Dnd 3.5 mind lock12/14/2022 ![]() ![]() Without patrolling monsters in the area or some other time derived challenge, time based penalties are going to be irrelevant, and thus retrying will be a thing that will be desired and no rational reason can be made for it not to happen. It really depends a lot on the environment, in my mind. If I knew I would always have some degree of lock-picking success that would bore me as a player, and encourage me to be lazy as a DM. Being stymied at that stealthy approach might mean breaking down the door, using knock, becoming ethereal, scaling dangerous walls, trying to smuggle yourselves in… I mean there’s a mountain of tropes and narrative devices to get around this hypothetical door, and being forced to adapt to the unexpected is part of the charm of playing and running the game. If your dungeon only has one way into it then there are poor design decisions beyond the nature of locks. Failing forward is great in some situations, but it can’t be overused or it just reinforces the player’s mentality that they can’t truly fail in a task, and locks are so common that things can quickly get crazy if you’re constantly making use of it. #DND 3.5 MIND LOCK FULL#There needs to be meaningful consequences for failure, and I personally go with the no re-roll (at least for a full day or so). No more stealth, and their goal in the dungeon is probably being moved immediately. The only time I might call for an actual failure is if they roll a natural 1, and even then they might just get a "Massive complication", like the door loudly falling off it's hinges, the sound of it echoing throughout the dungeon halls ahead of them. Now they have a fight, and possibly an alarm getting sounded if they don't finish this quick. For example, they automatically trigger a random encounter, which happens to have unlocked the door from the other side. Now, if they fail a whole lot, they might have some serious problems. Let the check succeed, but they have damaged their thieves tool (Disadvantage), or if their thieves tools were already damaged from one failure, they are now broken (No more lock picking.) So, for example, your example of them damaging the thieves tools. Instead, I would have "Success", and "Success with a minor/major complication" depending on how much they fail. I would say that "Failure" Doesn't accomplish a whole lot, story wise. Monsters on the other side of the door hear the noise and prepare an ambush (this probably goes without saying). ![]() The character must wait 1 day before re-attempting (or some other significant amount of time). The thieves' tools are broken in the attempt. (This, like damaged armor, acts as a gold sink.) The thieves' tools are damaged in the attempt, effectively increasing the DC and all future DC's made with those tools. Retrying, with consequences: The character suffers a negative consequence as a result of the failure, but can make a new attempt afterwards. I like this a lot, but is it against the spirit of 5E? Since breaking down a door is noisy, every attempt will result in a wandering monster check. (This is the AD&D model).Ĭonsequences: The party must find another way through the dungeon or break down the door. No retrying: The lock is beyond the character's abilities, and any future checks will result in failure until the conditions change. What are some meaningful consequences of failure? Imagine there is a door with a DC 15 lock on it and the character attempting to unlock it fails the check. Some of the dungeons in Yawning Portal were obviously written with this in mind, so how can we best emulate this in 5E? (And is it even necessary?) Tales from the Yawning Portal is getting me back into the AD&D vibe, when skill checks couldn't generally be re-attempted. ![]()
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