Lockpicking mini-rant

[Araon]

So, this is less of a criticism on Baldur's Gate 3 as much as just an issue I have with the genre in general that BG doesn't do anything to fix.

Games like these are often filled with locked doors and containers that require lockpicks and an investment in a lockpicking skill to access reliably. It's rarely something that'll lock you our of progressing the game, but certain quests can be harder, and in general exploration you're going to miss out on a lot of loot.

My issue with that is that it generally means that at least one character in your team has to be geared toward dealing with lockpicking. In BG3 that means that one of three things has to be true: you either have to have Astarion with high dex (since he has slight of hand from his background), Have a rogue or bard in your team with high dex, or your avatar has to have a background that grants slight of hand proficiency and high dex.
It's not the worst thing ever, but it does suck to have a limitation like that, especially for repeated playtrhough where maybe I don't want a rogue or astarion in my team, so now I have to have a bard or a dex-based custom avatar if I want to be able to deal with locks.

To me locked chests don't really feel like an option given to a player, like stealth or persuasion solutions to quests, but just a borderline nececity that the game forces on you. Especially when pretty much no other mechanic or system in the game is a stingy with solutions for a situation that is way more common tha nfor example needing to lift something heavy or jumping far/high, etc.

[BeautifulFlowerField]

complaint has no basis. You don't even need a lockpicker in the first place but Astarion, shadowheart, lae'zel can all three easily lockpick the entire game without devoting anything in the character progression specifically to it) as well as the knock spell and the ability to break locks with weapons and damage. You can create hireling skill monkeys if you want and you can warp to camp and back out with whatever party member you need for a skill check basically anywhere in the game except for very very few fast travel restricted areas. You're not going to miss anything due to a lock unless you're rushing through the game ignoring absolutely everything therefore not knowing what you can even do. Even my characters without lockpicking proficiency can pick DC 30 locks, it's no problem when you have 25+ thieves tools bardic inspiration guidance astral knowledge sleight of hand bonus accessories sleight of hand bonus abilities and spells knock just break it misty step past it, there are dozens of ways to solve the problem besides having or grabbing a party member with a high lockpicking skill which you can also do very quickly without ever compromising your preferred party set up for combat or dialogue.

[Asgo]

or just a single level dip into rogue with a okish dex that isn't a dump stat. do it on cleric and that char can self guidance to improve it.
It's not that hard to get an okish value there, most locks are <=20 a few 25 and very rare 30 that you don't have to care about (most of them probably have a key somewhere)

[Wiegs]

A wizard can use Knock to open almost anything, or even better you can just look around and find the key most of the time. Or go full barbarian monkey brain and smash chests, it often does the trick.

[Shaddy Safadi]

I know this is necro, but I came to this thread after just failing a chance to lockpick something with a 25% chance 33 times in a row. Lockpicking in this game is really tedious and boring.

[Draknalor]

Originally posted by Shaddy Safadi:

I know this is necro, but I came to this thread after just failing a chance to lockpick something with a 25% chance 33 times in a row. Lockpicking in this game is really tedious and boring.

You can smash most doors & Chests instead of having to open just break them.

For anything that you can’t break just use the knock spell from wizard or if you have a knock scroll

[belgix]

Because high DEX is important for monks, my TAV did all the job. She was no so good detecting traps, I used Shadowheath to find it when my monk failed do detect it. A perfect pair.

[jonnin]

even more options...
you can have a gith with a 14 dex or so using astral knowledge
you can have a ranger or bard with SOH

you can have a 14 or so dex character loaded up with SOH items and guidance and whatnot. This will fail a lot esp on 30 difficulty locks but the majority of locks are under 20 and this will do just fine given the excess of picks in the world. you can knock the really bad ones and some of the blood potions have a 'free' knock (gnome?)


I keep saying 14 dex. This assumes you have at least 1 medium armor user in your group, who has the 14 or better to take advantage of that type of armor.

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SOH is just a critical skill, and its OK since it replace at least 5 old ruleset skills. Its your pickpocket, disarm and set traps (set was left out of BG3), open locks, general SOH(con games and odd delicate operations) all in one. Back in older rules you wanted a rogue or a bard or someone with a very high skill set (a few classes got tons of skill per level, most did not, and only rogues and select classes were allowed to take thieving skills as not generally known to others) so its much better than it used to be.

[76561199209629721]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.