BOE trap skill

[Rabbits]

I'm playing ASR and springing traps more often than disarming them despite my Nephilim having nimble fingers, a maximum dexterity, a maximum trap skill, and helpful equipment.  Are the help files missing something?  Should she be a higher level or smarter or stronger or something?

[Celtic Minstrel]

So whether you disarm a trap is based on the trap's difficulty, your disarm traps skill (including from items if that's possible, I forget), your dexterity (including from items), items with the thieving ability, your luck skill, the nimble fingers trait, and the town's difficulty; so it's a pretty complicated formula.

 

I'll try to explain the formula in words, but you can also view the calculation in the source code here.

 

First, a bonus is calculated. This is your dexterity stat adjustment (which is different from your dexterity skill level, more on that in a moment) plus half the total level of thieving skill obtained from items, all times two. (This differs slightly from "twice dex stat adj plus total thieving" in that the division by two is rounded down.)

 

Then the game calculates your skill level, which is the disarm traps skill plus half the luck skill plus 1. Add on the bonus, subtract the town's difficulty as a penalty, and clamp between 0 and 20. This is then used to look up the odds of the trap being disarmed in the following table:

 

0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20
5    30   35   42   48   55   63   69   75   77   78   80   82   84   86   88   90   92   94   96   98

 

So. that's the odds of disarming. Next is the dice roll - roll d100, add the trap's difficulty, and subtract 6 if the character disarming has the nimble fingers trait. If the resulting number is less than the odds calculated above, then the trap is disarmed.

 

About "stat adjustment" vs "skill level": rather than using your intelligence, strength, or dexterity skills directly, the game normally uses them as an index into the following table, taking that value as the skill bonus:

 

 0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20
-3   -3   -2   -1    0    0    1    1    1    2    2    2    3    3    3    3    4    4    4    5    5

 

Stat-boosting equipment adds a +1 flat bonus (non-stacking!) on top of this, and various traits add an additional +1 bonus (though there are only relevant traits for strength and intelligence). In other words, the maximum dexterity stat adjustment you can have is 6.

 

-----

 

In short, as far as I can tell your character should be doing pretty well on traps, unless the traps they're attempting have an unusually high difficulty or are in towns with an unusually high difficulty.

 

[Rabbits]

Thanks :)  She isn't very lucky at all.  That's something I can work on.  Nothing's boosting her dex, as far as I can tell..  Her gloves have the "Thieving" ability.  Her ring has the "Skill" ability.  No idea what that does :)  Is there a glossary for those ability terms?  "Skill" could be almost anything.

[Celtic Minstrel]

According to the editor documentation, the "Skill" ability just increases her chance to hit in combat (probably works for missiles too, but not 100% sure on that). The "Thieving" ability should be helping her with traps though.

 

The editor documentation (and game manual) can be found here (I think this is linked in the forum header too but not sure). The editor appendices are probably the most useful place to look if you're wondering what a particular item/monster ability does (though I think the names used there may not always be identical to the names used in the game, particularly for items that cast a spell).

[Rabbits]

Silly me.  I never thought to see what the editor says.  I've never used it.  That idea might've come to me in a few months :P

Thanks again.

[Rabbits]

The editor documentation and game manual link doesn't work anymore.

[Celtic Minstrel]

I've reported this issue to ADoS, so hopefully it can get fixed within 24 hours or so. It can also be downloaded from GitHub if you need it now, but that'll give you the entire source code (I don't think GitHub offers a way to only download the doc subdirectory).