| 16 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Recently, I had cause to take a close look at the humble Chime of Opening in Pathfinder. I had not taken a close look at since 3.5, and thus had not realized the changes in the rules. Instead of automatically opening locks etc, one now can
make a caster level check against the lock or binding, using the chime's caster level of 11th. The DC of this check is equal to the Disable Device DC to open the lock or binding.
Given the change in the mechanics for the Knock spell, this makes sense. The spell does not automatically succeed, and a magic item based on the spell no longer automatically succeeds.
However, the Knock spell also contains the verbiage of
make a caster level check against the DC of the lock with a +10 bonus.
The Chime of Opening does not have that verbiage. That means that a Chime of Opening makes the attempt to Disable Device with a +11 roll. This is about the average of what I see with a typical 3rd level rogue (3 ranks, +3 for class skill, +3 for Dex, and +2 for masterwork tools).
Without that language, the Chime of Opening has only as 10% of success against a typical "Good" lock (DC 30), and only 30% chance of success against an "Average" lock (DC 25). There is about a 1 in 3 chances that you will use all 10 charges of a Chime of Opening attempting to open a "Good" lock and still fail.
Something is off about this. The Chime of Opening can still automatically dispel Hold Portal and Arcane Lock of below caster level 15, which is very handy. The inability to open locks, though, seems a real waste. I could not find Errata for this, and am a little surprised that I did not find a previous thread on this when I searched the board.
Am I missing something? Should this item get the +10 bonus to the check that Knock spell gets, granting a total of +21 instead of +11 on those Disable Device checks?
My instinct is to make it Caster Level 15, and grant it the +10 bonus that the Knock spell has, but that is clearly a house rule fix. In addition, the pricing for the item seems to be based on a much lower caster level. It looks to be based on the "Single Use, Use Activated" Spell Effect item, i.e. 10 uses of a Spell Level x Caster Level x 50 gp single use spell (10 uses * 2nd level spell knock * 3rd level caster * 50 gp = 3,000 gp). That would suggest the item should be caster level 3, instead. I suspect that is how the 3.5 item was priced out, but I am not sure that applies appropriately to the Pathfinder version.
I take it no one on the boards has any reading that disagrees, and so a Chime of Opening is just really bad at opening standard mechanical locks.
I discovered that a few years ago myself. Hopefully it will be errata'd if we get enough FAQ clicks. There's no way that was an intentional change.
Nope it is just that bad.
Then again it does work on things Knock does not. Ropes for example are called out in the Knock description as immune to knock. The Chime does not have that language so it will open a chest or portal that is tied shut.
Not that that is all as they say that but it is something.