Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Let us keep our trap kit when we fail

I love that there are consequences to failure in this game. I don’t like when they cripple our abilities for future challenges.

The trap disarming kit is great, and it is almost balanced. Succeed? You don’t explode. Fail? You explode, and you can’t disarm any more traps.

Why not make it so that if we fail to disarm a trap, the thing goes off, and we can’t try again (the mechanism is jammed open), but we don’t lose the disarm kit?

There’s an argument to say “carry more kits”, but that feels like a get-out - this isn’t Skyrim, where you’re punished for messing up a manual check, this is a dice-rolling game. Let the dice mess us up, then we’ll go on to the next challenge (trap kit in-hand).

I had around 50 disarming kits at me ...
And almost every vendor is selling few more. :-/

So i dont quite see the reason. O_o

If you dont want to drag them all by you, bcs they have some (negligible) weight, you can have them in your camp and take just few with you.

The goal with any system in a game shouldn't be "well, this isn't too annoying, people should be able to deal" it should be "this is fun and creates interesting choices or experiences for the player". The mini-game of managing your collection of lockpicks and trap disarm kits is neither interesting nor fun; it's tedious and adds two more things that clog up your inventory. Why include it in the game?

The most practical reason I can think of is so that you can't just infinitely try to pick a lock over and over until you get it right, but there are almost certainly better ways to deal with this. For example, every time you fail, have a chance of breaking the lock so that you can never open it (even with the key). This turns picking locks from bookkeeping into an interesting risk.

Similarly for disarming traps - the issue shouldn't be "am I carrying enough of this standard kit that's lying around everywhere?" That's not an interesting problem to solve for a player. Create interesting choices with your traps: Do I try to navigate around it? Do I try to disarm it? Do I try to set it off from across the room? Do I try to lure my enemy into it? What are the benefits and pitfalls of each of these options?

Have locks and traps create interesting decisions or get rid of them. Having consumable lockpicks and trap disarm kits is a lazy and boring way to interact with these things.

Do you want to lug around 50 disarming kits at 2 lb a piece?

You cannot be more correct. Cluttering an already cluttered inventory system is not the answer.

There are plenty of disarm kits - leave it as it is - failure needs consequence - no need to carry 50 but there is certainly enough

The "consequences" here are just cumbersome rather than real consequences though. Just get rid of the item entirely, or make it a "tool" that you only need one of and need proficiency to use. If you fail, you set off the trap. If people want to save scum that, they can save scum the current setup anyway, but at least for everybody else it would be a straightforward system that doesn't encourage silly packrat behavior.

No lie, I did this once without realizing how many of them I had on me and how much they were weighing me down. I lol'd when I realized it.

If there are plenty of disarm kits, then losing one due to failure is inconsequential.

Well there are some consequences even if they are minor. Weight is an issue so you don’t want to carry 50. You don’t want to carry just one because if it breaks you will have to go back to camp and grab more.

It’s a minor detail and honestly I don’t care either way so I don’t think it needs to be changed.

If I may correct you the "Thieves Tools" and the "Disarming kits" are each 1 lb. And as for me only carry 5 of each in my inventory at a time. Never needed more than that there. So if I loose one or two because of not being able to disarm a trap or pick a lock no big deal No leave it the way it is

I cant shake that feeling that you didnt bother to read that last sentence ... O_o

What’s the advantage of the multiple kits system (apart from “it’s what we’ve got”)?

Well lets see ...
It fits the world, it makes more sence, it forces us to think at least a little before act, it was allways working like this, and its easier to calculate with ...

Disarming tools are allways consumed in the process, same as lock picks are ... that means even if you suceed ... so there isnt any "another punishment" its just cost for doing it.

What does this mean?

No it doesn't. Lockpicks are tools, not consumables. You don't replace a hammer every time you drive a nail in - why would you change your picks every time you pick a lock? A pick is a slightly more delicate tool than a hammer - I could see breaking one on occasion when you fail to pick a lock correctly (or if it's a fancy lock designed to destroy picks), but then you pull another pick out of your kit and get back to work. I own one set of lockpicks - not ten.

Again, it doesn't. Lockpicking kits are so readily available (to a really ridiculous degree) that I have never felt like there is a risk of running out of them. And that has been your argument upthread. Thus, there is effectively no cost to failing to pick a lock. The only cost right now is the weight in our inventory, which is at best an annoyance for the player rather than an interesting trade-off for the character.

This is never a good reason to do something. When people say this, it generally means "I can't be bothered to try to make this better".

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Fragile tools.

Slightly ...
A 1kg veight, 2x2 cm thick brick of iron fixed on wood litteraly created to bash things with it ... is "slightly more delicate" than two milimeter stick with permanently stressed fold. O_o

That is the problem ... picks usualy breaks when stressed, that means you can pick a lock sucessfully and feel like still having perfectly working pick ...
(and in reality you can be right, since they are much more durable theese days)
But then you try to pick another lock with the same tool and it will broke imediatly ... makes that lock unpickable, since that broken part stays inside.

That would be realistic as f***
And even more anoying ... imagine random number generator creating diceroll before every lockpick, with even incerased dificiulty with every sucesfull lockpick ... making any lock unpickable when failed.
You really think this would people concider to be fun? :-/

If so, then presume your lockpicker is aware of this danger and simply throw away every pick after use. :P

It still is ...
1) there is enough of them ... conclusion: No reason to change anything.
2) to have them means gues how many you want to bring with you, concidering ballance between weight and readyness ... therefore they force you to think at least a little ... conclusion: No reason to change anything. :-/

This is pure subjective ...
For some even the fact that they need to pick again, and again, and again is conciderable as "cost".

It certainly can be seen that way ...
I dont see much difference between counting with your picks compared to weight ... or counting your arrows (and therefore your weight) for certain characters in certain other games ... or counting with your spellslosts.
Its all just matter of preparation for adventure.

Its also not bad ...
People are doing things "as allways" for a reason ... and that reason usualy is that those things are working that way.

//edit:
But there is one thing about lockpicking that really confuses me, i presume its a bug ... but it seem to me like sucesfull lockpicking costs me one pick ... and unsucesfull costs me two picks. O_o