Is the lock and trap skill worth any investment at all for a gadgeteer, rouge etc.

Since in the mid-late game almost every party will have at least one caster that can cast the knock knock spell at power level 7.

I'm currently puting some points into the lock and trap skill for my gadgeteer coz I've run out of places to dump my points.

I think it is, combined with a 7th level divine trap spell it's a safer way to disarm traps than with knock knock. If you get it over 60 or so you should be good, can't hurt to raise it as far as 75 though if there's nothing else you need to spend the points on. Thieves' buckler helps for gadgies; rogues have the benefit of dual thieves' daggers and their class bonus, but the way I played rogues they didn't have the skill points to waste there, so I also went with the gadgie as the lock picker/trap disarmer.

I find that the damage the fail of an opening makes is not so high after all...
I never found something really good there anyway...

Some of the later traps are nasty, especially the philosopher's bane one ;) Basically if you have a locks guy you can avoid having to reload; or if you're playing IM I think it's a must to have one.

I also don't like the heatwave trap-it breaks your potions. I tend to hoard magic nectar, and it sucks to lose a big hoard of those

I agree. My Bard's doing the lock picking this time, and my Ninja's doing pickpocketing. Knock knock is good, but the combination of that and the lockpicking skill is better. And just examining chests helps up the lockpicking skill. Plus, you don't need Divine Trap to try to figure out what to disarm.

So, either you have a combo of two spells, Knock Knock and Divine Trap, or one guy with agile fingers. Early on I'd rather save the spell picks for something more substantial like buffing spells.

just force everything....6 lizardmen and a whole bunch of chest slammin is what i suggest...lol

If you have a gadgeteer in the party, then you should probably have plenty of points to put into Locks and Traps since he has no spells to worry about. I usually put 3 points in Locks, Engineering and Modern Weapons. Ranged combat and other stuff goes up just fine on its own, I think.


The Lord of Lunacy

to me it's very important to put a lot of points in lock and picks skill. knock knock spell can do the same but you'll be wasting your mana casting it.

A level knock-knock not necessary opens a lock. For high-level locks, sometimes 4 level 7 knock-knock spells (from different casters) are not enough. But combined with 2-3 casters, a skill of 10-20 is enough (which you can get from items).

But since your gadgeteer has nothing else to do, raise it. At least in ironman, its well worth it (just lost $70.000 to the chest at Barlone).