How does trapping work?

The trapping description is kind of vague. It says on an 11+ you can create a trap that can catch a elephant sized creature which is fine if your hunting or setting up an ambush. However how would it work if you wanted to say trap the area around your campsite at night? How long would each trap take? Would it be one check to set up a bunch of traps surrounding it or multiple ones for each trap? How long would it take to dismantle the traps? etc…

I am torn between two gut reactions. (Also, I am not an Autarch.)

The way I would rule it if a player asked this while we were playing: I would say it takes 1d6 hours per trap. (The exact number can be changed, but it takes quite a while to construct even a basic snare or deadfall, it should be measured in hours.)

The way I kind of want to answer it at some point: Give the character with Trapping a construction rate as per Domains at War construction rules. You can then figure out how long it takes to make any given trap based on the elements of that trap and its GP value. Off the top of my head, 21 gp/month (7 gp/day) seems reasonable. (It’s roughly half the rate of a craft master, but restricted to a specific type of thing. I picked 21 instead of 20 for the round number.)

That’s a pretty good idea; that way it scales. (cause you know someone somewhere will get into a position where they want to set a pile of snares up for some convoluted player reason)

Could treat it as a limited/primitive form of Siege Engineering; so that the Trapping character could oversee some amount of work done on his behalf.

You two have hit on the “ACKSy” solution. Definitely treat it as a Construction Project.

I’d give Trappers a wage of around 25gp per month (equivalent to other highly skilled one-proficiency professions such as artillerist and healer), about equal to a Journeyman. For simplicity, call it 1gp per day.

Trap prices can be found in Player’s Companion. Here are some examples:
Pit, open earth, 10’ x 10’ x 10’ (1d6 damage per 10’) 20gp
Pit (as above) with spikes (1d4 spikes each dealing 1d6 damage) 120gp
Trap, rolling rock (rolls from hidden location, save v. Blast or 3d6 damage) 400gp

Obviously, those prices are expensive! But these prices appear in the Strongholds & Structures section; they are for structural traps: Permanent, long-lasting traps that will survive rugged conditions with little maintenance.

D@W’s price differences for “crude” versus “ballistic” ballista ammunition suggest that rough-and-ready ammo costs as little as 1% of the cost of professional well-crafted ammo. I think we could make a similar assumption for crude “trapper’s traps” and say they cost 1% of permanent traps.

That would suggest:
Pit, open earth, 10’ x 10’ x 10’ (1d6 damage per 10’) 0.2gp
Pit spikes (1d4 spikes each dealing 1d6 damage), 10’ x 10’ 1.2gp
Trap, rolling rock (rolls from hidden location, save v. Blast or 3d6 damage) 4gp

That suggests a crude pit would take a few hours; a crude pit with punji-stakes about a day; and a rock deadfall a few days to construct. None of these would survive long (a pit would collapse on itself, a deadfall snap or fall apart, etc) but they will last “long enough” in most cases.

Since “crude ammo” imposes a -2 penalty to attack throws, let us make a similar rule that a “trapper’s traps” are detected and removed at +2, and where applicable attack at a -2 penalty or provide a +2 bonus to saving throw to avoid their effects.

Brilliant!

I’m glad it turned out to be … ACKSeptable.

Given it’s supposed to trap a creature the size of an ‘elephant’, and by definition be one-time-use, given I…I mean, cheap rulebendy players…would want to use these cheaper rates whenever possible on the battlefield, I’d think maybe something like this?:

The ‘trapper’s trap’, of whatever type, becomes non-functional after being encountered by a single-hex platoon size unit, and has no effect on company-scale or larger units (or multi-hex colossal units at platoon scale)

What I’m envisioning here is a platoon unit of elephants (i.e. one elephant) triggering the entirety of the trap, then it’s done after that, whereas the company of 5 elephants essentially trips over it or maybe loses a ‘single elephant’ due to HP loss from the trap.