with certain kinds of traps. I noticed in my Fighter campaign that different kinds of traps showed up in deeper levels of the dungeons. Gas Clouds in the cats. MindTraps in the castle. My guess is that the Dungeon Difficulty byte of the dungeon data structure determines this.
I think the level of difficulty also determines how likely I am to be hurt by the trap, and how much damage it does. I think Luck plays a big part in this, and character level as well. It might be a straight save using the saving throw algorithm that is used for running from encounters and repelling spells. In which case it would cap at level 36.
Now, about traps that you step on. In the IBM PC Version, these traps report Basilisk Snare or Gas Cloud, but they don't stone anyone or poison anyone. They just do damage.
But they seem to have different names as the dungeon levels progress, and they seem to do more damage, as well.
I built a party to do some tests, and here's what I found out so far.
There are two kinds of Traps. One you step on, and the other is attached to chests. This is about the kind on chests:
In the first level of the Cellars, the only kind of trap I found was Poison Needle.
Even at level one, I seldom had to worry about this trap if I had 18 luck. (I know it isn't normal to have 18 luck at level one. I didn't want my trap testing party dying too much so I raised them a bunch of levels and then went and insulted the Specter until they were all back to level one. That way I have decent hit points. But now all my tests start with 18 luck.)
Sometimes there is no trap on the chest. In which case you always are able to disarm it, even if you type in garbage for the trap guess.
If there IS a trap on the chest, I was only able to set it off about one time in 20 when typing in garbage for the trap guess. If I ever typed in POISON NEEDLE, it was always disarmed successfully.
Examining the chest was successful about a quarter of the time. This is consistent with what Drifting posted once in another thread.
If I went down one level, I was able to sometimes get a DARTS trap.
My guess is that there is a level associated with certain kinds of traps. I noticed in my Fighter campaign that different kinds of traps showed up in deeper levels of the dungeons. Gas Clouds in the cats. MindTraps in the castle. My guess is that the Dungeon Difficulty byte of the dungeon data structure determines this.
I think the level of difficulty also determines how likely I am to be hurt by the trap, and how much damage it does. I think Luck plays a big part in this, and character level as well. It might be a straight save using the saving throw algorithm that is used for running from encounters and repelling spells. In which case it would cap at level 36.
Now, about traps that you step on. In the IBM PC Version, these traps report Basilisk Snare or Gas Cloud, but they don't stone anyone or poison anyone. They just do damage.
But they seem to have different names as the dungeon levels progress, and they seem to do more damage, as well.