Brainstorming trap effects

[CunningGabe]

I have finished a first pass of the trap revamp and submitted a pull request. I will post full details in the other trap thread once the pull request is submitted. In the meanwhile, I wanted to start people brainstorming some new traps.

A trap now has a min and a max level, so that you see more dangerous traps at lower levels. At the moment, I've kept all of the original traps except for trap doors. However, many traps have low-level, mid-level, and high-level versions. The low level teleport trap is just a phase door; the high-level one is the same as the old one. Flame jets do more damage at higher levels. Et cetera.

There are some traps that haven't received this treatment yet, and I plan to deal with them soon. But the other thing I would like is to come up with more traps that are genuinely new. We particularly need good traps for deeper in the dungeon.

So, let's me hear them: what kind of trap effects would you like to see? It would be most useful if you had ideas for traps that, like the current ones, affect you or the dungeon in some way when you step on them. But feel free to share any idea, even if it doesn't fit into that framework -- I do intend to eventually add traps that trigger on other events.

[will_asher]

DaJAngband traps which aren't in V:
- hallucenation
- earthquake trap (smaller radius than most earthquakes, but significant chance to damage the PC -only appears on deeper levels.)
- polymorph all monsters in LOS
- summon a small group of kin monsters to the nearest staircase
- deep pit (hard to climb out of)
- drain charges (deep only)
- mana/energy drain trap (if you are not a spellcasting class, it stops most buffs you may have active and makes you fatigued)

[Derakon]

* Hunger trap (puts you at Hungry right above Starving, so no instant unresistable paralysis)
* Area-effect spell centered on the trap (yes, the area effect won't hurt the player more, but it makes it more interesting and it might destroy items)
* Teleport the highest-level monster currently in the dungeon to the player.
* Any status-ailment traps that haven't already been implemented (hallucination, amnesia, ...?)
* Gravity well trap -- all targetable effects used within LOS of the trap automatically target it. Might be a pain to implement, not to mention a bit too useful for melee characters -- it should probably be destroyed after one or a small number of "uses".
* Wounding trap (causes cuts of varying degrees of severity, up to and including "fatal wounds")

[ekolis]

Cloning traps - clones any monster which steps onto it (except uniques). Might want an activation limit (self destructs after being activated X times) or a cooldown period to prevent ridiculousness...

Gate traps - have a trigger and a gate (two different squares), where the gate is a secret door (preferably with a nasty bunch of monsters behind it). Stepping on the trigger opens the gate and frees the monsters to attack you!

Beam traps - remember those rotating fire beams from the castle levels in Super Mario Bros? Well, this is just like that, only turn-based! These traps should be visible from the get-go, as should their beams, but if you're brave you could sneak into the center and disarm it!

[HallucinationMushroom]

There's this trap in ToME that makes you drop everything you're wearing, or at least that's the way I remember it. I think there was another good one that would scatter your inventory items all over the level. Put those in there.

[PowerWyrm]

There's this trap in ToME that makes you drop everything you're wearing, or at least that's the way I remember it. I think there was another good one that would scatter your inventory items all over the level. Put those in there.

Of course not
If you're that sadistic, there were some good traps added in TomeNET for a while: "goodbye charlie" (strips you from everything equipped and carried and recalls you at once), "despair" (permanently decreases all your stats by 10 and gives you two potions, augmentation and death), and many more that would ruin your character really quickly...

[CunningGabe]

- Siren, like the shrieker mushrooms
- A trap that creates other traps nearby
- A monster spawner
- Close and lock all doors nearby
- Break all doors nearby
- Wall and door mimics
- Features that look like doors, but act like walls (i.e. can't be opened, bashed, etc.)

[Starhawk]

- Disenchantment (just like getting hit with disenchant melee attack -argh!)
- Temporary lowering of blows per round
- Temporary addition to spell failure chance
- Deafening (no more sound cues; this is fairly harmless and could be long-duration)
- Mindbending (negates telepathy temporarily)
- Polymorph the PC into a frog! (No spellcasting, weapon use, or item use... good luck pal! Very temporary)
- Item theft trap (grabs an item out of inventory, places it somewhere on the level randomly. Maybe in a chest so monsters don't grab it?)
- Charge-draining trap (like getting hit by a charge-drainer. Argh, I hate this effect)
- Recall trap (forces you to burn a ?Recall or at least waste a turn zapping a rod or casting the spell, if you don't want to go back to town)
- Gold-eating trap (destroys amount of gold carried, scaling with level)
- Even worse, anti-gold trap - does damage based on amount of gold carried. Automatically scales with level!!

[HallucinationMushroom]

Of course not
If you're that sadistic, there were some good traps added in TomeNET for a while: "goodbye charlie" (strips you from everything equipped and carried and recalls you at once), "despair" (permanently decreases all your stats by 10 and gives you two potions, augmentation and death), and many more that would ruin your character really quickly...

Hey, those sound sweet! I never got very far in tomenet.

[buzzkill]

How about ethereal walls for a trap effect. In essence, giving everything within radius x passwall ability for x turns.

[Mars]

How about a double vision/drunkenness trap, which makes you see all monsters double but you don't know which is the real one. Kinda like hallucination but less random. You can even opt to double all visible features (except maybe plain floor and walls).

[Djabanete]

My take on deep-level traps: the player is expected to have reliable and repeatable Detect Traps effects by this point in the game. The presence of Summon Monster traps and Trap Doors already enforces this. So what do you change by making traps nastier? Finding/avoiding/disarming* traps is trivial for high-level characters, so just making a trap insanely dangerous (i.e. drop all equipment) or annoying as hell (i.e. spread inventory throughout dungeon level) accomplishes very little, except perhaps occasionally causing someone to rage quit the game for various reasons.

*And by disarming, I mean using foolproof methods, not the "disarm" command.

But the fact that deep-level traps are expected to be known/visible to the character has an upside as well; they can be tactically relevant. Instead of going to extremes in designing preposterously lethal traps, I'd just try designing traps that could have useful applications in addition to being dangerous. My favorites (not all of them my ideas, I'm just collecting them):

Pandemonium trap (polymorph all monsters in sight)
Earthquake trap (small radius)
Disintegration trap (removes all walls in small radius)
Inferno/Thunderstorm trap (huge fire/lightning ball centered around player)
Greater Demon trap (summons a bunch of U's)
Ancient Dragon trap (summons a bunch of D's)
Greater Undead trap (summons a bunch of W's, V's, L's)

Good luck!

[ghengiz]

But the fact that deep-level traps are expected to be known/visible to the character has an upside as well; they can be tactically relevant. Instead of going to extremes in designing preposterously lethal traps, I'd just try designing traps that could have useful applications in addition to being dangerous.

A nice addition to gameplay, +1

[CunningGabe]

My take on deep-level traps: the player is expected to have reliable and repeatable Detect Traps effects by this point in the game.

This is true in the status quo, but probably not when I'm through with traps. Nevertheless, I agree that deep traps don't have to be lethal; just interesting.

[half]

The presence of Summon Monster traps and Trap Doors already enforces this.

I think the idea that trapdoors require flawless trap detection is incorrect.

For example, in Sil there is no flawless trap detection, just a perception-dependent chance in a small perception-dependent radius (1, 2, or 3). Moreover trapdoors (or false floors as they are now called) are much nastier in Sil. They do significant damage, and this is quite a bit harder to heal. They isolate you from the stairs and this is a serious problem since escapes are so hard to come by in Sil. They make you permanently lose any artefacts on the current level (there is no preserve mode in Sil). Interestingly, there are almost no complaints, even before 1.0.2 when traps were a bit too hard to detect.

However, perhaps the reason trapdoors are OK in Sil is that they cause interesting tactical situations (you are in an unmapped level, cut off from the stairs). In Angband, it is more like scrapping the current level with no interesting aspect. If so and if they are just frustrating, the answer is either to make them interesting, or to get rid of them. Not to force perfect trap detection.