From: I love making up rules... (acb@duke.cs.duke.edu)
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST
Mark Abbott asked me about my remark regarding failed lock-picking and
untrained pickers, namely, how do you determine when a picker has jammed the
lock, or prevent the "bring along a hoard of trollkin to try and pick a lock"?
I actually have a couple of ideas:
Simple: If you "special fail" your lockpicking roll (i.e., roll in the top 20% of the failure range), you jam the lock or break your pin, etc. It requires a critical success to unjam the lock.
More complex: Make it require multiple successes to pick a lock, and a failure on any one puts you a step back. Thus a 5% chance to pick a lock is effectively no chance at all. A 50% chance on a "3-step" lock will take a couple of tries, typically. A "special failure" (10% chance per attempt for a 50% chance) will jam the lock or whatever, which makes an expert lockpicker better than two dabblers.
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