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[kingandy]

Last night's D&D: Fun.  Though I was quite drunk.  Lizardmen almost murdered my doggy, which means I've used my Rage for the day.  myki ruled in his new role as ORBITAL DEATH CANNON.  Then he set off disarmed loads of traps (in the army camp that he'd just detonated) using some sort of flaming sphere, which just rolled over them casually, and they were all EL9-10 traps, which meant the whole pary gained about 7000XP.  Huzzah!

Hmm ... looking through the SRD for the bit about activating a frost sword taking a Move action.  Here's the part that seems relevant:

Activation: Usually a character benefits from a magic weapon in the same way a character benefits from a mundane weapon—by attacking with it. If a weapon has a special ability that the user needs to activate then the user usually needs to utter a command word (a standard action).

Cock.  I was rather hoping there had been some confusion between "activating a magic item" (ie, a scroll or wand) and "turning on your lightsaber".  I can't see that shouting a word is equivalent to an attack, after all you're allowed to talk to other people as a free action.  Maybe "uttering a command word" is a more involved process that involves posing while the coruscating energies sweep across you.  THUNDERCATS - HO!  BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!  etc.

Interested by this bit under Icy Burst:  "Even if the frost ability is not active, the weapon still deals its extra cold damage on a successful critical hit."  Think we missed that... so, mixed blessings then.  Now, must get that Keen in there too and we're sorted.

Comments

[kingandy]

The new rules want to de-emphasise the killing, or rather reward you for doing other things as well. Monsters have a "challenge rating", and if you defeat the challenge by any method - talking your way past, charming the guards, teleporting past or indeed slotting the lot of them - you still get the experience for it (having discovered a new and innovative way of dealing with that monster). They extended this to include other threatening situations, such as traps. A trap with a higher challenge rating will obliterate a low-level party - such as the area effect Firecloud type traps - though, yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense that you learn more from avoiding a pit trap with deadly poison at it than you do from avoiding one without.

Still, as Nook often says, it's D&D - it's not supposed to make sense.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Okay - then (he says, stretching the point, but I am honestly interested) - you disarm a trap innovatively, at no risk to yourself. The GM says - "bloody hell, that was innovative, here, have the XP that the challenge rating allows for that trap."

A couple of weeks later, you find (almost typed "come across", remembered whose LJ this was, didn't) a very similar trap and use the same method you used previously to disarm it.

Does the GM say "not innovative, therefore it wasn't a challenge, especially as there was no risk to life or limb" or do they still give you the XP, or perhaps a reduced amount?

It's the Star Trek problem; once you have the solution to a problem what stops you applying it to every problem?

(As an aside, which I'll expand upon if people want, there's a similar issue with contested Vis sources in Ars Magica ...)

[kingandy]

Depending on how much those happens in those two weeks, you may well have levelled up, in which case you'll get less XP for it. (D&D has always annoyed me by both requiring more XP to level up, and reducing the amount of XP you get for doing the same things. I would prefer one or the other, to do both seems too wishy-washy.) But yeah, "Innovative" was more a justification than a literal interpretation of the rules - the rules don't care whether you're innovating or not, just whether you defeat the challenge and what challenge it was in relation to your character level.

I take it by the "Star Trek Problem" you mean the "Star Trek Writers' Problem". ;)

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Someone writes Star Trek?!

[kingandy]

Um, no, I was mistaken - it grows naturally in the form of crystalline lattices extruded from the enbalmed scalp of Gene Roddenberry's corpse.

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

They used to have a chimp roll around in it's own faeces then get it to make hand prints on some scraps of paper. Then, Brannon Braga would write "with time travel" at the page bottom, and tada, you'd have a first draft script.

[kestrana.livejournal.com]

Then Michael Pillar would come along and write "insert technological dialogue here" and they would be ready for filming.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

But yeah, "Innovative" was more a justification than a literal interpretation of the rules - the rules don't care whether you're innovating or not, just whether you defeat the challenge and what challenge it was in relation to your character level.


I guess my (more serious point) is the point of "challenge" - the first time you come across a problem, it is a challenge; you don't know what will work and what risk you're going to put your character through.

The next time, if all you have to do is say "right, fireball from 60 feet on the red gem" it's not a challenge.

(OTOH, it is if at the next time you encounter it, you don't have any fireballs, or you can't see the red gem or whatever. But thats now a challenge again, because you ahve to come up with another solution.)

[kingandy]

True, true. I think the primary factors in deciding the threat level of a trap is not how hard it is to disarm (while that is a factor, you get the same XP for defusing it as you do for intentionally setting it off and taking the damage - which is actually one of the points of the Barbarian class ;)), but rather (a) how hard it is to spot and (b) how lethal it is if you do spot it[1]. Possibly the XP comes from recognising a new and interesting way that the enemies have used to conceal the trap...

To clarify - as far as the rules are concerned, if you spot the trap and then avoid it in any way, either jumping over, not picking up the exploding head, or lobbing rocks at it from a distance, you get the XP. If you blunder into it and set it off unintentionally, you get jack all whether you survive or not. (Though it's obviously less of a concern if you don't.)

That said, Nook didn't give us any spot checks on the traps last night. Or, maybe he did, and we all failed (we had a couple of checks, and were told things like "You see an army encampment up ahead, and some heads on poles").

As a side note, I haven't actually directly read the section of the rules that deals with traps, though, so most of this is second hand or derived.

[1] The two do not appear to be on separate sliding scales, but rather are directly related - more damaging traps are always harder to spot. *shrugs*

[kingandy]

Wait, no, I've just rememebered, you do get XP if you set it off and get caught in it.

Oh, bah. I don't know.

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

You get idiot points for surviving something extremely stupid.