ToME WikiRavenRed: Just a relatively quick idea on Trapping. This ability should once more become a skill, and have additional abilities as a result of it. These range from detection, to Trap Creation to even more exotic abilities (see below for the gory details).
ZasVid: Maybe increase the cost of 'trapping' ability and attach whole trapping scheme to Disarming skill? Then it wouldn't be such a waste of skill points as it is now.
RavenRed: Should an ability scale? Having said that, increasing the utility of currently single-use skills is always a plus, for mine.
NeilStevens: I'm informed that trapping is already strong enough to kill Morgoth. Why should it become a skill again? That would make it way more expensive, as the current ability is equivalent to level 25 of the old skill.
Wastrel: True, it is strong enough. But is it fun enough? Currently it is like playing with really high spell failure rates (75% or more). How about another ability ('Master Trapper' or some better name) that will give the equivalent of skill level 50 of the old trapping skill?
NeilStevens: I could support that.
KhymChanur: How about making Disarming do double-duty for the Trapping skill, like ZasVid suggested? It sort of makes sense that if you've learned enough to be really good at disarming traps, you should have learned something about setting them as well.
NeilStevens: Too hackish for my taste. Let's leave well enough alone. I can go with increasing the power level with a second trapping ability, but that's about it.
This skill should be available at a high mod to Rogues (1.200 or 1.000) and at a lower mod to assassins (0.700) and at an even lower mod to Rangers (though not Archers, .500).
This could become an important part of the arsenal or the sneakier classes, and the ability to create traps (in the same way as Archers can create ammo) expands the capabilities of trap-using characters markedly...
(NB All of these abilities are Mana Cost 0)
Set Trap - (Skill Level 1)
See snares (Skill Level 5) Detects traps in a radius of 1+(Trapping/5). At level 30, detects all traps in LOS
Create Trap (Ability, 15 Pts, req Trapping@10+ INT 17, Free to Trappers @ L5) - Allows access to:
Create Catapult Trap (Skill Level 9) Requires 1 junk item and 1 sling. At Level 19, all traps created are [excellent]
Create Fumes Trap (Skill Level 15) Requires 2 junk items and one empty bottle. At Level 25, all traps created are [excellent]
Create Bolt Trap (Skill Level 22) Requires 2 junk items and one crossbow. At Skill Level 32, all traps created are [excellent].
Device Trap (Skill Level 33) Requires 3 junk item and one staff/wand (NB, this does not LOAD the trap with the magic-device, it merely creates it). At Skill Level 43, all traps created are [excellent]
Identify Trap (Skill Level 17) Identifies a previously unknown trap type next to the player.
Steal Snare (Skill Level 27) Disarms a trap and creates a new trap, “stealing” it. The Disarm should take place at ½ the average of the combined Disarm and Trapping skill, however.
Detonate Trap (Skill Level 40) Enables the player to detonate one of his own traps at a distance, under the feet of hostile monsters. It becomes a radius-1 effect at Level 45 #1, and affects non-player traps at Skill Level 50
2cworth and counting...
#1 The Room of Mousetraps filled with Pingpong Balls effect. As one is set off, it will spring another, which will spring another, and so on...
Chatter
KhymChanur: Interesting idea. Perhaps instead of requiring a certain level to make [excellent] traps, an [excellent] level item would be used, so you'd need a Wand of Foo of Plenty or an Iron Rod of Foo of Cheapness to to make an [excellent] Devices trap. But then, for catapult, arrow and bolt traps, you might want the created trap to preserve the Ego ability of the item, so you could use a sling of Extra Shots to make a Catapult Trap of Extra Shots.
Also, maybe there could be a way to control what type of [excellent] trap was made. Like adding 20 bolts of Slay Dragon to the trap creation (used up in the creation attempt) would make a Bolt Trap for Dragons.
RavenRed: I thought of that, but that veers quite close to the alchemy model of doing things (which, for mine, encourages scumming). Also, the idea of a certain level granting [excellent] traps is partially so that it's worth raising the Trapping skill to the max, rather than people stopping after they get the minimum for Bolt/Catapult/Device traps... I do take your point, however.
About "Steal Snare", would that only work on Arrow and Bolt traps, or would it also work on, say, a Nexus Ball trap? Hmmmm, maybe another ability, "Commandeer trap", which changes a pre-existing dungeon trap so that it's triggered by monsters instead of you. Commandeer a Summon Undead trap, and it will sumon pet undeads for you...
RavenRed: Yes, but you'd get a random trap when using Steam Snare. Not the peak of realism, I know, but far far easier to code...
KhymChanur: Some more thoughts on this.
- About the "steal snare" ability, I'm implementing the trap code for ToME 3.0.0, and making a trapkit corespond to the trap that was stolen shouldn't be that hard. Stealing an arrow or crossbow bolt trap would turn it into an arrow/bolt trapkit. Stealing an Inertia Ball trap would create a special no-ego Inertia Ball trapkit.
- The trapping skill could make player-set traps harder to detect and disarm by monsters; to compensate for this, the ability to create trapkits would become an ability you could buy, like "Forge Ammo".
- Add a "Trapper forge ammo" ability that can be bought, so that non-archers that rely on ammo-using trpakits can make their own. It would depend on the Trapping skill rather than the Archery skill.
- A no-mana-cost, no-fail means of detecting traps seems rather powerful, especially to gain at skill level 5. I think that should have at least some mana cost. Additionally, detecting all traps in LOS at level 5 is also pretty powerful. I think that it should have a radius that increase will the skill level, so that at skill level 5 it has a radius of 1, at skill level 10 it has a radius of 3, and so on, turning to full LOS at some high skill level.
Have a trapper class, to play like Wastrel did in ''A Day in the Life of a Trapper''. It would be like the rogue class, but have the following differences: (1) Can't hit with a melee weapon at all, or use offensive magical devices, to force a reliance on trapping. (2) Starts with 3, or maybe 4, catapult trapkits. (3) Gets "Trapper forge ammo" ability at character level 2, and "Create Trapkits" at character level 5. (4) No backstab, stealing, or dodging skills. (5) No access to the divination or temporal schools of magic, but a higher mod to the conveyance school. (6) No exp penalty, since playing a trapper is hard enough as it is.
RavenRed: My thoughts on your thoughts on my thoughts...
- "Foo Ball" and "Foo bolt" traps (i.e. not standard arrow/bolt traps) could default to Device traps. Summon traps could default to magic (scroll) traps. This would (to a large degree) mean that the dungeon trap system could correspond fairly closely to the player trap system.
- I agree that the detect LOS is pretty powerful for zero mana. However, remember that it's also ONLY line of sight, without the ability to "see" through walls. It's not detect all on level. This renders it "handy" without being "omniscient". See above for my edit to that idea, anyway.
- Trapper forge ammo... is a standalone ability necessary? Could we maybe make Ammo creation an either/or proposition instead (Trapping / Archery)?
Your trapper class is nice. Evil, but nice. Furiosity (come back, Furiosity, all is forgiven) created something similar for Theme, I seem to recall. Is the conveyance so that they can cast Recall on their own disarmed traps?
EDIT: Oh, and if "commandeer trap" could be achieved merely by changing the faction of the trap... even easier...
Wastrel: Probably duplicating my old forum postings, but:
- the ammo creation problem could be solved by simply giving Rogues access to the Archery skill. Even a modifier of [0.300] would be enough, since relying on traps means skill points probably aren't going into the melee skills.
- Monsters detect traps too easily. Going back to the Disarm skill for modifying the chance of detection seems the simplist method
- Some way of getting traps to stack in inventory would be nice. Enchant item scrolls would work for the less deadly trapping kits.
- No Divination spells for a 'Trapping class'?!!! I've yet to win without high divination and conveyance!
- Yeah, giving Rogues some Archery makes sense anyways (plus maybe crossbow mastery?), to shoot at their victims from the shadows, or something like that. But if it as just a [0.300] mod, then you'd have to spend a lot of points to pump it up enough to be able to make arrows and bolts.
- I was planning on making the catapult/arrow/bolt trapset enchantable anyways.
- Hmmm. Maybe the Disarm skill can make traps somewhat harder for monsters to detect and disarm, with the Trapping skill being even more effective, to make Trapping a more desireable skill to put points into, even if you don't plan on making your own trapkits.
- I thought you'd gotten divination just from Eru and prayer; maybe just remove access to the Temporal school.
Wastrel: Yes, that character got divination from Eru. But those two schools are my crutch.
Also! I've been making up new trapkit egos as I've been implementing the 3.0.0 trapkits system (because all the available hooks make it so easy), like:
Returning: when the trapkit in disarmed, runs out of ammo, or is otherwise unset, it and whatever ammo remains are teleported to your location.
Undisarmable: can't be disarmed magically, and attempting to disarm it manually, either by you or by monsters, instead sets it off. So it's good to use on monsters that often notice and disarm traps, but if for some reason it doesn't get set off by a monster, then you'll either have to lose it, or take the penalty of setting it off yourself.
More levels of Automatic. From looking at the 2.3 code, Automatic rearms 20% of the time, while Fully Automatic rearms 100% of the time. I added three more, which rearm with 40%, 60% and 80% chance.
Wastrel: Returning & Undisarmable I like. In my experience, even a fully automatic trap gets disarmed by monsters often enough that its ability seldom comes into effect.
I'm going to try to make it so that, for trapkits which can accept more than one of an ammo type (like Automatic and of Extra Shots) that they can accept a mix of different things, so you could put one rounded pebble, one iron shot and one mithril shot into a catapult trap set that can shoot out three shots. So, does this sound like a good idea?
Wastrel: I think the option to mix ammo can be useful (mix 'Bullseye' with the arrow of Gondor for instance).
Finally, I'm trying to work luck into the trapkit system, because for a Trapper class it wouldn't really be far for good luck not to be put to use (and for bad luck not to be penalized).
Wastrel: Since you are modifying the code could you fix my pet peeve?
- catapult,arrow,and bolt traps should have the damage multiplier displayed just like a sling, bow, or crossbow.
- If a trap kit of 'extra might' raises the multiplier then it would be obvious to the player just like a sling of extra might (x5). If the trap kit of 'extra might' does not raise the multiplier then I recommend changing its name to something less confusing. My guess from a glance at the code was that it did not raise the multiplier, but I was never 100% sure.
KhymChanur: Yep, I was already planning on doing that.
Probability of monster disarming a trap
KhymChanur: Whether or not a monster disarms a trap is decided in two steps: first, if the monster even notices the trap, and, if the monster notices the trap, if the disarming succeeds. The probability of a monster NOT noticing the trap is: (150 - smartness + difficulty) / 300. Difficulty is equal to your trapping skill modified by the trapkit being well hidden or obvious; with trapping being an ability it's hard-coded to 25. Smartness is equal to the monster's level, increased by 10 if the monster has the "smart" flag, and increased by 20 if the monster has previously noted one of the player's traps.
Thus, when trapping was still a skill, if you used an ordinary (no-ego) trapkit against a level 1 monster, a trapping skill of 0 would mean a 1/2 chance of the monster not noticing the trap, while a skill of 50 would mean a 2/3 chance of of not being noticed by the monster. This means that, with a skill of 50, a level 1 monster still has a 1/3 chance of noticing the trap, which seems pretty ridiculous to me; another way of looking at it is that increasing the skill from 0 to 50 only increases the chance of non-detection by 1/3.
If the trap has been detected by the monster, then it gets a chance to disarm it; if disarming fails, the trap is triggered. The chance of NOT disarming the trap is (80 - smartness + difficulty) / 120. Smartness is 1/5 of the monster's level, which is multiplied by 2 if the monster has the "smart" flag. The difficulty is entirely dependent on the trapkit, and was never affected by the the trapping skill. To get an average for a trapkit's difficulty, in wizard mode I went to level 127 of Angband, set my base luck to 33, and wished for a bunch of doable-ego trapkits; this produced some cursed trapkits, so I'm assuming it's representative of trap kits that would be found like normal under the same circumstances. The average non-cursed trapkit difficulty was 9.125, with a maximum of 13. Against a level 1 monster, the average difficulty would increase the chance of not being disarmed from 66% to 74%, an 11% increase in effectiveness. A difficulty of 13 changes it from 66% to 75%, an 16% increase in effectiveness.
I think that something like the old trapping skill might work if the two formulas above were changed, and better trapkits were given a higher disarming difficulty.