The Traps Beginners should be warned of

[TSS]

Putting this back where it belongs.

Some other traps:

Spring Attack: Cut your movement in half, attack once, and then get full attacked, all for the low cost of three feats! What's not to like?

Whirlwind Attack: Get lots of enemies to surround you, attack each of them once, and then get full attacked by all of them! What could possibly go wrong?

Bridget: The less said the better.

[zugschef]

Putting this back where it belongs.

Some other traps:

Spring Attack: Cut your movement in half, attack once, and then get full attacked, all for the low cost of three feats! What's not to like?

Whirlwind Attack: Get lots of enemies to surround you, attack each of them once, and then get full attacked by all of them! What could possibly go wrong?

Bridget: The less said the better.

great! this is exactly what this thread is all about. keep it coming!

[TSS]

I'm trying not to duplicate things. Let me think...

Combat:

Sword and board has already been covered. I'll just add one line.

"Sword and board is inferior to a two handed weapon both offensively and defensively at all levels of play."

Two weapon fighting has already been covered.

Let's not mention precision damage again.

Has archery been mentioned?

Spring Attack and Whirlwind Attack were just mentioned. The same extends to anything that requires Dodge and Mobility. Most of it is terrible, the few that aren't still aren't worth three feats.

Has healing been mentioned?

Non combat:

Skills have already been mentioned both individually and collectively.

Doors have been handled.

Have traps been handled?

There's also a few borderline traps. Things like melee combat or direct damage spells. They're bad by default, and a lot of things prevent them from working but you can make them just viable enough to not be traps if done in certain ways. From the perspective of a beginner there is no difference between a borderline trap and an actual trap as a beginner will lack the system mastery to make a charger that kills and doesn't die or a blasting caster that does enough damage and so forth. These still deserve their own distinction as unlike traps, which don't work no matter what these just require a greater degree of mechanical skill than the beginner has.

There's also a number of finer distinctions. Buffing isn't a trap, but many buff spells are because they're just not worth it. I'm not sure if it's worth going into that level of detail because buffing is an exclusively caster thing (mostly divine casters at that) and in a typical campaign those guys are forgiving enough that you can experiment and learn what works on your own for the most part. Many divine casters also have some form of spontaneous casting ability so if you guess wrong it's not a complete loss.

I'm trying to think of general things no one has mentioned yet.

[sirpercival]

I think with blasting, it pretty much works out to: blasting is a trap except for a couple of very specific builds, and those are extremely one-dimensional.

Basically goes along with Ubercharging, but a significant step better because it's spellcasting instead of bashing things.

EDIT: I don't think in-combat healing has been mentioned, and it's definitely worth a mention -- at the very least a link to the handbooks about why it's unnecessary.

Cure spells specifically are a trap.

[snakeman830]

In-combat Healing is a trap if you're not doing one of the following:
1. Healing a massive amount of damage
2. saving your buddy at -9hp
3. Removing debilitating conditions
4. doing something other than healing with the same action

So basically Crusaders and the (Mass)Heal spell are it for viable in-combat healing.

[TSS]

I think with blasting, it pretty much works out to: blasting is a trap except for a couple of very specific builds, and those are extremely one-dimensional.

This is true. I only consider something a trap though if it either doesn't work at all, costs too much for the benefit or both. The blaster could be fairly argued to be the latter due to the high number of metamagic effects required. The blaster does kill things if his trick works though and fewer things stop his trick from working.

Basically goes along with Ubercharging, but a significant step better because it's spellcasting instead of bashing things.

EDIT: I don't think in-combat healing has been mentioned, and it's definitely worth a mention -- at the very least a link to the handbooks about why it's unnecessary.

Cure spells specifically are a trap.

This one is easy then.

In combat healing is a trap for one simple reason: Enemy damage outpaces it at all levels of play with two exceptions. If you try to heal in combat you're fighting a losing battle and using up the action of someone who has so many better things they could be doing. This is only putting yourself at an even bigger disadvantage.

The exceptions to this are when a Cleric casts Heal at levels 11-15 or when an Artificer has cast Armor Enhancement for the Greater Healing enchantment beginning at level 5 and ending around the mid levels. Both of these keep up with enemy damage output and the latter is a Swift action so it is held to a lower standard (pun intended).

In any other situation you should never cast them unless it's an emergency or you are not in combat. In the latter case wands or other magical items cover all your healing needs.

[sirpercival]

The blaster could be fairly argued to be the latter due to the high number of metamagic effects required.

That or a friendly DM and Reserves of Strength

[SorO_Lost]

Another large one is AC.

AC it's self is one giant trap designed to eat your money. Not only does the cost of AC scale up faster than the vales gained in return, but more and more monsters present with options to ignore it. And it really hurts that your AC is further split into three values.

Effects like Cover and Concealment works across all three AC values and not only are cheaper for the same degree of attack protection, but they also protect against being attacked in the first place. And barring their total protection they also offer additional bonuses such as Cover giving bonuses to Reflex saves or Concealment preventing Precision Damage.

[zugschef]

grappling was mentioned...

but actually the first trap you can fall for as a beginner: BAB!
it just doesn't matter.

the second trap (along with skills, but they have been covered): feats!
there are (basically) 5 kinds of feats:

• pointless ones (+2/+2)
• taxes (iron will)
• broken feats (craft contingency)
• feats which should be class features or part of the basic mechanic (power attack, natural spell, etc.)
• good feats which still have problems because of various reasons (imperious command, steadfast determination)
• exceptions (yes that's why it's #6 ;-)): sword of the arcane order, etc...

what does this mean? either a feat is as much a class feature as anything, or it doesn't really improve your character all that much.

[TSS]

The blaster could be fairly argued to be the latter due to the high number of metamagic effects required.

That or a friendly DM and Reserves of Strength

If you're going to have an arbitrarily high caster level you can forget about HP and just kill everything with no save.

[zugschef]

The blaster could be fairly argued to be the latter due to the high number of metamagic effects required.

That or a friendly DM and Reserves of Strength

If you're going to have an arbitrarily high caster level you can forget about HP and just kill everything with no save.

blasphemy!

[Halinn]

The blaster could be fairly argued to be the latter due to the high number of metamagic effects required.

That or a friendly DM and Reserves of Strength

If you're going to have an arbitrarily high caster level you can forget about HP and just kill everything with no save.

blasphemy!

Holy Word!

[zugschef]

The blaster could be fairly argued to be the latter due to the high number of metamagic effects required.

That or a friendly DM and Reserves of Strength

If you're going to have an arbitrarily high caster level you can forget about HP and just kill everything with no save.

blasphemy!

(Holy) Word!

[TSS]

Here's one. Feat chains.

Not all of these are bad. Some of them are actually quite good. Most of them however follow the pattern of take one or more useless/weak/bad feats and only then do you start getting the benefits. The ones that are good end up being because they do something unique and/or only require things you'd take anyways. It isn't obvious which are good though at a glance and this future time where your investment pays off might never come depending on the campaign.

[RetroGamer24]

From experience I can say healing in combat is a big trap.  I played a dread necro in a game.  We faced a monster that hit for like 14 or so.  Well it hit the barbarian and knocked him down good, cleric healed, the thing hit again and pretty much nullified the healing.

[RetroGamer24]

Here is a question.  Is is a trap to focus heavily on things like advance scouting?  Like taking a Ranger or a Scout to do advanced warning? 

[TSS]

Here is a question.  Is is a trap to focus heavily on things like advance scouting?  Like taking a Ranger or a Scout to do advanced warning?

Yes.

[Unbeliever]

+1. Advance scouting can be handy especially if you have buffing in your party to really take advantage of it. But I'd say it's like a tertiary character role or ability. So don't focus too much on it. You also need some sort of "get out of jail free card" in case you're spotted.

[Mooncrow]

+1. Advance scouting can be handy especially if you have buffing in your party to really take advantage of it. But I'd say it's like a tertiary character role or ability. So don't focus too much on it. You also need some sort of "get out of jail free card" in case you're spotted.

How much you focus depends on the DM - some hate scouting so any focus on it is a waste.  For a typical group, spells/wildshape is plenty.  Occasionally you'll run into a trenchcoat and mirrorshades DM, that requires a little more resources, but that's pretty rare.

[Prime32]

A "spy drone" is probably more efficient. Find some way to communicate with/see through the senses of something that's small/good at hiding/fits into its surroundings. Plus expendable, since it's unlikely to survive being spotted by something that would normally be fought by the entire party.

A familiar fits most of the bill (sharing your ranks in Hide is nice), but the XP cost for its death is painful. There's a vestige that lets you summon a bird at will, which seems worth looking into. Then there's stuff like prying eyes of course. Regular summon spells could also be used for scouting (though I haven't looked through the lists for good choices), particularly if you're using the variant where you summon the same creature every time (thus it can report back even if it dies).