Locking large crates

[Zhofe]

Is there any way it can be made possible to lock the large crates?

You see, Cappyra and I are working on turning a house in Leilon into a makeshift inn. This inn would have rooms for rent aswell as a bar area for meeting and drinking etc. We had this plan in mind back before I left as a response for the outcry to cheap player housing, and we believe that the idea would still be successful, however, to keep everyone's goods secured, it would be nice if we could place crates (to give us a large amount of storage without taking up too much of our placement limit) and have them be lockable (so that the tenants feel secure.)

I am sure this is a bit of a hassle, and I apologize for that, but I think it would solve alot of complaints if we could open this inn. If any of the GMs have other suggestions of how to secure the items I am open to suggestions.

Thank you.

[aragwen]

Good idea to get crates to be locked.  Chests can be locked so I cannot see why crates cannot be locked.
  But just a to put a spanner in the works.
  Firstly if you allow tenants to lock their crates or chests, what happens when you want to put them out. You will not be able to unlock the chest or crate because only the owner of the furniture can do that.
  Secondly for the tenants to be able to lock chests or possibly crates they will have to place the furniture to be able to do that. So that would be a problem as well.

[Zhofe]

Yes, they would have to place the furniture, and yes, it would be a pain to get the furniture out, but I think the GMs would much rather deal with coming in and zapping up leftover furniture on occasion than dealing with "OH MY GOD SOMEONE STOLE ALL OF MY STUFF!!" ... especially if someone came through and cleared out all the rooms. That would be nine "OH MY GOD SOMEONE STOLE ALL MY STUFF!!"s to deal with ...

Of course, it would be nifty if we could get some sort of master furniture tool like the DMs have ... but perhaps limit it to that building, but that would probably be alot of trouble aswell ...

If there was a way to lock the individual room doors, that would be an interesting, and more realistic solution aswell ...

[aragwen]

Locking doors is also not available, but you can work around that. Did it in my house.
  Place a bookshelf in front of the door. The owner will be the only one able to remove it and get access to the room.

[Zhofe]

Yes, I know that currently it is unavailable, and I have done the bookshelf thing too (the rooms beyond are secret .... I personally call one of the the "Quin Cave (tm)"

But it would be a nifty feature if we COULD lock doors ....

[Variable]

One thing I have to add here is that there is not really a placeable limit anymore, I believe it was fixed a while back so you can have an outrageous number of placeables without messing anyhting up.

On another note I use quite a few small chests to store my really valuable stuff because i can lock them

[Zhofe]

L said that the limit was around 200 items in another post, and we have about 150 and we are not quite done yet, and if we replaced every instance of a crate we have with 3 chests we would certainly go over 200 ...

[Talan Va'lash]

well,  you can lock the doors if you have at least 1 rank in open lock... but, then anyone with at least 1 rank can open them, and they only stay locked until the next server reset.

[Zhofe]

Well, we hit the placeable limit. I feel kinda proud to have done it actually ... even if I am kinda stuck out of the house now ...

[Fista]

Hire a high level lockpicker to be your "locksmith"

[Zhofe]

Okay, back to the main topic of locking large crates.

I can see NO reason why they shouldn't be lockable. Bookshelves are lockable afterall, crates make more sense. Is it possible in ANY way to do this? It would make things a whole lot easier not only for us running the Leilon Arms but also for any players sharing housing.

If it is too much of a hassle to mae the large crates lockable, or if there is some other reason it is not possible, then please let me know so I can stop bugging you.

In the craft tinkering you can make locks. Perhaps having locks that characters could buy to put on crates or on doors might be a good idea. The crate itself is not locked, but the lock could be smashed or picked to allow access to the crate or through a door.
Having locks used in this way, you could also have trick locks. The character that placed it would not trip the trick (trap).