Thursday, March 18, 2010

Dwarves as trap-finders

Grrrr! Fear my chainmail loincloth!
There's some interesting stuff in the comments to yesterday's post about the everyman dungeon skills Find Traps, Listen at Door and Find Secret Door.  Some folks took notice of the fact that my little chart gave members of the dwarf class a blanket 2 in 6 chance of finding a trap.  My chart was based upon Moldvay Basic and it's retro-clone Labyrinth Lord.  Here's the relevant language from the Basic rulebook:
"They are expert miners and are able to find slanting passages, traps, shifting walls, and new construction one-third of the time (a roll of 1 or 2 on 1d6) when looking for them."
That's from page B9, under the class description for dwarves, in the paragraph titled Special Abilities.  I can see how someone might infer that these dwarven abilities only apply to stonework, but the text doesn't precisely specify that.  The second parargaph of the trap rules on page B22 don't specify dwarven find traps as anything more than a superior form of the ability every character possesses:
"Any character has a 1 in 6 chance of finding a trap when searching for one in the correct area.  Any dwarf has a 2 in 6 chance."
The text in my LL rulebook mirrors both these passages sufficiently that I'm not going to bother to type it in. 

So based upon the ambiguity in the first passage and the lack of modifying language in the second one, I rule that dwarves have a 2 in 6 chance of finding any trap that anyone else can find.

Does that help us at all with figuring out the problem of the thief Find Traps ability mentioned in yesterdays post?  Here's a comment from Robert Fisher, who is a pretty smart dude and one of my go-to guys for thinking on parsing fiddly D&D rules:
Some people take the interpretation that there are two kinds of traps. Type I traps are the big things like pit traps. Type II are the small traps like a poison needle in a lock.

The 1 in 6 for everyone and 2 in 6 for dwarfs rule—in this interpretation—only applies to Type I traps. The thief F&RT skill does not. (Type I traps cannot be overcome with a remove traps roll.)

Likewise, the generic rule doesn’t apply to Type II traps; only the thief F&RT skill.
I don't really see anything in the rules that supports the assertion that "some people" are making here.  As far as I can tell the rules in question only distinguish between regular traps that anyone can find and magical traps that cannot be found (unless you've got a detect magic or something like that going).  I could see some DMs allowing thieves to find magical traps, since the rules don't specifically preclude it.  I'm pretty sure that would make thieves more magical than I want in my campaign, expecially given that the next logical step is allowing thieves to remove magical traps.  And the step after that is letting thieves pick doors with wizard lock cast upon them.  I just don't want to go there.

Finally, keeping both non-magical thieves and trap-finding dwarves sets up an interesting situation in that dwarves appear to be better at trap detection than low level thieves.  Forget about putting the thief in front to find traps, get the dwarf out there to do it.  If he finds a trap the thief can be called up to remove it.  If the dwarf finds a trap the hard way he's got better hit points, better armor and better saves.  That little bugger is in a much better position to survive setting off the trap.  By using a little teamwork that poor d4 hit die Basic thief may actually live to second level.

Image: Ral Partha dwarf from SlappingPaint.net.  Dude's positively skinny by modern dwarf standards, ain't he?

11 comments:

  1. My house rule: By hurling a unarmored dwarf down a corridor, the party has a 5 in 6 chance of detecting any traps.

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  2. I agree that dividing traps into two types is unnecessary and really too much for me to bother with for OD&D. In fact, it sounds more like AD&D to me.

    So I looked it up. Here's what the AD&D Player's Handbook has to say:

    Dwarf: Detect traps involving pits, falling blocks and other stonework - 50% probability.

    Thief: Finding/removing traps pertains to relatively small mechanical devices such as poisoned needles, spring blades, and the like. Finding is accomplished by inspection, and they are nullified by mechanical removal or by being rendered harmless.


    It's one of the reasons I prefer OD&D and retroclones; it's not as harshly cut and dried as AD&D.


    Verification word: premmend. Contraction of pre-recommend, something critics do before they've even read/seen/heard the product, just based on their own prejudices.

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  3. Count me as one who thought that dwarf trap detection was limited to stonework stuff (due to AD&D) until a few weeks ago when I re-read the Labyrinth Lord text and found out differently.

    I happen to like it and don't see a problem with dwarves being better at it than low-level thieves.

    INTERESTING: LL Advanced Edition Companion gives dwarves +10% on find/remove traps, so a non-thief dwarf has a 33% chance, a dwarf thief has a 24% chance, and a human thief has a 14% chance. I'd think a first-level dwarf thief would be at least as good (and probably better) than a dwarf non-thief. I'd say give the dwarf thief a +20% to find but only the +10% to remove. That would put the dwarf thief at 34% to find for 1st level, reflecting the idea that there isn't a whole lot that thief career training can teach a dwarf about finding traps.

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  4. Way I see it, the thief ability to detect traps is of the same order as his ability to move silently or hide in shadows. It is a free pass if accomplished, much like the find traps spell. The normal 1-in-6 or 2-in-6 deal is an abstraction of actually searching for traps, which could alternatively be role-played out. No sense in role-playing out the thief ability.

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  5. Interesting. I never read the rules to mean that the dwarf trapfinding abilities were tied to stonework, I always just assumed that dwarves were good with mechanisms.

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  6. I agree with Al - if you have enough dwarves, you can find ALL the traps.

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  7. I agree with you Jeff - I see nothing wrong with a toke dwarf being better at finding traps than a low level thief.

    That mini is one of the best dwarf minis I've ever seen!

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  8. Mentzer also includes the distinction between "stonework traps" dwarves can find and other small traps that thieves can find/remove.

    Since I cut my teeth on Mentzer, I've always run it that way. I may think about changing things around.

    BTW, in my games, thieves can find and remove wizard locks, symbol spells, etc. but only at very high levels.

    http://lordgwydion.blogspot.com/2009/11/only-king-and-his-lord-marshall-have.html

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  9. How about Thieves get an additional +1d6 chance at finding traps? Ditto that for the bonus on the disarming of traps...

    Then a Dwarven Thief would have a 1-3(d6) chance of finding traps, while humans only have a 1/1d6 chance of finding traps, and a human thief would find a trap on a roll of 1-2 (d6) and so on...

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  10. In 'The Hobbit' I think it mentions that dwarves have very sharp eyesight and hearing.

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  11. I'm fighting through some of these fiddly bits myself in my Moldvay Basic campaign. I've decided to give Thieves a flat bonus to all thieving skills equal to their Dex Score - not the bonus, but the score, so a 1st lvl thief can actually open some doors and find some traps. It's an experiment but it seems to be working for now.

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