Any spell/item that disarms traps??

Ignatius

Traps can be deadly. They end runs, they ruin playthroughs, they chunk NPC's. They render entire areas of the game out of bounds for a party that cannot disarm them. They are both fun gameplay wise, and a huge pain.

And yet, this is quite unique, it is the prerogative of only one single class (Thieves) to disarm them. It gives that class a very unique advantage, that of being almost indispensible in a party. Think of it, almost every other ability of the game can be mimicked, to some extent, by another class / item / spell. Except disarming traps.

Is there any spell, or any item in the BG trilogy, that allows trap disarming? if not... should there be, from a DnD perspective?

Djimmy

Mirror Image is perfect for "disarming" traps. Cast it and "charge blindly on" as Minsc would say.

Ignatius

That's not what I meant by disarming. And there's a chance your "real image" will be hit. Running through a PW:K trap for instance... I know that the game can be won without disarming any trap, and that there are many workarounds. But still. Mages can open locks, clerics can detext traps, I find a little odd that neither get some sort of spell that can disarm.

KidCarnival

Item or spell, no. But I always thought it would make sense for rangers or druids to have this ability, like bards have pickpocket, which automatically levels up the same way.

valky

Only (pure/cross/prestige-) classes with the Disable Device ability are allowed to disable mechanical or magical traps.

But am not quite sure about the Disjunction spell of mages, it could be 'abused' to destroy magical devices as well, including magical traps - but that's PnP and not ingame

Else BG2 without trap-disabling is nifty, there are a few deadly ones, which should ignore mirror image/saving throws (or very very hard) and alike. In IWD/IWD2 a rogue was also pretty much recommend, even if only for some levels and then dual him/her. And at least in NWN2 the mages' familiar could do the job...
There is no item as far as I know....

DJKajuru

Physical traps (arrows, spears from the ground) can be avoided with stoneskin.

Magical traps (fireballs, magic missiles , lightning bolts etc) an be avoided with mirror image, elemental protection or globe of invulnerability.

walls smashing you - no protection against that, so avoid it heheh

Ignatius

@DJKajuru: but even with solid metagaming you are unlikely to remember exactly which trap does what. And there are other traps that trigger spells, some of which are insta-kills if you fail the save (and sometimes, you're not even allowed a save...).

Mikkel

Ignatius said:

@DJKajuru: but even with solid metagaming you are unlikely to remember exactly which trap does what. And there are other traps that trigger spells, some of which are insta-kills if you fail the save (and sometimes, you're not even allowed a save...).

True. To answer your question: No, there's (to my knowledge) no items or spells that disarm traps directly. As has been stated above, there are certain ways to avoid the effects of some traps, but no way to get rid of them entirely.

DJKajuru

@Ignatius , I thought you mentioned BG1 traps. In BG2 there are very weird traps that release fingers of death, prismatic spray ... you'd need specific protections for those ones, I guess.

Ignatius

DJKajuru said:

@Ignatius , I thought you mentioned BG1 traps. In BG2 there are very weird traps that release fingers of death, prismatic spray ... you'd need specific protections for those ones, I guess.

Yep, some sort of magic shielding. There's a few nasty ones in BG1 too (Pirates' cave, Durlag's...).

Djimmy

Ignatius said:

That's not what I meant by disarming. And there's a chance your "real image" will be hit. Running through a PW:K trap for instance... I know that the game can be won without disarming any trap, and that there are many workarounds. But still. Mages can open locks, clerics can detext traps, I find a little odd that neither get some sort of spell that can disarm.

Then I don't know. I think there isn't such a spell or skill that disarms traps other than thief's disarm traps skill.

Oxford_Guy

Djimmy said:

Mirror Image is perfect for "disarming" traps. Cast it and "charge blindly on" as Minsc would say.

Isn't there a chance the damage hits your actual real person?

BGEE_loverz

use summoned monster on the trap, or a charmed one, if i remember corectly if u haste some trap won't even activate, so try hasting maybe

Oxford_Guy

BGEE_loverz said:

use summoned monster on the trap, or a charmed one, if i remember corectly if u haste some trap won't even activate, so try hasting maybe

I don't think you can trigger a trap with summons, though have not tested recently

SeaJey

Cleric's Skeleton Warriors do not trigger trap for sure

mlnevese

I always thought summons should trigger traps normally, after all they're physically there, they're not illusions. In PnP it was a normal tactic when splitting the group to have the thief, mage and cleric never in t he same subgroup. The mage or cleric would then summo something to go first and trigger traps while the thief would do the search for the part of the group he went with.

Ignatius

Summons do not trigger traps in BG. Maybe they should, but I am not sure it would be easy to implement. I have never tried with charmed characters: it might work. As for walking through a trap with mirror image: have not tested it in BG:EE but am sure in vanilla, there was indeed a chance your "real image" would get hit.

Djimmy

Oxford_Guy said:

Djimmy said:

Mirror Image is perfect for "disarming" traps. Cast it and "charge blindly on" as Minsc would say.

Isn't there a chance the damage hits your actual real person?

Yes, there is.

DinsdalePiranha

valky said:

Else BG2 without trap-disabling is nifty, there are a few deadly ones, which should ignore mirror image/saving throws (or very very hard) and alike. In IWD/IWD2 a rogue was also pretty much recommend, even if only for some levels and then dual him/her. And at least in NWN2 the mages' familiar could do the job...
There is no item as far as I know....

BG1/BG2/IWD pretty much required a thief, IWD2 not so much (never had an actual rogue in any of my teams, only 1 point in disable device, because you can't advance without it), NWN2 even less (you could "outsource" these skills to NPCs, or use the magic of rest), NWN2: MotB had the familiar you're mentioning.

all hail rogueless teams! at least in D&D 3e games, that is.

AHF

The only part of the BG saga that is really difficult without a thief, IMO, is Durlag's Tower. Everything else can be fairly easily managed with a normal party lacking a thief.

ajwz

That's what summoned kobolds are for.

Sometimes I like to see the look on there faces as they are frogmarched through a doorway, and hear there futile protestations of "...but you already have a party thief"

Oxford_Guy

@ajwz - I thought it had already been stated that summoned creatures cannot trigger traps?

ajwz

Oxford_Guy said:

@ajwz - I thought it had already been stated that summoned creatures cannot trigger traps?

It depends on the trap i believe. But yeah, most summons can trigger most traps I think

Ignatius

ajwz said:

It depends on the trap i believe. But yeah, most summons can trigger most traps I think

I would really like to have confirmation of this, somehow. I have used summons a lot on my BG playing experience and I do not remember any of them ever triggering a trap. Just like monsters do not trigger traps when they roam or attack (ie, the golems in the pirates cave). I can confirm, not on all traps but I have tested it on quite a few, that in curtrent BG:EE skeleton warriors never trigger any trap.

Oxford_Guy

Ignatius said:

ajwz said:

It depends on the trap i believe. But yeah, most summons can trigger most traps I think

I would really like to have confirmation of this, somehow. I have used summons a lot on my BG playing experience and I do not remember any of them ever triggering a trap. Just like monsters do not trigger traps when they roam or attack (ie, the golems in the pirates cave). I can confirm, not on all traps but I have tested it on quite a few, that in curtrent BG:EE skeleton warriors never trigger any trap.

Thanks for checking @Ignatius - am considering running a solo Bard run and was originally thinking that maybe I could deal with most traps with Summons (from spell or wand), but it doesn't look that way...

Also, I think for Durlag's Tower, this looks vitually impossible w/o a Thief. Might do a duo run (CHARNAME Bard and Imoen) instead!

Ignatius

@Oxford_Guy: I have only tested with skeleton warriors and maybe undead are specific with respect to traps. I believe I tried having them walk all traps in the Cloakwood mines and they activated none. I have not tried other summons / other traps.

My run was a solo no-reload (see here http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/12581/the-no-reload-challenge-spoiler-warning/p3). It is not anymore, I won't take a solo Cleric in Durlag's - a more experienced gamer might, but by my book it would be suicidal. I recruited 2 NPC's for an interesting Gnomish-trio!

Erg

Looking with NearInfinity, there all kind of flags that can be used to customise traps: trap set off by enemies, trap set off by NPC, etc. I don't see anything specific to summons, but maybe with the right flag it is possible for summons to trigger them.

Erg

AHF said:

The only part of the BG saga that is really difficult without a thief, IMO, is Durlag's Tower. Everything else can be fairly easily managed with a normal party lacking a thief.

In my first ever playtrough (around 12 years ago) my only thief was Imoen dualled to mage at level 2 and I managed pretty well, but I didn't have TOSC at the time.

Oxford_Guy

Erg said:

AHF said:

The only part of the BG saga that is really difficult without a thief, IMO, is Durlag's Tower. Everything else can be fairly easily managed with a normal party lacking a thief.

In my first ever playtrough (around 12 years ago) my only thief was Imoen dualled to mage at level 2 and I managed pretty well, but I didn't have TOSC at the time.

The thing is I think you still need a thief for Durlag's Tower, you could conceivable even do this Imoen dualled to mage at level 2 if you she's drugged-up on enough potions of Master Thievery, but you need *someone* who has the Find/Remove Traps skill (Monks only get the Find Traps part of this) to be able to buff if it in the first place

Erg

Oxford_Guy said:

Erg said:

AHF said:

The only part of the BG saga that is really difficult without a thief, IMO, is Durlag's Tower. Everything else can be fairly easily managed with a normal party lacking a thief.

In my first ever playtrough (around 12 years ago) my only thief was Imoen dualled to mage at level 2 and I managed pretty well, but I didn't have TOSC at the time.

The thing is I think you still need a thief for Durlag's Tower, you could conceivable even do this Imoen dualled to mage at level 2 if you she's drugged-up on enough potions of Master Thievery, but you need *someone* who has the Find/Remove Traps skill (Monks only get the Find Traps part of this) to be able to buff if it in the first place

I agree, when I did it I didn't have TOSC, so no Durlag's Tower either.

AHF

It is possible to do Durlag's without a thief at all (I survived this with a solo F/M/C) but it is hard and requires either reloads or repeated buffing, resting, and lots of patience. If you render yourself immune to fire and lightning that gets you a big % of the way there. Mirror image is great for the physical damage traps too.