Bam! What this says. I always hated the posts that start with someone saying, "I do swordplay, so I know blah, blah..." I think we all get that D&D is not real life and there needs to be shortcuts to make the rules fit. We might not like all of it, but we need to understand it.
It is not that it does a bad job of lockpicking but a bad job of competence, at least without expertise and reliable talent. That is the issue is not the rules but the D20 and the variance in the die roll.
The problem is far more fundamental. It's that the gap between heroic tier proficient and non-proficient is only +2
I've actually picked a number of locks while on the clock. It's quite simple to pick locks with the right tools given time. The trouble with lockpicking in d&d isn't that they get the fluff wrong though, I think it's more the extreme emphasis put on thieves' tools/lockpick skill as the first last & usually only option that overvalues it in ways that cause tunnelvision.
