Rules / Hazards / Hazards & Detection
Hazards & Detection
Hazards
Hazards are fixed dangers with no mind of their own (traps, natural obstacles, magical wards) built to trigger, resolve, and then either fade or reset. A hazard has no will: no choices to make, no targets to pick, nothing to decide. Its danger takes one of two forms:
- Reactive hazards have a Reaction (or a Free Action, for effects that catch several targets at once) that fires the instant its trigger is met, and as many times as the trigger is met. A rune that fires whenever someone steps into its space fires every single time, not once per round. It happens the moment it's triggered, with no turn order involved.
- Sustained hazards act in one moment, then hand the ongoing danger to the character they caught: triggering one applies a Lingering Condition (quicksand applying Sinking, for example), and everything after plays out through that character's own recovery saves each round, the same way Wounds and Afflictions work.
Since neither kind ever has to decide anything, hazards never take a turn and never need a place in initiative. If a danger needs to make real tactical choices (picking targets, reacting differently to different situations), build it as an Adversary instead, with Rank, Role and Creature Type as usual, even if it's a construct, turret or other non-living threat.
Detecting Hazards
Every hazard has a trigger (a tripwire, a pressure plate, or for an environmental hazard or haunt, simply coming close). Detection happens in up to three layers, each giving the characters a real chance to avoid it.
Ambient Awareness (Passive)
As characters explore an area with a hazard, compare each one's relevant Skill Bonus against the hazard's level as the Scene Level (see Passive Awareness, below). The GM picks the skill that best fits the hazard (Thievery for a built trap, Survival for a natural hazard) and describes whatever each character's rung entitles them to, freely and without a roll, as part of describing the scene. A character who reaches Rung 3 or higher has effectively spotted the hazard outright.
Investigation (Active)
A character can spend real time and an action deliberately searching an area they suspect: Investigation's Search for a general sweep, or Thievery (using Perception as its key ability for this; see Skills, Using a Different Ability) to hunt for a built trap's mechanism. This is a real check against the hazard's Detection DC (15 + the hazard's level). Success finds the trigger outright, so it can be disabled at leisure; failure finds nothing, but looking doesn't set it off.
Reactive Detection
A character who approaches or touches a hazard's trigger without having found it through the layers above makes a Perception save against its Detection DC at the moment it matters. Success: they catch it just in time and stop short. Failure: they trigger it.
When several characters are moving together, they make this save as a group check: at least half the group must succeed for the hazard to be caught. If it triggers and can affect more than one target, it catches as many of the group as their marching order allows; with no marching order, whoever rolled lowest is the one who blunders in.
Magical Hazards
Magical hazards can be sensed the same way using the Perception-keyed Mysticism Skill Bonus, but that only reveals that something is there, not what it does. Understanding a magical hazard fully takes the Detect Magic skill action (Mysticism), or a faster but less thorough spell such as Detect Arcana if one is available.
Passive Awareness
As the party explores a scene (a room, a ruin, an NPC's manner, a stretch of wilderness) the GM describes its obvious points of interest freely. A character's training and talent colour what else they notice, by a simple comparison instead of a roll: the GM quietly compares that character's Skill Bonus in a relevant skill with the level of whatever is being examined (the Scene Level: a room, a hazard, an NPC, a point of interest, set like any other level in that place).
| Rung | Requires | What the character notices |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | Always | Whatever any reasonably attentive person would notice. |
| 1 | Skill Bonus ≥ Scene Level + 1 | A sensory cue: something feels off, though they couldn't say what. Atmosphere, not information; it invites suspicion, not answers. |
| 2 | Skill Bonus ≥ Scene Level + 6 | A concrete tell: real, visible evidence something is wrong, though not yet its nature or cause. |
| 3 | Skill Bonus ≥ Scene Level + 11 | A specific, meaningful sign pointing at the actual nature of the danger or secret, enough to make a reasonable guess. |
| 4 | Skill Bonus ≥ Scene Level + 16 | Deep insight: they understand almost completely what they're looking at, the way an expert recognises their specialty at a glance. |
A character gets their highest rung and every rung below it: a sharper eye never costs them the obvious details.
Rewarding a clever approach. If a player's stated method, question or approach is unusually sharp, the GM may grant 1 level of Advantage (+2) to their Skill Bonus for that comparison, possibly lifting them a rung on the spot.
Where this applies. Passive Awareness uses the character's Skill Bonus. Active investigation (Searching, Tracking, deliberately hunting for a trap's mechanism) is a separate tool: committing real time or an action calls for an actual skill check, on top of whatever Passive Awareness already gave. (Hexploration's Reading a Hex uses its own, smaller rung steps.)