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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8806218" data-attributes="member: 6877472">No I can agree with that, but I've been arguing about the rules of D&D for a very long time, and it gets really cumbersome when two people read the same sentence and come to two very different conclusions.  For some reason, despite the use of "natural" language and the emphasis placed on the DM to go with their own interpretation, there seems to be just as many rules debates now as 20 years ago.Six months ago, I'd bother to image capture text from the books and post it on the forum (I love Enworld's functionality!) to debate these things, but enough time of it just not mattering has made me just shrug; a lot of people don't even want to agree on a baseline of how the game works to begin with.With this thread, I recently discovered that the vast majority of modern locks have exploits and a trained lockpick with proper tools (which is what I always assumed Rogues/Thieves were) can pop one open within a minute with relative ease.  On top of this, I also found out that the vast majority of locks from the time periods D&D emulates were waaaaay less complex as well.Which got me wondering about entire dungeons where you'd told things like "doors: all doors are made of thick wood and bound with iron and have DC 20 locks unless otherwise stated"- this struck me as very odd, and I got to wondering about why it's like that.And without doing a count, most replies are "because that's how D&D is", a smaller but not insignificant number are "yes, it's kind of weird, but there are good reasons to not change it" and what's left is "why are you having people roll anyways, locks are 99% of the time a deterrent to commoners, not thieves".  Or, as I said in my original post, nothing but speed bumps or time sinks, not actual challenges.And now I'm rambling, lol.  I'm sure I was working up to a point, but it's gone now.  I think the takeaway here is:D&D is strange, nothing new about that.More specifically, complex lock and trapmaking exist, even when other innovations do not, because all D&D technology is weird.Don't worry too much about who is making all these devices; either monsters have all kinds of time and resources on their hands, or it's remnants of an ancient civilization, or the DC's reflect things like rust and decay.Or, to the contrary, Kobolds have a compulsive need to maintain any old mechanisms they find.Either way, if the difficult to bypass a lock or trap isn't super hard, then it must take a long time and create a lot of noise, otherwise Criminals/Rogues have no place in adventuring,</blockquote>

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