My solo assassin had to take most of his points in HiS and move silently so his detect trap is around 40 and pick locks is about the same. My question is this: are there traps/locks that need a certain skill level to beat or is it always rolled?

I expected that the RNG would give me a number from 1-100 every time and if the number was smaller then my skill, lock picked. If higher not picked. I have already come across several traps(3 in the first dungeon, in that room where the alarms go off) and several locks(the ones I can remember are upstairs from the guy who wants the 20,000 gp) that were unpickable/disarmable. And I clicked on these damn things for a while.

Shouldn't I be able to pick any lock eventually?(natural roll of 001)

<font color= silver> <h6> I believe that it is rolled, but what you need to roll is calculated from your Skill Points. It says in the manual that each trap has a random chance of being detected. Locks however, are a diferent story. The more your skill points the more locks you can open. If you get a message like 'Lock Pick Failed' it doesnt help to try again and again. Whereas Traps, it can help depending on whether failing to disarm it sprung it. That is what i have been led to believe, but remeber that i might be wrong. Someone else who knows more than me will come and conform this soon id say. </font> </h6>

That could explain why I could never pick those damn chests, but I tried to disarm those traps just as many times to no avail.

Does anyone know why the game is cheating?

Well... when I made my solo Assassin, I pumped everything into Detect/Disarm Traps and Lockpick. I did not put any points in Hide in Shadows and Move Silently. Needless to say, it was kinda hard in the beginning since I could barely use my main advantage which is to backstab. I relied heavily on Bow and Arrows + Poison Ability in the beginning until I attained around 50+% in both HiS and MS. I only starting pumping points into HiS and MS when I had 95% in both D/DT and Lockpick. Then when I reached 100% in both HiS and MS, I pumped Set Traps to 100%, then pumped D/DT and Lockpick to 125%.

I think (though I'm not 100% sure) that Imoen has the pick locks/ detect traps skill you need to be able to open any lock and disarm any trap throughout the game. So that would mean you'd need 85% in lock picking and 95% in find traps.

Yep, I had Nalia for my thief for quite a while, and we had to use Knock several times. Couldn't open a one in Mae'Var's guild.Then came back with li'l ol' Imoen and opened them like a charm. There is a lock in TOB she can't pick, though. Forgot where it is, I think Yaga Shura's place, but remember thinking, darn, Im, that's the first time.

I think that some traps ARE harder than others to disarm. I think that every trap can conceivably have a skill modifier to represent the difficulty to disarm. For example, If you have a 90% to disarm and are attempting to disarm a trap with a -50% modifier, then you actually have only a (90-50) 40% chance of succcess.

From what I am getting, as long as I have skill points in Lpick, then I should have a chance to pick them. I tried for some time, before giving up.

Are there any items for boosting Lpick and disarm Trap? There are lots for HiS, so perhaps I allocated my points wrong.

there are a few items for lock pick and pick pockets. the yonly give 20% advantage though, and i dont know where to get them, excepting jans techno gloves which are only usable by him.

from my observations any game critical lock will be pickable by any thief or forceble by anybody at all. so you'll never not be able to finish due to not having a theif with high lock-pick.

getting more hypothetical, it seem that theres also a difficulty modifier for most locks/traps and the harder it is, the more XP.
natural 001 does not seem to be an automatic pass, although a 1% chance can hide fairly easily. be easier to be sure if the rolls showed up like combat ones, but they dont.

Yeah, that was another thing I was wondering if I could see the rolls for the thief skills. The whole absence of real numbers just smacks of computer cheating :D

If anyone knows the exact locations and names of these items that could help me out.