Find Traps spell vs. Find/Disarm Traps ability
Bane_of_Gerbils
Member Posts: 6
I've been trying to get a handle on this trap disarming proficiency but nothing seems all that clear, specifically the probability that a thief can disarm a trap revealed vs. the Find Traps spell.
First off, does anyone really use this spell at all? It seems worthless to me since a thief must be part of the party to disarm it anyway. The thief would likely be able to spot the trap using their ability ability rating so the benefit of wasting a spell slot to do what the thief can do anyway seems... ummm... pretty idiotic to me.
If there is NO party thief, what possible good could spotting traps provide other than perhaps suggesting that an alternate route (if available) might prove a better option. The main failing that I see is that Find Traps does not identify the type of trap which WOULD be a useful bit of information to have (though I do recognize that a thief cannot identify trap types with their ability either). It would easier to plow through a trap field if their effects could be predicted and equipment and/or buffs adjusted accordingly. Anyway, I've yet to find the spell useful in any run-through I've done so would be interested in reading if others have found a use for it and under what circumstances. Even without a thief, summons or charmed can be forced into trap fields to trigger them but it's not really needed to see the traps if you use summons/charmed for recon in standard practice.
The second part of this question is equally baffling for me. If a caster does indeed cast the spell and the trap(s) become(s) visible, what Find/Disarm Traps ability level is needed to disarm those traps revealed in this manner? I am assuming that any trap that is "naturally" revealed using the thief's Find/Disarm Traps button can be disarmed, but this is just from personal experience, not thoroughly tested under diverse conditions. Suppose a thief only has the slight amount set to traps at creation plus perhaps a bit more from the DEX? Does that mean all traps revealed by Find Traps spell can still be disarmed anyway? This is very confusing for me and am hoping someone here has experience dealing with how the spell & thief ability interact.
Thank you for your time to read and consider this.
BoGs
P.S. I recognize the fact that in other AD&D versions the Find Traps spell also disarms them, but for BG that is not the case.
First off, does anyone really use this spell at all? It seems worthless to me since a thief must be part of the party to disarm it anyway. The thief would likely be able to spot the trap using their ability ability rating so the benefit of wasting a spell slot to do what the thief can do anyway seems... ummm... pretty idiotic to me.
If there is NO party thief, what possible good could spotting traps provide other than perhaps suggesting that an alternate route (if available) might prove a better option. The main failing that I see is that Find Traps does not identify the type of trap which WOULD be a useful bit of information to have (though I do recognize that a thief cannot identify trap types with their ability either). It would easier to plow through a trap field if their effects could be predicted and equipment and/or buffs adjusted accordingly. Anyway, I've yet to find the spell useful in any run-through I've done so would be interested in reading if others have found a use for it and under what circumstances. Even without a thief, summons or charmed can be forced into trap fields to trigger them but it's not really needed to see the traps if you use summons/charmed for recon in standard practice.
The second part of this question is equally baffling for me. If a caster does indeed cast the spell and the trap(s) become(s) visible, what Find/Disarm Traps ability level is needed to disarm those traps revealed in this manner? I am assuming that any trap that is "naturally" revealed using the thief's Find/Disarm Traps button can be disarmed, but this is just from personal experience, not thoroughly tested under diverse conditions. Suppose a thief only has the slight amount set to traps at creation plus perhaps a bit more from the DEX? Does that mean all traps revealed by Find Traps spell can still be disarmed anyway? This is very confusing for me and am hoping someone here has experience dealing with how the spell & thief ability interact.
Thank you for your time to read and consider this.
BoGs
P.S. I recognize the fact that in other AD&D versions the Find Traps spell also disarms them, but for BG that is not the case.
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Comments
The spell and the thief ability don't work in concert. The thief ability makes the spell obsolete, provided the thief actually has enough skill points in it.
The only advantage the spell has over the ability is that it works 100% of the time, but again, if the thief can't detect it, the thief can't disarm it. The spell and ability don't complement each other.
Disarming a trap usually requires somewhat higher skill than simply revealing it, using the thief's Find Traps skill. So even if you sometimes may have high enough skill to reveal a trap you might not have enough to disarm it. Note that you can try disarming a trap several times and eventually succeed (or accidentally trigger it) if you get a lucky dice roll.
EDIT: I am apparently wrong about this. I've never had a disarm failure, though. Oh well.
Side-stepping traps has seldom come up in my own experience since all access to the overall quest location is usually guarded by traps placed in the alternate passages (if the designer really, really wanted to set up a trap-related test, that is).
But it is interesting that there seems to be different opinions about what level a thief needs to be to disarm traps revealed using the spell. I've always assumed that the difficulty for revealing a specific trap was the same number (or percentage) as disarming it, ability-wise, but with the spell working 100% of the time even by scroll, the trap difficulty is not clear as it would be using the thief ability. As I said, I've never spotted a trap via the ability that could not be disarmed by the spotter, though it may take a while for the traps to highlight initially.
One other oddity seems that your thief needs to be oriented towards the center of a trap to spot it, especially noticeable on those extra wide traps, a situation where Find Traps spell would be helpful (assuming you actually knew ahead of time that traps were set in that general area of course). In a narrow passageway (thinking about the stacked traps that Davaeorn had set up in his Cloakwood Mine level), they seem to spot faster without needing to shuffle the thief around waiting for a good dice roll. That situation (Davaeorn's traps) is one that applies very well to the spell value issue... what good does spotting those 3 or 4 traps stacked together if your thief can't disarm them? May as well just run through them all and try to endure the damage and/or entanglement (not sure if they are all the same trap type at that location) or send summon recon forward.
I can see where a druid may have a benefit to use it solo, perhaps combined with a charmed mammal at level 2, to trigger a few traps, but they still need either ppl or mammal targets available to send sacrificial trap-trippers.
The chief reason I see the spell as wasted, though, is the question of "When do you decide to cast it?". I mean, you won't have enough slots to take 20 steps, cast FT, take 20 more steps, rinsing and repeating for long... without exhausting all your level 2 slots, slots that would be much better utilized (a single casting of FT is about as useless as one can get unless you are already certain there are traps in the immediate vicinity).
Dunno. Seems like nothing but a spell that seems to make the repertoire of spells larger without really adding much value.
I think one [edit: possible] benefit of the spell over the skill (besides of course solo runs for non-thieves who can cast the spell) is that the Find Traps spell seems to detect quicker and at a larger distance, reducing the probability of inadvertently triggering a trap.
I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the number of thieving skill points invested in Detect Traps, i.e. whether a Detect Traps skill of say, 150, makes a Thief detect traps faster and easier than a skill of 100.
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The aspect I find most interesting, though, is the apparent "fact" (@elminster) that the detect level and disarm level of a trap can be set separately. So, if a designer decided to set a very high detect level but a more pedestrian disarm level, a medium-level thief could use a priest's spell to discover those and then use their disarm ability to deactivate it. Not that I've ever noticed such an odd trap customization, but a trap COULD be set up that way.
Detect and disarm actions would then use separate dice rolls in combo with the ability allocations, though... right? There must be for at least detection because if enough rounds elapse, a high level detect check will eventually succeed. That would account for what appears to be a faster detect action with higher ability levels since higher dice rolls would not be needed to succeed the check and eventually even a roll of 1 in the first round within trap proximity would succeed. Whether repeated attempts at disarming will reroll the check... THAT I couldn't even guess (since my thieves never failed disarming any trap on the first attempt they were able to detect, probably just because the traps encountered happen to be designed with equal levels). Lock-picking does reroll the check but traps may be treated differently.
The long interval between ticks of the skill makes it very tedious to de-trap a dungeon that is full of them, and this could be a very good perk for a cleric-thief, or for a thief with a supporting cleric or druid in the party. It also gives the druid something useful to do with second circle druid spells.