In a recent session my players triggered a trap that they didn't notice; it went off and did damage to most of the party.
I've done a rudimentary search through the Pathfinder SRD and couldn't find an answer to this: Experience points are granted for "challenges overcome," but is triggering and surviving a trap a challenge that the PCs have overcome, or is it merely one they've survived? In other words, do you only earn experience for a trap that you detect & disarm? Or is surviving enough?
A search is the SRD brings no useful information: I may be missing something but it seems like Pathfinder just never clearly states this point.
However Pathfinder is built from DD3.5 where it is stated (DMG, p39) that:
Overcoming the challenge of a trap involves encountering the trap, either by disarming it, avoiding it, or simply surviving the damage it deals. A trap never discovered or never bypassed was not encountered (and hence provides no XP award).
So in 3.5 there was no ambiguity: surviving the damage was enough.
In Pathfinder, the best we have is a quote from James Jacobs in Paizo forums:
ALL XP awards in the game are handed out when the thing they're attached to is defeated. Be that a monster or a trap or a haunt or a tense political standoff. Be "defeated" akin to "killed" or "driven away" or "disabled" or "endured.
AKA: You get full XP for a trap if you detect it/disable it, if you trigger it and survive its effects, or if you detect it and avoid it. You don't get the XP more than once (so if you detect and avoid it then come back later and disable it or endure its effects, you don't get to double dip).
James Jacobs don't make authority on Pathfinder's rules, but at least his position is clear.
If you want to convince yourself about the validity of this approach you can think the following: how is disarming the trap a better solution that triggering it? Triggering it will cause penalties like hp losses, but disarming it costs time. If the PC group is one barbarian, one cleric of Sarenrae, one oracle of life and one paladin it makes complete sense for them to send the barbarian running into a probably trapped corridor and heal him rather than trying desperately to find a trap they anyway have no chance to be able to disable. In that case to me making the PC gain no XP would be the same as making them gain no XP on an encounter against kobolds because the wizard chose to use his only fireball to kill all of them in one round.
You deserver to get experience whether you detect and disarm (D&D) OR survive. Not all parties have the skills or abilities to D&D so they survive.
If the party did survive a challenge and came through it, typically hurt, bruised, and the better for the experience (see the pun?).
Yes.
Wesley from The Princess Bride:
No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt - no problem. There's a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too.
(emphasis mine)
The characters now know what that kind of trap exists and what it looks like.
Though, I doubt that I would give experience for triggering the exact same type of trap again unless there were different circumstances.
