Neonchameleon
Legend
DC20 sounds reasonable to me if you use the baseline of a not particularly dextrous person untrained at lockpicking. If it was any lower we'd be asking who was making these locks that couldn't even keep out someone with no training or aptitude. Masterlock?So while D&D worlds are generally a mashup of different eras of history, mixing and matching technological advances to keep them from feeling "too modern", the fact is, even modern locks aren't terribly hard to open with the right tools and you can learn how to bypass them yourself by watching some YouTube videos. Locks during the time periods that D&D tends to mimic should, by rights, be fairly simple to open.
And yet, even first level characters can encounter DC 20 locks (5e's Sunless Citadel, for example) that you only have a 25% chance of opening. Who is making all these devilishly complex locks in the first place?
D&D Next is looking better - at +5 with advantage from having the right tools you've a 7/16 chance. The problem is +2 isn't enough for proficiency.