On my character sheet, I've got 1@1 pick locks. I've also got 2@1 blacksmithing. The thing is that a blacksmith would have been the one who built the locks. Obviously, if my character built locks, then he's got a pretty intimate understanding of their inner workings, and would know how to dismantle them and probably also how to pick them easily. Would that skill at building locks translate out in any way, or is this another one of those "Where do you draw the line?" questions?
I think a locksmith would have built the locks, actually; most locks in the times/places similar to Dancing Princess would have been simple wooden latches, and the specialized skills required to build locks would be known only by those metalworkers with lucrative employment in richer settlements (with castles in need of dungeon locks, for example, or many rich merchants desiring secure safeboxes). The town you were in would have no demand for locks, and I doubt your teacher had any knowledge of them.
MJ's call, of course.
If you did have professional level at a skill package which included Design or Build Lock, I would probably allow you at least a +10 SM on picking any lock whose design you know and could build. If it were my game, though, I'd wait and make the call when it came up in play.
Well, it was in a movie that I saw, called Earthsea. A blacksmith gets locked in a dungeon, and he pulls a nail out of a piece of wood, and goes to work on successfully picking the lock. When asked what he's doing by the lady in the other cell, he says "Practicing my trade." Granted it's a movie, but it made me wonder. I think you're probably right though.
(Doing Therapy)
I would not include locksmithing in a blacksmithing package. Part of that is because if in my game you learned to pick locks in a world where keys were large iron bars with one inch square leaves cut to bypass blocks and catch the pin, that would be sufficient information for you to have a chance at picking a lock in which the key was a slotted flat with multiple raised and lowered ridges to clear the blocks and move the pins of a very sophisticated locking mechanism. It is the understanding of the mechanism of locks that gives you the chance to bypass them.
And I agree that the blacksmiths in Dancing Princess did not make locks. I don't have to decide who did.
The blacksmithing skill package is fairly comprehensive as it is, incorporating both soft metal and hard metal skills. You can do things (like draw wire) which my character wishes he could do.
--M. J. Young
You can do things (like draw wire) which my character wishes he could do.
Well, stop trying to be the hero and learn some skills for a change. Sometimes, non-involvement does have its advantages.
Two Posts
And I agree that the blacksmiths in Dancing Princess did not make locks. I don't have to decide who did.
Ya know, I was just thinking. A blacksmith would probably be more than capable of building a lock. Perhaps my movie-hero blacksmith just lived in an area where locks were a frequent thing that they built. It just wasn't something that I got familiar with. Completely acceptable. (It's more to explain the movie than anything else)
Another thing is that blacksmithing isn't all the same. A 19th century frontier America blacksmith would probably be miles ahead of the medieval work that I was doing. The game probably doesn't make that distinction though, right?
(Doing Therapy)
Right--too many distinctions to make. Rather, it's covered by probability of success and the opportunity for the referee to add sit-mods. For example, you've got soft metal skills of all sorts, but you never worked with aluminum, which is a soft metal (at least, I think it is--it's never arisen in play). You've undoubtedly encountered aluminum in your new location, and probably done stuff with it, so it's just become part of your skill--but if you had been somewhere else and decided you wanted to apply your blacksmithing skills to working with aluminum, it would have been a skill check situation, possibly with a penalty for working with a new metal. If you succeeded, it would mean that you successfully applied your metallurgical skill to aluminum; if you failed, it would probably mean that the new metal gave you problems you did not anticipate.
--M. J. Young
The tip of the Washington Monument is made of aluminum because it was at one time considered a precious metal. So perhaps its specially hard to refine from ore, or to work with.
Aluminum was considered a precious metal? That's funny. I've read that it is one of the most abundant metals on the planet.
It certainly has characteristics common to precious metals--it is easy to keep shiny and does not corrode so quickly as steel.
However, I am not certain why it was so late in coming into use or so rare originally.
--M. J. Young