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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 5:36PM
#1
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Situation: First room of a high level dungeon. The PCs enter chamber I designed as a way of eliminating some of those pesky, super powerful magic items the characters were hauling around using to zap all of my powerful bad guys. The chamber contains a portal to another plane and was built by the Githyanki, who are also the bad guys in this scenario. The portal is powered by magic items. The more magic items it drains the longer the portal stays open. Suspicious, the characters stand outside the room and detect for traps using a variety of spells and devices. I rule there are none. The characters enter the room and the portal starts draining their magic items. The characters lose a significant number of their precious magic items.
Once the PCs figure out what happened they begin to howl in protest. They claim this was clearly a trap and that their trap detection devices and spells should have been given a chance to work. I reply that this room was a portal, not a trap, and not designed by the Githyanki to be a trap. They reply that the Githyanki are highly intelligent and evil and would be very well aware of the potential traplike effects of this room and probably designed it to be multi-purpose (a trap and a portal). They further argue that the positioning of this chamber, the first room in the dungeon,clearly indicates it was intended as a kind of trap, even if it was also a portal back to their world.
What do people think, should I have allowed the PCs a chance to detect a trap? Or is this fair game?
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 5:58PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Dec 13, 2010
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As the DM you have clearly set it up as a trap no matter how much you say it isn't.
That being said; were the magical items destroyed or have they been weakened by the portal, their powers drained?
I can undertsand if all the PC's best gear was suddenly destroyed they would be pissed off, if it breaks their toy's it's a trap in my book. If however it has only weakened their magical items they can't be too mad. If they realised what was happened and left both problems should be solved.
a. As the DM you have weakened their magical items so that they don't instant kill all your monster.
b. The Players keep their magic items but have learned a lesson and maybe even a new adventure hook...
Does the portal go somewhere fun, building a new adventure. If the portal is unuseable what was the point. It was a trap.
Just in case I failed to mention; I am playing D&D 3.5e.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 6:07PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2004
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What do people think
I agree with your players. Indeed, losing a significant number of precious magic items would seem unfair even if they hadn't spent efforts detecting for such a thing.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 6:52PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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What do people think, should I have allowed the PCs a chance to detect a trap? Or is this fair game?
No, but an Arcana or Knowledge (Arcana) or Intelligence or Wisdom check might have been appropriate. And no, I wouldn't call this fair game. There are plenty of other fair ways to deal with powerful characters without taking away items in a "gotcha" manner.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 8:58PM
#5
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What do people think, should I have allowed the PCs a chance to detect a trap? Or is this fair game?
You: "My players spent a lot of time and effort determining that there was no trap. After doing so, I told them that there HAD been a trap, and that they had actually had no chance to possibly detect it even using their infallible trap-detection magic, and took away all their cool stuff. As punishment. For not detecting a trap I had decided was undetectable despite them having infallible trap detection magic. Am I doing it wrong?"
Me: Yes.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 9:55PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Aug 23, 2010
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Situation: First room of a high level dungeon. The PCs enter chamber I designed as a way of eliminating some of those pesky, super powerful magic items the characters were hauling around using to zap all of my powerful bad guys. The chamber contains a portal to another plane and was built by the Githyanki, who are also the bad guys in this scenario. The portal is powered by magic items. The more magic items it drains the longer the portal stays open. Suspicious, the characters stand outside the room and detect for traps using a variety of spells and devices. I rule there are none. The characters enter the room and the portal starts draining their magic items. The characters lose a significant number of their precious magic items.
Once the PCs figure out what happened they begin to howl in protest. They claim this was clearly a trap and that their trap detection devices and spells should have been given a chance to work. I reply that this room was a portal, not a trap, and not designed by the Githyanki to be a trap. They reply that the Githyanki are highly intelligent and evil and would be very well aware of the potential traplike effects of this room and probably designed it to be multi-purpose (a trap and a portal). They further argue that the positioning of this chamber, the first room in the dungeon,clearly indicates it was intended as a kind of trap, even if it was also a portal back to their world.
What do people think, should I have allowed the PCs a chance to detect a trap? Or is this fair game?
I agree with you 100%
unless the players Detected magic within the room and made arcana checks on the portal, then I gree with the PCs. Here's what I mean.
The PCs did not detect any traps in the room, as you said there where none. No conventional traps, the like the PCs would have been looking for. If the portal uses magical energy as it's power source, then the PCs should have been smart enough to get out while they still had their magic items.
If the PCs searched for magic and used arcana checks on the portal and where not told about it's siphoning magic as a power source, then you misled them by telling them that there was nothing in the room. That is unless they failed their checks, then they wouldn't know either way.
It really just seems to me that your players are butt hurt from losing their magic gear. This happens, and as DM, you have final say. You can keep with your ruling if it's fair, or if you or the PCs think it was unjust, then you can rule it in the PC's favor. However, if the PCs never checked for magic or used arcana on the portal, then it's entirely on their fault that they lost their magic items. Maybe next time they'll be more carfull about walking into situations they arent prepared for or don't use their character's abilities correctly.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 9:57PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Apr 29, 2006
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First,  Second, there are plenty of better ways than rail-roady gotcha traps to deal with these kind of problems. For example, communication works surprisingly often. If you're having a hard time challenging your players because of their gear, talk to them about it. Assuming your players are vested in having challenging encounters and making sure that everyone has one (which includes you), they'll listen. And from there, some sort of solution or compromise can be reached.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 11:31PM
#8
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Situation: First room of a high level dungeon. The PCs enter chamber I designed as a way of eliminating some of those pesky, super powerful magic items the characters were hauling around using to zap all of my powerful bad guys. The chamber contains a portal to another plane and was built by the Githyanki, who are also the bad guys in this scenario. The portal is powered by magic items. The more magic items it drains the longer the portal stays open. Suspicious, the characters stand outside the room and detect for traps using a variety of spells and devices. I rule there are none. The characters enter the room and the portal starts draining their magic items. The characters lose a significant number of their precious magic items.
Once the PCs figure out what happened they begin to howl in protest. They claim this was clearly a trap and that their trap detection devices and spells should have been given a chance to work. I reply that this room was a portal, not a trap, and not designed by the Githyanki to be a trap. They reply that the Githyanki are highly intelligent and evil and would be very well aware of the potential traplike effects of this room and probably designed it to be multi-purpose (a trap and a portal). They further argue that the positioning of this chamber, the first room in the dungeon,clearly indicates it was intended as a kind of trap, even if it was also a portal back to their world.
What do people think, should I have allowed the PCs a chance to detect a trap? Or is this fair game?
For me this really depends on whether or not the portal serves any purpose other than siphoning off the magical items your party had accumulated and how you wrote the Githyanki as powering this item.
1*. If the sole purpose of this portal is that your player's items lose magical powers then it is clearly a trap. However, if they could travel through the portal and engage in some story on the other side then this is fair game if and only if,
2. The Githyanki must have a means of powering this portal other than devaluing their own magic items. If the Githyanki carry around arcana infused stones, rings, medallions, or other such items in order to power their portal home then this is a fair use of the portal. However, if you either didn't write an activation mechanism into the game or relied on the magic items pillaged by the Githyanki to power their return transport then, again, this is a trap.
*My reading of your description is such that the portal is not the intended direction of travel for your party, but rather something that ought to be bypassed quickly. If this is not the case and the portal was indeed the only other way out of the room then you are more justified in destroying their items, but only so far as to move your actions into an ambiguous grey area.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 1:24AM
#9
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Date Joined:
May 19, 2011
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Your definition of a trap is : This device does not try and kill you.
The player definition of a trap is : This device will eff with us in some way.
You clearly created a device whose sole purpose was to directly destroy the effectiveness of your player characters regardless of how well your player characters tried to avoid it.
If this were a 2nd edition game I would say "Bravo, well done, sir!"
If this is 4th, that's just rude, man...
To put this into some kind of real world analogy, it's like the repo guys from that tv show with all the fat repo people showed up at your house and started taking your stuff, with no actual (read: you didn't pay your bills) reason. Then proceeded to berate you for having so much stuff. Also, one of them is dating your mother. I'm not sure how that part of the analogy fits, but it does.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 6:43AM
#10
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Ok, as a follow up question:
The PCs are walking along an ancient dungeon corridor. No one has walked this corridor in a 1,000 years. It so happens that during the past 1,000 years several of the ceiling blocks have become unstable -- not by anyone's design but rather just through the passage of time. The characters use a find traps spell but the DM rules that since the loosened ceiling block are not a trap nothing is detected. The reverberations from the character's footfalls are enough to cause these massive ceiling blocks to come crashing down and land on several of the adventurers, causing much damage and potentially death. Fair? Or should the spell have detected this hazard even if it wasn't technically a trap?
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