I've had a couple of really irritating deaths to these things, since you don't need to be standing on or even that near the trap for it to be able to kill you. What happened was frontliners triggered the traps (once a bad summon to trigger it, once rubberbanding due to lag) and it jumped to my guy standing way in the back and killed him in one hit.

If there's going to be badassed traps around, sonic or fire are fair enough, they'll get anyone standing too close. But 15ft isn't much short of the detection radius, and they crop up in quite lowish-level places (like the Chosen, where it's instadeath to non-tanks).

I've always reckoned these things were overpowered, after using them a lot in Single-player as boss-busters. They do the most damage of any trap by far, get the largest blast radius and the hardest saves. In the latest case, one rubberbanding killed two of us and blew the hell out of another.

Is it possible to nerf these things into a level where there dangerous still, but one bit of bad luck won't eviscerate a party?

We know how strong they are and that accounts for why they are scarcely populated as it is. Traps are deadly and are a part of adventuring. I don't see this changing.

Meh, fine then. It's a gereal NwN thing, rather than an EfU thing, but it's odd that one trap so outshines all the others in every single capability. IMO traps should be like most things. Serious damage to a single target, or AOE that deals less damage per target but more overall. As it is, the single target traps are weakest whereas the AOE traps are most dangerous.

I don't think this trap outshines any other by a large amount. Each have their own uses and I have seen some traps that I would certainly use over the electrical. Also, they are scarcely about and thus good enough. Perhaps making sure your rogue has a great amount of scale would be a higher priority now as they should be (Yeah, all you rogue players should be happy at the free promo). Nerfing the traps would be horrid since it would just be another trap where frontliners purposely walk through knowing that it will do a minor amount of damage.

:shock: Scale is Light now? Useful. Could you stick that in Mechanics changes, I never thought to even look at the armor. No, this was a ranged caster bard, by the way, which is why he was standing right at the back in a tunic. :wink:

If you look at the table, for pure firepower on several targets, the electrical trap does outdo anything else (except a fire trap with a lot of PCs in the radius), and that's the thing. Both times, the traps were triggered out of combat, and lead to instant death with no chance to save us using healing. Yeah, -ve energy, gas etc are nasty in combat, but they won't fry you straight off.

Oh, and by "nerf" I was implying the AoE not the damage. Both times, the frontliner who tripped it survived with a wounding, and it was us standing back avoiding the damn thing who got zapped by the blast and sent Fuguewards. Dropping it to a level of 5-10 feet like the Fire Trap would make it still a deadly thing for a careless/unlucky frontline player to hit, but not an insta-wipe for anyone following cautiously at a distance. It's electrical, it'd take the first path to earth anyway :P. IG stuff like Gedlee's Electric Loop only has a 3-foot radius or something.

If I had it my way we'd do away with traps completely. >_<

But yes, this is probably not going to change.

MadCaddies If I had it my way we'd do away with traps completely. >_<

Dagam

MadCaddies If I had it my way we'd do away with traps completely. >_<

much agreed

Yus preeze

Traps are awesome. Just not the way they exist in NWN. And when bad DMs make everything fireball traps (sheesh, be creative!).

Traps, Indiana Jones-style, now THOSE are awesome. Swarming insects, Tumbling boulders and rocks, pitfalls, traps that warn of incoming foes... awesome.

Or modern military claymores. :)

Fat trap, IMO

Who could forget the fat trap?

Garem Traps, Indiana Jones-style, now THOSE are awesome. Swarming insects, Tumbling boulders and rocks, pitfalls, traps that warn of incoming foes... awesome.

Oh, hell yes! Zap traps annoy me bacuse of the sheer "Bang! dead!" effect. On the other hand a trap that gives a bit of warning (rumble or whatever) before unleashing some unusual form of screaming fury would be cool.

I would love to see a DM quest with an Animation Trap. If you trigger it, a dozen tractile zombies rise up around the area and attack. Now that would be unexpected, scary and very characterful in a quest with a necromancer or the like.

Because I can, I'll reply to this.

My rogues love to hate traps, and I'm always doing everything I can to increase my Search/Disable etc...

I know every quest with a Deadily electric trap in it, because I've died to every single one of them. The Dc is too high for evasion to matter, it never seems to show up on detect mode unless we've been standing around for awhile. And it's never hit me and not killed me.

Lots of traps are scary, lots of traps are impressive, these are neither. These just suck. And instant death of a large chunk of the party isn't a challenge, its just immersion breaking. Thankfully, They are rare. I'mean if I was breaking in the Queen of Traensyr's bedroom, Id' expect these types of traps. But honestly, I hate them otherwise.

Still, there is no solution to fullplates soaking traps, other then lowering a save DC (for the rogues <_>), and increasing the damage dealt.

*ZZZZZZZZZZTT*

I am pro lightning trap.

Yes, you and your Stone Breastplate both. :P By the way, DMs, that's such a cool piece of armor. Especially rainbow dyed.

Ebok's right on it. If they were that powerful or more and hit a single character, they'd be a good incitement to not rushing ahead. As it is, it's more likely to nail any character who's rigged to avoid traps (ranger, rogue, backliner) than it is to kill a fighter. Even if you don't bring the lightnings down a bit, it'd be good to see some sort of massive damage, single target, lower DC trap to discourage rushers, and let the rogues shine.

Basically a Spike Trap with >lightning-grade damage.

Traps like that are scary. What fun is adventuring if you're not scared just a little?

Keep endurance and protection from elements close, and you should generally be fine.

Electrical traps do like...120 dmg?

Yeah, I got hit for 89, enough to kill my Bard twice over even with prot from ele. He was already Mage Armored, and had >20AC on a backline char.