I like the suggestion of being able to steal from creatures, instead of stealing from other players. The game should foster a PvE environment instead of potential PvP. I acknowledge that some potential roleplay may be lost, but it prevents bullying which should be more important.

I would make the pick pocket skill similar to skinning. In that it generates a small sum of money in addition to whatever is gained by killing and looting the creature. The TP costs are less, but somewhat comparable. I would use a combination of perception and pick pocket skill to determine success and treasure gained. Similar to how skinning is a combination of first aid and survival training. Rogues would be the best at 3x Perception/2x Picking Pockets.

Skinning requires a skinnable creature, picking pockets would require a creature that generates treasure. So no stealing from a coyote. It should also take into account the level of the creature versus the level of the character. If you're choosing low level creatures to steal from as a capped character, you should gain very little, if any treasure.

Each creature could be stolen from once and I could see a small roundtime associated with the theft, 2-3 seconds. It would require an empty hand, so there is some amount of risk involved with each attempt. There could be a bonus for having two empty hands. It would be safer to steal from hiding, and it should add to success, since it adds to RT cost.

<I kept the PP ranks for a while and mostly used it on friends in game - I'd hand them a gem/wand/item I pulled from their container and let them know they dropped it. I got so many odd looks and them swearing up and down that they didn't drop it and that it wasn't their item. They'd refuse it most of the time...I'd have to go on about how I saw them stand up and their pouch wasn't closed and the gem fell out. I'd tell them I snatched it up quick before anyone noticed so someone with sticky fingers wouldn't claim it as their own. A few people took a lot of convincing to take their item back without me actually telling them I stole it from their container.>

I used to do the same thing with my rogue with much the same results. Sept, instead of telling them they dropped it, I'd just hand the item to them in the middle of a conversation. Some folk would think I was giving them a gift, others would give me an odd look as they accepted it, and a few would flat out refuse to take the item back asking me why I thought they needed such a thing.

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

As I said with my suggestion, I'm fine with it being a character-vs-game skill.

I really struggle to see any kind of positive in having it be a character-vs-other-character skill.

How about making pickpocketing its own problem and solution in one place? The higher your skill, the better able you are to take money and the better able you are to make anti-pickpocketing traps. You could turn around and sell those traps, so it would always be possible for a rogue to profit from training the skill.


AIM: sweetleafiara@gmail.com

>>A couple players have said they enjoyed the rp of being pickpocketed from. I would be curious if there was a flag, if those turning on the flag so people could steal from them would be higher than 10%. I could just be biased and maybe most people would turn the flag on but I doubt it.

This was worth repeating. I'd bet 10% would be high.

>>It is an interactive world.

If you are stealing successfully, there is no interaction. It's just profit for you and loss for the victim, no matter how small you may think it is. And for most thieves, the interaction after they are caught ends very quickly as they run away or disappear. I just do not see how this skill creates meaningful interaction other than in the vary rare cases cited.

>>Go through the room (TSC was best at the time) and I'd watch for a long while - making note of who was a rogue and who wasn't. I kept track of things for a good week before I started to make my move with my wizard. Marks that I knew weren't a rogue and appeared to be of younger level, I had a better chance at stealing from.

And this is precisely what I hate about the skill--picking on lower-level targets that can do little to respond even if you are caught. Thank you for the excellent example. And it is clear that you were working very hard not to be caught--so, again, what interaction?

>>Gemstone has never been a care bear society.

OK, good, then lets make it harsh. Permit stealing. And if you are caught, your character is given a real jail sentence in terms of days or months instead of minutes or hours (depending on how often you are caught), and you have to return all that you stole. That would make it more reasonable.

>>I really struggle to see any kind of positive in having it be a character-vs-other-character skill.

Absolutely agree. Just get rid of it.

--David

"At a moment like this, I can't help but wonder, 'What would Jimmy Buffett do?'"

I'm down with permanent loss of a hand, same as what happened in oh, so many cultures here on Earth.

And I mean, permanent. None of this "healed by an Empath" or "regrown by an herb" crap. You Has One Less Hand.

Go ahead... steal a second time....

>I'm down with permanent loss of a hand, same as what happened in oh, so many cultures here on Earth.

>And I mean, permanent. None of this "healed by an Empath" or "regrown by an herb" crap. You Has One Less Hand.

>Go ahead... steal a second time....

I need a like button for this one. :)

--David

"At a moment like this, I can't help but wonder, 'What would Jimmy Buffett do?'"

I think the thread is evidence that people love the mechanic in this role playing world. Also the numerous tells in game from people agreeing with me that simply do not want to banter back and forth with views expressed by people who want the skill removed. There is simply nothing wrong with pick pockets.

The conversation should be oriented towards making it more fun, and that includes player interaction. I can't think of a sadder day than if we couldn't be able to lift a GEM out of the pockets of another in GEMstone.

Thankfully it appears simutronics agrees and introduced a "Thief Set" to become a "Master Thief".

Owning this set and having an all powerful theft system isn't my interest. What I want to see is better mechanics surrounding the skill that make it more fun for all players.

If you can't contribute to the evolution, and all one does is offer "I want it removed" then what is happening is a block to true progress, because clearly simutronics doesn't hold that perspective, and this thread is about the skill not it's removal.

I'd call for a moderator to silence dead lock adds to this conversation as counter productive. We need to move it forward in the interest of the game.

<An official response from Simutronics stating that it will not be removed would be helpful.>

It was already stated earlier in the thread by a name in red that there was no official interest in removing any skills in the skill manager (or something to that effect, I forget the exact wording).

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

That's not actually what was said.

It's not that there is no interest in removing the skill. It's that there is no way in hell that anything like "changing something in the Character Manager" is going to fly.
(My interpretation of Ixix' comments, post #316.)

In fact, if you want to parse things in a certain mindset, "expect no changes to the character manager" could be spun as "Sure, we're totally down with making changes to this that and the other thing. Just, you know. Not the Character Manager."

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They could, for example, I don't know... completely disable the 'steal' verb.

Just sayin'.

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They could also leave the skill CALLED that (Make No Changes To The Character Manager), but have it DO something else entirely....

Don't conflate "Simutronics' Goals For the Game" with "One GM Made Some Neat Items."

Items get made all the time. They do some neat things.

Still two totally different animals.

About the thief set - I made that (based on ideas from Wyrom for the abilities and whatnot) to be good now, without any changes to the pickpocketing system. If updates happen it'll continue to be good but it shouldn't be seen as an omen of upcoming changes or anything.

Ixix

What is with this recent wave of people asking for posts to be hidden?

People have opinions. Some of them differ from those held be other people. People talk, expressing their opinion. This is what is called conversation, or--in more formal settings--debate.
"You Can't Talk" is not conversation nor debate.
Note that "I Can't Hear You" is totally within the power of each account (not viewing another account's posts).

I'll remove posts that violate policy. Saying that you want pickpocketing removed isn't violating policy, so I won't be removing those. I will recommend to everybody to discuss the system, the game, and the points in other posts, and not other posters or the existance of their posts.


Ixix

<<I'll remove posts that violate policy. Saying that you want pickpocketing removed isn't violating policy, so I won't be removing those. I will recommend to everybody to discuss the system, the game, and the points in other posts, and not other posters or the existance of their posts. ~GM Ixix

Agreed on this.


~Aulis
Forums Manager
QC'er

You made your point known that you want posts removed and the names in red disagreed with you. If anything, continuing to insist on it is the disruptive posts.

no

At this point, the topic has been disrupted by the numerous requests to remove disruptive posts.

Anyway. I'm not a fan of pickpocketing, for the previously stated reasons. What if the skill allowed a lockpicker to pocket some coins from boxes, but make it nearly impossible not to be seen? Get caught, lose customers and rep. Don't get caught, make up for lousy tips. Customers/marks can invite themselves to the rp of it knowing there's a risk, pickpockets can choose to risk their lockpocking reputation.

___________________________________

The flamepoint sand kitten hisses at a patchwork flesh monstrosity.
... 9 points of damage!

I'm totally okay with it being changed and improved. If GMs want to put time into it, great, and more power to them.

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Rank	Learning	Bonus	Skill Name
10	1	+50	Pick Pockets

I've been suggesting "doing something" to make improvements to it since the last millennium. :) This was still current...

Rank	Learning	Bonus	Skill Name
1	1	+ 5	Riding

(Same character, same training. That 'Learning' column meant that you had to choose--now, at the time you made this level--the ranks in skills that you wanted to achieve in the future [then, when you made the next level]. No changes in between. No go-backs. No redo's. No annual fixskill. We're talkin' old school, baby. Want to hunt through the Misty Chamber runestone five levels from now? Make sure you started training in Runes [as it was called] not now, but five levels ago.)

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The big difference is that now we actually have small versions of instantiation: Adventurer's Guild tasks (mini-quests) and Grimswarm camps and especially Duskruin (multiple people can be running the Arena, and the Arena is fundamentally the same for all of them), so things like "robbing the rich merchants house" is actually a feasible goal.
Now.
It was not, then.

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You laid out your experience with it. I laid out mine.
My personal experience was, that it didn't happen often. (To me, never, from a merchant event or shop. Only in-town NPCs and other players.)
Some folks said they'd stolen 6x shields from merchants in the past; I inquired "how often" and "how commonly" (granted, those phrasings carried the implication of "at one or two events" and "once or twice in a decade").
Please note that to date I don't think I've seen any response to that, and certainly no great outcry from fifty people saying, "Yeah, we did it too!"
So my takeaway remains little changed: It didn't happen any too terribly often.

As it stands, it is rather draconian in behavior. (Inasmuch as for the most part, "high level Thief succeeds against low level spud with complete success and no chance of retaliation... or even detection.")
Someone asked for suggested changes--if the skill were to be left in--so I suggested equally draconian responsive measures, which has a great deal of Earth-history behind it, even.
The big difference, of course, being that on Earth we can't have someone meditate over our hand and put it back right away (now with free experience to the healer). So I addressed that aspect.

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I would love to see something along the lines of the front cover of the old AD&D Player's Handbook. Giant statue? Huge faceted ruby eyes? (One already missing... and one Thief, scaling along over the nose of the statue to get to the other one.)

My experience in GemStone tells me, there ain't no giant statues like that. There ain't no giant gem eyeballs like that. There ain't even a dungeon that has anything like that in it.
However, if one of the things that we could do--as my previous posts have suggested--was to scan the crowd looking for a mark (RT & skill check) and find a rich target (NPC priest, merchant, townsman, whatever) and follow him (RT & skill check) unobserved (skill check) back to his (temple, warehouse, shop, home) and find out the weaknesses (RT & skill check) and break in (stealthily [RT & skill checks] or brute force [RT & combat]) and steal from them (RT & skill checks)...

Absolutely! Bring it on! The more the better!

I just happen to feel that the current implementation just ain't that good. Someone else suggested changing the name of it (which we now know is Character Manager, and verboten, so we won't do that) or having it do something else, so I took that ball and ran with it a little.

.

To end on a lighter note, see also Order of the Stick:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0029.html

Perfect 👌 example of constructive feedback.

I am discouraged though that given the length of time since the changes, the acknowledgement that additional changes/update would be good, and that it's not on any official agenda, that it is in fact a dead topic.

There shouldn't be permanently closed doors.

Who do I need to pay off? What would the Dev costs be?