This is why you invest in strength and "open" chests like Kratos does.

Lockpicking in Gothic I was "fun". You had to find out and remember in which sequence the pick had to be moved right and left. If you took the "wrong turn" you had to start again and often broke your pick. Complex locks had up to a dozen moves.

Tabletop Wizard: Wait, I have an app a spell for that.

NNescio said:

Tabletop Wizard: Wait, I have an app a spell for that.

The Rogue: I WILL CUT YOU!

NNescio said:

Tabletop Wizard: Wait, I have an app a spell for that.

Are there spells to disable traps? (In Morrowind you could use magic for unlocking, but the traps stayed active. You could work around that setting off the traps with telekinesis from a distance, but you could deactivate the traps only with your security skills.)

sanitaeter said:

Are there spells to disable traps? (In Morrowind you could use magic for unlocking, but the traps stayed active. You could work around that setting off the traps with telekinesis from a distance, but you could deactivate the traps only with your security skills.)

In D&D the Wizard has a spell to detect magic (including auras emanating from magic traps), and Dispel Magic can usually temporary suppress a magical trap, or outright disable one. For non-magical traps... well there are spells that let the caster gain trapfinding as a Rogue, and spells that boost skills to detect and disable traps manually, but those tend to be limited to the Cleric or rogue/caster or crafter/caster hybrid classes so it's harder (though not impossible) for a pure Wizard to gain access to them.

That said, Wizards also have a bevy of options to indirectly detect and disable or bypass non-magical traps. They have a bunch of spells that can give them extra senses like x-ray vision or "Daredevil" sonar sense, they have several telekinesis or remote manipulation spells that let them trigger traps from a distance (Unseen Servant + 10-foot pole being a perennial favorite), and can summon creatures to scout ahead and intentionally trigger traps. These creatures can range from lowly Celestial Monkeys (giving rise to the term "trapmonkey" for the trapfinding role), to Earth Elementals with Toph-like seismic sense that can move through walls, to various angels/demons that can either detect/disable traps on their own or cast their own spells that let them do so.

Wizards also have a spell (Knock) that is designed exactly for opening locks (or locked objects), just like various unlocking spells in RPGs like Morrowind. This is the one app spell that is usually responsible for making the Rogue feel useless. They also have several other spells that can, with a creative mind, be used to precisely destroy locks or door hinges or create passages to bypass locks. (Or even outright shrinking a door loose from the door frame/portal and then carting it away later for resale, especially when the DM decides to make the door out of an expensive, durable material.)

With all that said, spells are (usually) a limited resource for D&D Wizards (and most tabletop games), so spending precious spells just to invalidate what your teammates can do is not a smart use of resources. But a situation similar to this, where the rogue can't open a lock after hours of effort, and the party can't move on without the lock being opened, is an "ideal" one for bursting out the "unlock" spell.

(Of course, for this exact situation, the party is better off getting the barbarian or fighter to smash through the chest, or perhaps to specifically target the lock or hinges under the guidance of the rogue to minimize the chances of wrecking the contents, or maybe just carting the whole chest back home and then let the rogue or wizard or some hired NPC deal with the chest at their leisure during downtime.)