Make Remove Trap useful.

[Salladhar Saan]

Currently you can use lock-picking to pick a dungeon chest and then use the Telekinesis spell to blast the trap. I am all in favor of making the lesser used skills more useful, so what I propose is to remove the ability to use Telekinesis on trapped dungeon/treasure chests to set off the trap. The role of treasure hunter in Second Age becomes much more specialized, and much more important. Instead of any old mage being able to open dungeon/treasure chests, it rewards the player that specializes in a hard to raise skill with the riches he or she deserves.

[do0m]

lockpicking is the hardest skill to GM, If someone has GM lockpicking they deserve whats in that chest lol no matter how the trap is sprung. What you're suggesting would also make telekinesis useless. I like the idea of making lesser used skills more useful. I got an idea, lets make begging better! if someone has GM begging and uses it on a player they get 10% of the gold that in that players bank.

[Salladhar Saan]

There was no need for the sarcasm. It was only a suggestion and a practical one at that. Have you ever tried to play a character with remove trap? Have you ever tried to raise the skill to GM? If not then how would you know how hard it was to raise? If it's not harder to raise than lockpicking than it certainly is as hard. The same rules apply to the last 5.0 skill of both skills.

I'm just trying to promote a little character diversity, and it's not as if there aren't other spells in the spellbook that are useless.

[Dupre[THG]]

yes doom is full of sarcasm and useless posts

[do0m]

yes doom is full of sarcasm and useless posts

Yes i was being a bit sarcastic, but actually my post is a vaild post.. reasons being:

1. Lockpicking is the hardest skill to GM
2. Begging sucks as of now
3. Not being able to use telekinesis on trapped chests would make it useless

[DemonArkanis]

how about this one, it's accurate. Remove trap was never needed and therefore should not be implemented. In fact in UO even today remove trap is still not needed.

[leterrien]

2. Begging sucks as of now

Yeah, I agree. It would make it a lot better if you could beg from other players. Not to take gold from their bank, but just the 10gp from their backpack that you usually get when begging from an npc. The NPCs can't interact the same way as a real player. Imagine going to the bank and getting mobbed by beggars and before you can put your money away they have taken 100gp (10 successful begs!) of it. Probably not really feasible, just ideas.

As for remove trap, I agree that it would be nice if it was required for higher level treasure boxes, but it'll probably never happen. Tele. is just a badass spell.

So, even though I think that it would be nice to give new life to these skills, the fact is that they have always been minor skills without much use in game, just kinda there for fun and to round out the feel of the game(?) I am all for keeping things accurate.

[Derrick]

I'm all for making these skills useful too, withing the realm of accuracy. We've recently make Item ID and Forensic eval more useful and I'd love to find a way to make remove trap useful as well, I can't take the ability to tele-pop chests because that was definitely in during the era but other suggestions on the skill are certainly welcome.

[do0m]

how about making it a passive ability, when running around dungeons it will attempt to automatically disable the trap when you run over it?

[Derrick]

An interesting idea for sure. Pretty hard to cast that to era accuracy though. I'm surprised that OSI never came up with that.

[platy]

im not sure if remove trap takes you out of hiding, but if it does, changing that so it wouldnt take you out of hiding would make it an extremely useful skill for those stealthing lockpickers who who hate having to run or peace the monsters that attack em?

[Derrick]

That's a great point. Actually it currently does not reveal you but that is likely not well known (had to test it myself). It's probably worth publicising that it's a great skill combined with stealth to get in grab treasure and get out undetected.

[Khronus]

removing items from t-chest reveals you right? so u would have to kill the spawn anyways...

[Salladhar Saan]

removing items from t-chest reveals you right? so u would have to kill the spawn anyways...

Taking stuff from dungeon chests doesn't reveal you.

Edit: I didn't know Remove Trap keeps you hidden when you use it. That's awesome.

[Derrick]

Aye, you can stealth in, lockpick, remove trap clean out the chest and stealth back out without being revealed by those actions. Taking items from corspes other then your own will reveal you however.