A new gameplay element in trap detection

Loldrup

Sometimes a thief is able to find a trap, but not disarm it.
This means that traps must have two difficulty levels: one for detection, and one for disarming.
I suggest that the detection difficulty level (DDL) gets a second function:

If a thief tries to disable a trap, but fails, he also get make an extra (or two or three? with a bonus?) dice roll (or whatever the computer is using. Probably not dices) against the DDL of the trap. If this roll succeeds, he isn't merely given the standard "trap not disarmed" message. On top of the standard message, he will also be told what *kind* of damage the trap does if tripped.

Then the party can come up with clever ways to pass the trap (relatively) unharmed (using specific potions or spells), even in the situation where they can't fully disable it.

And voilà! We have a whole new gameplay element!

Ardanis

Years ago I made a minimod to that would display "Trap Detected" over a trap when a character would near it, and "Trap Type is XYZ" when a thief would detect it via skill. Unfortunately, I never published it and lost the code since then.

I did complete the BG1 and a part of BG2 with it, however, and found it extremely convenient to not have to slowly crawl through the dungeons (it was years since I last played BG1, and I completely forgot where traps were) or stand at every chest and door for a round to check for safety, while still keeping all the traps in place and fully armed as before.

gorgonzola

@Ardanis
Interesting, but that way a thief can hide and spot all the trap locations, with no risk of being spotted and attacked by enemies. If you want to rewrite the code some day, and if is possible, I think that leaving the traps on the ground like they are and applying your mod only to the containers is better.
Also with your code there is no more the risk that the thief fails to detect and someone gets damaged or killed, many traps can be avoided if you know where they are. This does not apply for who has a perfect metagame knowledge, and perfectly knows where each trap is and what it do, but your lost mod is geared for who lack that knowledge.

Ardanis

gorgonzola said:

Interesting, but that way a thief can hide and spot all the trap locations, with no risk of being spotted and attacked by enemies.

Tbh, I use invis for scouting... Stealth is better for backstabbing in Boots of Speed

gorgonzola said:

Also with your code there is no more the risk that the thief fails to detect and someone gets damaged or killed, many traps can be avoided if you know where they are.

Eh, but that was exactly the point - after many years I had forgotten where were traps in BG1 and had no desire to inspect locations inch by inch. Because that's really the only element that random traps add to gameplay, imo, as you can slowly crawl your way forward and detect and disarm every one of them - net effect is no different from if they weren't there in the first place. With auto-detection installed, however, it became a "see warning - fetch thief or cleric - detect - decide whether to disarm or ignore" routine, further spiced up by randomly increased difficulty of detection and disarm thresholds.

gorgonzola

And this is fine, but make the game not only less boring, if you don't enjoy to spend your time in detecting traps, it make it easier. There are situations where you turn a corner and you don't know if you'll find a trap or an enemy that will kill you, if you go hidden the trap kill you, if you go detecting the enemy kills you.

Making auto detection work only for containers don't make the game easier, but avoids to waste some time waiting next to each container when you loot, after the battle is ended. That waste of time looting imo is only annoying, if you have a thief able to detect the traps there is no challenge in taking 3 minutes to loot a room instead of seconds.

And even so the game gets easier as you can dual from thief at level 1 and have an automatic permanent trap detection.

Both ways are good, is just a player's choice.

Ardanis

There are situations where you turn a corner and you don't know if you'll find a trap or an enemy that will kill you, if you go hidden the trap kill you, if you go detecting the enemy kills you.

That's why I scout under invis rather than stealth

gorgonzola

True, but invisibility spells and potions are limited, each enemy group is a battle so you loose invisibility.
Quite resource consuming. As I play mainly modded BG2 and my memories of BG1 are fading away I am not sure if there is different and whole dungeons can be explored with one or few invisibilities, in my settings is not so easy as lot of enemies see trough invisibility, or cast TS as an invisible person approaches and you have some long dungeons with traps alternated with enemies that force you to loose invisibility. But is the same that I do as soon as I have the SoTM.