Trap Revisions

[Ardanis]

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.

Consumption, yes.

[Ardanis]

Okay, I've got few news about this.

 

First, I can't seem to find a way to properly consure spells when setting traps. Well, whatever...

Second, I'm nearing the finish, if circusstances will allow, I'll upload Trap Revisions soon.

[Ardanis]

Here you go.

[leania]

Oh... I noticed now Ardanis was already done for revised Trap...! That is really great work indeed.

 

BTW I have a few suggestion for the reivision.

 

1. Lightning Bolts Traps for Thieves seem not to be reasonable trap because Thieves are not closely related to magic though they may be able to read scrolls. IMO 2 types of traps for Thieves are sufficient since they are not specialized to Trap compared with Bounty Hunter.

 

2. Should we give "Set Snare" ability as HLA? I think the revised traps are so powerful, thus increase of the number of setting traps may cause balance problems.

 

3. We should keep increasing thieving abilities by racial/dex bonuses. Who would select Halfling as their thief character if dex/racial bonuses are not so important?

 

4. I think the skill cap of each trap need to be lower except the case of Bounty Hunter.

[Ardanis]

1. Those are crossbow Lightning Bolts +2, not magic invocations. I may even have made PFMW to stop them (?).

 

2. Makes sense, but note that special HLA traps do not add new uses per day as in vanilla, but instead merely increase dialog options.

 

3. My reasoning was that a trapper works in safe environment, where good reflexes are not important, as it is the case with stealing and hiding, as well as with doing batle against an intricate lock or trap.

 

4. They do receive a firm skill bonus... but I guess your idea has merit.

 

 

That said, I'm playing with a thief character now, and came across following thoughts:

1) Gold cost should better be removed, at least as a default feature.

2) There need to be slightly more options for low level skill values.

3) Instead of gold, some more powerful traps - like lightning bolts - should require said bolts to be present in inventory and be taken afterwards. Latest ToBEx's features allow for flawless implementation.

[Ardanis]

Thoughts.

 

Traps should scale both with rogue level and skill, using the skill for success probability was a really poor choice. I suggest to use the level for qualitative upgrades (darts become poisoned at 10th etc.), while the skill determines the power of effect.

 

AoE traps can be made user-unfriendly, but it only works well when the trigger radius is minimal - the explosion has to be target-centered if we want to retain trigger-friendliness.

 

There should be three basic trap types:

1) Bolt - multi-loaded single target, variable number of shots and save penalty

2) Darts - AoE, variable explosion radius and save penalty

3) Spike - single target with minimal trigger radius, variable damage

 

Another possible trap type is a symbol emanating aura. Known issue - the delay between consequential activations is also the initial trigger delay, which means our once-per-round thing would also wait for a round before it decides to trigger, leading to the same problems as with vanilla Skull Trap.

[Kalindor]

I agree that the skill percent would be better applied to strengthening the effect of traps instead of success rate. I did not know this was possible.

[aigleborgne]

Would it be possible that traps could be used by enemies as well ?

I mean, I never used traps because it's just cheese and unfair, especially stacking traps on the same area. It shouldn't even be possible to set multiple traps on the same exact location.

 

Now, if you can set trap while in combat and enemy can do it too, I could see a reason to use them. It would be more like an offensive effect but at least, it's fair if everyone can use it.

Players would still have an advantage because they can better place and disarm them.

[Ardanis]

Vanilla trap setting restrictions are tied to specific opcode, which can be omitted. After that it's only a matter of scripting support for enemy AI.

 

Using snares in combat should be fine with casting time of one round, I think. I can't think of any feasible way to disarm them, though.

[kreso]

Iirc, BP AI actually uses traps in combat. SCS doesn't.

[aigleborgne]

Last time I scripted enemies to set traps, they did it, but it was friendly traps if i remember correctly.

So maybe, we need to change target of all traps, I haven't looked yet how they are configured.

 

I could see some good points to manipulate enemy thieves, settings traps, then try to hide, and backstab. Thieves might become more powerful after all.