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So here's some outlier psionic traps for consideration:

attraction/aversion: could cause a preference for melee or ranged combat, an aversion to potions, etc.  Would have crazy implications on tactics.  Targeted play could still act normally, but takes -2 on rolls

feat leach: target loses one feat that has no prereqs.  Would need some sort of house ruling to the effect that the person who loses the feat can still uses other feats (eg, trap steals 'dodge', but fighter can still spring attack).

time hop: target appears in the arena on round 5 of the fight.


For triggers, 'alarm' is the default magic trap trigger spell.  would the psionic equivalent be empathy (ie, detect mind)?  Triggers can also be customized with detect spells (eg, dismissal triggered by detect evil).  Could 'detect psionics' be used so that the trap only triggers on on a character with power point reserve (eg, 'mind trap' trap only goes off on psionic characters with pp to target)?
 

The majority of other low level psionic effects are pretty reasonable: sicken, daze, shaken, entangled, energy or untyped damage.

For both magic and psionic traps, lv 5 auto kill effects (disintigrate, mind crush) are CR 6, so an ECL 10 character can get them in a trap. Unlikely to be a game winner, but possible.

Question about house rules for trap design: rules say...

Required Trap Features: Search DC, Disable DC, Reflex DC or Attack Bonus, Reset Type and Trigger Type

 
 does this mean that a magic trap must have a reflex save or attack roll in addition to a will save for the spell itself?

SRD example:

 

Extended Bane Trap

CR 3
magic device
proximity trigger (detect good)
automatic reset
spell effect (extended bane, 3rd-level cleric, DC 13 Will save negates)
Search DC 27; Disable Device DC 27
Cost: 3,500 gp, 280 XP.

 would this trip require the targe to fail a reflex save and then a will save?

I would have thought that spell-like traps wouldn't require a reflex save (unless of course the spell itself does).

Presumably, if Black Tentacles can attack for one round, so could a summoned creature or Astral Construct. That's probably not actually as good as just shooting an arrow at them or something, though.

Slightly off-topic: If I can prebuff allies contingent on being the attacker (so I use either allies or a trap), can I make other prebuffs or even free actions depend on my attacker/defender status? I can't remember what I had in mind - I think something like e.g. prebuffing with Longstrider to increase my speed and thus my Jump and thus give me a better Outmanouevre score.

Mar 4, 2012 -- 7:33PM, Uknits wrote:

You have to prebuff longstrider long befor the fight (at least 1 hour), and thus you have no idea if you are defender or not.  Traps are the only conditional prebuff.

Not quite; IIRC you can also have allies prebuffed conditional on the trap not being available (i.e. prebuff trap if defender, other ally instead if attacker.)

That's what I would have thought, but I figured it bore asking. What if e.g. you wanted to buff an ally? Would you have to do that without knowing whether the ally would join you or not?