A level 5 rogue will quite probably have a thievery dc of 13, if they invest in it and max dex. The average lock has a dc of 25 and requires 4 successes. It takes a roll of 12 or better to have a single success, and will average about 9 rolls to rack up those 4 successes. With 9 rolls wherein you crit fail on a 2 or lower, the likelihood of breaking a pick is ~61%.
Should a level 5 rogue take a minute to open the average lock, and more likely than not break a pick in the process?
And let’s look at a good Lock: DC 30, requiring 5 successes. The level 5 rogue will only succeed on a 17, meaning it will take on average 20 attempts to get those 5 successes. On one attempt in a thousand our Lvl 5 rogue will open this lock before breaking a pick, and will typically break 3 in the process.
Am I missing something?
Seems excessive and boring to be honest.
IRL a person can learn to pick locks fairly easily, and with rakes, bump keys and combs makes it trivial.
I think DC13 for average locks, and DC18 for exquisite ordinary locks is fair. Trained skill only. Assuming done without time constraints or distractions.
If you’re trying to do it quick or while being shot at you should absolutely expect DC25 etc…
Naturally anything that’s really worth locking up tight will have secondary puzzle or magical countermeasures too.
Thanks for the good input everybody.
(at least) 2 things I was missing: Replacement picks being 3SP/negligible bulk, and critical successes.
I think Merwyn has an excellent point about the rolls being excessive when there’s no time constraints, but I could see how the rolling could build tension when the rogue is trying to break into a dockside warehouse and the paladin is trying to distract the nightwatchman.
The gaminess of pick tracking is not fun, but I’d just say to buy a hundred, and instead of measuring them in qty measure them in the extra round lost fishing a replacement from your pack.
I can only base my knowledge of picking locks on watching the LockPickingLawyer. :P
So, I looked at this video, mostly because the key looks like what you’d find in a fantasy setting, and it’s an older style of lock than the modern pin tumblers. He starts at 1:15, and finishes at 2:06, for a time of 51 seconds. Not too far off! and while a Pathfinder character will be pretty superheroic, the man in the video (for those who don’t know) is notoriously fast at picking locks, and has even competed in timed competitions—and he’s not in grave danger, like a player character likely would be. :P he also, interestingly enough, gets stuck, figure out what the problem was, and start over, which maps perfectly onto requiring multiple successes to fully open.
As for lock picks breaking, I don’t know. Bean counting aside, I don’t know how big of a deal it would be. I’ve heard LPL talk about breaking picks, but it’s fairly rare, unlike what you see in most RPGs that incorporate it as an element. But he’s also living in the modern day, where materials can be better and more consistent, and manufactured at scale. the people making lock picks, especially ones a thief an honorable rouge can get their hands on, might be making small batches by hand with whatever material they can get their hands on.
So I think it’s actually firmly realistic enough for suspension of disbelief.
I think taking a minute to pick an average lock, or 2 minutes to pick a good lock is pretty reasonable, personally. What’s weird is the fact that in PF1 / D&D, it can be done in 6 seconds, most of the time. That’s just inhumanly fast. If you break a pick (at a cost of 3sp, assuming common tools and that you just replace the pick rather than bothering to try to repair it), that’s not really a big deal - any rogue worth their salt should be carrying spare picks, anyway.
Is it realistic to expect to break a pick on 60% of lock you pick? No, not really, but this is a game, and we already do a lot of things that are unrealistic. As a GM, if I had a player complaining about this, I’d consider letting them take longer to pick the lock (perhaps doubling or tripling the completion time) in exchange for the threshold to critically fail being slightly lower (by 5 points or so), to represent more meticulous work in an effort to specifically avoid breaking tools - but really, the cost is so minimal, I don’t really see any reason that this should be needed (except in a case where picks are for whatever reason not readily available, and where time is no real object, such as picking the lock on shackles or something.)
It’s a pretty realistic expectation for a mediocre locksmith in the real world faced with the average door lock. It’s a bit slow for the fantasy expert lock picking thief who’s invested their ability and skill increases to excel at a mundane and achievable task. But time spent is the smaller issue.
And it’s 3 gp a thieves tool set, but the bigger issue is bulk. God forbid you’ve a dozen doors with good locks in a dungeon, that’s 4 bulk worth of picks to get through–pretty much the thiefs whole inventory–and a 50 percent chance of ultimate failure (not to mention 240d20). Pretty rough on the class fantasy. If nothing else I’d change the names of the locks to pad the thief ego: poor becomes average, average good, good master and master legendary. I don’t want my player stymied by an average door because he only brought one backup toolkit.
Merwyn already pointed out that replacement picks are cheap and weightless. Regarding the number of dice, every PF2 campaign I’ve been a part of (which is two, so a pretty small sample size) has just had the rogue roll for each tumbler right up front. Need 5 successes, roll 5 dice. If any of them are a critical success, it offsets a critical failure (in addition to counting for two tumblers as normal); otherwise, each critical failure = -1 replacement pick. It’s meant on average 2-3 sets of rolls per lock, rather than 7-8, and keeps things moving at a fine clip.
To me the time requirement looks fine. There is examples of super skilled people on YouTube who can pick good locks in less time than a round in pf, but they obviously are legendary.
My issue is the chance to break picks. That part seems unrealistic (even for a fantasy world) and it just add something to keep track of in a “video game” style.
My other issue is that from a gameplay perspective, if there is no ongoing fight and we are not in encounter mode, I don’t see at all the point to make so many rolls and require several successes. I would be more inclined to a system with a lower DC and where the difference between your roll and a dc determine the time you spend to open it. I am kind of homebrewing it this way in my campaign, but I was not very consistent with my ruling for this … I should think about it and write it somewhere.
In the end, if your players agree to a little homebrew, it’s up to the GM to tweak the rules to fit the story. Are they trying to pick a lock while being chased with enemies dozen of meters behind ? Then it’s important to clearly define how many rounds are needed and I would make a check per rounds. Otherwise, if they are calmly trying to open something without stress and with all the tools required, just make one check and determine the time spend (if it’s relevant) from the result.
Are they in a dire situation with only one precious pick and without possibility to find more ? Then it’s important to follow the rules to break it, otherwise just handwave it.
My other issue is that from a gameplay perspective, if there is no ongoing fight and we are not in encounter mode, I don’t see at all the point to make so many rolls and require several successes.
Isn’t that why old editions of D&D let you take 20 on a lot of out-of-combat things? I’m still not sure why that was removed from both D&D and Pathfinder.
