I'm already tired of HAVING to bring astarion every to lockpick worth a damn. He's got a guaranteed spot on my roster because of it. Going somewhere with a sub par group sucks. Gotta take Lae'zel for the creche is annoying.
But....you DON'T have to do this. You can have a MC good at lockpicking (or someone else if you respec them.) You can use the spell knock. You can smash things open. In fact, the level of lockpicking skill Astarion gets is massive overkill for like 99 percent of locks in the game. Between all the bonuses you can apply from things like guidance, advantage from gloves of thieving, and the fact that lockpicking, unlike every other skill in the game, allows you to keep rerolling so long as you have thieves kits, even someone with just a moderate dex bonus is fine.
That's the thing though. I don't get a ton of lockpick kits and they're super expensive at the beginning of the game. My bard is that playthrough's lock picker and I fail more often than not. Especially on DC 15+ locks. I rarely find keys for locks, as well.
If I want to take my warlock or sorcerer to do it, I'd have to reroll to get a background with it, because I do not have one that lets me have it, and I cannot take it at reroll. *someone* needs to have it and they're the second highest DEX class in my group(my casters roll 16 main stat and 16 dex usually)
As for knock, it's a 2nd level spell and those are precious to me. I pick up the spell, sure, but right now I just don't have the 2nd level spell slots(level 8 on my highest game) to waste on a ton of knock spells without long resting even more than I already do. I detest doing it after every fight, as that's not practical to me.
