Considering how any caster can cast spells without losing weapon durability to breakdown doors and chests, it's nice that melee gets a workaround for skipping the lock picking skill as well
True, I forgot to mention that I've done this a few times myself. It's definitely more tedious, due to the wind-up time attached to most spells, but blasting open containers with spells (or, more accurately, with a dozen or so sequentially cast spells) is pretty much the equivalent of bashing them open with an unbreakable weapon (or your fists).
