Setting Traps (sage study)

The ability to set up mechanical devices for the purpose of detaining, damaging, wounding, injuring or killing unwanted trespassers and unsuspecting victims, preferably so that the character is not implicated in the trap's effect. Traps are typically used to protect valuables and other illicit property, or by owners who feel unsafe in their dwellings.

Most traps possess some sort of trigger, even if it is the movement of the potential victim which enables the trap, such as a covered pit. The materials used to make traps vary widely and trap-makers are assumed to be highly innovative in working with whatever materials might be immediately available. The most common tool employed is the knife, which is used to make, carve, bend or otherwise alter materials such as wire, twine, wooden or metal stakes and earth in order to change the environment sufficiently as to make it dangerous. Most of the materials used in a given trap can be salvaged afterwards, once the trap has been sprung or dismantled.

Another key element of trap creation includes misdirection and psychological manipulation, which drives individuals to move this way or that while in the trap's presence, reducing the random chance of activating the trap. An unskilled person setting up a snare might never successfully produce a result; but a person with even an Amateur knowledge of the study is presumed to set up a trap in such a manner than there is a 60% chance or better than any creature moving into a trapped 10-foot diameter area will fall prey to the trap. In part, this is also due to the use of varying baits. This helps explain why not everyone can simply build a pit and cover it; without a thorough understanding of where to dig the pit, or properly conceal it, the likelihood is that an ordinary pit would not produce any results.

It is presumed that assassins can dismantle and remove their own traps; however, as a limit to the assassin's prowess in the field, the study gives no special ability to remove the traps of others. The alternative study, Setting & Removing Traps, is a study that is available to the Thief class.

Sage Abilities

Amateur

• Animal Trapping: uses snares and traps to catch animals for their furs and meat, or as a means of pest control.
• Set Snare: creates nooses and tension to catch or immobilize unsuspecting victims.
• Trapping Pit: design pits with steep sides designed to trap victims, camouflaged with branches, leaves and other materials.

Authority

• Booby Trap: creates lethal traps using mechanisms and ample tension; includes spring traps.
• Recognize Dweomer: enables the observer to recognize the presence of magical traps, glyphs, runes, sigils and similar devices.

Expert

• Poison Trap: includes the enduring application of poison substances into booby traps.
• Pressure Trap: implements balance and hydraulic forces in the making of traps.
• Safe Trap: improves traps so that they can be reset or reloaded by unskilled persons with a minimum of training.

Sage

• Self-resetting Trap: uses magical applications and ingenuity to enable traps to reset themselves after firing.

See Assassin Sage Abilities