PLEASE improve character pathfinding

[hyperion_500]

Allied characters KNOW there's a trap/hazard area there.
They KNOW the hazard will hurt if they step on it.
There is a CLEAR path around the hazard, requiring 2-3 more steps.

So why in the Abyss do they keep bee-lining straight through the known hazard at the earliest opportunity?!? Sometimes they even ignore manual pathfinding around the hazard.

I realize SOME micromanagement is inevitable, but this is just infuriating. Of all the issues I have with the Pathfinder games (building adjacency, lack of vanilla equipment crafting, choice railroading, the bizarre vanilla alignment shifts, etc.) this is easily the worst, because it's the one that can't be modded away.

[Buyung Kilat]

If you can automatically maneuver around these traps, wouldn't that make them pointless? Might as well ask to get rid of the traps altogether, I'd say.

But without the traps, thieving skills will lack variety in its use.

[hyperion_500]

Originally posted by Buyung Kilat:

If you can automatically maneuver around these traps, wouldn't that make them pointless? Might as well ask to get rid of the traps altogether, I'd say.

But without the traps, thieving skills will lack variety in its use.

I get the feeling you didn't read my post very closely.

If they don't know the trap is there, then it makes complete sense they'd walk into it. But as I said, characters keep walking into trap triggers EVEN WHEN THEY KNOW IT'S THERE, and there's a big red indicator box indicating the trigger area. Not to mention walking through visible, and obviously dangerous hazards like poison gas clouds instead of automatically steering around the hazard, like any half competent orangutan would.

As for thievery, you DO usually have to disarm or trigger most traps to proceed. So I don't see how you think this would make thieving skills lack variety.

[rsk454]

Agree 100%, really stupid to have the characters detect a trap then walk right over it while attempting to disarm it.

[hyperion_500]

Originally posted by rsk454:

Agree 100%, really stupid to have the characters detect a trap then walk right over it while attempting to disarm it.

The problem is especially bad when enemies show up on the other side of the trap. If you don't start combat in turn based mode, it often results in having to reload from the last save because half the party pulled a Leroy Jenkins before you can hit pause, and even then if you manually pathfind every party member around the trap, the're a good chance they'll randomly swerve off the path and set off the trap anyways.

If the AI can't figure out how to get around static threats, it's broken and needs to be fixed, end of story.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by Buyung Kilat:

If you can automatically maneuver around these traps, wouldn't that make them pointless? Might as well ask to get rid of the traps altogether, I'd say.

But without the traps, thieving skills will lack variety in its use.

Traps ARE pointless. They are just a "fk you" to the player. They are not meaningful. They are just there to ruin your day for no good reason.

AND they are extra pointless because the enemy mobs don't set off traps when they clearly should.

Also I totally agree that the player's characters should not run over traps. I shouldn't have to manually maneuver and keep track of every party member every millisecond. I'm not a babysitter. And unless you turn on the stay in place option, even if you move each unit around the trap, they are still going to run right through it the moment your back is turned. It is stupid and really bad game design.

Frankly I think games need to stop having fu traps altogether. They don't make the experience better, they make it worse.

[mna99]

Traps are part of the classic D&D/Pathfinder experience. It is true that it is lazy of the developers to allow enemies to ignore simple mechanical traps; however, magical traps can be configured to trigger only on certain individuals.

Traps are a big-enough part of the 3.5e experience that they can have their own CR if used in an encounter. Presumably the same holds true for Pathfinder 1e.

As far as the big, red trap outlines are concerned, nobody running a tabletop game would give your entire party perfect knowledge of the trap trigger area just from one member of your party making a Spot/Perception check. Your Rogue wouldn't have time to draw a nice chalk outline around the thing mid-combat. Even if he could accurately describe the trap trigger location on his initiative, there's no guarantee that your Barbarian would listen after entering a rage.

It's a huge benefit to CRPG players to be able to steer everyone around traps like that versus what you'd have to do in an equivalent pen&paper session. The controls are a little janky for real time, yes, but you can just turn off AI and use hold where necessary until someone disables the stupid things.

[Azure-Ghost]

They should increase trapsize so you can't "move around" in most cases and have you make mobility/acrobatic checks each time you try to pass a detected trap (several times for bigger ones)

I think it was in DDO? (might missremembering but it was definitly some D&D online RPG) where you had to actively maneuver through the traps like a parcour to reach the trigger and disable it, a task often pretty much impossible to anyone lacking the skills or wearing heavier armor. On the other hand traps were usually quite visible (not so the mechanic to disable the trap which required a perception/trapfind check to find) and often lead to optional rewards

[hyperion_500]

Originally posted by mna99:

Traps are part of the classic D&D/Pathfinder experience. It is true that it is lazy of the developers to allow enemies to ignore simple mechanical traps; however, magical traps can be configured to trigger only on certain individuals.

Traps are a big-enough part of the 3.5e experience that they can have their own CR if used in an encounter. Presumably the same holds true for Pathfinder 1e.

As far as the big, red trap outlines are concerned, nobody running a tabletop game would give your entire party perfect knowledge of the trap trigger area just from one member of your party making a Spot/Perception check. Your Rogue wouldn't have time to draw a nice chalk outline around the thing mid-combat. Even if he could accurately describe the trap trigger location on his initiative, there's no guarantee that your Barbarian would listen after entering a rage.

It's a huge benefit to CRPG players to be able to steer everyone around traps like that versus what you'd have to do in an equivalent pen&paper session. The controls are a little janky for real time, yes, but you can just turn off AI and use hold where necessary until someone disables the stupid things.

Absolutely agree traps should be kept, they definitely are a part of the D&D experience, but I'd have to argue that even if not every character knows the exact trigger location of the trap, they should not have to be micromanaged away from the trigger.

I'll give the hypothetical example of a minefield, one may not know the exact location of every mine, but the only time an AI representing the intelligence of anything more competent than a particularly dim red-faced baboon should pass through an active minefield is if 1, they didn't know there was a minefield, and 2, the decision has been forced, or 3, they're neurologically impaired. Any other outcome is a sign the AI isn't up to scratch.

As for the AI work arounds, the point is, they don't always work, even when you manually assign each party member, they sometimes 'creatively' interpret those instructions to set off traps. And there really isn't an excuse for not having basic hazard avoidance behavior, especially if it creates a need for constant save-scumming. If anything, we should be having trouble getting the party AI to pass through hazardous areas when we NEED them to risk it.

Edit, entering minefield reason 4, they don't know what a minefield is.