Trap Revisions

[Ardanis]

Trap revision

 

Few months ago I started working on a Trap Revision mod to supplement my playthrough with new experience, but soon after I caught my every year's Spring Anime Fever and left the stuff in a half-completed state. Being a rather small amount of content, I think it may look better as a part of KR.

 

As we all know, traps check for skill's value to determine the success chance and for thief's level - for the actual effect. The latter can be lived with, the former is annoying (chance of failure, yes). Moreover, there's absolutely no reason to raise the skill higher than 100%.

 

I figured out how take into account the PC's skill to determine the power of a trap. It takes summoning an invisible creature that initiates the dialog where PC's skill is checked and the appropriate .spl is used. It also makes possible to get creative and let the user to choose between, say, a regular trap that shoots a single dart and a more advanced one, that shoots a dozen of those but needs to spend 10 Darts of Poison. And so on. T/Ms can even spend scrolls (Slow, Confusion, etc.) to make magical traps.

 

It needs a fair amount of work to be done, as there're can be about a hundreds of .spls, besides scripts and dialogs. Needless to say, I'm willing to undertake the whole process, since it was my idea to suggest.

[Ardanis]

Traps, the summary

 

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The 'lay trap' ability in vanilla game.

 

Each % in the Set Traps skill represents character's chance to succeed when laying a trap.

If there're enemies nearby then, no matter how high the skill is, the thief will fail to set a trap.

As soon as the skill reaches 100% it will provide no further benefit.

The skill benefits from DEX.

 

There's a hardcoded limit of 7 active traps at the same time.

 

The thief class characters receive the Set Snare ability at the first level and then another one for every 5 levels of experience.

Bounty Hunter kit in addition receives Set Special Snare at exactly the same rate.

Thieves (including multiclasses) and bards may take Set Spike Trap, Set Exploding Trap and Set Time Trap as a HLA.

 

 

Proposed changes

 

Every 25% in the Set Trap skill represent one level of trap expertize (TE). The higher TE is, the greater is the effect of snares.

If there're no enemies around then trap setting will always succeed.

Otherwise the chance is 5% per TE, up to 50%.

No DEX bonus.

 

No limit on the number of traps. It already can be found in BG2Tweaks, the exe patch isn't necessary.

 

Thief characters get snares at about the same rate as in vanilla.

Slightly revised HLA traps - max of 3-5 traps of any kind instead of previous 16, Trap Mastery HLA that can serve as a bonus level of TE, probably another mastery HLA with a different effect.

Bards don't get any trap related HLAs.

Magic Trap HLA for T/Ms.

 

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Vanilla traps.

 

1) Set Snare - multi-target

 

Lvl 1 - 2d8+5 missile damage

Lvl 11 - 2d8+5 missile damage; 2d6 poison dmg for 3 rounds (6d6 in total)

Lvl 16 - 3d8+5 missile; 4d8+2 fire

Lvl 21 - 3d8+5; 20 poison; save vs death at +4 or death

 

 

2) Set Specail Snare - multi target

 

Lvl 1 - 3d8+5 missile; save vs spells at -4 or slow for 5 rounds

Lvl 11 - 4d8+5; save vs spells at -1 or hold for 5 rounds

Lvl 16 - save vs spells or Otiluke's Sphere of Resilience for 7 rounds

Lvl 21 - maze

 

 

3) Set Spike Trap - single target

 

20d6 magic damage

 

 

4) Set Exploding Trap - multi target

 

10d6 fire, save vs spells for half; wing buffet effect; save vs spells at -10 or unconsciousness for 3 seconds

 

 

5) Set Time Trap - self

 

Timestop for 10 seconds

 

 

 

Proposed changes.

 

1) Set Snare

 

a) Single target. 1d6/TE missile damage, save vs breath for half, save vs breath at -1/TE for no damage.

b) Multi target, needs level>=6, TE>=4, 10 Dart of Wounding. 1d4 missile; 2d2/TE*3 poison for round/TE*3, save vs death at -1/TE*3 for no.

c) 5 targets (SR's Flame Arrow, if it'll work), level>=8, TE>=6, 5 Bolts of Lightning. 2d6 missile, save vs breath at -1/TE for no; 4d4 lightning, save vs breath at -2 for half, save vs breath at -1/TE for no.

d) Single, level>=10, TE>=8, Arrow of Detonation. 2d6 missile, breath at -1/TE for no; breath at -1/TE or fireball for 8d6 fire, breath for half.

e) Single, TE>=4, Assassin kit, expends one Poison Weapon ability. 1d6/TE missile, breath for half, breath at -1/TE for no; breath at -1/TE or 1d6 poison for 3 rounds.

 

 

2) Set Spike Trap

 

Single. 5d8+1d8/TE piercing, breath -4 for half, breath at extra -1/TE for no.

 

 

3) Set Firebomb Trap

 

Multi. 1d4/TE fire, breath for half; breath -4 or burning flames 1d8 for 3 rounds.

 

 

4) Magic Trap

 

a) Single. 1d4/TE magic.

b) Single, expends scroll of Chaos or a memorized Chaos spell. Chaos spell.

c) Slow

d) Remove Magic

e) Hold Monster

f) Domination

 

 

That's all the ideas I've got so far.

[Demivrgvs]

Interesting concept...I'm trying to avoid non-SR related things right now, but I'll be back on this as soon as I have the time.

[Aranthys]

No limit on the number of traps. It already can be found in BG2Tweaks, the exe patch isn't necessary.

Erm, please, no. Unless it's a separate component.

Limits are there because it would make some fight absolutly way too easy... and even, it's already the case i think.

[Ardanis]

Erm, please, no. Unless it's a separate component.

No limit is more of a side effect here. It probably is possible to retain the limitation, but likely not too easy. Sorry about that.

[Dakk]

Allowing traps to be set while enemies are near (in combat, in the enemies midst) sounds like it could break something. What do you foresee balance wise?

[Icendoan]

Could you not have the traps have a very long casting time, also lowering the players AC so they can be interrupted easily in combat? Out of combat, this doesn't make much difference, especially if it is set to a round. This allows trap-setting in combat, just without the cheese of them being instant cast.

 

Icen

[Ardanis]

Increasing casting time to one round can be nice, but I foresee a character waving their hands in the air as if they were casting some fancy magic.

 

I'd still stick with the skill check. After all, if you've pumped your Set Trap skill up to 250 (10 full levels of experience!) then you really are the true master of trapping matters, and having 50% chance to succeed when tightly surrounded by a horde does sound fair to me.

[Demivrgvs]

Well conceptually I don't like at all the idea of setting traps while opponents see you. Don't be mad at me for this though!

[Ardanis]

In any case, it can be customized with ease if trapping while in sight of enemies is to be allowed. Or even made a separate component.

[Leomar]

Well conceptually I don't like at all the idea of setting traps while opponents see you. Don't be mad at me for this though!

Sorry, but for me, too. If I can see how a thief made a trap, why should I step into it?

 

Greetings Leomar

[Jarno Mikkola]

If I can see how a thief made a trap, why should I step into it?

Well perhaps you see him placing the trap, but can't get to him before he is protected behind it, so you have to disarm the trap or just rush through it, or let it kill you with arrows. All good options.

[yarpen]

- Traps are possible to being setup when enemy see you: in battle fervor not everyone is capable of avoiding trap. I know, player can do this but AI cannot. I like this idea because I remember great D&D 3rd editional prestige class of Battle Trapsmith or something about that - this guy was throwing traps to enemies legs.

- Setting up trap should be considered as casting spell for whole round (possible to do more?) with all of the interruption rules. Maybe there could be nice HLA which allows (especially to Bounty Hunter) to reduce time of setting trap.

- Traps shouldn't be as powerful as they were in vanilla game in the meaning of damaging. Spamming Firkraag with thousands of them isn't cool. But traps with minor spells as web loaded on them, or poison traps are just awesome. I don't like this little "wallbreaking" so traps via dialogues.

 

But after thinking about dialogues, I've got some idea about DRAGONS, which are most often victims of trapizator! When you're trying to set-up trap via dialogue Firkraag interrupts you with a bit cynic comment about how pity your methods are and what automaticly interrupts setting up a trap.

[Leomar]

If I can see how a thief made a trap, why should I step into it?

Well perhaps you see him placing the trap, but can't get to him before he is protected behind it, so you have to disarm the trap or just rush through it, or let it kill you with arrows. All good options.

All right, nice described, you're right.

But can the AI handle that? I think the enemies will only walk over the trap...

If I see that an enemy has made a trap, I try to avoid it, so the enemy should have the same behavior.

 

Greetings Leomar

[SixOfSpades]

If I see that an enemy has made a trap, I try to avoid it, so the enemy should have the same behavior.

The game is severely limited in what can & can't be done, AI-wise . . . while it is possible to script enemies to avoid small areas, it would be one hell of a pain in the ass to code, require 1 invisible creature per trap to hang around in the middle of a combat zone, create a chunk of script that would need to be added to the AI of nearly every intelligent creature in the game, and would cause enemies to behave strangely in a fight. ("He was about to cut my head off, but then he noticed that he'd stepped a little bit nearer to a trap than he'd like to be, so he turned and ran a few steps back.")

 

 

All told, I favor Thieves being able to set Traps in the middle of a fight, because as the Glitterdust discussion with DavidW reminded me, to go Invisible and Backstab is just about literally the only way Thieves can contribute in combat. (Fighter/Thieves with powergamed stats excepted, for obvious reasons.) So, my suggestions:

1) If there are no enemies in sight range, chance to set a Trap is 80% + 5% per level of Trap Expertise (to have 100% chance you must have at least 100 points in the skill, same as vanilla).

2) If there are enemies in sight but the Thief is Invisible, chance to set a Trap is 50% + 5% per level of Trap Expertise. (Only a master trapster with 250 points in the skill is guaranteed to succeed in the middle of a fight.)

3) If there are enemies in sight and the Thief is visible, chance to set a Trap is only 5% per level of Trap Expertise.

 

e) Single, TE>=4, Assassin kit, expends one Poison Weapon ability.

. . .

b) Single, expends scroll of Chaos or a memorized Chaos spell.

Is this outright consumption of the ability/spell or an actual casting of it? I don't think I want an Assassin to set a poisoned trap in the middle of a fight and stepping away from it with the full effects of a regular Poison Weapon, thus performing two combat actions in the same round.