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Is picking a lock harder than it should be? (2e.aonprd.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/pf2general@pathfinder.social
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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?

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[–] [S] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

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.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    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.

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