Introduction
Snares are a collection of nonmagical items used to quickly build and deploy single-use traps. They’re a good trap option for players because they take just a minute to set up and come at a variety of price points, and they’re a great tool for GMs because they’re single-use, disposable, and can’t be looted.
This article will explore some of the practical parts of using Snares in your game, both in terms of how the rules work and from a character optimization perspective. This is not a replacement for the original rules text; it is intended to be read alongside the rules text in order to offer useful insights.
Crafting Snares
The phrase “Crafting Snares” is immediately confusing. Unlike most items which you can craft and move around, Snares are not portable. You need to carry your raw materials and tools (see Tools and Materials, below) and craft the Snare wherever you want to place it.
Snares are built in a single 5-foot square. The Craft activity has the Manipulate trait, which means that you must be able to reach whatever your crafting, so you need to be in or adjacent to this square throughout the crafting process. The Snare is triggered when a creature enters the Snare’s square, so if you create a Snare in your own space you’re fine unless you exit the Snare’s square and then return to it.
There’s no listed restriction on how a Snare can be placed. It’s never specified if the square needs to be on the ground, though I think that’s the intent. It’s also never specified if more than one Snare can be in the same space. Check with your GM.
You do have the option to craft a Snare as a Downtime activity in order to craft it at a discount. However, this uses the normal rules for crafting items, so it takes 4 days at minimum and a Craft check, and the Snare still isn’t portable. This is generally a terrible idea, but Snares are permanent so maybe it’s worth the time to craft a high-level Snare in your home base or something.
During combat, it’s unlikely that most characters will craft Snares. 1 minute is longer than many combats, and you can’t sit around putting together a Snare while your friends are fighting and dying around you. If you plan to craft Snares in combat, you’ll want feats like the Ranger’s Quick Snares feat.
Tools and Materials
Crafting Snares requires a Snare Kit, a Formula for the desired Snare, and adequate materials to craft the Snare. A Snare Kit isn’t a problem, but the materials aren’t described in any detail. Where do you buy them? How much do they weigh? What are they? Totally unclear. As far as I can tell, you spend gold and get an equivalent value of generic snare materials which are ambiguously defined and of negligible Bulk.
Like alchemical items, you’ll need a Formula to craft a Snare. You get four when you take the Snare Crafting feat, and there isn’t a level restriction on those so you can select Snares across a range of levels if you’d like, or you might take a bunch of high-level formulas to save money later. High-level formulas cost a huge amount of money. The core rules detail 21 Snares, so you’ll either spend a ton of money to learn them all or you’ll need to pick which ones are worth the cost.
If you’re using snares in any significant capacity, strongly consider upgrading to a Specialist’s Snare Kit when the 55gp cost is no long daunting. It’s a low cost for a +1 Item bonus to your Craft checks, and while you don’t make a check to craft a Snare, your Crafting DC sets the DC to detect and disable your Snares.
Be cautious about the cost of Snares. They’re single-use and can’t be moved, and if you over-use them the cost will quickly eat into your ability to equip yourself properly. The Ranger’s Snare Specialist feat allows you to prepare several snares per day at no material cost, so it’s a must-have for Snare enthusiasts.
Countering Snares
Countering snares is simple: detect it and either disarm it, avoid it, or intentionally trigger it.
Detecting Snares
Detecting snares works like detecting anything else: you use the Seek action, you pick an area to target, and you make a Perception check. Unfortunately, that’s a steep cost in combat, especially over a large area, but there isn’t a way around it except to stumble blindly into any square that might contain a Snare. Snares all make either an attack or require a Basic Reflex save, so if you have someone in the party with Evasion they’re a great candidate to run around the room trying to find Snares or other hazards.
Disabling Snares
To disable a Snare, you can either use the Disable a Device action to intentionally disable it, or you can trigger it.
Disabling a Snare requires the Thievery skill, plain and simple, and you need to have your Thievery Proficiency high. You don’t need to match the Craft Proficiency of whoever crafted the Snare, but you need to be one step behind them. But if they have better Proficiency, you need to make up the mathematical difference. Infiltrator Thieves’ Tools are essential, and look for other bonuses like the Guidance spell.
Triggering a snare intentionally isn’t as easy as you would hope. A Snare is only triggered when a small or larger creature enters its square. You could roll a wagon over a Snare, and somehow that doesn’t trigger the snare. You could disintegrate the floor underneath it, and RAW the Snare is happy to hang suspended in mid-air and wait for something to fall through it. The creature size limitation also prevents you from triggering Snares by throwing rats into the square, so the classic “bag of rats” abuse case doesn’t apply here.
You may be able to trigger a trap by damaging it, such as by shooting it with an arrow. The core rules for traps specify that damaging a trap “usually triggers it”, and since Snares have the Trap trait, they’re technically also traps. Unfortunately there’s no guidance on how the GM should interpret the word “usually” here, so you’ll need to work it out with your GM.
Your Character
Now that you have your head around how Snares work, it’s time to talk about how you make them work for your character.
The Basics
If you want to craft and use snares, you need three things: Intelligence, the Craft skill, and the Snare Crafting General Feat. You can achieve all of those at 1st level, but you don’t necessarily need to do that. Snares cost money, and low-level characters often need to strain their financial resources to acquire all of the mundane equipment that they want.
Still, this initial investment of character options gets you quite a bit. The ability to craft snares opens up an interesting tactical option with a fairly minor investment. Unfortunately you won’t be setting Snares in combat, but you can still use them in ambushes and to protect yourself while resting.
Character Build
Rangers get access to snare-related feats, but other classes will need to explore the Snarecrafter archetype.
Kobold
Kobolds have racial feats which directly complement snare builds. Other races should consider Adopted Ancestry to gain access to Snare Genius.
- Snare Setter: Trained in Crafting, the Snarecrafting feat, and access to Uncommon Kobold Snares (there are none published, currently). If you took Adopted Ancestry to get this, you’ve effectively given up a General Feat and an Ancestry Feat for a different General Feat and a single Skill Increase. That’s an objectively bad trade (until some Kobold Snares are published).
- Snare Genius: 3 to 5 additional free Snares per day, and ALL of your damage-dealing Snares gain the ability to make targets Flat-Footed if they critically fail their saving throw. The free Snares are already good, but the additional effect really makes this feat great.
Ranger
With Class Feats related to Snares spread across most levels, it’s easy to deciate most of a ranger’s build to Snare usage. Unfortunately for other classes, that also means that any multiclassed Snare users are at a massive disadvantage.
- Snare Hopping: The only way to move a placed Snare. Hopefully you’ll never need this, but at low levels when you can’t afford to place a Snare every round this can keep you from wasting a Snare because its current position isn’t working out like you hoped.
- Snare Specialist: The second most important feat, behind only Snare Crafting. You get a bunch of new formulas, and you get to prepare a number of snares per day without paying the materials costs, allowing you to use your highest-level Snares without constantly sweating over the price. You get to Craft these Snares in 3 Actions rather than the full 1-minute crafting time, making it possible to use them in combat, and you get additional free Snares as your Proficiency in Crafting increases. Notably you must prepare these snares ahead of time, so much like preparing spells you need to pick which ones you’re preparing when you perform your Daily Preparations.
- Quick Snares: Craft all Snares in three Actions. This doesn’t diminish the need for Snare Specialist, but it makes it easy to craft a Snare on the fly rather than relying on the Snares which you prepared at the beginning of the day with Snare Specialist. It will later become obsolete when Lightning Snares becomes avaialable, so plan to retrain it.
- Powerful Snares: This makes low-level Snares reliable at any level, allowing you to use a much more diverse set of Snares without sacrificing effectiveness. You’ll still want to use high-level Snares for damage because the damage dealt only increases as Snares increase in level, but many low-level snares apply status effects which are useful at any level.
- Lightning Snares: If you like to use Snares in combat, this is amazing. Quick Snares is not listed as a prerequisite in the Core Rulebook or in the CRB errata, but I assume that this is an oversight and will be corrected in the next round of errata.
- Ubiquitous Snares: By this level you’re likely Legendary in Crafting, so with Snare Specialist and Ubiquitous Snares you can prepare 16 Snares every day.
- Impossible Snares: A free copy of any Snare that you have prepared every minute without further limitation.
Snarecrafter
A better option for non-Ranger Snare enthusiasts, the Snarecrafter archetype offers Class Feat options at every level from 2 through 14 (and there are two at 10th level), meaning that until high levels you could spend every one of your Class Feats on the archetype if you chose to do so.
Like the Ranger’s Snare-related Class Feats, you will need the Snare Crafting General Feat to qualify. However, unlike the Ranger you only need to be Trained in Crafting rather than Expert.
- Snarecrafter Dedication: Roughly equivalent to the Ranger’s Snare Specialist, but you don’t get free formulas added to your Foruma Book. If you just want the free Snares for quick deployment, this appears to stack with Snare Specialist so you can get a sizeable number of free Snares.
- Surprise Snare: The biggest challenge of using Snares is getting enemies to trigger them. This feat solves that problem, but makes it easier for enemies to resist the Snare. This also has a very high Action cost so you’ll need to already be adjacent to the target at the start of your turn.
- Remote Trigger: Most Snares only affect creatures that enter their square, so this is a situationally-useful ability that only works with a handful of Snare types.
- Quick Snares: See description under the Ranger, above.
- Giant Snares: You get 4 or more free Snares in a day depending on your feats and your Proficiency in Crafting, and since those Snares are free they’ll frequently be used for your most powerful Snares to help manage the cost of using Snares. You want to get as much mileage out of those free Snares as you can, and increasing the area which triggers them will make them considerably more effective.
- Powerful Snares: See description under the Ranger, above.
- Plentiful Snares: A significant amount of extra free Snares. This will amount to a huge amount of gold saved.
- Lightning Snares: See description under the Ranger, above.
How Many Free Snares Can I Get?
With the addition of the Snarecrafter archetype, you can now combine the Ranger’s Class Feats with the Snarecrafter’s feats to get a bunch of free “Quick Deployment” Snares. The effects appear to stack, so let’s explore just how many you can get.
- Snare Specialist
- Trained: –
- Expert: 4
- Master: 6
- Legendary: 8
- Snarecrafter Dedication
- Trained: 4
- Expert: 4
- Master: 6
- Legendary: 8
- Snare Genius:
- Trained: –
- Expert: 3
- Master: 4
- Legendary: 5
- Plentiful Snares: Double Snarecrafter Dedication
- Ubiquitous Snares: Double Snare Specialist Dedication
Answer: 37.
It’s important to note that Plentiful Snares only doubles Snarecrafter Dedication and that Ubiquitous Snares only doubles Snare Specialist. They’re effectively two separate pools of the same resource. Still, 32 free Snares in a day is enough that you could reasonably use nothing except those Snares and get through most days without spending anything on Snare materials.
Types of Snares
The core rules list 21 Common Snares across a wide range of levels. That’s not a ton of options, but Snares are a niche option and hopefully we’ll see them expanded over time.
1st-Level Snares
1st-level Snares are inexpensive enough that beyond low levels you can typically afford to craft them without concerning yourself with the price. While their utility in combat may diminish quickly, the Alarm Snare and Hampering Snare remain useful nearly any time.
- Alarm Snare: There’s no saving throw for this snare, making it an inexpensive and reliable way to protect yourself from ambushes, to create distractions, and potentially to locate inivisible foes.
- Caltrop Snare: Caltrops don’t have a save DC; instead, they rely on an Acrobatics check. Most creatures aren’t proficient in Acrobatics, so it’s a straight Dexterity check for them, which means that this remains useful long after the DC for 1st-level Snares stops being effective. Still, the damage and speed penalty are minor and might not feel impactful beyond low levels.
- Flare Snare: Combination communication device and alarm system. Situational, but it’s inexpensive and there’s no save to avoid setting off the effect. Weirdly there’s no explanation of what happens if the flare hits a surface, if you’re underwater, or if the flare is otherwise impeded. At the very least I’d like to know how much light the flare casts if it’s set off inside, such as in a dungeon.
- Hampering Snare: Useful at any level. A creature is only going to move through 2 squares, but that can be enough to prevent foes from escaping an ambush, and at such a low cost you could reasonably line up several in a row.
- Marking Snare: Situational. I would hope that this would help with invisible or hidden foes, but it doesn’t.
- Signaling Snare: Situational.
- Spike Snare: Simple and straightforward. Damage with a Basic Reflex Save.
4th-Level Snares
- Biting Snare: An upgrade from the Spike Snare. Short of the speed penalty on a Critical Failure, this is essentially a Basic Save.
- Hobbling Snare: The speed penalty is nice, but the DC to Escape from the effect is detached from the actual save to resist, so the effort to set the trap may not be worth the 1 Action that it costs the target to remove the effect.
- Stalker Bane Snare: An inexpensive counter to invisibile foes. Even if the target Succeeds on the save, this still helps to locate the creature.
- Trip Snare: Knocking a foe prone robs them of an Action to stand. If you’re setting an ambush that’s great, but otherwise it’s not good enough to spend the Actions to set a Trip Snare in combat.
- Warning Snare: The Alarm Snare usually solves the same problem.
6th-Level Snares
- Nauseating Snare: The save DC is no higher than 4th-level snares, but the effect is good and with Powerful Snares this will remain relevant and profoundly useful. Sickened reduces creatures’ checks and DC’s, making them more susceptible to your other Snares and to your allies’ spells and abilities.
8th-Level Snares
- Bomb Snare: The damage is fine, but unless you can produce the 6 bombs at reduced cost this gets expensive very quickly. Snare Specialist removes the cost to Craft the Snare, but doesn’t remove the additional Crafting Requirement. If you’re a Snare enthusiast you’re likely good enough at Crafting that alchemy is an option, so that might not be a problem. If you have the Powerful Snares feat, this can be an effective way to deliver higher-level alchemical bombs. It’s also the lowest-level Snare which deals area damage.
- Grasping Snare: Immoblizing a foe holds them in place, so unless they’re happy to fight where they’re standing they’re going to spend an Action to attempt to Escape.
- Striking Snare: Single-target damage on a Basic Reflex Save.
10th-Level Snares
- Snagging Hook Snare: Compared to Striking Snare, the Snagging Hook Snare deals 1d8 more damage and costs more than twice as much. The one improvement is that on a Critical Failure on the save, the target is immobilized. For the same gp price you could use a Grasping Snare and a Striking Snare and still have 50 gp left over. The advantages that Snagging Hook Snare has over that combination is that you can place one snare faster than two, and many feats will give you free Snares, so if free snares are an option, Snagging Hook Snare is a good choice, but I wouldn’t spend gold to craft this.
12th-Level Snares
- Bleeding Spines Snare: The initial damage is less than Striking Snare, but if the persistent bleed damage applies even once it’s more damage than Striking Snare. Beyond that, this remains in place for a full minute rather than breaking immediately. If you can hold a foe in place or a push them back in somehow, you can quickly wear a foe down with repeated damage at little cost.
- Scything Blade Snare: Single-target damage on a Basic Reflex Save.
- Stunning Snare: A little bit of damage, but the real appeal is the Stunned effect. Lightning Snares becomes available at the same level as Stunning Snare, so you can spend an Action to gamble your Action against whichever creature is unfortunate enough to step into the snare. In a fight where you outnumber your enemies, that’s a fantastic gamble because even on a Success the target is still Stunned 1 so it’s an even trade.
14th-Level Snares
- Engulfing Snare: Strangely, this has the same DC as 12th-level snares, making it more expensive but with no guarantee that it’s more effective. Creatures which fail the initial save need to spend Actions to either Escape or to attack the cage and destroy it. Of course, at this level enemies can smash through the cage in one or two attacks, and creatures high enough level to threaten you will have bonuses on their Escape check which are high enough that they can reliably escape. On top of that, if you’ve taken Powerful Snares, low-level options like Grasping Snare can immobilize creatures with the same save DC at less than one tenth the gp cost.
16th-Level Snares
- Hail of Arrows Snare: A bunch of damage in a 20-foot radius. As ridiculous as it sounds, you might Craft this then step on it yourself if you’re surrounded. Classes like the Ranger get Evasion and often have high enough Dexterity that you could avoid all of the damage on a successful Reflex save.
- Omnidirectional Spear Snare: Hail of Arrows does an average of just 20 less damage and can affect multiple creatures. Unless you’re in tight quarters or facing a single enemy, Hail of Arrows is typically a better option.
20th-Level Snares
- Flying Blade Wheel Snare: A decent amount of damage on a reasonably high attack bonus. You can move the wheel 60 feet with one Action, so creatures will often need to take more than one Stride to get out of range. Creatures can also attack the wheel to destroy it, but it has 200 hit points so that’s going to take a lot of time that your enemies could be spending attacking you instead. If they attack the wheel, you win because they’re wasting time attacking a disposable resource. If they run, they waste Actions running. If they stand still and attack you, you get to use the wheel to attack them repeatedly.
- Instant Evisceration Snare: A big pile of single-target damage on a Basic Reflex Save. It does as much damage as three hits from Flying Blade Wheel Snare, and in many cases dealing less total damage but dealing it all at once is better than more total damage dealt over time because you might kill the target faster and prevent them from harming you in return, not to mention the Actions that you’re not spending to repeatedly activate the wheel. You also don’t need to spend Actions to make additional attacks like you do with Flying Blade Wheel Snare.