Trap

A trap is a terrain feature or feature of an object, such as a door or a chest, that is potentially dangerous or inconvenient to the player’s character. The effect could possibly be beneficial as well, although traps are rarely, if ever, designed with that intent. Typically, such traps can be disarmed either through magic or through some mundane skill. Games vary in whether traps can be triggered by and affect monsters as well as the player character.

Common trap types:

• pit: possibly modified with spikes or poisoned spikes
• trap door: like a pit, but deep enough to deposit the character on the next level down
  • also called a “chute”
• fire: does fire damage
• acid: does acid damage
• missiles: arrows, darts, crossbow bolts, spear, and axes are among the items that may be flung
  • darts may have coating with pretty much any magical effect, a few examples:
    • reduce stats
    • reduce experience
    • cause hallucinations
    • slow the victim
    • paralysis
• explosion: exploding doors in ADOM are a particular treat
• polymorph: perhaps the most notorious of all trap types, it can transform player character or monster into a different species
• immobilizing traps: these can magically paralyze the victim or they can merely prevent moving out of the trapped square until the character frees himself (like Nethack bear traps or Crawl Stone Soup net traps)
• teleportation: the trap teleports the victim
• alarms: these traps merely wake nearby monsters
• summoning: some magical traps summon monsters around the victim
  • a “pinata” “trap” could summon treasure