The Open Lock spell was an awful idea if you want role-playing. A magic user shouldn't be good at getting through locks just like a thief shouldn't be good at wielding two-handed weapons. If you want to get through a lock, you should need to invest in the skill that gets you through locks. It's a simple role-playing concept.

It completely subverts role-playing if you can just throw a spell at it without a dedicated skill. Especially with regenerating magicka, there's never any consequences or risk of failure associated with trying. A mage shouldn't be better at dealing with locks than a dedicated thief, but that's what an Open Lock spell accomplishes. Infinite no-risk no-cost unlocks for mages, whereas a thief needs to manage lockpicks and carefully assess if a lock is worth attempting. That's completely backwards. Even if a mage has a free ride with being able to pick locks without the requisite skill because he has a spell, they should never be better at it than someone dedicated in the skill of picking lock. It's like being good at blocking without having to touch the Block skill, and being better at it than someone who did invest in a block skill.

Your ability to get through locks should be affected by your lockpicking/security skill. Perhaps bashing and open lock spells could work that way... the less you know about locks, the more risk there is of damaging the contents of a chest, of tripping traps, making people go hostile, and of generally alerting enemies to your presence, regardless of your weapon or alteration skill (in fact, the more weapon or alteration skill you have, the more risk there is of damaging contents or alerting people, if you don't have a lockpicking skill to match). If you want to use a spell to unlock a lock, or strength to safely and efficiently break open a lock, you should still need to know how locks work.

The lockpicking skill is useless. Anyone with some experience with the minigame can open a master lock with 10 lockpicks at most. The only reason I put perk points in lockpicking with my thief character was roleplaying.
And since you find lockpicks under every bush, you don't even need to care how many you've broken.

Here's my two septims:

1. Beth should assign a skill requirement for each level of lock (you need 20 lockpicking for an apprentice lock, 45 for adept, 70 for expert,etc, so the skill would be needed.

2. They could add a low level lockpicking perk (requirements: 80 in One-Handed, or in two handed AND 30 lockpicking) that would allow you to bash a lock open.
It would be very loud though, and alert everyone in the area.

3 .And with an expert level alteration spell, you could open the lock, but every item in a chest opened with the spell (except quest items) had a 33% chance of being destroyed in the process, and it would be moderately loud.


So you could circumvent lockpicking with some effort, but it had some backdraws.

What would you have a mage do then when there is a locked door? Just say "It's locked" and move on? That is a huge disadvantage to the mage who doesn't want thief skills, using lock picks, and also doesn't want warrior skills, using heavy weapons to bash open a lock.

There has to be an open spell for the mages so that they also can open chests and doors and have the same level playing field that the other "Classes", in a classless system in Skyrim" have.

Role Playing a mage just can't be done because the game forces you to become a thief, in the main quest, forces to you use thief tools, lock picks, and pushes you to become a warrior, nerfing the destruction spells so that they don't level up with you like your sword does.

I shudder at the thought of eliminating real-time picking altogether and going with some stats-bounded roll of the dice. If I wanted to play a paper-and-pencil RPG, that's what I'd be doing. I very much like the importance of the player's skill in as many things as possible, in an ARPG. I think the lockpicking idea in Skyrim is very sound, and it's the best implementation in the ES series yet. The mechanics are always the same, but the player's room for error increases as the player's character's lockpicking skill advances. If your skill is honed sufficiently, you don't need to spend precious perk points on your toon's stats. That's actually true in more than just lockpicking, All aspects of physical combat come to mind. This flexibility combined with scarce perk points works very well in Skyrim.

Yes. Unless you can find a key somewhere, or there's some other way around. One character doesn't have to be able to do everything.

And it's a huge disadvantage to a thief who doesn't want warrior skills to be in open combat. If you give characters a free pass because they didn't take lockpicking, then what the heck is the point of taking lockpicking? Would you give thieves great weapon and armor capabilities for "free" because they didn't want to take weapon or armor skills?

There should be consequences to your choices. If you don't level in heavy armor or light armor, you're not going to soak up damage that well. If you don't level in lockpicking, you're not going to get through locks well. For a forum that regularly complains about the lack of consequences to player choices, and lack of choices in general,, this argument is strongly in favor of stripping a rather big consequence from a player choice, to the point of making such a choice irrelevant.

I'm not aware of any locked door or chest in the MQ that you had to open to progress. The only reason it pushes you to become a warrior is because magic is very poorly balanced, since it doesn't scale with your level like the other skills do (and the mage-oriented buffs you could get were utter crap), and thieves aren't known to be able to stand toe-to-toe in open combat.

There is no real-time lockpicking. The game world is paused while you're in the mini-game. Not that I'm in favor of dice rolls, but Oblivion's and Skyrim's mini-games had too little bearing on your character's lockpicking/security skill. You would get slaughtered if you fought a high-level enemy with low-level combat skills, but it's a snap to "defeat" a high-level lock with a low-level lockpicking skill. TES tends to do well with merging player and character skills (you need both to survive), but lock-picking is one they never really got right.

The exercise itself is real-time, and could be done while the world's clock continues to tick. Not doing so was a design choice, not a limitation of the mechanics.

Figure out how to find the key? Yes, I know that Skyrim holds an extreme number of locks that has no ingame key, but in most cases a key should have been available. As I noted earlier, if one use of force is allowed, a magic user can use destruction magic to destroy the container, with problems of noise and possible destruction of their contents.

Having a simple spell that bypass the need for a whole skill is simply not balanced, and it makes the skill useless.


"Pure" warriors cannot open locks either. They have to go for lockpicking as well. And why should a "pure" mage be getting the same bonus for doing, well, nothing, that a "pure" thief gets for spending a lot of time to master a skill? Also, how is knowing how to pick a lock the same as being a thief? Locksmiths know how to pick locks, but they are not thieves.

And yet, the mini-game is not real-time. A guard cannot in any way surprise you while you are trying to open a lock. Your subjective experience may be real-time, but from the point of view of the NPCs, it takes all of 0 seconds for a noob to pick a master lock.

Personally, I favor skill checks because for me the really exciting part of being a sneak is the knowledge that in a second, someone could walk in on you and catch you red handed.

i shudder at what lockpicking has become in tes. it's now a sloppy and worthless system.

it's purely cosmetic now.

the regression is complete.

think about it: a tes game, where thieves are a fundamental class to create and lockpicking is now inmaterial.

This is ultimately my problem with the RPG mentality...

"A mage wouldn't pick a lock"

Why not?

Because an arbitrary class system, that has no real basis on anything, has told people that Lockpicking is a "thief" skill...

Even though that class system is completely irrelevant in Elder Scrolls and has been for all but 1 game.

Elder Scrolls doesn't deal in "warrior", "mage", "thief", despite what constellations skills are grouped in for nothing more than a sense of lore. It deals in "do what you want", therefore, if you want to play a mage, and you want to pick a lock, then a mage would pick locks, and it does not make him a thief.

The same way if I play a thief and want to wield a 2 handed warhammer, I can do it. Or if I want to play as a mage who can cast high level Calm spells.

Elder Scrolls has been distancing themselves from that arbitrary class system since the very beginning, and that is exactly what makes Elder Scrolls great. In a system where you are not limited to "warrior", "mage", "thief", like inferior RPG games limit you to, there is no need for an Open Lock spell. It is a luxury, and it's nice to have, but ultimately abilities like Open Lock spells and lock bashing completely negate an entire skill.

The current Lockpicking minigame certainly is a flawed way of dealing with the skill, and perhaps making it real time is something that needs to happen, so that there is more benefit to leveling up that skill to make the game easy, but that is not the only solution.

However, I do know that a solution such as making it impossible to even attempt to pick the lock unless you have a required skill flies in the face of what Elder Scrolls is about. I should be able to attempt it, the same way I can put on Heavy Armor with no skill in it, or pick up a 2 handed warhammer with no skill in it. I shouldn't be denied the chance to attempt something, however there needs to be a better balance between the minigame and the actual skill.

In response to the title, Yes & Yes. They should had restricted it, so you cannot attmept to even open a lock unless you have the skill level required.

And The Mages Open Lock spell oversight....still makes my blood boil

So then basically... "thieves" should be restricted on what locks they can and cannot attempt to pick, but "mages" should just be able to throw a spell at it?

I might break 30 picks on a master lock. I always have about 200+ lockpicks on me. I'm 96 lock picking though. Feel I've accomplished something big in the game lol. The hard road is almost over >.<.


I don't know about several thousand gold.. but master lock chests usually give me around 200-300 gold. And that's the usual for boss chests as well.. Most I've got was 515.

what would you do nell? seriously.

don't defend. be creative and take about all of 10 minutes to come up with a better system.

No, the Spell has to be of sufficent strength for the lock

Not let "mages" just bypass skill investment that "thieves" have to put time and effort into.

I've already explained some ideas that I had for the lockpick system earlier in this thread.


That still gives "mages" the same benefit that "thieves" get, only without the skill investment that "thieves" have to put work into.

See?
It is possible to devise a system that works.
You just dont want to, so you jump through hoops in order to make it sound as if an open lock spell is really unfair and unbalanced (As if that means anything in a single player game).

You needed level 100 alteration to open a master level lock in Oblivion, but could attempt to lockpick it at any level.

And when push comes to shove, there simply is no such thing as 'bypassing a skill investment' in a TES game.
This is a roleplaying game. This isnt halo or wow and that kind of mentality of min-maxing and linear gameplay simply has no place, or should have no place when designing a game like this.

That still gives "mages" the same benefits as "thieves", without putting in the skill investment as the "thieves"

First of all, as I explained above, no it does not.

Secondly, even if, that is meaningless as this is a roleplaying game.
There simply is no such thing as what you describe.
Why cant I choose lockpicking if I like to do that and choose open spells on another character?
Its a fallacy that an open lock spell makes lockpicking useless because the attraction of many options is in enhancing the roleplaying aspects and by that the shelf life of the game, whereas less options ultimately boils down to less playtime.

nell-

i honestly don't understand the, now, apologetic attitude, you've taken. (i thought even apologists couldn't touch lockpicking)

it doesn't seem right?

the lockpicking system is something my daughter can fix.

to go beyond that it's faulty into other realms is irresponsible.

The skill tree for lockpicking includes many useful perks not related to difficulty, such as:
Quick Hands: Pick locks without being noticed
Golden Touch: Find more gold in chests
Treasure Hunter: 50% chance to find special treasure
Unbreakable: Guess

In conclusion the minigame may be easy but the skill tree is far from useless

It's the fact that lockpicks are so easy to find, unlike in Fallout 3, and you can unlock all the locks at a low level. The main thing is the lockpick rarity though. I think if they patched it so they are harder to find then it will be more balanced.

Trivializing a skill and making it superfluous doesn't "enhance" roleplay. Take the argument to the extreme to see how ludicrous it is.

You need to train a specific skill (lockpicking) to do a specific activity (get through locks). A character that chooses not to invest in that specific skill, but can still do that activity, is the bane of role-playing. You want to do an activity, but not invest the time and skill designed for that activity. It makes the skill unneeded if you can do the activity without the skill. And once the skill becomes unneeded, you can bet dollars to donuts that it will be "streamlined" away as redundant an unnecessary (which it would be). Everyone can do it, so the skill adds nothing.

Just because it doesn't bother your role-play that you're investing in a useless skill doesn't mean it doesn't bother someone else's role-play.

Have you considered why there is no doctor or first aid skill in TES? It is quite simple, really. When healing spells are all over, why use the time to wait for the body to heal naturally? I suppose that if you really wanted to roleplay a doctor, a doctor skill could have been added, but it would be a gimped skill, because the Restoration skill did much more than the doctor skill and faster.

It's the same thing with Lockpicking skill vs Open Lock spell. If there was such a spell, the clever thief would not muck around with picks. He or she would learn Alteration (or whatever magic skill was required). Aside from being able to open locks, the thief would not need any incriminating tools and get the added bonus of being able to do all the other spells in that school.

I have played three thieves, two of which completed the Thieves Guild quest line. I took no lockpicking perks, and I never got caught lockpicking. I imagine that Golden Touch and Treasure Hunter could be quite useful, but you would have to waste two perk points to get them.

The problem is that youre seing locked items as a function of the lockpicking skill.
It is not, it is a function of the gameworld.
Different routes to get past this obstacle is not the bane of roleplaying, quite the reverse, because it allows you to adopt differing methods suited to your character.

It has also already been pointed out that in Oblivion you could lockpick a master lock at lockpicking level one, but needed alteration level one hundred to do the same with magic.
That sort of means that the argument of not investing is a false one.

More is better. More options are better.
A thief uses a lockpick, which has very few downsides. A warrior bashes a lock, which has a chance to alert enemies.
A mage uses a spell, that requires a hefty skill level.
Thats how it should be as this would facilitate roleplaying becauses it provides options that fit the character.

It would also really help if the difficulty of a lock affected its contents, so that we dont spend five minutes opening a master lock for a pittance in loot.

disqualified.