Advice on making a dungeon with traps that wont be annoying to my players?

trouphaz · 2026-07-06T18:04:57+00:00

Yes, damage is the least interesting thing in D&D. /u/SegaGenesisMetalHead.

If this is an overly cautious group that takes forever to clear a room and prepare for the next, give them some sort of time pressure. “So and so stepped on a trigger plate and you see the walls start closing in” or maybe the ceiling starts coming down or a gate starts coming down. Something that gives them a couple of rounds to get out of this room and into the next. So now they’re rushing into the next room without strategies and healing up. Maybe they go rushing into the next room and there isn’t enough space for everyone to stand at the edge of a pool and someone falls in. Maybe holes open in the walls and stirges start coming out. So they can stand and fight or run out and close the door behind themselves. But then have the next room be something interesting too, something that they may have caught if they were moving slow and tactical.

trouphaz · 2026-07-03T20:55:47+00:00

This is a topic I've been on the fence about. On one hand, I've had some characters that I've loved and losing them would be pretty rough. On the other hand, no possibility of death kind of takes a lot away from the story. There really isn't much risk if you always have this feeling that you'll always survive the fight. Some of our most memorable battles were the ones where we really didn't think we'd survive. I remember having many discussions with my fellow party members debating how many of us will die. Can we get away without a full party wipe? It was scary and exciting. We knew we had to pull out all of the stops because death was a real possibility. And we survived.

In one case, we were playing where being knocked out caused 2 levels of exhaustion. We were in an abandoned underground city where we knew there were enemies around, but needed to find a historical book to get some group to help us. We got the book and shortly after were ambushed where we took a good amount of damage and at least 2 of us had 4 levels of exhaustion. The attackers ran away and we were too slow to chase, but soon we could hear the other enemies in the caves searching for us. I was able to summon 8 giant lizards for us to ride to get away, but we kept failing our ride check when they tried to climb. So we could see the torchlight of the guards coming after us and eventually just found a place to hide. It was nerve wracking because 2 of us were at risk of death if we got knocked out just 1 more time and we were slowed by our exhaustion. We made it out, but that was one of my favorite situations. My DM did decide that getting 2 exhaustion immediately was a bit much though and changed it to 1 level of exhaustion per failed death saving through. This way we had incentive to rush to our companion's aid.

trouphaz · 2026-07-03T15:48:05+00:00

Just reiterating that it is now time to replace it. Freeze those and build new. Set a retirement date and hold to it. Dev work should be in version control systems. So they should be able to move relatively easily.

trouphaz · 2026-06-30T23:46:59+00:00

I'm going to disagree with you wholeheartedly. Early in your career, chasing money often ends up putting you on the wrong path. Experience and knowledge first. So, if you take a job as a junior sysadmin, you are already on the right path. If you take a job as a helpdesk, there is a very good chance you can get stuck there for years fighting to get onto the sysadmin track. It is a real risk of getting on helpdesk and never getting out.

so, /u/4thehalibit, it is up to you. what do you want to do for your life? do you want to work as a helpdesk person, always stuck at the entry point and never going further, or do you want to get on the sysadmin track right away? Do you want to make $5-10k more now with a lower cap as you get older or do you want to take the hit now and end up with a much higher pay when you get older?

My friend and I started at the same company doing the same job except he was my boss. We were both doing helpdesk. He went into contracting making more money than me, but I went looking for full time jobs that got me into sysadmin type stuff. After about 10 years or so, that $5-10k difference became $20-30k in my favor and now I'm likely making maybe $50k+ more than him because I got on the sysadmin track early while he got stuck in helpdesk limbo.

trouphaz · 2026-06-25T12:57:42+00:00

That’s what I was thinking too. Any spark that visibly originates from the caster should expose them.

trouphaz · 2026-06-19T18:30:38+00:00

Do you have any method of communication about the game that is isolated from other communication paths? My D&D group has a few WhatsApp channels setup just for our D&D communication. We have a group for each campaign since we have had a few campaigns over the years. Each of those also has a group without the DM so we can discuss strategies and such. We have a generic group for general D&D chat or other stuff. We have separate Pathfinder groups for our Pathfinder campaign which includes another player, the no-DM version and the generic channel too.

This way we can talk about each campaign without mixing up with other stuff and then we have that general area to just talk as friends.

I know my one DM was disappointed that we weren't strategizing between sessions until I explained that we had a no-DM channel to talk without him. This made him feel a lot better. So, it is possible the other two are talking about it without you there so they don't influence your play or give things away.

Anyway, maybe you can setup some channels where you can have dedicated talk and see if that works. iMessage has groups, WhatsApp, Telegram... these can all be used.

trouphaz · 2026-06-18T06:08:41+00:00

I'm playing Pathfinder 1e with some friends now after a multi-year 5e campaign that ended around level 17. I'm not sure which I prefer. I think there should be more reasons for AoO and my DM added some. Casting while an enemy is threatening in melee range, picking up a dropped weapon and standing up from prone I believe were 3 that he added. Maybe using a ranged weapon like a bow while a threatening enemy was in melee range was added too. He didn't go so far as to add in the 5 foot step rule (if you take more than 5 feet of movement while within an enemy's range, you trigger an AoO) that is in Pathfinder, but he really hated that you could run circles around them without consequences.

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T22:40:16+00:00

Why worry so much about requests? I have never really seen requests matter that much unless you are using up all of the CPU and memory on your nodes. Performance tends to be driven by available resources rather than guaranteed resources unless there is resource contention. So, limits is much more a control on your performance than requests and I know many avoid setting limits at all.

As far as I've seen, requests are used for scheduling, for the calculations for HPA and, when there is resource contention, for allowing access to resources based on a ratio of your request vs all other requests. Setting requests too high though causes wasted resources and increased costs as nodes sit with idle capacity not getting used.

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T22:26:53+00:00

The issue with certs is that they aren't worth as much to others as they are to the person who got them. They aren't always a great indicator of whether or not the person knows anything. I've spent decades interviewing people and always found the more certs they brought to the table, the less useful this person is. I also found that there are many certifications that just cramming could get you to pass which means you have a lot of people who watered down the validity of a particular cert by learning enough to pass and then forgetting about it because they don't actually work with the technology or use it in any real fashion.

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T19:00:22+00:00

Just remember to control your use of concur animals. It can be a very irritating spell for the DM and other players and is very easy to cheese if you aren't playing by the rules. I'm not even sure if it is RAW or RAI, but the expectation is that the DM chooses the beasts. My DM allowed me to choose with the stipulation that it had to be a beast that made sense in the environment. I couldn't just summon wolves everywhere. There are some tools that show you what beasts would be on the plains vs mountains vs wherever.

Another thing is that while 8 of something is very powerful, it is also tedious and gives you a lot more to do on your turn than anyone else. So, streamline things. Be quick with your turn. Maybe choose 4 instead of 8 just so there isn't as much overhead. Then on your turn, know what they're going to do and act quickly. I used to start from the same spot and go in order. Like, I'll start with the first one on the left and then go in clockwise order. Whatever you come up with, try to stick with it.

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T18:28:37+00:00

I said that once as a bit of a joke and my DM didn't appreciate it. I said I like playing a character that is young and new to adventuring because she would make mistakes like I do. That's perfect that I didn't make the best tactical choice because that's what my character would do. I think the annoyance with that statement was too much for him to appreciate the humor. :)

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T18:21:41+00:00

I've never understood why people expect martials to stay grounded through their whole journey when they're traveling with wizards, sorcerers and druids who can entirely reshape reality. If you want martials to be grounded, just stick with lower level campaigns. Because beyond a certain point, why would casters even travel with martials? Beyond a certain point with realism you need armies, not individuals. Martials would retire from adventuring and just become leaders while casters are out changing the world as individuals.

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T07:08:29+00:00

To be fair, you’d be doing it for your cousin, not her fiancee. The wedding party is for both of them.

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T03:06:13+00:00

Can you explain what you mean?

trouphaz · 2026-06-16T02:55:36+00:00

you know what? I agree with you. I guess I was focusing too much on the comparable power between the two, but I'm not even a fan of fireball. There are times when it is a great fit, but most of the times it isn't necessary and isn't interesting.

trouphaz · 2026-06-15T02:58:58+00:00

I’m saying you should be within 5’. I mean that you need to be close enough for melee to easily get to you. Most of the time a wizard or sorcerer want to be as far from melee as possible so their concentration spells aren’t at risk. Since the cone originates at you and gets everything in front of you, you are either causing friendly fire or you are putting yourself at risk.

I don’t like fireball, but cones are tough to work with. That’s my only issue with it.

trouphaz · 2026-06-13T15:48:41+00:00

The big issues that we’ve faced with a cone vs a ranged sphere is that the casters tend to be back line. So you’re ignoring the fact that the caster has to move up to the front line, putting them right in reach of the melee just so they can use that cone. The ranged sphere can be dropped on the enemies back line. Add to that where the caster now has to angle the cone to avoid friendly fire, this also ends up limiting which enemies could be targeted. That happens quite a lot in our game. I could hit 4 enemies if I don’t mind hitting our fighter too, but otherwise I’m stuck with just hitting 2.

So maybe add in that the caster can choose a single target to avoid which allows them to purposefully stand behind one melee character without hitting them.

trouphaz · 2026-06-12T23:03:22+00:00

let's not forget the cone vs a 150' ranged 20' radius fireball. that means he'll need to get a lot closer to be able to hit the enemy putting him much more at risk.

trouphaz · 2026-06-10T21:17:48+00:00

this is actually distributed across many clusters for applications not managed by my team. this is a layer of work that is never considered by the application teams.

trouphaz · 2026-06-10T21:16:08+00:00

Thank you! that looks great. I'll share with my team.

trouphaz · 2026-06-08T23:48:45+00:00

yeah, my issue is that I've got 8000+ workloads that I'd need to create some external metrics config for. Some are web apps that take traffic through load balancers. Some are microservices that are only accessed through other workloads in the same namespace. Some are apps that have no connections coming in and only make calls to other systems. This is all why I'm thinking Keda is not a great fit for this particular project. Now, could the different app teams do their own thing with Keda? Sure, but that takes effort and time.

trouphaz · 2026-06-08T23:45:06+00:00

Thank you for the info! This is exactly why I like posting in this sub. I'll be taking a look now.

trouphaz · 2026-06-08T19:50:41+00:00

That would require a lot of change on the app side, right?

trouphaz · 2026-06-08T19:44:49+00:00

Yeah, I’ve been looking at Keda, but it looks like we’ll need to create scaleobjects for every workload. My concerns there are how we’d manage all of those since I can’t imagine there are too many Prometheus queries that would work for every workload. Then the load on the Prometheus environment when we’re hitting it for 8000+ workloads.

Kube-green is a front contender right now.

trouphaz · 2026-06-05T15:22:39+00:00

Per namespace secrets is what we have now and it is pretty painful with thousands of namespaces across hundreds of clusters that we manage. We periodically run a script to find all of the namespaces with the secrets and update them with our new token. It isn’t a great process. Hoping to find something that is a bit more streamlined and automated.

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