How does anything stay locked?

[Skarg]

I think Knock may work on ordinary locks, but if a smart vault designers knows that, then they may choose not to use ordinary locks at all, or in any case not to rely on them.

In the modern world, with no Knock, a burglar can generally break into most places, as long as they're not caught. It's not that windows and doors can't be got through without Knock.

Again, in worlds without Knock, no bank or other secure place relies on the supposed unopenableness of a door to protect valuable things. Doors and even bank vaults are there to make theft slower and more difficult, but its the guards and police and the risk of imprisonment etc that are the main deterants.

A successful Knock may never trigger traps, but then a smart mechanician doesn't rig the traps to go off when the lock is unlocked. The traps are set to go off when the door opens, or someone steps into the room beyond, etc, unless some other non-lock mechanism is used to disarm the traps. Or maybe, since some of the traps are alarms, the alarm can just be the usual "open for business" bell, which is understood as an alarm if it's not at the start of a banking day, and so there is no way to deactivate it.

Originally Posted by phiwum

In the same way, if you want to ignore the consequences of Open Tunnel when it comes to castle sieges, you had better not make a siege adventure.

Or, as we discussed in the other thread, your engineers take Open Tunnel into account in wall & castle design.

Originally Posted by phiwum

I'm still ignoring a pretty big hole in my adventure. The robbers are digging a tunnel towards the bank. How the heck are they getting rid of the tailings? If my players think about it, I'll kinda look foolish, but I'm reckoning they won't and hoping for the best. Otherwise, this conspiracy is going to have to grow rather a lot and work slow rather a lot. (Fortunately, ignoring this detail has a long history in RPGs. There are often ghoul warrens beneath graveyards. Where did all the dirt go?)

Seems like an opportunity to make the situation more interesting to me.

Yes, what are they doing with the tailings? Could be quite amusing, interesting, provide logical clues, make the game feel much more real, get players to pay more attention in general to things going on in the game world, etc.

In one campaign, we were trying to rescue someone from an underground cell in a city, and what we did was buy or lease a house somewhat nearby, which lacked attentive neighbors and used it as a base for mining operations. Yeah, it's not easy, even with some spells. Tailings do take up a lot of space. What to do? :-)