Lockpicking vs. Bashing: Balancing Alternative Solutions to Gaming Puzzles

A locked treasure chest is perhaps one of the oldest puzzles in gaming, be it digital or board. The task is simple: open the chest to get the goodies inside. In the olden days of D&D and similar games, the locked chest was exactly that: a locked, usually wooden, chest. Hinges to open the lid, a small padlock on the front, and a sturdy construction of oak (or ironwood) banded by metal to keep it in one piece.

Traditionally, the job of opening the chest fell to the part Thief (now often called a Rogue or some similarly friendly name) who would employ lockpicks and other tools to overcome the lock and allow the players access to its contents. The players are meant to think of this just as they would a locked chest in real life.

Of course, there are alternatives to picking the lock: You could bash it with an axe, hoping to split the wood into pieces without damaging the contents. You could take this destruction to new heights, burning the chest until it was weak enough to crack open with brute strength. You could even try disassembling the hinges in hopes of bypassing the lock itself. As a child, I would sometimes disassemble the hinges on the interior doors of my house to similar effect. Later editions even introduced magical spells that allowed wizards to unlock chests and doors. Later editions of D&D that is, not my childhood.

With all the options, the Thief loses a bit of their reason for existing within the party. How can we address this in a way that allows these options to exist, but also keeps the focus on locks as the thief's job and not just whoever happens to get their first? And as we try to keep the Thief employed by adjusting the system, how does that affect player creativity and further the idea of an "optimal" solution?

I'll talk about two solutions to the lock problem here: Differing difficulty levels, and external consequences. In examining them, we will see how different players approach problems and how the game system encourages or stifles creativity and party roles. I'll be using a party system of three classic character archetypes, the Wizard, the Fighter, and the Thief. Clerics don't really enter into this discussion.

The first and easiest solution is simply to make "alternative" methods harder than the "proper" method. For example if a lock has difficulty 15 to pick, make the chest a difficulty 25 to break open. This highlights lockpicking as the ideal method , while still allowing the Fighter the option to get at the goods if the Thief is dead, unconscious or otherwise disinclined. Or perhaps instead of a strength check, the Fighter has to do enough damage to the chest to break it open or destroy the lock.