Ye Olde Inn

As Zargon (or Morcar) Have you asked yourself this question: "Why won't my heroes bother disarming traps??!"

The bottom line is that the cost of an action is *more* costly than any negative consequences--they'd rather take the Body damage penalty of a sprung trap than fork over the time (or money, in the case of buying a tool kit), to attempt to disarm a trap safely.


One simple house rule: I propose making disarming a trap a free action, like opening a door.

1) A trap still must be found before disarming, and any Hero besides the Dwarf still needs to buy a tool kit to properly disarm a trap.

2) This also simplifies the conundrum of a trapped chest. Regardless of the outcome of the disarming attempt, a Hero can take their "search for treasure" action after the free action of disarming, and take the treasure they've earned. (By the book, this would be a 3 action process, search for traps, disarm trap, search for treasure!)

3) With this house rule, it's possible for a hero to begin their turn by searching for traps, then move to the trap, and attempt to disarm that trap, (and even continue moving after that!) all in one single turn.

Conclusion: This keeps the game moving at a nice pace, and still retains the tension of disarming the trap.


I'll give it a test drive during our next quest, and report back

Are you sure disarming traps even IS an action?
With spells it is clearly stated the wiz and elf can cast a spell instead of attacking.
It says no such thing for disarming traps.

NA rules list Disarming Traps as action 6, which then holds true for the Toolkit.
On the Dwarf character card, it is also listed as a possible action for him to take.

I don't wanna read the EU rules of play right now.

Stupid NA rules, making everything worse!
But it seems that's one more thing where UK/NA differ.

UK dwarf can automatically remove a trap while his American cousin must avoid rolling a black shield.
And in UK it's heavily implied that disarming a trap is a free action.

I like disarming being a free action because of the reasons Goldie mentions

I like it so much that I changed my entry for the Disarm icon for it to grant disarming a trap as a side action (like drinking a potion).
Last possible moment, I might add.
Great idea!

Can confirm GK's assertion of the UK rules regarding trap disarming:





Since there is no chance of failure in the UK rules, there is no need for the Hero to move on top of the trapped square for disarming.

I guess the house rule proposed here is now a mix and match of both UK and NA rules.

Wth keeping most of the vanilla NA rules, the differences of this House Rule from the vanilla UK rules are these:

1) Spear Traps and Treasure traps are not auto-disarmed when searched for.
2) Trap tiles are not placed on the board until they are sprung, only gestured to their position beforehand.
3) Hero must move *onto* found trap to disarm it.
4) chance of failure to disarm, not automatic success
4) Toolkit and Dwarf have diff chances of success.
5) A failed attempt springs the trap.
6) (Something else I'm overlooking?)

If disarming a trap is now a free action, the question is, besides adopting the UK rules wholesale, can we change anything else to improve on the improved? Do the remaining NA rules maintain a fun and thematic effect?

I have a dream of some day writing the two rulesets into one, taking the best from both. This could be a community project.
NA isn't exclusively improvements as we can see here.
Risk of failure is good. It being an action is bad.
Iron out all ambiguities, explain unexplained situations and basically make it 100% playable.

Then in the end, format the whole thing to resemble the official book, then contact Hasbro and ask them to make it official like the errata a few years back.

I mean, I could just play it however I want, but it would give me satisfaction to get the stamp of approval on the thing

I do not agree.

It may only be a body point, but they add up and fast.

Also it shouldn't be just a simple matter to disarm a trap, I like the mechanic already in play. It forces my players to play smart. Your players may be willing to take a Body Point to hurry things along. My players are wary of every BP they take. That 1 BP you suffer from a simple trap at the beginning of the game might be the difference between victory over the boss, or a wipe of the group.

If my players were to just start taking the damage instead of bothering to disarm...the next dungeon would find spear traps enchanted to do an extra BP in the quest notes....

cynthialee wrote:I do not agree.

It may only be a body point, but they add up and fast.

Also it shouldn't be just a simple matter to disarm a trap, I like the mechanic already in play. It forces my players to play smart. Your players may be willing to take a Body Point to hurry things along. My players are wary of every BP they take. That 1 BP you suffer from a simple trap at the beginning of the game might be the difference between victory over the boss, or a wipe of the group.

If my players were to just start taking the damage instead of bothering to disarm...the next dungeon would find spear traps enchanted to do an extra BP in the quest notes....

But the difference there is made by searching for traps and then memorizing the right spots,
not by disarming a trap being an action or not.

Once my players (or one of them - the one with the functioning brain who can tell the others while they move) memorize where the traps are, they tend not to disarm any because they "waste" a search action AND risk BP. That's how I've always observed it...
GYG's suggestion there is a pretty near perfect compromise to make the mechanic attractive again.

GimmeYerGold wrote:As Zargon (or Morcar) Have you asked yourself this question: "Why won't my heroes bother disarming traps??!"

The bottom line is that the cost of an action is *more* costly than any negative consequences--they'd rather take the Body damage penalty of a sprung trap than fork over the time (or money, in the case of buying a tool kit), to attempt to disarm a trap safely.

My group never had this issue. We were accustomed to D&D, so taking the time to disarm traps was part of successful dungeon-crawling. It appears your Morcar/Zargon event deck is contributing to their behavior, but your fix is a good way to deal with it.

GimmeYerGold wrote:One simple house rule: I propose making disarming a trap a free action, like opening a door.
...
2) This also simplifies the conundrum of a trapped chest. Regardless of the outcome of the disarming attempt, a Hero can take their "search for treasure" action after the free action of disarming, and take the treasure they've earned. (By the book, this would be a 3 action process, search for traps, disarm trap, search for treasure!)...

Overall, your houserule deals with this nicely. I do feel in this case it is a little counter-theme to abbreviate disarming a trap while leaving the search for treasure a full action. I mean, searching for treasure at a chest by opening it is very similar to opening a door, which is already a free action. Picking up the treasure is also a free action in the rules (NA at least.) I'm inclined to pass off a search for treasure adjacent to a chest as a free action, instead. However, I can see that it's simpler to to use your blanket disarm free-action to make things run more smoothly in all cases.

GimmeYerGold wrote:3) With this house rule, it's possible for a hero to begin their turn by searching for traps, then move to the trap, and attempt to disarm that trap, (and even continue moving after that!) all in one single turn....

GimmeYerGold wrote:...I guess the house rule proposed here is now a mix and match of both UK and NA rules.

Wth keeping most of the vanilla NA rules, the differences of this House Rule from the vanilla UK rules are these:

1) Spear Traps and Treasure traps are not auto-disarmed when searched for.
2) Trap tiles are not placed on the board until they are sprung, only gestured to their position beforehand.
3) Hero must move *onto* found trap to disarm it.
4) chance of failure to disarm, not automatic success
4) Toolkit and Dwarf have diff chances of success.
5) A failed attempt springs the trap.
6) (Something else I'm overlooking?)

If disarming a trap is now a free action, the question is, besides adopting the UK rules wholesale, can we change anything else to improve on the improved? Do the remaining NA rules maintain a fun and thematic effect?

I see a seventh difference (#4 was repeated.) Since a Hero May perform an unlimited number of free actions in a turn, more than one discovered trap may be disarmed in a turn as a Hero continues his move. The EU rules limit a disarm attempt to just one a turn.

Consider the extreme case of eight traps placed consecutively in a single corridor, as in The Eastern Passage, Quest 7 of the NA version of Keller's Keep. With a decent move roll and some good luck, it is possible for the Dwarf to disarm all of the traps before the false door in a single turn. For me, this shouldn't be possible due to thematic sensibilities. I'm more comfortable with a one-disarm-a-turn limit. You could amend your houserule to match the EU limit easily enough, if that's what you want out of it.