"A specific key is required....." (about locks)

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 7:59 pm

Okay .........now this might fall into the category of "pet peeve" but .....

I would like to see a change made to the script of "a specific key is required to open that".

PnP D&D has a very well developed set of rules regarding opening of locks and breaking doors. If those are followed the world will be more immersive. I hate having to see a high level rogue roleplay that the lock on some flimsy farmhouse door barely hanging by a hinge "is beyond my skills to understand" when in order to be beyond the rogue's skills it would have to be magically locked by the farmer/archmage or have some gnomish device to keep it shut worth a few thousand gold pieces.

Now, I know there a times when builders and DMs don't want PCs to have potential access to all areas. In these cases I would like to see a script that says: "This is area is only to be entered undered DM supervision" or something to that that effect. But still leave the doors with an appropriate hardness and Open Lock DC as per their PnP recommendations.

Anyway ...........just my thoughts on a subject that probably very few people care about

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:06 pm

Roleplay. The door is barred from the inside. The locks might be rusty. There's nothing in there of interest. Use your imagination.

Post by **paazin** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:13 am

Rotku wrote:Roleplay. The door is barred from the inside. The locks might be rusty. There's nothing in there of interest. Use your imagination.

Still, it would be rather nice if it could be made into an in-game system where a reason would be given for that (Not provided by the builder but possibly the ACR).

And expand, perhaps, the number of bashable/pickable/whateverable locks so they aren't key specific.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:28 am

Scripts to offer PnP rules for breaking open placables and forcing open doors are written, though not at all tested. Scripts are also in place to offer PnP damage rules towards placables and doors (less energy damage, immune to crits, etc).

Scripts will not be written to offer any way of opening doors which requiret a specific key, or bashing down plot-marked doors. Builders need to be able to keep these from being opened, most commonly because there is nothing built behind them.

The "a specific key is required" message is not a script, its hard-coded, and its nothing we can change. We could offer an additional message, but thats all.

Misty · Post by **Misty** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:05 am

With all the things teh tech team is working on, this seems really low on priority

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:10 am

Rotku wrote:Roleplay. The door is barred from the inside. The locks might be rusty. There's nothing in there of interest. Use your imagination.

OK then ..........A farm house in Tribaor. Nothing special. Jus a little thatched shack in the woods........a balanced party of 12th level pcs wants to investigate it .......................................

The point is ..........if the door is barred then it can be broken.........if the lock is rusty then a well trained locksmith can pick it.

Making locks and doors "supernatually" locked isn't a good system.

Not trying to make waves ..............just trying to point out a potential spot for improvement

Misty · Post by **Misty** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:15 am

I have not yet met a builder who wants to go in and replace all the inconsequential doors of a mod that are marked thus. I suppose someone like that is out there, somewhere.

I'll take live DMing to get my PC over 1st level rather than fuss over doors. My times are posted

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:18 am

dergon darkhelm wrote:
Rotku wrote:Roleplay. The door is barred from the inside. The locks might be rusty. There's nothing in there of interest. Use your imagination.
OK then ..........A farm house in Tribaor. Nothing special. Jus a little thatched shack in the woods........a balanced party of 12th level pcs wants to investigate it .......................................

The point is ..........if the door is barred then it can be broken.........if the lock is rusty then a well trained locksmith can pick it.

Making locks and doors "supernatually" locked isn't a good system.

Not trying to make waves ..............just trying to point out a potential spot for improvement

Umm... okay. So how would having a message come up saying "This is area is only to be entered undered DM supervision" be any better? You still have to find an IC reason that you can't get in.

The only solution is to go around and make all the interiors. If you're willing, I know of about 30 in TPI that need making

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:43 am

dergon darkhelm wrote:OK then ..........A farm house in Tribaor. Nothing special. Jus a little thatched shack in the woods........a balanced party of 12th level pcs wants to investigate it .......................................

The point is ..........if the door is barred then it can be broken.........if the lock is rusty then a well trained locksmith can pick it.

Making locks and doors "supernatually" locked isn't a good system.

Not trying to make waves ..............just trying to point out a potential spot for improvement

This is mainly used when an area doesn't have an interior because it's not important, but the doors are there for flavor. If you make every door openable, then you have to make every interior in every city. Silverymoon should have about thirty thousand of them, get to work.

Brokenbone · Post by **Brokenbone** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:08 pm

Consider the "Specific Key" message your requested "Enter with a DM" message from here on out, and the problem's licked, right?

I've got a rogue and see this all over the place for spots I know I need to investigate... which just rings an alarm bell for me which says "if this is important to me, I'll want to grab one of my plot-knowledgeable DMs to check this out."

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:36 pm

I couldn't agree more, Brokenbone......in NWN I treat that message as "find a DM"

What I meant to was try to see if there could be something different done in ALFA NWN2 so that fewer doors would be this way.

I don't script or build so I am not sure of the level of effort that would be required to have some random indoor areas to place behind doors with differing DCs etc (ala the system that WD has now). It was just a thought

Gelcur · Post by **Gelcur** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:07 pm

Well there is also the problem that sometimes DMs have things planned for those areas but haven't found the time to build it. Filling it with temporary content wouldn't be a solution. Honestly I have no problem with entire areas being like this there are some places PCs just shouldn't be without DMs.

Though it is great that we have all the PnP scripts in place. Hopefully we can get them all tested out this way we can have all doors not marked as plot work that way automatically.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:32 pm

I think this topic has come up before and I think the answer lies in creating template areas for "generic" interiors that a scripted system can just cycle through at random. These we could attach to door events by default.

For things like busting into a store (say they break down a door that is barred) or picking locks in plain view, there has to be consequences built into the environment depending on the area. That means NPC AI to investigate if they are within earshot or line of sight and jail-port scripts to haul off the rabble rousers. These things are already on the ALFA wish list.

Joos · Post by **Joos** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 8:36 pm

Yes, and a generic PnP based system for doors rather than the "take 20" system thats is currently the IG standard.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:50 am

Rotku wrote:Roleplay. The door is barred from the inside. The locks might be rusty. There's nothing in there of interest. Use your imagination.

Its not hard to have the message say "This door is barred from the inside" rather than "This lock is beyond your skills", surely?

However, the "this pissant farm door resists the blows of your great-axe without a dent" is a little bit harder to explain in game - the lock picking issue is a minor subset of the problem, really.

That problem being - there are more doors in game, leading to trivial areas, than builders can reasonably be expected to provide interiors for.

***

A fired message of "A quick look through the door shows a peasents lodgings with nothing of interest" is one solution.

But even then doesn't take into account that folk might have reasons to enter that go beyond avarice or nosiness. Hiding themselves (or a body) for example.

How would the random system handle that?

****

A random system that treated an interior a bit like a P-Chest might be interesting - the same actual interior "Tile" could be used for all peasent lodgings, with placables, NPCs and any dropped items, spawning in depending on a database entry?

Especially useful if the game can randomly generate a new database entry itself, when a player enters a door that no-one else has ever entered. Builders would simply have to indicate a given door links to a given database, and not have to create the actual interiors.