Ok so, just watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and after a specific scene with Rocket, I was curious if there was a "trap" system for FFG. I don't recall any career/spec that specifically states having benefits/talents that apply to making traps, and I can't remember any rules about setting up traps, but I was curious how it would work in this system.

First off, are there even rules about traps in this system? Because I can't recall seeing them. Second, is there a class spec that does actually revolve around setting up traps? I can't think of one, but I don't have all the books.

If not to either or both of the above questions, how would you make rules for someone, perhaps an outlaw tech/engineer type, that loves making gadgets but wants to use them for traps? How would that work in this system, and if you were building a talent tree around this idea, how would you do it?

Cunning Snare. Trailblazer.

I wouldn't necessarily give a Talent per se to a techie, although Mechanic pretty much already can be thought of as doing it with Bad Motivator or Contraption imo.

Creating them would probably be a Survival and/or Mechanics check like everything for crafting. Jury Rigging out of existing stuff one could be those, or appropriate Weapon skill imo.

How would you decide the results though? Would successes go toward damage the trap inflicts? Or the likelihood of the target to spot the trap? Would you instead have them make a skullduggery roll to try and actually hide the trap? Or make it part of the trap roll itself?

Hmmm. I see a few options here:

In case of a mine, that you want to hide, you do a simple mechanics check to arm it, then you hide it via skulduggery or perhaps survival, depends. But instead of making a check by the trapaker, the target of the trap makes a perception check against the corresponding skill of the traplayer. So if you want a rancor to spot the mine, you roll his perception against the traplayers survival skill, because maybe the rancor get's supicious by the strange smell, that the hunter did forget to mask.

The other one is, that you make an opposed check against the intended targets vigilance or perception.

I'd read Cunning Snare if you are looking to cause damage with an improvised trap and use that as a guide.

In regards to Guardians, some of that was them tripping traps, some of it was Rocket triggering things. Some of what he did would be a simple as a PC saying they're laying out a series of Stun grenades in an area that overlaps and setting up a remote trigger. That could be just saying everyone will at least take the Blast effect in a given area, and then have the PC maybe roll the Easy check to see if there are additional successes.

In the case of using Contraption any decisions you make about hiding it, emplacing it, triggering it, etc I'd have decided by that roll. I wouldn't bog it down with a lot of dice rolling for checks to emplace stuff, hide it, spot stuff, checks for this and that, too much dice rolling.

As others have said, try a mechanic similar to the Demolitionist's Improvised Detonation or the Trailblazer's Cunning Snare. I would either make the check harder or make the damage scaling worse. What you don't want to do is create something that makes it better than those classes talents. Alternatively, you could allow them to make hard mechanics/survival checks to rig blaster power cells, explosives or grenades to explode. Since there is a credit cost to doing this, you wouldn't be completely stepping on those talents. Lastly, there is an Electro-snare in Enter the Unknown that you could use as a template to design other types of traps.

2 hours ago, 2P51 said:

I'd read Cunning Snare if you are looking to cause damage with an improvised trap and use that as a guide.

In regards to Guardians, some of that was them tripping traps, some of it was Rocket triggering things. Some of what he did would be a simple as a PC saying they're laying out a series of Stun grenades in an area that overlaps and setting up a remote trigger. That could be just saying everyone will at least take the Blast effect in a given area, and then have the PC maybe roll the Easy check to see if there are additional successes.

In the case of using Contraption any decisions you make about hiding it, emplacing it, triggering it, etc I'd have decided by that roll. I wouldn't bog it down with a lot of dice rolling for checks to emplace stuff, hide it, spot stuff, checks for this and that, too much dice rolling.

It's basically what I meant, but I see that I was not that clear:

In my opinion the trap ist just set by the player. No check needed. The enemy then makes a check against the corresponding trait and skill as difficulty of the PC to avoid it.

What I meant by using skulduggery or survival, it's just how the player decides to hoide the trap. He doesn't make the check. It just determines the difficulty pool against which the target of the trap must roll. And of course different locatiosn, different traps all play a role in which skill is the relevant one.

The thing with the simple mechanics check to properly arm the mine is actually unnecessary, I see that now. You can arm a grenade perfectly fine, so why need a check to arm a mine.

I think it boils down to are you using something for what it's meant to be used for? The grenades already have time delay, detonate on impact, dead man switches, etc, so it would hardly be a leap for a crew to want a version of their grenades to be able to set up with tripwires, remotes, blah blah, all reasonable and not needing any fiddling I don't think.

Now, if you are taking repulsors off your grav bikes in the hold of your damaged freighter to set up anti gravtiy mines, that is where Contraption or whatever comes into play.

Mostly I'm talking about both. The creation of specific traps, and the setting them up in a way to avoid detection. I figure making the traps, would either be mechanics or survival, depending on the nature of the traps. There's a big difference in a thermal detonator with a tripwire, and a logroll set up by Ewoks. Basically, I'm mostly thinking of someone who builds the traps ahead of time, sort of as his primary form of combat, or at least a heavy focus. I guess it's mostly going to be Skullduggery to actually hide them in a way to catch unsuspecting targets.

Cunning Snare uses an opposed check with the player character's Survival versus opponents Vigilance as the the pool . I would think some variation of that based on skills and such is appropriate .

The specifics in regards to damage could be determined by obviously the details of what the trap actually does, and if it's designed to even do damage .

I'd favor a lot of one-roll resolution here, to keep things moving. You could certainly create templates for specific traps, go through a lot of crafting minutiae, etc. but I don't think that level of granularity adds anything to the game. Personally, I'd have the PCs make a single roll when emplacing the device, opposed by the target's Vigilance. If successful, it goes off as planned. Despairs are bad, etc. etc.

I'd just be certain to ensure that damage and additional effects are less than what you can get from Cunning Snare and/or Contraption, otherwise you're taking away from an existing Talent.