Mechanic: Puzzles and Lockpicking
More Minigames! While I adore the simplicity of d20/advantage, and I have no desire to return to the pre 3E days where everything had its own clunky rules, I think there’s a missing gameplay opportunity in limiting everything to be resolved by just a single roll against a DC
Specificly, I’m looking to create a minigame that evokes a character skillfully overcoming a mechanism that doesn’t require me to break out any props or handwave away hours of work with a single skillroll. I also want to involve a character’s secondary skills as all too often a single ability or proficiency can become a character’s entire toolbox.
Since most videogames have dedicated minigames for lockpicking, lets use it as an example of what I want to do.
First comes understanding the challenge: the player rolls an intelligence check vs the difficulty of the lock (adding whatever tool proficiencies they feel appropriate for the lock). Beating this roll lets them understand the mechanism: Getting a pool of d6s and one of a few “challenges” based off the DC of the lock in question.
DC 5 | 1 | roll a specific number
Dc 10 | 2 | get doubles of a specific number
Dc 15 | 3 | get triples / a run of three/
DC 20| 4 | quadruple / two pair/ all evens
DC 25| 5 | quintuple / full house/ all odds
DC 30| 6 | six of a kind/ two triples/ three pair
Once that Pool of dice is rolled out, the character then gets a number of rerolls based on their dexterity and proficiency in slight of hand, representing them actually using their fine motor skills to pick the lock. If they meet the challenge conditions before they’ve used their last reroll, then they’ve successfully picked the lock. If not, they can either wait for the end of their next short rest with a +5 to the initial DC, or wait until a long rest for that DC to reset.
And that’s it! A system that simulates fussing with something challenging while at the same time putting the player experience forward and not being too rules heavy.
Some considerations when using this system:
Most locks shouldn’t use this system, it’s there for the delicate, fiddley stuff that you DON’T want your players to open/bypass on the first try. This is a lock to the boss room when they can’t be bothered to search the rest of the dungeon for the key, this is the treasure chest containing secret information that you want them to open after an important plot beat has happened.
Different characters can understand the lock and do the actual picking, letting you do team ups between multiple characters or swapping off between them.
You can use this system to represent almost anything complex and skill related, provided you can figure out two ability/proficiency combinations appropriate to the task: picking out a hidden code from a letter and deciphering it, performing an exorcism, engaging in tourney combat before a crowd, solving a maze, willing yourself out of an illusion.
I previously covered a way to make treasure chests more mechanically interesting, and paring them with this sort of lock would be as memorable as any mimic encounter.
I was heavily inspired for the basis of this system by a youtuber creator called Zipperon Disney, he does amazing stuff, go check him out.
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
