Of all the classes, Thief receives probably the brunt of criticism regarding D&D’s early class design. I’ve even met some OD&D grognards who view the class as borderline heretical and excise the class entirely from their games, viewing it as a “forced niche.”

The point of this article is not to debate the merits of the thief class, which I believe it has - even if not mechanically, certainly archetypically - but that is a bit beyond the scope of this article. What I aim to do is focus in on a specific mechanic of the thief’s which I find the most egregious: lockpicking.

I’ve had this discussion about lockpicking in OSR games with quite a number of people, and I’d like to say I wasn’t the first to devise this concept (certainly there is probably a blog post somewhere out there which has outlined this idea), but so far I have not found it.

Anyone who has watched the LockPickingLawyer probably knows where I am going with this, and being a novice dabbler in the skill of lockpicking, I can say it’s pretty trivial. The difference between a good lockpick and a bad one is not a matter of if, but when. That is an important distinction because often the thief skills are treated as binary pass or fails like many skills, but I think this ill-suits lockpicking.

What I propose is that lockpicking as a skill should be a matter of when rather than an if. Getting the lock picked is a guarantee; the question rather becomes do you have the time? Time before someone notices or before the Dungeon Master rolls for dungeon encounters?

Lockpicking Rules⌗

Note: I used the OD&D Thief as the example, but this works just as well in B/X or AD&D.

  • Lockpicking takes a base time of 10 minutes to complete
  • Thieves reduce this time by 1 minute for every 10% in their Open Lock skill (e.g., a Thief with 65% Open Lock skill reduces the time by 6 minutes)
  • If attacked while picking a lock, the Thief makes an Open Lock skill check:
    • Success: They maintain their progress and can continue from where they left off
    • Failure: They lose their progress and must restart the process

Thief Open Lock

Level Open Lock Time Reduction
1 15% 1 Minute
2 20% 2 Minutes
3 25% 2 Minutes
4 35% 3 Minutes
5 40% 4 Minutes
6 45% 4 Minutes
7 55% 5 Minutes
8 65% 6 Minutes
9 75% 7 Minutes
10 85% 8 Minutes
11 95% 9 Minutes
12 100% 10 Minutes.

Tools

Tools Time
Improvised tools 2X Time
Thieves Tools Standard

Lighting Conditions

Lighting Condition Time
Total Darkness 3x Time
Darkness 2x Time
Dim Light 1.5x Time
Normal Lighting Standard

Lock Quality

Quality Time
Poor 1/2 Time
Standard Standard
Good 2x Time

Be Not Afraid Rules⌗

For my own game system I have Lockpick as a skill a character can pickup either at character creation or if they roll for skill increases at level up, I have the rules for that here.

  • Lockpicking Base Time: 10 minutes, modified by skill and conditions.
  • Skill Modifications: Each +1 in Lockpicking reduces the time by 1 minute. For example, a character with +4 in Lockpicking reduces the time by 4 minutes.
  • Poor Quality Locks (e.g., Masterlocks): Can be instantly opened by using a waverack or by striking the lock. (A roll of 1-2 out of 6 opens the lock when hit.)