Adamantine Daggers and Locks

[Captain Zimri]

I set myself for disaster some time ago in my run of the Skull & Shackles campaign (no spoilers). Short version is that a PC has an adamantine dagger that he uses to break open locks. For three books, I have allowed this because I was too lazy to look up rules and I strongly believed in the "rule of cool." After watching episodes of Critical Role and being a player again (I'm now playing in a campaign for the first time in four years, instead of GMing), I've come to think that I shouldn't have given this PC so much power. Doors and chests are no problem for him now.

What could I do to change the mechanic that I have allowed?

[Charles Scholz]

Admit what you had done and why. Tell him you are now following the rules and he is no longer able to open locks that way.

[Starbuck_II]

It should work. You can make it noisy and sloppy (easy to see someone was there), but it should work.

Now, an adamantine lock would prevent it, but you'd have to guarding something very expensive to have one.

[Link2000]

I might be wrong, but adamantine overcomes hardness less than 20, making it pretty effective at breaking almost anything. Most locks are made of iron and will break with a couple of whacks at most with an adamantine anything. Doors and chests have various HP and hardnesses based on thickness and material.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Moral of this story....

Don't allow the words "Rule of Cool" to shut down your critical thinking process.

[Captain Zimri]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Moral of this story....

Don't allow the words "Rule of Cool" to shut down your critical thinking process.

This is a lesson I have learned the hard way.

As for the others' input:
I guess that makes sense, in a way. As I was thinking about it, any door that he's opened would have to be repaired because none of them can lock anymore.

[Link2000]

Definitely. Disable Device is the clean method that lets you keep or use what you disable. Adamantine is the "f" it process of just getting it done.

Sometimes breaking chests with adamantine objects damages the contents. So you could "punish" the over usage by watching him get sad when scrolls or potions are broken because of his corner cutting ways.

[Lamontius]

traps
guards
alarms
magic locks
mimics

[Saldiven]

Remember, the section on breaking objects has the following line (which players love to ignore or act like means something other than what it says):

"Ineffective Weapons: Certain weapons just can't effectively deal damage to certain objects. For example, a bludgeoning weapon cannot be used to damage a rope. Likewise, most melee weapons have little effect on stone walls and doors, unless they are designed for breaking up stone, such as a pick or hammer."

It's fully within the rules for a GM to simply state that a dagger is not an effective tool for getting through a lock.

If you don't want to go to that extreme, there are also the possibility of nested hinges and/or internal locking mechanisms:

"Breaking a lock is sometimes quicker than breaking the whole door. If a PC wants to whack at a lock with a weapon, treat the typical lock as having hardness 15 and 30 hit points. A lock can only be broken if it can be attacked separately from the door, which means that a built-in lock is immune to this sort of treatment."

and

"Nested Hinges: These hinges are much more complex than ordinary hinges, and are found only in areas of excellent construction. These hinges are built into the wall and allow the door to swing open in either direction. PCs can't get at the hinges to fool with them unless they break through the door frame or wall."

Now, ultimately, brute force will almost always win out against things like doors and chests, especially at levels where players deal a lot of damage per swing. The only real issue is how long does it take and how noisy is it. For the adamantium dagger, cutting through metal is possible, but not fast. Some like to say, "It cuts through iron/stone like butter," but there's not really anything in the rules to support that. The subject material is still stone/wood/metal, and will still take effort to break and make noise in the process. At the very least, using this kind of force to get by locked doors and chests should alert anyone nearby that something is going on.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Link2000 wrote:

Definitely. Disable Device is the clean method that lets you keep or use what you disable. Adamantine is the "f" it process of just getting it done.

Sometimes breaking chests with adamantine objects damages the contents. So you could "punish" the over usage by watching him get sad when scrolls or potions are broken because of his corner cutting ways.

I also generally rule that using brute force methods such as this, is a sure fire way to set off traps, even those that might have been potentially disabled.

[Scythia]

My immediate thinking is that severing the workings of a currently engaged lock (other than a padlock) would most likely render the lock stuck in the engaged position.

Basically the lock would still be locked and unable to be picked or opened by key.

What that adamantine dagger is good for is either cutting hinges or frame, so a door or lid may simply be removed. This of course is more obvious and takes longer.

[Saldiven]

Scythia wrote:

My immediate thinking is that severing the workings of a currently engaged lock (other than a padlock) would most likely render the lock stuck in the engaged position.

I was going to say much the same thing in my previous post, but forgot until after I was done typing.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Moral 2 of this story...

Don't make broken metals like Adamantium something you can just purchase at the corner store.

[Saldiven]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Moral 2 of this story...

Don't make broken metals like Adamantium something you can just purchase at the corner store.

This is very true.

If you use the Game Mastery Guide for determining item availability at settlements, adamantium weapons are actually a bit tough to find for most AP's that I've seen, at least until the party is several levels into the campaign. A settlement would need to be in the "Small City" or larger category for the player to have a 75% chance of locating such an item. In smaller settlements, there's just a tiny random chance that an adamantium dagger would show up as one of the pre-determined items available for purchase.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Saldiven wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Moral 2 of this story...

Don't make broken metals like Adamantium something you can just purchase at the corner store.

This is very true.

If you use the Game Mastery Guide for determining item availability at settlements, adamantium weapons are actually a bit tough to find for most AP's that I've seen, at least until the party is several levels into the campaign. A settlement would need to be in the "Small City" or larger category for the player to have a 75% chance of locating such an item. In smaller settlements, there's just a tiny random chance that an adamantium dagger would show up as one of the pre-determined items available for purchase.

The Guide is exactly what it says... a guide, not a tome written in stone. IF a GM wants to make an item more or less available than the guidelines to fit her campaign, all the power to her.

[Saldiven]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Saldiven wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Moral 2 of this story...

Don't make broken metals like Adamantium something you can just purchase at the corner store.

This is very true.

If you use the Game Mastery Guide for determining item availability at settlements, adamantium weapons are actually a bit tough to find for most AP's that I've seen, at least until the party is several levels into the campaign. A settlement would need to be in the "Small City" or larger category for the player to have a 75% chance of locating such an item. In smaller settlements, there's just a tiny random chance that an adamantium dagger would show up as one of the pre-determined items available for purchase.

The Guide is exactly what it says... a guide, not a tome written in stone. IF a GM wants to make an item more or less available than the guidelines to fit her campaign, all the power to her.

Well, obviously.

My point was that you shouldn't need to make it less available. If the character got the adamantium dagger prior to 6th level or so, I'd argue that the GM was making such items more available than the guidelines. {I could be wrong; I haven't looked at the settlements in Skull and Shackles.}

For comparison, in RotRL, the plot doesn't take the party to a town that has a chance to sell adamantium weapons until 7th level. In Iron Gods, there is no town in the plot until almost the very end that has that high of a base sale value; my players took a fairly long detour after the second book specifically to travel to a town where they could upgrade their equipment appropriate to their level (none of the towns in the plot thus far could do so).

In my experience with AP's, the settlement sale values are a fairly strong limiter on what kind of equipment the characters can find.

[Jiggy]

The way Pathfinder is structured as a system, by the time the party can afford to have 3,000gp tied up in an adamantine dagger, the sentence "it's locked" is no longer supposed to represent a meaningful obstacle.

Pathfinder is a game where leveling up* means that your previous types of challenges become trivial and you move on to what would have been impossible a few levels ago but now presents about the same amount of challenge that the now-trivial obstacles of the past used to present.

*And in Pathfinder, "leveling up" includes the accumulation of fantastic gear and magic items, as that's a built-in mechanism of character advancement.

[Menacing Shade of mauve]

If you're unconcerned with noise, unconcerned with the opened chest or lock being obvious, and unconcerned with the repair bill, there is no reason to mess around with lockpicks.

If you're not enforcing with those concerns, trying to enforce lockpicking instead of brute force is going to feel artificial and gamey.

[Saldiven]

Jiggy wrote:

The way Pathfinder is structured as a system, by the time the party can afford to have 3,000gp tied up in an adamantine dagger, the sentence "it's locked" is no longer supposed to represent a meaningful obstacle.

Tell that to the AP designers.

Also, there's a difference between "can afford" and "can reasonably afford."

A part of four characters could afford one as soon as they hit 2nd level, but it would eat up the majority of their wealth. Such an item being specifically used to bypass locks and traps would more reasonably be affordable sometime much later, where it doesn't as significantly impact each characters equipment allotment.

[Jiggy]

Saldiven wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

The way Pathfinder is structured as a system, by the time the party can afford to have 3,000gp tied up in an adamantine dagger, the sentence "it's locked" is no longer supposed to represent a meaningful obstacle.

Tell that to the AP designers.

Yeah, I know. That's part of the multi-faceted reason I gave up on Pathfinder: there seems to be quite a disconnect between what the game is billed as doing, how the game actually works, and how the adventure writers (and PFS leadership, and the GMing community, etc) seem to think the game is structured.

[swoosh]

Saldiven wrote:

A part of four characters could afford one as soon as they hit 2nd level, but it would eat up the majority of their wealth. Such an item being specifically used to bypass locks and traps would more reasonably be affordable sometime much later, where it doesn't as significantly impact each characters equipment allotment.

Well there's that whole 'characters shouldn't own an item worth more than half their wealth' thing, which pushes an adamantine dagger back to level 5.

[Ravingdork]

I imagine the characters are not stabbing at the padlock (that's silly), but sticking it in between the lock bars and prying, similar to an indestructible crowbar. Ergo, the inappropriate weapon rule probably should not apply.

[GinoA]

Okay! I can't not reply any longer. One of the scenes from all the fantasy books I've read over the last few decades that I remember best is from the first one by Gygax that was based on his home game. The main characters were a rogue and an old-school, prestige-class-like bard.

The scene where they meet has the rogue showing off a cool new trick he learned to his new best friend. He flips over a small safe and begins peeling the bottom of the safe off one thin layer at a time.

This is how I picture an admantine dagger being used to open almost anything. Does anyone else remember this?

[Ravingdork]

GinoA wrote:

The main characters were a rogue and an old-school, prestige-class-like bard.

The scene where they meet has the rogue showing off a cool new trick he learned to his new best friend. He flips over a small safe and begins peeling the bottom of the safe off one thin layer at a time.

Pictures or it didn't happen. ;P

[Bob Bob Bob]

The adamantine dagger isn't doing anything you couldn't already do with a greatsword, just more stylishly (and much easier). It's very loud, the lock is useless after, and it's super obvious to anyone who looks at it. It's a magic metal that ignores most hardness, of course it's great for breaking things.

Now, there are absolutely other ways to use it (like Ravingdork suggests) but those are based on the fact that adamantine is super hard, you could do them with an adamantine rod same as a dagger.

Oh, and the "inappropriate weapon" stuff is completely pointless for this specific discussion. If a dagger isn't a suitable weapon for breaking locks, then assume they bought one that was (they all cost the same). Heavy pick, perhaps. Oh, and "unable to reach the hinges unless they can break the door frame or wall" isn't a restriction unless the door frame and wall are made of something with hardness 20 or higher. That's the whole point of an adamantine weapon.

Or, you know, they could have 2 levels of barbarian, grab Smasher (Ex), and destroy everything.

[Pizza Lord]

Making a material that bypassed all hardness was one of the most short-sighted ideas that came along. A material that ignored half the hardness of any material below 20 would have been just as awesome.

A dagger is not a proper item for hacking down a door or into a typical chest. Using a dagger as a prybar is also inappropriate, since a dagger isn't a prybar. At best it's an improvised tool and trying to break something open with a prybar doesn't use hardness or hit points anyway.

Now, if the PC had an adamantine axe or hammer, then sure. Dagger, no. Also, if they're going to be bashing things open, even with adamantine weapons, that doesn't turn the material they're hitting into butter or soften any blows.

You are well within your rights to have fragile items inside battered containers; artwork, glass, potions, etc. break. Even items that might not break from impact can then be ruined by spilled or released substances. A simple 1 gp. bottle of wine may not be a huge treasure loss, but if it stained a valuable painting or soaked into an otherwise expensive set of clothing (staining it beyond a simple prestidigitation) that might cost them time, money, or some interesting skill checks to make right. Spilled liquids like acid can destroy scroll tubes and their contents and even wreck magical items.

[Tomos]

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

The adamantine dagger isn't doing anything you couldn't already do with a greatsword, just more stylishly (and much easier). It's very loud, the lock is useless after, and it's super obvious to anyone who looks at it. It's a magic metal that ignores most hardness, of course it's great for breaking things.

Now, there are absolutely other ways to use it (like Ravingdork suggests) but those are based on the fact that adamantine is super hard, you could do them with an adamantine rod same as a dagger.

Oh, and the "inappropriate weapon" stuff is completely pointless for this specific discussion. If a dagger isn't a suitable weapon for breaking locks, then assume they bought one that was (they all cost the same). Heavy pick, perhaps. Oh, and "unable to reach the hinges unless they can break the door frame or wall" isn't a restriction unless the door frame and wall are made of something with hardness 20 or higher. That's the whole point of an adamantine weapon.

Or, you know, they could have 2 levels of barbarian, grab Smasher (Ex), and destroy everything.

Exactly.

The idea that an adamantine dagger is an inappropriate weapon/tool for disabling a lock is absurd. It's not going to be clean, quiet, or quick, but it will work.
Like Jiggy said earlier, by the time your players can afford a 3000gp dagger, mundane locks are a trivial obstacle.

I am baffled as to why so many seem to think that mundane locks should somehow present a serious obstacle to an adventurer.
An iron lock is an iron lock. It's not made of miracles.

A real-life parallel: off the top of my head, I have probably 10 different tools in my garage that I could easily grab and use to disable even the most stout of typical padlocks, deadbolts, or other 'normal' mechanical security devices. However, it would be messy and incredibly obvious that "someone dun broke in here". This doesn't require any specific skill or training. Hit it hard enough or saw on it long enough and it will break.

Consider a lock on a wooden door or a padlock on a wooden chest. How long would it take your average joe to just chip away at the wood around it with a mundane hammer and chisel? Not long. Now, make that tool incredibly hard, sharp and sturdy. Easy.

An adamantine dagger would easily destroy or disable a mundane lock (simple through superior) almost immediately.

The problem is not the dagger.
The difficulty that you're having as GM is due to the fact that you're trying to challenge PCs with obstacles that are totally outmatched by their equipment and skill.

Lamontius wrote:

traps

guards
alarms
magic locks
mimics

This is the answer.

[Starbuck_II]

Pizza Lord wrote:

Making a material that bypassed all hardness was one of the most short-sighted ideas that came along. A material that ignored half the hardness of any material below 20 would have been just as awesome.

A dagger is not a proper item for hacking down a door or into a typical chest. Using a dagger as a prybar is also inappropriate, since a dagger isn't a prybar. At best it's an improvised tool and trying to break something open with a prybar doesn't use hardness or hit points anyway.

Now, if the PC had an adamantine axe or hammer, then sure. Dagger, no. Also, if they're going to be bashing things open, even with adamantine weapons, that doesn't turn the material they're hitting into butter or soften any blows.

You are well within your rights to have fragile items inside battered containers; artwork, glass, potions, etc. break. Even items that might not break from impact can then be ruined by spilled or released substances. A simple 1 gp. bottle of wine may not be a huge treasure loss, but if it stained a valuable painting or soaked into an otherwise expensive set of clothing (staining it beyond a simple prestidigitation) that might cost them time, money, or some interesting skill checks to make right. Spilled liquids like acid can destroy scroll tubes and their contents and even wreck magical items.

Then an adamantine Kunai, the rules let it act as a crowbar instead of a dagger.

"Unlike finer weapons, the kunai can readily substitute for a crowbar or piton without being damaged in the process."

[Lorewalker]

Don't forget that this exists too, Adamantine Wire Saw.

It is designed specifically as an adamantine item for cutting through several types of locking mechanisms. Would work against bars as well.

[Pizza Lord]

Starbuck_II wrote:

Then an adamantine Kunai, the rules let it act as a crowbar instead of a dagger.

"Unlike finer weapons, the kunai can readily substitute for a crowbar or piton without being damaged in the process."

Lorewalker wrote:

Don't forget that this exists too, Adamantine Wire Saw.

And that's fine, but a kunai is not a dagger, which is clearly what this topic is about, using a dagger. Just because there exists a method to accomplish a task, doesn't mean that an inappropriate method suddenly works just because it's more expensive.

You may as well have just said, 'They could just use the key to open the lock.' Again, a Kunai used as a crowbar, would work like a crowbar, even an adamantine kunai. That is just a Strength check for Break DC. The fact that adamantine can bypass hardness doesn't come into play.

Tomos wrote:

The idea that an adamantine dagger is an inappropriate weapon/tool for disabling a lock is absurd.

It's not absurd. First, ask yourself if there's a tool or object that is appropriate for opening a lock (other than the key). Can you think of one? Let's call that a lock pick, or a thieves' tool. Is a knife a lock pick? No? then it's an improvised tool and, as such, has a penalty to opening locks. It doesn't matter if the dagger is iron, or silver, or a +3 dagger, or adamantine.

You're trying to claim that even though it's clear you can't sever a rope with a mallet, that doesn't matter because you can sever it with a 2 gold piece dagger, and so, a 5,000 gold piece mallet can sever a rope because it costs way more than a dagger. That's what's absurd. You can't extinguish a burning fuse by smashing it with a lit torch, not even a really expensive magnesium torch, not even one lined with adamantine.

[Lorewalker]

Pizza Lord wrote:

Starbuck_II wrote:

Then an adamantine Kunai, the rules let it act as a crowbar instead of a dagger.

"Unlike finer weapons, the kunai can readily substitute for a crowbar or piton without being damaged in the process."

Lorewalker wrote:

Don't forget that this exists too, Adamantine Wire Saw.

And that's fine, but a kunai is not a dagger, which is clearly what this topic is about, using a dagger. Just because there exists a method to accomplish a task, doesn't mean that an inappropriate method suddenly works just because it's more expensive.

You may as well have just said, 'They could just use the key to open the lock.' Again, a Kunai used as a crowbar, would work like a crowbar, even an adamantine kunai. That is just a Strength check for Break DC. The fact that adamantine can bypass hardness doesn't come into play.

Tomos wrote:

The idea that an adamantine dagger is an inappropriate weapon/tool for disabling a lock is absurd.

It's not absurd. First, ask yourself if there's a tool or object that is appropriate for opening a lock (other than the key). Can you think of one? Let's call that a lock pick, or a thieves' tool. Is a knife a lock pick? No? then it's an improvised tool and, as such, has a penalty to opening locks. It doesn't matter if the dagger is iron, or silver, or a +3 dagger, or adamantine.

You're trying to claim that even though it's clear you can't sever a rope with a mallet, that doesn't matter because you can sever it with a 2 gold piece dagger, and so, a 5,000 gold piece mallet can sever a rope because it costs way more than a dagger. That's what's absurd. You can't extinguish a burning fuse by smashing it with a lit torch, not even a really expensive magnesium torch, not even one lined with adamantine.

It is not about cost, it is about ability. The adamantine wire saw I referenced is less than 200 gold and is used to cut deadbolts, among other things.

An adamantine dagger, whatever its cost, has the ability to easily cut through wood, stone or iron. It makes sense, then, that you could cut the lock out of whatever it was locking(given that it had a hardness of less than 20).

This is not to say that it should do the job quickly or silently. But it would accomplish the task. It is adamantine, sharp and thin. Those are attributes that do matter and should be accounted for which you are not.

It is not like the only way to open a lock is by using a set of lockpicks. Heck, you can open a lock by shooting it. There are rules for this in the game. If you don't need the lock to be usable again, nor do you need the opening method to be silent, nor do you need it to be quick... well, then there are many ways to get by a lock in the game. Saying "well, it's not a lockpick so it is an improvised tool" for all situations is ridiculous. Only if you attempt to pick the lock would that be the case. But there are, as I have said, many ways to get through a lock without picking it.

[swoosh]

Quote:

It's not absurd. First, ask yourself if there's a tool or object that is appropriate for opening a lock (other than the key). Can you think of one? Let's call that a lock pick, or a thieves' tool. Is a knife a lock pick? No? then it's an improvised tool and, as such, has a penalty to opening locks. It doesn't matter if the dagger is iron, or silver, or a +3 dagger, or adamantine.

Well unless I'm mistaken, the OP's player is not using it as a lockpick, but rather using it to destroy locks outright.

[Pizza Lord]

swoosh wrote:

Well unless I'm mistaken, the OP's player is not using it as a lockpick, but rather using it to destroy locks outright.

You aren't, but the reply you posted was in response to posts that talk about crowbars or disabling locks, rather than smashing or cutting through them. If they used an improper term when they meant cut or smash then that's understandable. Disabling a lock and breaking the door that it's locking open are two different terms.

[Ascalaphus]

Saldiven wrote:

In Iron Gods, there is no town in the plot until almost the very end that has that high of a base sale value; my players took a fairly long detour after the second book specifically to travel to a town where they could upgrade their equipment appropriate to their level (none of the towns in the plot thus far could do so).

The very town you start in in Iron Gods is known as THE place with a handy natural feature that facilitates smelting adamantine. It's where the weapons get made.

[Ascalaphus]

Tomos wrote:

The problem is not the dagger.

The difficulty that you're having as GM is due to the fact that you're trying to challenge PCs with obstacles that are totally outmatched by their equipment and skill.

This. A locked chest is a challenge at low levels; not at whatever much higher level they are now.

[Avh]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Tomos wrote:

The problem is not the dagger.

The difficulty that you're having as GM is due to the fact that you're trying to challenge PCs with obstacles that are totally outmatched by their equipment and skill.

This. A locked chest is a challenge at low levels; not at whatever much higher level they are now.

A locked chest is never a challenge. Period.

The same for a locked door.

The challenge will come from other things, such as opening the door or the chest quickly and/or silently, while being chased by opponents or things like that.

If the whole challenge is opening a door (or a chest) without anything else, power attacking the door (or the lock) will open it even at first level.

[Menacing Shade of mauve]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Tomos wrote:

The problem is not the dagger.

The difficulty that you're having as GM is due to the fact that you're trying to challenge PCs with obstacles that are totally outmatched by their equipment and skill.

This. A locked chest is a challenge at low levels; not at whatever much higher level they are now.

A locked chest assumed to contain very breakable treasure and/or with dangerous enemies nearby is a challenge at low level.

[JoeElf]

If the party has a character with Disable Device, cannot the character just Take 20? Would that not take about the same time it would take to hack through whatever the dagger is being employed for, and not create the problems of noise creation, being unable to relock, and risk of internal contents breaking?

[Rikkan]

Jiggy wrote:

The way Pathfinder is structured as a system, by the time the party can afford to have 3,000gp tied up in an adamantine dagger, the sentence "it's locked" is no longer supposed to represent a meaningful obstacle.

Pathfinder is a game where leveling up* means that your previous types of challenges become trivial and you move on to what would have been impossible a few levels ago but now presents about the same amount of challenge that the now-trivial obstacles of the past used to present.

*And in Pathfinder, "leveling up" includes the accumulation of fantastic gear and magic items, as that's a built-in mechanism of character advancement.

Well you could buy a dagger for 3000 (+dagger cost) gp or you could buy an adamantine arrow for 60 gp (+arrow cost). When using the arrow as a weapon it deals damage as a dagger, you just have a -4 on attack and you probably don't care about attack penalties when attacking a lock.

[Pizza Lord]

JoeElf wrote:

If the party has a character with Disable Device, cannot the character just Take 20? Would that not take about the same time it would take to hack through whatever the dagger is being employed for, and not create the problems of noise creation, being unable to relock, and risk of internal contents breaking?

Yes, it would be quieter than breaking down the door but Taking 20 takes 20 times as long as the action normally takes, so in this case 2 minutes. That is probably much longer than it takes to bash open a door with an appropriate adamantine weapon or tool, such as an axe or hammer.

Assuming a Strong Wooden Door (20 hit points), if you can do at least 7 damage with your axe or hammer, or (12 without adamantine to deal with the hardness) that's 3 rounds, or about 18 seconds. Leaps and bounds faster than Taking 20. Noisier, yes. Even an Iron door (2 in. thick, 60 hit points) will drop in half the time it takes to open the lock (less than 10 rounds, 1 minute). Even if you were only able to do 1 damage to a Strong Wooden door per round, you would still hack through it within 2 minutes.

So, No. In almost no case will Taking 20 come close to taking about the same time as hacking through a door unless you can't beat its hardness or the door has ungodly hit points (bolstered by arcane lock or somehow repairs itself.)

[Pizza Lord]

Rikkan wrote:

Well you could buy a dagger for 3000 (+dagger cost) gp or you could buy an adamantine arrow for 60 gp (+arrow cost). When using the arrow as a weapon it deals damage as a dagger, you just have a -4 on attack and you probably don't care about attack penalties when attacking a lock.

Sure, and pay double for a Large-size arrow, so for only 120 gp. you can bypass Hardness less than 20. It doesn't count as a light weapon and now you can use 2 hands for Strength and a half damage plus the bonuses from Power Attack for a 2-handed weapon.

Wait... no... I'm still gonna have to say that's an ineffective weapon for hacking through a door. Amusing to think about a Barbarian 2-handed rage-power attacking by stabbing an arrow into a door... but gonna be a 'No'.

[Tomos]

Avh wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

Tomos wrote:

The problem is not the dagger.

The difficulty that you're having as GM is due to the fact that you're trying to challenge PCs with obstacles that are totally outmatched by their equipment and skill.

This. A locked chest is a challenge at low levels; not at whatever much higher level they are now.

A locked chest is never a challenge. Period.

The same for a locked door.

The challenge will come from other things, such as opening the door or the chest quickly and/or silently, while being chased by opponents or things like that.

If the whole challenge is opening a door (or a chest) without anything else, power attacking the door (or the lock) will open it even at first level.

And this is where the "appropriate tool" issue arises.

If the task is to sneak in without anyone knowing you were ever there, destroying a lock isn't going to result in success.
So, in that instance an adamantine dagger is not an "appropriate tool;" a set of thieves' tools is what you need.

If the task is to get through the door as fast as possible, just about anything will work, including simply kicking it in. An adamantine dagger is an "appropriate tool" for the job, but so is a portable ram.

[Ravingdork]

Why wouldn't the adamantine property come into play while prying a lock apart with the dagger? Surely the blade is biting into the lock as it is pried apart (surely the player characters aren't going to leverage the lock using the weakest part of their tool--the flat of the blade). I imagine it wouldn't be too dissimilar to bolt cutters, except that the direction of the applied force goes out rather than in (and you know, it's also adamantine and all). In the end, it's just a more sensible way for the player to describe the destruction of the lock.

Everybody gets what they want; The GM gets to follow the rules, the player gets to do something cool and feel useful, and the monsters in the next room get a free meal.

[JoeElf]

Well, in that event I would recommend just the basic Take 10 (and the Take 20 just for Arcane Lock), though I am assuming a Rogue or such in the party.

Disable Device:

Simple Lock: DC 20
Take 10 = 10 = 1 round
16 Dex = +3
Masterwork Tools = +2
Class Skill = +3
Ranks = +2 = level 2
Total = 20

Average Lock: DC 25
Take 10 = 10 = 1 round
18 Dex = +4
Masterwork Tools = +2
Class Skill = +3
Ranks = +6 = level 6
Total = 25

Average Lock + Arcane Lock: 25 + 10 = DC 35
Take 20 = 20 = 2 minutes
18 Dex = +4
Masterwork Tools = +2
Class Skill = +3
Ranks = +6 = level 6
Total = 35

[ryric]

I'm just thinking of a recent game where the players applied their adamantine "universal lockpick" to a treasure chest they were too lazy to try and pick. They were less happy when I described the tinkling of broken glass and how a multicolored liquid began to leak out of the bottom of the chest. They managed to open it, but the potions and scrolls within were all destroyed(scrolls by the liquid from the potions).

Loud and violent brute force solutions often work, but can have unintended consequences. To me, that's sufficient reason to use them as a last resort.

[Bob_Loblaw]

Ravingdork wrote:

Why wouldn't the adamantine property come into play while prying a lock apart with the dagger? Surely the blade is biting into the lock as it is pried apart (surely the player characters aren't going to leverage the lock using the weakest part of their tool--the flat of the blade). I imagine it wouldn't be too dissimilar to bolt cutters, except that the direction of the applied force goes out rather than in (and you know, it's also adamantine and all). In the end, it's just a more sensible way for the player to describe the destruction of the lock.

Everybody gets what they want; The GM gets to follow the rules, the player gets to do something cool and feel useful, and the monsters in the next room get a free meal.

The dagger would essentially be a crowbar at that point. It isn't being used as a weapon. In this case, I would assign a +2 circumstance modifier to the disable device check.

[Jiggy]

ryric wrote:

I'm just thinking of a recent game where the players applied their adamantine "universal lockpick" to a treasure chest they were too lazy to try and pick. They were less happy when I described the tinkling of broken glass and how a multicolored liquid began to leak out of the bottom of the chest. They managed to open it, but the potions and scrolls within were all destroyed(scrolls by the liquid from the potions).

Loud and violent brute force solutions often work, but can have unintended consequences. To me, that's sufficient reason to use them as a last resort.

Makes sense if the brute force solution was to break a hole in the chest with a greataxe and the treasure gets smashed in the process.

Though in the context of the OP, where the "brute force solution" is to break the lock with an adamantine dagger, the destruction of all the treasure within mostly just tells us some unfortunate things about the kind of person the GM is.

[Saldiven]

Ravingdork wrote:

Why wouldn't the adamantine property come into play while prying a lock apart with the dagger? Surely the blade is biting into the lock as it is pried apart (surely the player characters aren't going to leverage the lock using the weakest part of their tool--the flat of the blade). I imagine it wouldn't be too dissimilar to bolt cutters, except that the direction of the applied force goes out rather than in (and you know, it's also adamantine and all). In the end, it's just a more sensible way for the player to describe the destruction of the lock.

Everybody gets what they want; The GM gets to follow the rules, the player gets to do something cool and feel useful, and the monsters in the next room get a free meal.

Bolt cutters would be useless on a lock that is internal to the object being opened, as opposed to a pad lock.

It's arguable that a dagger would be equally useless (especially since the rules say that such internal locks cannot be directly targeted for attacks, anyway).

Now, you could use the adamantium dagger to just try to hack/cut a hole through the wood of the door or chest, of course.

Oh, and to reply to an earlier comment, daggers/knives make terrible crowbars. Indestructible or not, the lever arm is too short.

[Saldiven]

GinoA wrote:

Okay! I can't not reply any longer. One of the scenes from all the fantasy books I've read over the last few decades that I remember best is from the first one by Gygax that was based on his home game. The main characters were a rogue and an old-school, prestige-class-like bard.

The scene where they meet has the rogue showing off a cool new trick he learned to his new best friend. He flips over a small safe and begins peeling the bottom of the safe off one thin layer at a time.

That was the second book of the Gord the Rogue series.

I seem to remember that they detected a hidden compartment in the bottom of the chest but couldn't figure out how to open it, so they flipped it over to cut into the bottom. It was described like he was whittling away at wooden boards rather than a sheet of iron.

[BLloyd607502]

I'd honestly say allow it.
He's come up with something clever, test it, push him to be sensible with it but don't take it away from him just because its not written-in-stone-in-the-book.

Of course there are drawbacks, any lock with a trap in it is going to be set off, its loud, you can't use the chest again afterwards, but its a good idea.

There's nothing as painful as a player as finding a new, clever way of doing things, to succeed a few times and then the GM says 'Now you've had your fun a few times, you can never do this again, because balance'