15.5 Devices

The Devices skill is generally easy to resolve as long as you can choose a reasonable difficulty value for the device. For examples and common usage, see Table 7.2: Devices Difficulty Values. Of course, you should adjust some of the difficulty values of devices in your games so their difficulty values aren’t always perfectly on increments of 5. An individual lock might be old and loose, reducing its DV, or unsually well-crafted, increasing its DV.

It may sometimes be challenging to deal with players who have high Devices checks, since they might be able to bypass any mundane lock they encounter. This can it hard to seal off areas that you don’t want your players to access yet. There are two common ways you can address this.

First, you can design your game so physical access to arbitrary areas doesn’t negate the challenges the party faces. This is easiest in narrative-heavy games, since you can keep introducing additional complications. Even if the party can break into the paladin’s office and find proof of his treachery, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. They may not be able to prove the authenticity of the documents, or the documents could be forgeries that were placed there as a ruse by someone who knew the party was likely to snoop around.

Second, you can make a successful Devices check impossible. Magically sealed locks can be useful for this, or at higher levels, magic portals that only activate if the party fulfills specific conditions. In dungeon-style games, this is sometimes the only reasonable way to make the dungeon work. If you use this approach, make sure to provide other opportunities to reward the player for their high Devices skill, such as middle-tier locks or traps that they can interact with. Players will generally be okay with not being able to solve every problem as long as they still feel like they are contributing.