Any way to make a lock un-pickable?

[Chernobyl]

Is there any way to make a lock in-pickable by non-magical means, meaning that the only way to open it is by using dispel magic or knock or something?

I looked at Arcane Lock, but that can still be picked using Disable Device.

Thanks!

[Celestia]

Bubblegum (or Medieval equivalent) in the lock.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You could Sovereign Glue (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/r-z/sovereign-glue/) it, but that can only be removed by Universal Solvent as it's no longer magical after it dries.

[Anxe]

Dont have a keyhole so it can only be locked/unlocked from the inside

[JNAProductions]

Dont have a keyhole so it can only be locked/unlocked from the inside

One step higher-don't have a door. Teleport through.

[Sayt]

By not building a door.

Or rather, by casting Phase Door (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/phase-door/) on a wall section.

[Tetsubo 57]

Multiple flexible keys. These exist. This would be as close to unpickable as possible.

[Fizban]

Unless you've houseruled it or are Pathfinder or something, Open Lock is what opens locks, in spite of the hilarious slip.

The spell you want is Sign of Sealing (Spell Compendium), which can't be opened except by breaking or magic. It does include an explosion when forced open, and then says the trap can be disabled by Disable Device. How your DM rules this interacts with the obvious intent that it be un-openeable without magic is up to them.

Greater Sign of Sealing can create a permanent forcewall over a corridor, but it still explodes so it still has the trap line.

If you have a specific item you want to protect, Secret Chest is the standard, but Force Chest will keep it protected by a disintegrate/disjoin only box of force for days. It includes no trap, so there's no way to Disable Device it. Shadow Cache goes one step further and makes the item irretrievable unless someone casts Shadow Cache again on the same spot- and quickly, before the item vanishes into the plane.

And of course, you can simply bar the door from the inside or chain it shut, which prevents anyone from picking it. Knock specifically unbars and unchains, but you can't disable something the DM says you obviously can't get to.

[Telonius]

One word of caution; be sure the walls are made of the same material as the door. You can have the most solid adamantine door with the most unpickable lock in existence; it won't do any good if the PCs can put a door-shaped hole in the wall (and sell the door for scrap).

[Fizban]

Adamantine is also trivial to chop through for most characters that would care to try, since they'll have power attack and a two-handed weapon even if they aren't using something to ignore hardness. And for the baseline party, the Cleric has Stone Shape at 3rd for when rocks are in the way. There are ways to increase hardness and hit points, but generally speaking if your players want through something they're going to get through it, because that's what adventurers are supposed to do.

[carrdrivesyou]

Make your doors in question to be shaped walls of force. You can't pick it, you certainly can't kick it down; the only real solution is magic, although those solutions are fairly simple. I.e. Disintegrate, passwall, phase door, dispel magic, etc.

If you wanted a nonmagical way of doing this, just make the door out of whatever nigh unbreakable material you like, and just have the lock in a broken condition. Maybe someone tried too many times before and now there are a dozen broken lockpicks jammed into it. Maybe someone shoved sovereign glue in it. Maybe there just isn't a keyhole or lock anyways. Maybe it's barred and chained on the other side. Sure they can break the hinges, but they will have to break through the chains and bars separately, alerting the rest of the dungeon to their presence.

I once created an entire dungeon in which the walls, ceilings, and floors were all lined with walls of force just beneath the exterior. The party had literally made adamantine mining equipment and had been tunneling through my previous dungeons. So the cultists wised up on them.

Just my thoughts.
-Carr

[denthor]

I like a small rule from one of the core books. DM guide or players I forget which.

The door can only be opened with a cleric chanel energy used as a turn/rebuke undead. Example was you have to use the power with the equivalent of a three hit dice turn.

If you channel Good/evil on an evil/good door and make the right turning chanel numbers the door explodes.

You can not pick the lock since you have to use a presented holy symbol and channel energy.

[Anxe]

One word of caution; be sure the walls are made of the same material as the door. You can have the most solid adamantine door with the most unpickable lock in existence; it won't do any good if the PCs can put a door-shaped hole in the wall (and sell the door for scrap).

Unless you want this to be the way in. I ran a dungeon where my players did that to get around an unopenable door. Seemed like a good solution to me.

[Baroncognito]

If you wanted a nonmagical way of doing this, just make the door out of whatever nigh unbreakable material you like, and just have the lock in a broken condition. Maybe someone tried too many times before and now there are a dozen broken lockpicks jammed into it. Maybe someone shoved sovereign glue in it. Maybe there just isn't a keyhole or lock anyways. Maybe it's barred and chained on the other side. Sure they can break the hinges, but they will have to break through the chains and bars separately, alerting the rest of the dungeon to their presence.

Mending says that the broken condition is removed once something gets up above half hit points. Mending is also a cantrip, so it's conceivably a spell a rogue would have access to without multi-classing.

Just like real life, the there's no such thing as un "unpickable" lock. The only hope is to make picking the lock more effort than it's worth.

I think if you want a mundane lock that can be used very easily by someone who has the key but is hard for anyone else:

1) More than one lock on a door, but one obvious one. Have that one unlocked. The party approaches the door. "I open the door." -"You can't open the door." "Is the door locked?" -"Well, you can't open it." "Is there a lock?" -"Roll perception." "5" -"There is a keyhole underneath the handle." etc. If the player picks that lock, the door is now at least twice locked.

2) Give some locks more than two stages. Perhaps "Unlocked, Locked stage 1, and Locked stage two" and disable device cycles through those stages. The down side of this is that it's harder for you to keep track of the locks.

3) Hide some of the locks. Stick an illusion over the whole door, but also use mundane methods of hiding the some of the other keyholes.

4) One of the keyholes should be a mechanism that reverts the door back to the initial lock state. This makes a lot of sense because, if people have been messing around with your door locks, you want to get it back to a place that you know how to unlock it from. That said, the players should have no way of knowing that the keyhole does this. As far as they can tell, it's just another deadbolt.

5) Initial state and default state don't need to be the same.

6) Have a schematic to keep track of everything.

7) If you have hidden and unhidden keyholes, consider making using one of each required for entry.

8) Have multiple Initial states considered. That way, you can see how they get started and decide "oh, well, they would have unlocked that initial state if I'd chosen it, so let's not use that one." to prevent them from opening the door with just sheer luck.

https://i.imgur.com/1qIMCjL.jpg

[vasilidor]

the original version of the tomb of horrors had adamantine doors. eventually people got sick of playing through it and just stole the doors, never setting foot inside. later versions had it be false adamantine doors, they acted like the real thing until ou pried them off their hinges. I once knew a guy who played that dungeon so many times that upon realizing what the DM was trying to run he would have his character (and himself) turn around and leave, assuming he could not get the DM to try something else. to be honest if the first door of the dungeon was this I would automatically assume it was the tomb of horrors, and not want to play it, as I have 0, read zero, interest in that particular adventure.
now for your actual question, try a heavy stone door with no lock and it is just really hard to move.

[Hugh Mann]

Well, you could have the lock constantly moving so that interferes so that the person picking it can't finish the full round action. This could be done by having the lock be placed on a magically propelled rolling boulder.

Alternatively the lock could be so big or small that the players simply can't access it. Let's see the players unlock a door when the tumblers are as large as castles or as small as bacteria.

[vasilidor]

at some point one of two things will happen 1: lose all interest in what lies on the other side or 2: brute force method of getting past. at some point the answer to all riddles becomes fireball.