Or WoW-style ( yeah I just said World of Warcraft! yay ! ), sometimes you get a lockbox for defeating your enemies. Can only be opened with Lockpick, will contain small stuff like gold, healing potion, maybe a craft item.
Or give a NPC the ability to lockpick for you for a price ( maybe keeping the gold inside, making it some kind of gamble by varying the potential gold quantity ), and put some more useful things in it. Kind of how Repair and Loremaster already work, either do it yourself or do it for gold, so that no one will have to skip on the content.
