D&D Next March Playtest - Feats

My Biggest Point of Contention
I want to start with this to get it out in the open.  I'm putting it first because I REALLY HATE IT, and I want it to be REALLY NOTICEABLE.  Maneuvers as feats.  No.  Just, no.  With a side of no.

What is the biggest strength of a tabletop roleplaying game?  This is something that was actually talked about BY THE DESIGNERS at the beginning of the playtest (I think in a podcast), and they were spot on.  That your character can do anything.  Instead of having computer code determine the outcome, there's a living, thinking person (the DM) who can adjudicate the rules.  Wasn't this the whole point of emphasizing ability checks?

So now when a PC says "I want to push a guy," a rules-lawyer type will have the rules to back up his answer of "no, you don't have that feat?!?!"

But here's the worst part.  Take Trip Attack, for example.  There's no drawback to using this, and no tactical choice that needs to be made in-play.  Once a PC has the feat it makes sense to use it EVERY SINGLE TURN.  How boring is that?  And how many fights do you see in movies or in novels where all a guy does is constantly try to trip his opponent over and over again?

Maneuvers should be universal options.  There should be enough of a drawback to not try to spam them every turn, but they should be useful enough to actually use when the situation calls for it.  Here's how I handle them in 13th Age, and I think such a system would benefit Next as well.  Make an appropriate skill check vs PD or MD (in Next I guess you'd use opposed checks which is more dice rolling).  If you fail, the target can make an opportunity attack against you.  If you succeed, you can attack and if you hit you do that cool thing you were trying to do (applied AFTER the attack).  Alternatively, if you want to play it safe just roll the skill check INSTEAD of attacking.  Success lets you do that cool thing (without having to hit with a follow-up attack), and you won't take an OA if you fail.

If the designers read this, I encourage them to steal the idea.  It'll make the game better.

What I Like

• Combat Reflexes.  Makes melee characters more sticky.
• Defensive Ward.  Simple countermagic is very cool.
• Find Familiar.  Good to make it a feat, as some spellcasters want one and others don't.
• Healing Initiate.  Cure Minor wounds is a little game-y since it can't heal past 3 total HP, but that keeps in check what is otherwise an at-will heal.  Think of it as just enough healing to keep you conscious and you're good conceptually. 
• Heighten Spell.  Insurance for your big gun.  Might I add that these "metamagic feats" are SO much better than the convoluted mess in 3.x where you changed the spell's level.
• Hold the Line.  If I'm interpreting this right, you can stop movement if an enemy in melee with you tries to move away (basically trading an opportunity attack for a movement stopper).  If that's the intent, then great!  We have sticky tanks!
• Interposing Shield.  Great defender option, sort of like a mark.  Giving up your only reaction is a little pricey, though.
• Martial Arts.  Monk-lite!
• Polearm Training.  Reach weapons for everyone!  And enhanced opportunity attacks with them, to boot.
• Purge Magic.  If this gives you Dispel Magic even if you're not a Wizard.  Which I think is the case here.  Heck, even if you ARE a Wizard you can have fun not needing to prepare it, plus this feat gives you multiple uses of it.
• Restore Life.  Suck it Cleric!  I don't need you in my party!
• Relentless.  Because it's fun when good things happen despite a miss.
• Spring Attack.  Way to cater to the skirmisher fighting style.  Encouraging movement is good.
• Taunt.  Ok, this "skill as feat" is actually kind of cool.  
• Tumbling Movement.  Again, great skirmisher feat.
• Weapon Mastery.  Hey-oh, it's a buff to weapons in general and not "choose this specific weapon to specialize in."  Good, because if my normally-melee Fighter needs to pull out the bow I don't want him to suck.

A lot of these are supporting certain fighting styles (defender, skirmisher) in a simple way even outside of the tactical rules module.  Which is good.  Combat should be more than "walk up to enemy and trade blows until one of you drops." 


What I Don't Like

• Magic-like wording of Charming Presence.  Heck, its very existence.  In what ways can't this be handled by a simple CHA check?  If you want a feat to boost your ability to charm people then it should be "ignore situational penalties when you use the Charm skill," or better yet "gain Advantage when you use the Charm skill" (which would cancel any disadvantage anyways).
• Open Locks, Disarm Traps, Pick Pockets, etc.  Wait a second, so what used to be skills are now feats?  Based on the wording they basically ARE skills, it's just that they use up your "feats" resources.  Sloppy, and unintuitive.  Plus this very much falls within the realm of My Biggest Point of Contention above.  What, so I can't attempt to pick your pocket with an ability check if I don't have this feat?
•  Read Lips.  Huh?  Why can't this just be a Wisdom check?  A bit situational to be a skill, but even that would be preferable to a FEAT.

D&D Next March Playtest - The Paladin

While not perfect (this is a playtest, after all!), by and large the first two classes to debut in this packet (the Druid and Ranger) were well done.  Conceptually successful with a good mechanical scaffold.  I can't say the same about the Paladin.  The design is solid enough, but it just doesn't hit the concept strongly enough.

That's NOT My Warden!
First we'll tackle the 800 lb gorilla (or oak, or avatar of winter, etc.) in the room.  There's only the tiniest bit of resemblance to the original class here, with Nature's Wrath admittedly looking decent.  The problem is outside of casting Entangle this guy isn't sticky at all.  The Warden is supposed to be a black hole of nature-magic doom.  I'd rather Nature's Wrath restrain targets even if you had to give up the damage.

As for his other Channel Divinity options, Lay on Hands and Turn Undead?  Really?  So 2/3s of his options are identical to the Cavalier's?  That's not going to differentiate him at all!  ALL THREE Channel Divinities need to be adaptations of stuff that the Warden could do in 4E.  At least one of these should be inspired by his Daily "Form of ____" powers.  

A lot of that Warden flavor is easily achievable if the designers had simply made some custom spells to support the concept.  The Warden doesn't need this Cure Wounds and Bless nonsense, he needs to be able to buff himself (with a "Swift Action") in order to freeze guys in place when he hits them, or gain reach by growing tree limbs for arms, or lashing out with vines to pull fleeing enemies back toward him.  Otherwise yeah, he'll just be like any other Paladin with some nature-themed parlor tricks.  I think an entirely separate spell list for the different Oaths might work best.  Or a pared down general Paladin list, with 2 or 3 Oath-specific spells per spell level.  The Oaths simply don't play differently enough right now.

Blackguard
The Blackguard is in a little better shape than the Warden.  At least all of his Channel Divinities reinforce his theme.  Some of the same arguments still apply though, especially regarding the spell list.  Why should Cure Wounds be on the general list?  Isn't it a little schizophrenic for the Blackguard to have both Cure and Inflict Wounds?  His Blackguard-specific options are all good choices, but it'd be nice to have 2-3 per level so he's more likely to use Blackguard spells (and still get some variety) as opposed to general Paladin spells. 

Where's My Tank?
Of all the classes the Cavalier has the most justification for getting some kind of "tanking" mechanic.  Selfless knight-errant, protector of the innocent and all that.  Simply put, I want Divine Challenge.  This guy should be saying "face me, you coward, or feel the wrath of my gods!" and have the teeth to back it up.  Either damage the guy, debuff him, or both.  This might work best as a Cavalier-specific spell.  I mean, we're giving the Paladin spellcasting, why not use it to reinforce the archetype instead of just saying "hey, I have mini-Cleric functionality!" 

With this framework the Cavalier and Warden would both actually be able to dissuade enemies from attacking their squishy allies.  The Cavalier would be throwing around Divine Challenges while the Warden would be the black hole of nature magic that we've grown to love from 4E.  Now, I'm not expecting at-will Divine Challenge or quite the same degree of black-hole-ness as 4E.  Next is a different beast, with less emphasis on tactical combat.  PCs also simply have fewer resources in general.  That doesn't mean that the Next iterations of the classes can't do the same things, along the same themes, albeit in different ways, though.

Mount
Yeah, remember how I applauded the designers for not following the 3.x example and actually giving the classes their iconic abilities starting at 1st level (Druid Wild Shape, Ranger spellcasting)?  Well they failed here.  Honestly, the mount isn't even that mechanically significant.  A lot of people really like that mount, regardless of how situational it is, because it reinforces the fact that a Paladin is a Knight with divine backing.  He gets a divinely-gifted mount to ride into battle, and he's got a Druid or Ranger-like relationship with it. 

That feeling still comes across even if he gets a weaker version at level 1.  Something roughly comparable to a mundane horse, but with a minor Oath-specific ability.  At level 8 you can get the "upgraded" version (the stat blocks as presented). 

Alignment
This is a contentious issue.  Personally I'm of the opinion that you should be able to pick whatever alignment you choose, if you even use alignment at all.  After all, each god has an alignment, and they're all over the map.  If you indicate a specific god, your alignment should line up with theirs. 

That said, mechanically speaking this version of the Paladin has some pretty easy-to-ignore alignment restrictions.  This is exemplified best by the fact that Detect Evil has been replaced by Divine Sense.  Instead of being able to detect a specific alignment (which never made much sense to me anyways; at best a person's alignment is an average of their actions and beliefs; what if an evil person is thinking good thoughts or doing good deeds when the Paladin used Detect Evil?), you can detect celestials, fiends, and undead.  Cool, that actually shows that you have a connection with the divine planes, and undead are unnatural (a mockery of the divine spark of life or somesuch), so that makes sense too. 

Summary
Paladins need to be tanky defender classes (except the Blackguard, he should just be really good at causing pain).  A lot of this functionality should be possible by re-working the Paladin spells.  They should be Paladin spells, not Cleric-lite, and each Oath should get options that strongly reinforce their theme.  Channel Divinity needs to be revisited for the Warden to really let him stand out.  Yeah, he's a Paladin build now and I don't necessarily mind if he'll be wearing heavy armor, using Divine Sense, etc., but the build is still conceptually more different from Cavaliers and Blackguards than those two are from each other.  If you're going to use the 4E name, pay homage to the class.  Finally, mounts should be a 1st level feature, and good job making alignment easily ignorable but still satisfying those who like alignment restrictions.

D&D Next March Playtest - The Ranger

Fighting Style (NOT!)
Perhaps the most immediately noticeable thing about the Ranger is the absence of a feature that's been traditional for most incarnations of Rangers - a choice between wielding two melee weapons or focusing on archery (which usually involves making multiple ranged attacks).  Rangers have always been the multi-attackers.

The problem with that (a problem that the design team is well aware of) is that it's not enough of a schtick to justify a class.  It's just weapon choice.  It's a choice that any melee class should have the option of making (as 4E proved with its "Ranger clone" builds: the Tempest Fighter and Whirling Barbarian).  Plus there's the fact that it does absolutely nothing to replicate one of the most iconic rangers of all in fiction, Aragorn. 

I don't play a Ranger because I want to be "a Fighter, but with two weapons."  It's one of my favorite classes, and you could more accurately say that I deal with the fact that the choice is usually baked into the class.  No, I play a Ranger to be the guerilla-tactics, outdoorsy hunter guy.  To me subtle nature spells and animal companions are both more in line with how I view Rangers than weapon choice (though there are strong archery traditions to the archetype; it's the two-weapon fighting that I mostly don't get).  So bonus points for slaying that sacred cow.

Spellcasting
Ah, Ranger spellcasting.  In 3.x it was so weak compared to a full caster that it might as well be ignored (though not to the egregious extent as the Ranger's half-strength animal companion that usually was ignored).  In 4E it simply didn't exist.  And yet, it's still something that makes sense to me. 

If you're going to have it, then YES you should get it at 1st level.  I'm a HUGE proponent of classes getting all of their main stuff right away.  People play different classes for different reasons, but it usually boils down to "I want to be able to do ______."  In 3.x I would always want to play a shapeshifter, and was always let down because we almost always played low level, and the Druid didn't get that yet.  There's always room to get better at what you do as you level, but the main components of your class's identity should be useable out of the box. 

As I hinted at before, the key to capturing the Ranger's feel is that their spells need to be SUBTLE.  They shouldn't give up much (if any) raw combat power just because they get spells, because they're not going around slinging spells during combat.  This spell list hits that mark perfectly.  With Animal Friendship and Cure Wounds you could replicate Aragorn's abilities fairly well, even if his "spellcasting" wasn't as overt as D&Ds.  And really, it's not something you have to (or should) play up as a Ranger.  Cast your spells with little to no fuss and act like nothing unusual happened.  Yours is a more humble spellcasting; you lack the flashiness (and raw power) of the Druid's.  If the flashiest spell you've got is Fog Cloud and Spike Growth, you're a well-designed caster-Ranger.

I also like that, aside from Barkskin, you're also not using your spells to buff yourself up for combat.  The 3.x Ranger was guilty of that.  No, the Ranger should have the same baseline competency as the other martial classes.  His spells are for utility.  Occasionally healing, but mostly "exploration" based.

Favored Enemy
I'll just come out and say it that this incarnation of Favored Enemy is probably my favorite thing in the whole packet.  This is coming from someone who normally HATES Favored Enemy mechanics.  For largely the reasons that were explained in the podcast that was aired when this packet was released.  The bonus is situational (what if the DM doesn't include those enemies?) and the result is that you're just a gimped Fighter most of the time, but when your moment comes to shine then the fight is usually anticlimactic because you can chew through it.  Which leads to the DM to not want to include those enemies, and it's just a vicious loop.

So why is this version better?  Well, it's applicable to a broad range of foes that have similar qualities to the one you specialize in, and the benefits are a lot more interesting than straight numerical bonuses.  They're tangible concepts that make you feel like you have an actual ability. 

Your first option is Brute Hunter, which means that you specialize in those monstrous humanoids that tend to fight in large groups.  You're the guerrilla warrior that can take a larger force by surprise and win.  This is very much my kind of Ranger.  All of options give you advantage on checks to recall lore on your type of enemy, which is expected and works well.  Then you get another 1st level feature, which for this option lets you keep your allies from being surprised (you're used to being on the lookout, and sneaking by even when there are many eyes watching out for YOU).  Then there's a 2nd level feature, and an 8th level feature.  At 2nd opportunity attacks made against you have disadvantage, allowing you to either retreat from a fight more easily or to move through a group to kill a priority target.  At 8th you get a double cleave that can be used with ranged attacks.  Yeah, you're very dangerous when outnumbered.

Next is the iconic Dragon Slayer.  Starting from 1st level you're immune to fear.  By 2nd you buff a subsequent attack when you hit a foe, dealing extra damage next round.  Chip away at those "bag of hit points" monsters (as dragons tend to be).  The capstone is Evasion, to protect you from things like Breath Weapons (half damage if you fail a Dex save, no damage if you pass even if you'd normally take half).  Fights against dragons will still be appropriately tough, you're just good at taking the heat.  You're more likely to not get burned to a crisp or run away.

Finally, we have Giant Killer.  At 1st level you can use your reaction to halve damage taken from Large+ creatures (nice!).  Your 2nd level ability is the same as Dragon Slayer's (I approve of avoiding redundancy when designing for similar concepts).  As a capstone you can avoid the reach that giants will inevitably have (but plenty of other creatures as well).  While outside of 5 ft melee attacks against you are made with disadvantage.  If threatening reach is a thing in Next, these guys will be great at punching through that first line of defense.

Deadly Strike
Though the wording is a little weird, I like that melee damage scales as you level by multiplying your base damage die.  It works better than gaining extra attacks (you reduce the total number of die rolls) or piling on static mods (as was the case in 4E, where your weapon's damage didn't matter all that much; made you wonder why you needed to roll a die to begin with).  It's also a great way of keeping the melee classes at parity.  It's no coincidence that the Druid's Dire Shape gives Wild Shape the same scaling ("why yes, we do acknowledge that you want to fight in melee, and here's how you keep up with Fighters"). 

Mostly it's a good sign that "this guy's better/worse at combat" isn't being used as a balancing point.  You're not a gimped Fighter just because you get Favored Enemies and Spellcasting, you're a warrior who gives up the Fighter's maneuvers in order to get those things.  You're both comparable as far as raw numbers are concerned, though, and that's what I want to see in a Ranger.

D&D Next March Playtest - The Druid

Wild Shape
I'll start out by saying that I generally prefer at-will Wild Shape to Daily Wild Shape, even if you have daily uses of certain forms with an otherwise at-will Wild Shape.  That said, this version of Daily Wild Shape is much better designed than 3.x edition, and it's something that I could suck up and happily play a Druid.  Getting Wild Shape at first level is ESSENTIAL since that's such a huge part of the class's identity.  Most of the time if I play a Druid, it's because I want to play a shapeshifter.  While you only start out with one use per day, the Circle of the Moon (the circle that focuses on shapeshifting) grants you an extra use per day, and at second level you're already up to a baseline of 2 uses (3 with Circle of the Moon).  Considering the duration (level + Con mod HOURS) you can conceivably spend most of any day shapeshifted even at low levels.

Speaking of Circles, I actually really like that Druids have the option to either increase their spellcasting ability (with Circle of the Oak) or go with a bigger focus on Wild Shape (with the aforementioned Circle of the Moon).  In addition to an extra use of Wild Shape, Circle of the Moon gives you a small amount of healing when you revert back to your natural form and provides access to new forms.  These are the combat forms, so basically if you're not Circle of the Moon your Wild Shape is mostly for utility, as even your starting Shape of the Hound isn't very good in a fight (its advantages are a high speed and great senses).

The biggest problem for me is that even with Circle of the Moon your different forms don't scale.  So you start out with Shape of the Bear, but at 3rd level when you gain Shape of the Great Cat it doesn't make much sense to use the Bear anymore; the cat gets a lower base damage, but if you pounce you make two attacks, and if both hit you knock the target prone and bite them.  Both shapes get the same AC.  A better design would be to have a handful of different scaling forms that filled different niches.  So you'd have Shape of the Bear for when you want to be durable with decent damage (it would have higher AC, and perhaps some kind of damage reduction or temporary HP mechanic), and Shape of the Great Cat would give you mobility and spike damage.  You could even buff up Shape of the Hound with some sort of "pack attack" mechanic (low damage and AC, but it gives your allies Advantage as it harries the enemy).

Point being, part of the fun of having multiple forms that you can turn into is getting to make meaningful tactical decisions regarding which form you decide to take.  It's a bit dull if you have a highest-level form that becomes a no-brainer to use whenever a combat breaks out.

The utility forms (those available to all Druids) look good.  You've got all the basics covered; hound for speed and improving your senses, rodent for hiding and climbing, fish for swimming and breathing underwater, steed for even more speed and carrying capacity, and bird for flying.   You end up having access to all of your bag of tricks by 6th level, too (with the bird).  My only concern would be that perhaps 6th level is too early to have access to such a reliable form of flight (Circle of the Moon Druids can use Wild Shape 4x/day by that point).  Given that the duration of Wild Shape is so long and that even Circle of the Moon Druids will want to spend at least one battle in their natural form to sling spells around, most will be planning on using a utility form at least once each day.  Granted I LIKE that you can use Wild Shape often enough, early enough for these non-combat utility forms to see play (despite Wild Shape not being at-will); the issue is potentially how early you gain access to flight.  Consider that Circle of Oak Druids won't be using Wild Shape for fighting anyways, and you could easily run into situations where they're flying up to a safe perch and raining death on their enemies without fear of reprisal.

Finally, Shape of the Dire Beast needs a simple fix.  Size should not increase to Huge, at least not in all cases.  All of the Druid's combat-worthy forms are already Large sized, and by increasing them they can't fit through your standard door.  I mean, a lot of big cats would be at the small end of Large anyways, if not outright Medium, so it makes more sense to me for a dire version to be either solidly Large, or at the bigger end of Large, but NOT Huge.  Shape of the Dire Beast is what allows shapeshifter Druids to keep up with the scaling of the melee classes, and it doesn't make sense to deny them their basic functionality just because the DM set his adventure in cramped spaces.

Spellcasting
Another concern I have is that you seem to give up more by going Circle of Oak.  I mean, you pretty much have no combat utility from Wild Shape (well, you certainly won't be keeping up with the melee classes), but Circle of the Moon Druids can still use spells to full effect.  It's just that Circle of Oak Druids get to recover expended spell slots (like the other "full casters") and they have a list of automatically prepared spells.

Cantrips are decent enough, though Druidcraft and Spare From Dying are notably missing.  Shillelagh is a solid enough melee option; you won't deal as much damage as the dedicated melee types, but the 10 foot reach is a nice perk.  Fire Seeds is pretty low damage but looks to be a good "finishing move" option, especially considering the fact that you get two low-damage attacks.  Faerie Fire is surprisingly nice; sure, you give up making an attack, but you can cause enemies in a pretty big area to grant Advantage.  This might see a lot of use.

At first level, Entangle was always one of my favorite spells, and it has some serious teeth.  Its area is pretty small, but the combination of decent damage and a solid mobility-debuff looks like great fun.  Thunderwave was also a happy surprise to see on the Druid's list.  Great area effect with the potential for pushing enemies off of cliffs.  These two offensive spells are likely to see a lot of use.  The utility and healing spells that round out the list are pretty much to be expected.

I won't go into much detail past this point, but incarnations of Web, Hold Person, and Flaming Sphere look nice; very well done.  Flame Blade is a neat "haha, I can deal solid melee damage plus I'm good if you come across any trolls!" option, and Heat Metal might not have the duration of previous incarnations, but the disarm if cast on a weapon vs disadvantage if cast on armor riders seem interesting enough.

The lack of Summon Nature's Ally is immediately noticeable; I assume they want to get a better handle on core mechanics before they muddy the waters with summoning (which is notorious for balance issues).


EDIT:  Added concerns about Shape of the Dire Beast.

D&D Next March Playtest Packet Review (TOC)

I haven't been keeping up with the D&D Next playtests all that closely.  Mostly it's because I have precious little game time, and I've been using that to play 13th Age and Edge of the Empire.  It's also partially that I lost interest early on when I disliked a lot of the updates, and class selection proceeded slow (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's tough to get excited when a lot of your favorite classes haven't been released yet).

Well, I figure with 3 shiny new classes (two of which, the Druid and Ranger, are among my favorites) it's time I examined the material more closely.  I'll be writing a series of posts, each on a different class or rules element, and this will be the table of contents so links to everything are in one place.  For now it will just be a rough outline, subject to change, and as I write each post I'll edit this one with its links.

Barbarian
Cleric
Druid
Fighter
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Wizard

Exploration Rules
Feats
Skills
Monsters

Concluding Thoughts

Fire Sale at Pelgrane Press

In case you haven't heard yet, Chris Huth (the guy doing the 13th Age layout) has had his apartment catch fire.  He lost his layout files and all of their backups, which will push the release date for 13th Age back to late June.  Details are here. 

Proceeds from the Pelgrane Press online store will go toward getting him back on his feet, so if anyone is interested in buying anything from the site now would be a good time to do it.

Icons in Action (2)

Overall tonight's session was pretty light on Icon usage.  I guess that just happens sometimes; it was a short session, and somewhat combat-heavy.  Each player rolled one 5 for Relationships at the start of the session, and there was an outstanding 5 and 6 from last session that hadn't been spent as well.  Complications are awesome and make perfect sense in some situations, but in others I find I struggle to come up with a good disadvantage.  Results of 5 can be, quite simply, more work to utilize in play (unless you're endowed with more improvisational creativity than I am). 


Icon Rolls/OUTs
Argus, our party's Fighter, wanted to copy down some ancient writing from a tapestry onto paper for later research.  The player simply asked if the standard adventurer's gear included paper.  Thinking it unlikely for any but a studious Wizard type, a Bard who likes to compose on the road, or a PC of any class that has an established personality/backstory that would justify carrying paper, I said probably not.  "But what happened to 'Always say Yes,'" you might ask?  Well, I happened to be struggling with coming up with any applications for these relationship rolls (as were my players), so I offered the player the following bargain:  if he spent a 5 for the Emperor that was still in play, he can be carrying around imperial stationary with an appropriate writing implement. 

The beauty of this suggestion is that it's so minor at the present time that I didn't feel the need to tack on a complication.  Easy on me, right?  Results of 5 could involve a complication, OR they could simply provide a lesser benefit than a 6 would.  But it's still open-ended.  How did Argus come by this imperial stationary?  His Relationship with the Emperor is conflicted, and his OUT is that he's the only person known to have insulted the Emperor to his face and lived to tell the tale.  Is it left over from a former position that he once held in the imperial military?  Or did he come by it later through illicit means?  Will it be possible to forge an official document later on, now that it's established that he carries imperial stationary?  Maybe a more significant benefit will come up later, and the possibility for future conflict is certainly there as well.  Point being, just because you need to come up with something on the spot for a relationship roll doesn't mean you have to come up with EVERYTHING on the spot.  And everyone knows sometimes minor details can end up having a big narrative impact later on. 

Backgrounds
Turns out the best example of a surprising (and yet obvious, in hindsight) background application came from Argus as well.  After repeatedly breaking down several doors with axes (because when will a party consisting of a Cleric, Paladin, and Fighter decide to pick a lock?) and subsequently alerting those in the room, Argus decided to finally try to pick the final door in their path.  "Can I use Blacksmith?" he asked.  Lightbulb moment.  Hey, we have someone whose halfway decent at skulduggery!  A blacksmith just might know enough about the internal workings of locks to be able to have an advantage while picking them.  And an otherwise under-utilized background gets some screen time.