Why did I stand in front of the shotgun trap while disarming it?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

If I know where a shotgun trap is, I should logically be able to try disarming it without setting it off in my face.

If shotgun traps were less traditional damaging tiles, and more a 1-shot turret pre-aimed and waiting for the trigger, they’d be more dangerous in logical situations, someone might have set one up to protect an inner room of the house, or the front door.

If they were more common though, I suppose it would be best to mix in turret traps of all the smaller guns, to reduce their commonality.

2

Agreed. Right now it’s a little annoying that you can’t take a stick or something and set off a crossbow/shotgun trap without getting hit. Personally I love your turret idea, or at least we should have a “trigger with something else” option for crossbow/shotgun traps (maybe at the price of never returning ammo?) that gives a large boost to your ability to disarm it without getting hurt (I can still see the potential being there of you not understanding which way it’s pointing if you have a very low traps skill).

3

Because when you see the “shotgun trap”, you’re not really seeing the shotgun - you’re seeing the trigger of the trap. Imagine the shotgun is buried somewhere nearby, and the trigger is just a piece of rope under tension that fires when it breaks.

Now, how do you disarm this? How do you find the shotgun? Obviously, you could dig around for it… but that’s exactly the sort of thing that risks setting off the trap in a way that you get shot!

There has been discussion of ACTUALLY moving the shotgun to a different square, and having a generic “you see some sort of trap trigger here” sort of trap, (and being able to tie it to things like doors, so you can have the shotgun across the room from the door or around a corner where it’s hard to reach and disarm directly) but I’m not sure what the ultimate result will be. For now, though, assume the shotgun is inaccessible or it’s location is unknown until you disarm the trigger, and that’s what you’re actually trying to do here.

4

Thanks for the confirmation Glyph. I had always assumed your PC just stood and ogled in front of the barrel dumbfounded, like, hmm, how does this work? Maybe kick it a few times if your trap skill is low.

5

I’d really like to know how a buried shotgun trap works.

In any case, you ought to be able to throw high volume objects at traps to set them off, like a heavy stick.

6

Correction: Intelligence is low, Even someone that has no idea it is a trap would not kick a bloody Shotgun