#ThiefWeek
What is a Trap
What constitutes a Trap? Can a magic circle trap still be disabled by a Thief (i.e. step into the circle and your are trapped in it)? The moves says he can theoretically, but do you need other tools in the fiction too? Does a Thief has to know enough about magic to disable it?
If i use a lot of magical traps in my game, do i make the Thief more magical because of it?
Does the Thief have the “right” to try to find every kind of trap and disable it?
Trap Expert
When you spend a moment to survey a dangerous area, roll+DEX. ✴On a 10+, hold 3. ✴On a 7–9, hold 1. Spend your hold as you walk through the area to ask these questions:
Is there a trap here and if so, what activates it?
What does the trap do when activated?
What else is hidden here?
Tricks of the Trade
When you pick locks or pockets or disable traps, roll+DEX. ✴On a 10+, you do it, no problem. ✴On a 7–9, you still do it, but the GM will offer you two options between suspicion, danger, or cost.
The Thief can totally spot magical traps and disarm them, because they’re traps and because that’s what the Thief does. Even if your trap is a magic circle, it will still leave telltale signs that the Thief can spot, in addition to the Thief knowing where all the best places to put traps would be and being therefore able to guess where you’d put it.
As for disarming it, ask your players. Maybe they just scrape off the activation rune, or throw a little bit of magic-neutralising grave dirt onto it, or any other method they can think of. You get to ask, they get to establish setting details to be reused later and everyone walks away happy, rather than telling the Thief that magical traps are immune to its class abilities.
I agree with Alex Norris , because who but a thief would consider stealing part of a trap as the method of escape… And returning it when you need to trap someone else.
“All around the runes are carved into every inch of the stone, there is no way to reach past the circle and remove all of them.”
“I take my dagger, pry lose the cobble stone and pocket it”
“Wait, what?
Ask the players.
“Hey thief, you don’t really know any magic. How do you handle magical traps?”
Work from there.
‘I recognize the metalwork on this lock! Let me check real quick… yeah, there’s a pin just past the tumblers that triggers something. Probably poison gas, judging from the cavities in the metal flowers of this fancy trim. Yep, less dust there, definitely a gas trap triggered by either lockpicking or an excessively long key. Maybe I’ll epoxy those nozzles shut and be sure not to push past that last tumbler when I go in the lock with my pick and tension wrench.’
isn’t much different from
‘There’s a trail of broken brick here, wedged into the grout line of the flooring. Why? Looks like it makes a closed loop. And if I throw some of this flour in there – yup, invisible angry man-shaped-thing. Do I have any holy water left…. maybe those quarrels of xenoplanarphobicness…’
The Thief is SUPER competent at finding traps, both the physical thing and the signs that something is afoot most other heroes would only be able to identify as a sixth sense telling them something was wrong. Could a thief set off a magical trap where he wouldn’t set off a mundane one? Sure, but that’s what the dice rolling is for in the first place!