Forgive me if I'm late to the party, this boat has sailed, changes have been made in r14, etc. I'd like to seek clarification on the following item:
EE r13 wrote:
Trap: Leg hold traps for fur bearing animals. Traps are
designed for different sized animals. The jaws of the large
sized traps have teeth to help hold the large animals they
are designed for. These traps are typically hidden and will
surprise on 1-3 of 1d6. The trap is set by pressing down
on the spring and then setting the trigger. There is a
chance the trap will trip while the trapper is setting a trap,
use an attack roll with the Dexterity bonus vs the Armor
class of the trapper; a natural roll of 1 means the trap
misfired and the trapper has pinched his/her finger in the
trap. Use the Armor Class and a Dexterity Bonus to see if
the trap springs on a victim.
How the chance that a trap will trip on the trapper is calculated is unclear to me. As written it seems ambiguous. An attack roll with the trapper's own Dexterity bonus against his or her AC?
I suggest the following alternative passage, stitched together from what LibraryLass and AlMan and probably others wrote earlier and the trap core rules:
Bear traps or hunting traps are spring-loaded traps constructed from a set of serrated steel jaws and a pressure plate, intended to snap shut on and trap the legs of fur-bearing animals. A hunting trap can be secured in place with a stake and a length of rope or chain, holding any creature caught by the trap in place until it manually removes the trap, breaks the chain or rope, or pulls the stake out of the ground. Arming, staking, and concealing a trap takes about one turn, during which a character other than a Thief has a 1 in 20 chance of accidentally pinching his or her finger in the trap, aborting the attempt.
Once placed, the GM may choose to make a roll for each potential victim to activate the trap (say, 1-2 on 1d6, or a wider range for artfully concealed traps) or to determine that mindless, blind, or charging victims have stepped directly on it. The creature triggering the trap must save vs. Death Ray (with Dexterity bonus added) or take damage as indicated by the size of the trap below and cease movement if the trap is staked down.
I tried to preserve AlMan's chance of the trap misfiring, as it seems like exactly the kind of thing that would happen as you're frantically trying to put down a giant bear trap while a mummy shambles towards you from the other end of the hall. Or something like that. A turn also seemed like a more reasonable timeframe to set one of these than a round, but I have no personal experience and may be completely wrong. Please let me know what you think.
Additionally, the listed damage values for these (scaling in size from 1d4, 1d8, 1d12) seem slightly out of scale compared to other things, and like they may be more in line with weapon damage, damage from other traps, and the utility of a leg trap preventing movement if they were 1d4, 1d6, and 1d8, or 1d6, 1d8, and 1d10. I'm inexperienced and again may be wrong, but I thought I'd bring this up for more discerning eyes.
Also, do studded leather, ring mail, and brigandine count as leather or metallic armor for movement purposes and thieves' skills?
A bed roll must be one hell of a luxurious sleeping bag to cost 17gp where a winter blanket costs 1.
The new art in r13 is awesome. I'm sure they've been noticed, so I'll hold my comments on formatting issues until r14 is released.