Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition: Locks

In role-playing games, locks are the bane of unimaginative, impatient, entitled, pearl-clutching retards that can't fathom an off-sheet solution, and suffer under the delusion that there's apparently a plague of utterly incompetent DMs barricading all avenues of advancement with doors only surmountable via lock picking.

In reality, in actual play? Eh...they are for the most part a very temporary setback.

Yes, you can try to pick it, and I suppose often enough that might as well be your initial go-to. But if you can't or--gasp--fail, and there's no key to be found, you can always try to find another way around. Or just make your own way by removing the door or bashing it in, removing/destroying the lock mechanism, or tunneling around the door.

There are also often magical workarounds. The classic knock spell comes to mind, but you could employ shatter or disintegrate, something from the transmutation category to make it easier to destroy or even create a path, or even just rust the lock mechanism.

If you can see through the door (just make a hole using a drill or axe if you cannot), a dimension door (or any teleportation, really) will also get you through.

Point is there are plenty of options, some louder and/or resource-intensive and/or more time consuming than others, but after doing some very basic research on locks discovered that, assuming you're more or less sticking with that pseudo-European feel, even with fantasy elements layered on top, you probably won't need to bother with the more laborious alternatives because most locks are really easy to pick.

Starting with the warded lock, this was invented quote some time ago, over a thousand years at the least from what I'd read. It's still in use today, but despite centuries of innovation isn't very secure to the point where one key might inadvertently work on multiple locks.

It doesn't even have to be a skeleton key, which is apparently the simplest way of defeating them (as well as many modern day warded locks): you get a key, file down most of the teeth so that they don't catch on the wards, and give it a turn. If it doesn't work, try some more, and if none of them work you can still do the job with only a pair of picks (or bent wire) designed for that purpose.

At some point locks began to appear with exterior wards, and while this made it more difficult for the skeleton key approach, the picks/wires still do the trick. All in all, pretty quick and easy to deal with.

The first lever tumbler locks came much later, and while they would normally be anachronistic by a couple hundred years, you could argue something like dwarven ingenuity speeding up development and justifying their existence. They are, however, still quite easy to pick using similar methods to the warded lock, but tend to take longer.

The earliest form of a pin tumbler lock predates the rest by a considerable length of time, and unlike the modern iteration there was no cylinder: instead the key hooks into the bolt, pushes the pins up, and then you slide out the bolt. In any case, all varieties are vulnerable to picking (even if they have "anti-pick" measures), and well as other techniques such as lock bumping.

There were also apparently padlocks from the 11th century, but they utilized a spring mechanism, where you had to insert a sort of key that would press down barbs on one end of the shackle (looks similar to a harpoon or barbed arrowhead), allowing it to be removed from the lock's body.

I'm sure they could be picked, otherwise everyone would have used them, but couldn't find any information as to how. Given that most of the keys looked like metal bars with disks on the end, which typically featured one or more holes, I'm guessing you would have a number of such keys to try out (similar to skeleton keys for the warded lock). Or insert some picks or bars to try and push the barbs in.

Some only had one set of barbs to worry about, others had more, which would make it trickier to deal with. I think in this cases you'd put some wax on a "blank", insert it to see where the barbs would be, and make a key based on the pattern. Or just hack it apart with an axe. Or saw it out of the door.

I get that it's a game, and picking locks gives the rogue/thief something to do, a sort of niche to specialize in, but now that I've bothered to look into it there's no going back: most medieval-ish era locks were stupid easy to pick, despite what 2nd Edition's baseline 10% chance and 3rd Edition's DC 25 for an average lock would have you believe.

It's because of all this I've devised a way of handling locks that is both different and superior:

Picking a lock is a Thievery check, modified by Dexterity. The GM makes this roll secretly. You can take 10 and 20, and when taking 10 or rolling can keep at it to increment your check result by 1 each time (which also uses up more time based on the lock), until you effectively reach 20 (before adding modifiers).

I'm not sure what to call this mechanic (in case I want to use it for other skills without having to explain it over and over), or if there's a precedent, but here's an example of what I mean:

A rogue attempts to pick a lock with a DC of 21. He rolls a 13, plus, say, 3 from combined Dexterity and Thievery skill, for a total of 16. This is a "failure", but instead of rolling over and over again (or taking 20), the GM rolls to see how long the attempt takes, increments the result to 17, adds time, then increments to 18, adds more time, etc, until the total is 21.

(Or, put another way, you multiply the difference of your result and DC by the lock's time increment, then add on the base time to figure out how long it takes.)

Assuming the lock's base time is 2d6 minutes and the time increment is 1 minute, this means it would take him 2d6+5 minutes to pick the lock.

I think this could replace taking 20, as unless you roll a nat 1 it will always take less time, but players might opt to just keep retrying, because there's the potential that it will take less time. This mechanic could be used with taking 10, in which case you act like you rolled a 10 and tick up from there.

On the other hand, exceeding the DC can reduce the time it takes to pick a lock: initially every 5 points you beat it reduces the time, to a specific minimum, and Skill Perks and Talents can make this even easier to achieve. In this way, while anyone with at least one point in Thievery can attempt to pick a lock, and bypass most of them (the normal ones, anyway), rogues that opt to specialize will be far superior.

(Of course this only really matters if the GM is smart enough to impose some restrictions and consequences. If the dungeon is a static environment, and light and food aren't much of a concern, then how fast you pick a lock or bash through a door will largely be a non-issue. Something for GMs to keep in mind, and I'll be sure to mention this in the revamped GM's Guide.)

Now that you know how locks can be tackled (covertly, at any rate), here are some examples:

Warded Lock

Thievery DC 11+1d4 (+2 with exterior wards)
Base Time 2d4 rounds
Increment 1 round
Reduction 1 round (minimum 1 round)

Spring Padlock

Thievery DC 13+1d4
Base Time 2d4 minutes
Increment 1 minute
Reduction 1 minute (minimum 1 minute)

Three Lever Tumbler Lock

Thievery DC 15+1d4
Base Time 2d6 minutes
Increment 1 minute
Reduction 1 minute (minimum 1 minute)

Five Lever Tumbler Lock

Thievery DC 19+1d6
Base Time 3d6 minutes
Increment 2 minutes
Reduction 1 minute (minimum 1 minute)

Pin Tumbler Lock

Thievery DC 15+1d6
Base Time 2d6 minutes
Increment 1 minute
Reduction 1 minute (minimum 1 minute)

The above DCs are just baselines, randomized to account for the quality/condition of the lock (also to avoid predictability). GMs can assign a DC, even one that is lower or higher than normal. I'm also considering making the increment and/or reduction random, to make things really unpredictable, as well as to potentially eat up even more time (and therefore make Talents and Skill Perks even more valuable).

These aren't all the locks that will be mentioned. It's a fantasy game after all: we're doing a dwarven megadungeon, which features magnetic locks that can require multiple keys, which need to be combined in different ways, and sometimes inserted in specific sequences to get the doors to work.

The doors and walls are reinforced stone, which are very difficult to bypass, and the ghosts, zombies (more like eroded, petrified dwarf remains), knockers, and automated traps make tunneling through a difficult process due to the noise it makes and the time it would take (also light is an issue).