Traps
Mundane and magical traps — how they are built, hidden, spotted, and disarmed.
Mundane Traps
The fantasy genre is filled with elaborate traps requiring precision clockwork and colossal feats of engineering. In certain situations these may be appropriate, but most traps created by humanoids can be made with a hatchet, a shovel, a knife, wood, stone, rope, and time. The following traps should be available to all humanoids (including characters) with trapmaking tool proficiency or the survival skill:
| Trap | Effect |
|---|---|
| Alarm | The trap makes noise when triggered, alerting nearby creatures. |
| Deadfall | The trap drops a heavy load onto a given spot, such as a tree, a basket of rocks, a boulder, etc. |
| Foothold | The trap snares a target’s foot and restricts their movement, holding and possibly harming them. |
| Incendiary | The trap bursts a container of flammable liquid on the target while igniting it. |
| Pitfall | The trap is a covered pit, potentially with spikes or other hazards on the bottom. |
| Spikes | The trap is one or more concealed spikes, possibly in a slight depression in the ground. |
| Springbolt | The trap is a crossbow rigged up to fire at a given spot when a trigger is activated. |
| Tripwire | The trap is a thin wire at the foot or throat level to provoke an uncontrolled fall. |
Other traps may be included at the Storyteller's discretion.
Spotting & Disarming
Spotting a trap is a secret perception check rolled by the Storyteller against the trap's stealth score.
If a trap is particularly ingenious or the surroundings make it particularly hard to spot, the difficulty may be more severe at the Storyteller's discretion. A trap's damage is largely circumstantial; dropping a basket of rocks onto an orc is far less lethal than dropping an oak tree onto one. Thus, a trap's damage is always subject to the Storyteller's approval.
Magical Traps
Magical traps are different from mundane traps. They require an arcana roll to disarm and can be detected with a successful perception check or using spells like aura sight, truesight, or similar.
Disarming a magical ward requires a basic understanding of how they work: wards create an intangible field centered on an anchoring glyph. This field is similar to a magnetic aura or a soap bubble. If an intruder gets too close the ward brushes their aura and attraction occurs, or the bubble pops, triggering the effect. Various arcane methods can trick, misdirect, or counter this hanging influence to “confuse” the programming of the glyph, causing it to short out without discharging.
The exact flavor text of this process should be worked out between the Storyteller and the players ahead of time. Perhaps the character positions multiple creatures with differing auras at the very edges of the ward in various spots, causing the power to bleed off without actually triggering. Perhaps they have stones or figurines in their toolkit with simple petty enchantments that create arcane resonance or confuse the ward into registering a computer-like error and shutting down. Whatever the rationale, this process is always an arcana check because it relies on knowledge of the mechanics of magical theory.
Rogues & Traps
Rogues who specialize in traps are encouraged to take the arcana skill. The arcana skill does not impart spellcasting ability; it is simply knowledge of spells and how magic works. Actual spellcasting is a special process accessible only to those rare individuals who are born with magical souls, receive divine or mystic investiture from outer planar entities, or endure the long and slow process of attenuating to cosmic energies that shape reality (enduring arcane rigor in the process).