So with the following :

You carefully begin to examine an enruned steel coffer for traps...

Examining the coffer, you locate a small dark reddish-brown sphere held in a metal bracket towards the back of the lock mechanism. The spherical crystal gives off a faint humming noise, occasionally extruding a thin spiky filament. It appears that were the tumblers to be activated, the gem would be caught amongst them.

It looks like a simple trap (-71).

You still have a good enough picture of the trap in your mind, that you could try to disarm it.

Roundtime: 20 sec.

>disarm my coff

Having discovered a trap on the coffer you begin to carefully attempt to disarm it...

No matter how you try, your fingers are just too big to get back there to the gem. You'll need some sort of thin, rigid implement like a lockpick.

Why can we not use the tools in our locksmithing tool kit to disarm it? Namely the needle or file? Both are small enough to fit into the lock as that is how they are used with other traps. Why do I have to pull a lockpick out of my bracer just to disarm this one trap?

Scales make logical sense, as you'd need a knife to disarm the trap. What I'm bothered by is needing a lockpick to disarm the sphere trap, when I have two long(ish) objects already in my locksmithing kit that fit in the lock and should work just fine in prodding the sphere out of its holdings.

I understand that you like the trap concept and I am by no means trying to pick an argument, but I don't see the difference between a lockpick and a file or needle in the case of disarming this trap.

A lockpick in our current generation would have tiny teeth, but normally the teeth are recessed a bit from the tip. So if the GS lockpicks follow the same logic, there is little difference between the first milometers of a needle and a lockpick. Both should be able to prod a crystal all gentle like.

<<And since nobody wants to work on modifying guild skills, that's the way it will stay. >>

Can we not say things like this, please?

SGM Sleken

<It's simply a question of why a specific tool is needed to disarm the trap when we have other tools available already in our locksmithing kits that would complete the job just as easily.>

There are three possible reasons:

It could be because the person that designed the trap wanted the player to pull out a tool to have in their hand rather then just have it be something the script tells you your character did. That can't be done with the tools in kits, so they picked something every locksmith already has on them: lockpicks

It might make sense for your character to do it the way you describe, but with what was trying to be done with the trap they couldn't use the file or other tools in the kits because they're not actual objects you can take out and hold.

Second, they could have known the psychological effect that having to pull out your lockpick to disarm the trap would have on the player and designed the trap around that concept.

Lastly, it's completely possible the kits didn't exist yet when the trap was designed and it was kept the way it was when they were to preserve the uniqueness of the trap (I didn't have a locksmithing character until after kits were released, but someone else might know better)

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

Yep, moment of weakness on my part. Continue.

SGM Sleken

FWIW, I like that orbs add a little diversity to lockpicking.

Scales still terrify me. Every time I pick manually, I tense up when I see one.

Heh; I remember picking for someone and doing a box with a scales trap, and at the same time listening to the conversation going on. Being distracted, I handed the box back to the customer without slicing the trap cord. I was in the process of yelling "Wait! Don't open that b..." Boom! Instant jail time, and a customer I never saw again. How embarrassing.