Trap changes

[Old Coach]

I am a fan of the 'autonomous' traps in npp. Some of the turrets can hurt if you don't have the correct resistance. I have not played NPP past DL 60, so I don't know if they continue to be interesting at the deeper levels.

[CunningGabe]

Here is a brief summary of the changes made since the initial trap overhaul:

- All repeatable trap detection is gone. The mage and priest spells now just detect stairs and doors; the rods of trap detection are gone; and rods of detection no longer detect traps.
- Scrolls of trap detection now detect the whole level for traps. They now cost more than they used to, as well.
- Items can be on the same square as a trap. When an item is on the same square as a known trap, the symbol is a red '&'.
- A few new trap types added: alarms, trap spawners, and earthquake traps.
- Trap evasion chance (which was added with the initial commit) has decreased significantly.

Here is what I am planning to work on soon:
- Make vault traps less common but more dangerous. Instead of each '^' in the vault layout becoming a trap, maybe only 25% of them will become traps (on average), and with a 10 level boost.
- Let different traps have different ratings of how hard they are to evade.
- Replace the class and race dependent Perception (which now does nothing) with a boost in detection radius. For example, rogues, hobbits, and kobolds should all get a boost. Also, consider whether the default search radius for any character should be higher than 1.
- Make the "Searching" flag also boost detection radius.
- Start thinking about how best to deal with autonomous traps (i.e., traps that affect you without you stepping on them).

As always, feedback is appreciated!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

You can just use a special character to indicate "trapped square with item on it", without trying to be specific as to what the item is. For example, a green ampersand or asterisk. Presumably this will be a sufficiently rare scenario that requiring the player to manually look at the square isn't a huge hardship.

Ey and Fay show a red ampersand by default but there's an option to show the trap.

In the next version of Fay you can only try once to disarm a trap. Sometimes you will have to step on a trap to retrieve the item.

[Nick]

How do you display such a square? The current v4 code has traps and items in the same grid too, but not so much by design as by accident. Currently it only displays the trap.

FA shows the trap, on the grounds that you can't get the object until you disarm the trap anyway.

[Derakon]

You can just use a special character to indicate "trapped square with item on it", without trying to be specific as to what the item is. For example, a green ampersand or asterisk. Presumably this will be a sufficiently rare scenario that requiring the player to manually look at the square isn't a huge hardship.

[d_m]

How do you display such a square? The current v4 code has traps and items in the same grid too, but not so much by design as by accident. Currently it only displays the trap.

You piss off Magnate by supporting changing the background color of the square!

(I don't have a more serious answer than this one.)

[CunningGabe]

Fay has traps and items in same grid, too.

How do you display such a square? The current v4 code has traps and items in the same grid too, but not so much by design as by accident. Currently it only displays the trap.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A variation on this: magical trap detection gives the character a sense of danger based on how many traps are in the area, but no actual locations.
This leads to interesting decisions based on risk vs reward.

Yep, that would be fun.

In Fay, I'm playtesting terrain features -- closets -- that often hold items but also have traps around them. The player has to think about risk vs. reward, and optimize for the least amount of squares travelled in the trapped terrain. There are also Scrolls of Protection from Traps for these situations, so there's some resource management going on, too. Fun!

Fay has traps and items in same grid, too.

[Nick]

What if, rather than traditional trap detection or even spidey-senses, magical trap detection gave the character a different type of insight. In addition to revealing all traps within LoS, it would reveal if a grid, within a larger detection area, was definitely not trapped and thus absolutely safe. It would have to be non-omnipotent, so lets say it only identifies 95% (chosen randomly) of the safe (non-trapped) grids in its detection area.

A variation on this: magical trap detection gives the character a sense of danger based on how many traps are in the area, but no actual locations.
This leads to interesting decisions based on risk vs reward.

This gets even more fun if traps and objects can occupy the same grid.

FA 1.2 has this

[CunningGabe]

I think I still prefer the "if your search is at or over the trap's concealment number, you see it, otherwise you don't" just because it's simple and it would be hard to derive repetitive play from it.

That is the base mechanic. What we are discussing here is just the added benefit from a trap detection spell / scroll / whatever.

[buzzkill]

re: trap detection.

What if, rather than traditional trap detection or even spidey-senses, magical trap detection gave the character a different type of insight. In addition to revealing all traps within LoS, it would reveal if a grid, within a larger detection area, was definitely not trapped and thus absolutely safe. It would have to be non-omnipotent, so lets say it only identifies 95% (chosen randomly) of the safe (non-trapped) grids in its detection area.

The other 5% could be traps, or could just be an odd rock formation that looks like a trap. It's blocking the corridor, and active searching didn't reveal a trap. Do you walk through it, tunnel around it, or backtrack and look for another way. This gets even more fun if traps and objects can occupy the same grid.

It's a little convoluted, but I'm trying to satisfy the nay-sayers lobbying against deadly trap types on the grounds than (newly revised) detection will be imperfect. Under this scheme trap detection will be imperfect, but you'll be never have to venture from a safe grid unless you choose to (and once precisely balanced, I think there will be occasions when you will choose to), and so deadly and sadistic traps can re-enter the mix.

Ideally, I think that about 20% of questionable grids should really be traps (about 1% of the typical dungeon). This gives players an incentive to risk it every once in a while. In vaults this could probably be bumped up to about 50%, meaning that once inside a vault you won't see many 'safe' grids (1/2 will be traps, the other 1/2 you won't be sure of, pending search results), so you had best be prepared with a combination of searching, detection and disarming.

Once again, just thought of it, so I'm just throwing it out there. It seemed interesting to me.

[d_m]

I think I still prefer the "if your search is at or over the trap's concealment number, you see it, otherwise you don't" just because it's simple and it would be hard to derive repetitive play from it.

But really, I'm easy. Excited to see this stuff get finalized!

[CunningGabe]

I'll restate my idea from earlier in the thread:

Assuming:

- Removal of all magical trap detection (with the possible exception Enlightenment)
- The s key is only effective once

Detect Traps effect:

- Timed effect
- Possibly an increase in passive detection radius.
- Larger area of effect (like ESP) in which you will receive a warning when a trap is present in that area (this could be a message, or a status effect on screen).

Including my earlier reasons:
"This would increase anxiety (a good thing!) and provide the player with a choice ("I've dropped consumables earlier on the level, better get them before I hit a trapdoor" or "How badly do I want to see what that unID'd potion is over there, I know the area is trapped")."

Cons:
You could 'game' the system by moving around in a pattern, to see where the warning activates, and triangulate the position of the trap... but in all fairness, this seems like a pretty realistic search pattern for a fantasy rogue anyway

I was a little resistant to this at first, just because I like the simplicity of just detecting traps on the whole level. However, it occurs to me that your proposal works nicely with monsters that can create traps. Maybe we could use the DTrap status indicator, and color it depending on how close the nearest trap is. Green means no traps within, say, 10 squares; yellow means a trap within 6-10 squares; red means a trap within 1-5 squares. I kind of like that that would force the player to slow down for a moment and walk especially carefully.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

While I'll admit that chest traps were fairly useless, having chests entirely unprotected isn't a good alternative. I hope chests are still locked, ideally locked better that they were pre trap removal.

Here's one approach for chest locks:

Roll for the potency of chest trap. You simply cannot open it until your Disarming skill is equal to the trap potency (no random chance).

There may be alternative ways of opening chests, like bashing, but they risk breaking stuff inside.

[Gorbad]

What would people think of removing all repeatable trap detection, and having scrolls of trap detection detect the entire level? (The scrolls would become deeper and rarer in this case.)

I'll restate my idea from earlier in the thread:

Assuming:

- Removal of all magical trap detection (with the possible exception Enlightenment)
- The s key is only effective once

Detect Traps effect:

- Timed effect
- Possibly an increase in passive detection radius.
- Larger area of effect (like ESP) in which you will receive a warning when a trap is present in that area (this could be a message, or a status effect on screen).

Including my earlier reasons:
"This would increase anxiety (a good thing!) and provide the player with a choice ("I've dropped consumables earlier on the level, better get them before I hit a trapdoor" or "How badly do I want to see what that unID'd potion is over there, I know the area is trapped")."

Cons:
You could 'game' the system by moving around in a pattern, to see where the warning activates, and triangulate the position of the trap... but in all fairness, this seems like a pretty realistic search pattern for a fantasy rogue anyway