Hello everyone!

I have a question regarding the Electronic Lock Breaker ( EotE p178) and what is stated in Fly Casual (p82 - Locks). Does the ELB always reduce the difficulty by 2 on every Lock picking attempt? How are you ruling this device?

Thank you!

Going by the RAW, yes, it always reduces difficulty by 2.

The verbiage between all the CRBs is a bit off and confusing. AoR and F&D add "limited use" to the wording. Fly Casual says they reduce Difficulty, although EoE says some are automatic. So there needs to be some judgments made by your GM how they want to handle it in regards to automatic and limited use.

Context is everything. From the general context of the section in Fly Casual, as well as the immediate context of the paragraph, plus the rules in the EotE core rulebook, we can definitively infer that "it depends." It depends both on the lock in question AND on the model of lock breaker.

The lock mentioned Fly Casual , in the "Obstacles" section under Heists and Break-Ins, is an example of an electronic lock found in the Core Worlds. Note the phrase "Picking such a lock might require a Daunting Skulduggery check..." (emphasis mine) that directly precedes the rule about reducing difficulty by two.

It's probably a safe bet to just roll with a general ruling that a lockbreaker reduces the difficulty of a Computers or Skulduggery check to defeat a lock by two—a difficulty of 2 is "Average," and it makes sense that an average lockbreaker would be able to automatically defeat an average lock—but I would keep an open mind, so to rule as the situation might dictate for specific instances.

Thanks you @Rithuan for bringing this up! I have no idea this was mentioned in Fly Casual.

I posted something in another thread about picking locks, and you have now made my day! My Assassin will buy one of these pronto, based on the FC write up.

From the wording in FC it also seems to me that this is only the case with that kind of highly sophisticated lock, and that the electronic lock breaker would not have this effect on locks that are less advanced (Hard and lower difficulties).

Personally I've always just viewed electronic lock breakers to be "the right tools for the job" when it comes to breaking through electronic locks (which is pretty much all of them, in my campaigns; you don't find mechanical tumbler locks on most worlds).

I see them as those things you see in the movie where they hook it up to the keypad/lock and it automatically finds the combination. The character never actually does anything.

So, it could be that you can use it to bypass a lock, but can't use it with your own skill.

I'd lean to auto unlock for the padlock on the junkyard gate and reduction of the bank vault. Of course just unlocking something doesn't solve all problems and when the computer asks for DNA or retina verification that's an awkward moment.....

On 3/7/2017 at 11:20 PM, Andreievitch said:

Thanks you @Rithuan for bringing this up! I have no idea this was mentioned in Fly Casual.

I posted something in another thread about picking locks, and you have now made my day! My Assassin will buy one of these pronto, based on the FC write up.

You welcome. And thanks everyone for comment on this thread. It makes sense now.