The Crimson Binome
Hero
In many cases, there are no meaningful consequences for the action. If you fail to open a lock, then you've wasted a minute (?), and nothing else has changed. Most locks are there in order to guard property while nobody is there to watch it, so it's unlikely that anyone will show up before you get to make ten more attempts.Why not use the natural consequences of the action?
For me, personally, the biggest offender here is with manacles. Standard manacles can be slipped with a Dexterity check or broken with a Strength check, each against DC 20. If it only takes six seconds to make an attempt, and there's no worse penalty for failure, then the average nondescript human will break free in about a minute. Why would they even bother to craft such a device, if it was only effective on the sub-set of the population which had below-average Strength and Dexterity?