Building Hazards

Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide (Second Edition), page 74

Building hazards designed for your game allows you to customize them to match your story, location, and needs, as well as to surprise the other players at every turn. There’s no wrong way to create a hazard, but this guide presents the information in the order you might see it in a hazard stat block.

In this section

Concept The first thing you’ll need is a concept for your hazard. What level is your hazard? Will it be simple or complex? Is it a trap, a haunt, an environmental hazard, or something else?
Understanding and Choosing Statistics Much like for creatures, hazard statistics can be extreme, high, or low (hazards don’t need as much granularity, so they usually don’t have moderate or terrible values for their statistics).
Stealth and Disable When determining a hazard’s combat statistics, first decide how the hazard can be located and how hard it is to disable.
Defenses If there’s a physical component that a character could break, you’ll need to determine the hazard’s AC, Fortitude save, and Reflex save, using the extreme, high, and low values (preceded by E, H, or L on the table) as…
Offense Almost all hazards need an attack bonus or a save DC, and hazards that deal damage need to list a damage value.
Simple Hazards A simple hazard uses its reaction when triggered.
Complex Hazards Complex hazards roll initiative and act on their turn.