Arelith

Months ago I noticed on the PGCC that ESF: Set Trap does very litte. Heavy gear investment in the skill does very little as well.

If memory serves, these things do increase the detect and disarm DCs but do nothing for damage or even the DC against the trap's effect.

Set trap skill investment has a niche in the sense that increasing detect DCs can be useful for catching people unawares in PvP, but this is only the case if the opponent has a very high detect skill. For the most part heavy investment offers virtually no real returns against 98% of players. Not to mention PVE.

In fact, with gruesome technique rogues are better off going with heavy intimate investment than with heavy set trap investment if they want to be amazing trappers.

I'm not denying that gruesome technique is awesome, but I think this is kind of weird. IMHO, incredibly high set trap values should actually make you a better trapper in terms of damage or just the likelihood of a trap going off.

I also don't understand this reasoning that Gruesome techniques Traps Fear is tied to Intimidate instead of actual Set Trap skill.

Set Trap skill handles damage done and clearly indicates characters dedication to trap usage, why not allow the Fear on trap trigger be based on Set Trap as well?

aka... Skill Focus: Set Trap = Gruesome Technique
Epic Skill Focus: Set Trap = Nightmare Tactics

Edit: And Fear DC based on Set Trap skill not on Intimidate

Background:
Playing a trapper character who simply doesn't have skill points/stats available to invest into Intimidate

I would guess because gruesome techniques involve the usage of more than just traps. If it worked exclusively with traps and traps alone I can understand it being based of your set traps skill, but it isn't.

I have zero problem with gruesome technique as it is. It's awesome. I did not intend to suggest that it shouldn't exist.

All I'm saying is that set trap as a skill really doesn't reward much beyond 33 ranks and a good dexterity score. Almost every other skill rewards deep investment.

Ridiculous hide/ms can be super useful. The same with spot and listen. Getting discipline into the 70s is important, if not essential for most builds. 80 lore is a big deal. The sky is the limit with spellcraft.

You can pump use traps to a ridiculous level, and all that does is increase your detect/disarm DC against an absolutely tiny minority of dedicated trap spotting specialists in certain niche PvP situations. Getting trap gear/feats is basically a trap right now (lol).

To be fair, i'm not sure how you could improve set traps further without it getting ridiculous. The "average" epic trap damage is 192ish with a 38-39 DC with a heavy "rogue" investment, which can get stupid really fast if you run something over multiple traps. Even craftable traps have a listed average of 160ish with a 34ish DC, which again, gets stupid really fast considering the resources needed to craft traps are relatively inexpensive.

Damagewise, a handful of traps can outpace an epic evoker in very short explosive bursts. Yes, saves and elemental resistances negate some of this, but if you have time to prepare 4 or 5 traps, you've probably got time to consider which ones will eat at someones weak points.

Even without rogue-like levels, I found traps extremely useful on my warlock, of all things in pve, as dealing with spell-resistance heavy enemies was a headache without them (aka: literally every underdark spawn)

I'm honestly not sure what can be done to improve them. Additional effects after a certain skill threshold seems overkill as most of the traps have additional effects already. The search/disarm DC gets higher as your soft set traps rank improves. Maybe adding some custom higher-end traps? Maybe ones that deal less with damage and more with utility?

Hi there !

Posting as someone who traps a lot (pve) and has succesfully use traps to get through many epic dungeons.

Nowadays I mostly use two types: Fire and Holy

Only rarely when in epic dungeons will I use a few electric, cold, spikes, negatives

Tangle and gas: never.
Haven't tried gas since immunity to poison was largely wiped, so would have to study a bit again. But I doubt It'd be worth using compared with others.
Tangle ... Tricky. Got trapped by my own despite high dex save. So would basically need FOM when using those. A lot of trouble when a rogue can simply throw a grenade.

Got to remember one thing: traps are large. 2x2 is a lot of space in inventory. So why bother with many kind of traps?

The recycling of traps has gone a long way to make those viable to use frequently.

On the matter of SF & ESF or Gearing:

• (very small) utility to make detect DC higher, because it avoids loosing the 5 DC effect on a foe that sees the trap.
• It counts toward recycling rate, but is actually not very useful since getting to the maximum rate of recycling is faisible without even reaching 33 in base set and disable traps (this is good thing, please don't change this)

Let's be frank, at this point SF or ESF would be a huge waste of feats, yes. And I also agree it's not easy to make these feats useful without making traps Op or making trapping impossible without the feats (that would be too bad).
A few idea for the sake of discussion:

• could impact the Traps DC. Could be that over a DC of 40 the surplus only counts for half (a bit like the calculation of parry damage)
• ESF could allow to craft the epic traps (perhaps with a costly material in the recipe?)
• SF & ESF could in some way make a better chance to recycle epic traps than the 50/50 that is rolled after the recycling skill roll.
• SF & ESF could grant some immunity toward some traps ... (perhaps 1 type for SF, 2 types for ESF?)
• SF & ESF could help in making traps "party friendly". Cause rn it is not at all sadly. They could give some at least partial immunities to your traps for friends. I guess a difficult thing to code. But clearly a field to study imo.

Got no more idea right now, will try to note down and transmit if I have more

The only thing I can think of would be adding new traps, like say, breach traps, that are only usable with higher set trap ranks. Dispelling is negligable at early levels as enemies/you rarely buffed to a significant degree, but very, very relevant towards the late and end game when buffs make or break a fight.

I wanted to flesh out an idea for Spell Traps to add to the suggestion box:

Spell Traps:

• has a Use Trap and Spellcraft check for crafting.

• Uses Deadly Traps and scrolls as components.

• Has a higher base DC than regular traps.

• Spellcraft is included in the DC checks.

Though I never got around to sitting down to complete it.
The below is an example, and breach / dispel traps were another obvious port for this setup.

Web of Shadows: This trap consists of fine, nearly invisible threads that are laced with shadow magic. When triggered, the trap ensnares the victim in a web of shadows, immobilizing them and draining their energy over time.
Components: Tanglefoot trap and shadow conjuration scroll.
Effect:
Spawns a web when triggered (per the spell)
The web lasts for X rounds and does entropy damage to anyone standing over it each round.