D20Modern - Harry Houdini shafted!

[Unseelie]

It's not bad. If you're picking the lock it's an easier DC -- and in my early mucking about with magic days, I learned to do it with a big-ass Safety pin to a low DC lock without too many "ranks". If you're just wiggling out, that takes some skill and practice (and unpleasantly dislocated thumbs) and so should be a muckload harder.

And yet, taking 20 (two minutes, and nobody's watching), 16 DEX (+3 modifier), a 9th level hero with max ranks could do it. Not exactly epic level.

And it comes down even more with the Nimble feat (+2 to Escape Artist and Slight of Hand)...

I think it's safe to say that Houdini wasn't a low level character.

Now, if you're looking for the pulp/cinematic escape artist rather than realism, my call would be to consider creating an advanced class for Stage Magician. True to the other advanced classes, you should be able to hit it by 4th or 5th level if you're following the best route. Then you could add all sorts of cinematic escape artist abilities as a class feature.

 

[Unseelie]

And yet, taking 20 (two minutes, and nobody's watching), 16 DEX (+3 modifier), a 9th level hero with max ranks could do it. Not exactly epic level.

I didn't see this first time either, but it states that using EA to get out of handcuffs takes 1 minute, so taking 20 would require taking 20 minutes. So much for being able to hold your breath while removing them underwater.

 

[Scud-O]

But what, exactly, do you think the escape artist skill is ultimately designed to represent?

I would expect that it would be the entire range of trickery (not just muscle and bone manipulation) that could be used to escape from situations.

When modern day escapologists escape from modern handcuffs, whether they accomplish it by escaping from genuine cuffs beforehand or by switching something while the policeman isn't looking, this should be an option for modern heroic characters IMO.

well, if all you want to do is switch out the cop's real handcuffs for fake ones and then escape those, all you would need (assuming you had the fake cuffs on you) is a (possible) Bluff check, a Pick Pocket check (possibly twice, if your DM is as evil as ours--one for stealing the real cuffs, one for placing the fake ones), and, viola, you can now escape the mean, mean policeman's cuffs.

i agree, though, that for cinematic escapologists, one would want to create an Advanced class.