Revisiting Pickpocketing and/or Sleight of Hand

[TacticalFerret]

       I will preface this entire initial rant with an admission that I have willingly shot myself in the foot on this one for the sake of fulfilling a specific character trope. Knowing just how badly the pickpocketing system/ NPC inventories were absolutely wrecked back in 2017 - I 100% deserve every ounce of struggle on this bus. And I don't quite mind the amount of effort I need to put in to make ends meet on this character. That being said, I do not have enough expletives to dish out to properly express my frustration and bewilderment at the small amount of coin and resources that the NPC nobility of Port carry on their person. They cannot, with their coin purses, afford a good meal at the Croissant, much less indulge their inquisitive side and/or sweet tooth at Cezar's. I can understand the toned-down inventories of the wealthy in Vallaki, but not in Port-a-Lucine. This may have been a good decision back when there were not a million and one ways to make an excess of coin (I respectfully disagree to this sentiment) but at this point it is almost preventing niche characters and concepts from blossoming. One shouldn't need to murder, ninjaloot, or adventure to pretend to keep up with the Joneses.

      On a similar note: when player characters are palming small items from the ground via sleight of hand, they roll vs a DC 10. If successful, the items that are taken or picked up do not show in the log. Is there something preventing the same implementation on the pickpocketing system? It currently shows that an item is being received from the person on the other end of the pickpocketing attempt as opposed to it being removed from their person. With this, any player that is rolling a sly, outgoing sort of ne'er-do-well cannot play out the archetype without risking other players reacting to grey text that they may or may not otherwise be privy to, depending on their detection scores. Per the source material, they would only be making these rolls while the pickpocket is under close examination or scrutiny. It is only against the eyes of someone determined to figure out where something specific went that someone performing feats of legerdemain would roll.

       Naturally, there are concerns about PvP in the latter since the value of palmable items within a character's inventory are exponentially higher. I want to clarify at the head-end that my concerns are specifically for PvE pickpocketing vs NPCs. Stealing from NPCs is a valid way to generate coin in PnP. Stealing from PCs is a way to either get your character put in the past tense or get booted from the table entirely. We have PvP rules for a reason.

[zDark Shadowz]

The preference for silver over gold jewellery may really be survivor bias over a fashion trend; only those not wearing wealth were keeping their fingers. Keeping a very light purse is a disincentive for pickpockets to even try, which seems to be working.

A singular platinum coin kept as a souveneir or lucky keepsake and some minor silver jewellery for each noble is more than enough if they don't have it already.

[Day Old Bread]

I'd done a bit of pick pocketting in my time as well and it is entirely unsatisfying. As mentioned once you can guarantee a DC 10 to avoid detenction when picking up small items from chests/the ground while ninja looting or invis herbing, there's really not much reason to invest in Sleight of Hand aside from RP purposes.

It would be nice if more monsters and NPC's had at least a few things of value to be snatched.

[Maiyannah]

To answer one question specifically:

"On a similar note: when player characters are palming small items from the ground via sleight of hand, they roll vs a DC 10. If successful, the items that are taken or picked up do not show in the log. Is there something preventing the same implementation on the pickpocketing system"

I believe this is, unfortunately, hardcoded into the engine with the way pickpocketing worked.  Taking a 30 min detour into scripting for the sake of my own curiosity, I don't find an easy "entry point" for scripts to manipulate pickpocketing results in this way.  Not saying it's impossible - I'm hardly the most experienced at this thing - but I don't find any easy leads into doing this.

The best approach I could come up with would be to entirely rewrite it as a spell, and use that; this is an awkward reimplementation at best, and still not the easiest to do since I didn't find an easy way to manipulate an enemy inventory in the same way you can now - just have it take a random item therein.

[jimkaf]

Just to clarify, regarding Sleight of Hand, is it okay to stealth next to another PC and spam the Sleight of Hand button endlessly every second since there's no cooldown as long as you've turned them hostile first?

[Foxy]

There is a cooldown

[Philos]

Just to clarify, regarding Sleight of Hand, is it okay to stealth next to another PC and spam the Sleight of Hand button endlessly every second since there's no cooldown as long as you've turned them hostile first?

No. It's not.

First, you need valid role play as to why you're hostileing them. Pick Pocketing is PvP. If you have the same ground work laid to attack someone, you can steal from them.

Second, doing it over and over again counts as griefing. It's the same as if you camped the mist spawn and keep killingthe same PC over and over. Get an item or two and then call it a day.

Conflict and PvP is meant to further the narrative and create roleplay. Not make someone have a shitty day.

[jimkaf]

Just to clarify, regarding Sleight of Hand, is it okay to stealth next to another PC and spam the Sleight of Hand button endlessly every second since there's no cooldown as long as you've turned them hostile first?

No. It's not.

First, you need valid role play as to why you're hostileing them. Pick Pocketing is PvP. If you have the same ground work laid to attack someone, you can steal from them.

Second, doing it over and over again counts as griefing. It's the same as if you camped the mist spawn and keep killingthe same PC over and over. Get an item or two and then call it a day.

Conflict and PvP is meant to further the narrative and create roleplay. Not make someone have a shitty day.

Grand, thank you for the answer. That leaves one problem, in such a case, how to report being the recipient of such since you might only realize what has happened maybe hours later if the aggressor didn't fail their check?

[Mark Johansen]

Just to clarify, regarding Sleight of Hand, is it okay to stealth next to another PC and spam the Sleight of Hand button endlessly every second since there's no cooldown as long as you've turned them hostile first?

No. It's not.

First, you need valid role play as to why you're hostileing them. Pick Pocketing is PvP. If you have the same ground work laid to attack someone, you can steal from them.

Second, doing it over and over again counts as griefing. It's the same as if you camped the mist spawn and keep killingthe same PC over and over. Get an item or two and then call it a day.

Conflict and PvP is meant to further the narrative and create roleplay. Not make someone have a shitty day.

Grand, thank you for the answer. That leaves one problem, in such a case, how to report being the recipient of such since you might only realize what has happened maybe hours later if the aggressor didn't fail their check?

If at any point you believe that you were victim to unjust PvP go ahead and send a message to the DM with the report and they will look into it. Do remember to add screenshots if possible.

Also remember you don't always know the ongoings of any event/scene if in doubt try reaching out to the person and have a talk, if it doesn't work the CC/DM team is available to you.

[zDark Shadowz]

There wont be any logs to screenshot as the messages dont come up in your chat log if they succeeded both checks.

If someone is pickpocketing you, from perfect stealth, the only proof you'll have is the (potentially disguised) name of the person performing the attempt when they have to set you to hostile beforehand, and your inventory weight & gold slowly being lowered. If they had roleplayed while stealthed, you won't have that interaction on your end.

If all you have is a hostility indicator from a disguised character name that also hides player name, you're out of luck. Anyone can hostile for any reason so pre-emptively or mistakenly accusing folks who hostiled you of pickpocketing you without roleplay becomes automatically poor form (they may just be an AMPC or something with a server-wide hostile), and any disguises employed may not be used ever again.

When there's multiple people online that have hostiled you and things go missing, you cant simply accuse everyone.

There were two people that attempted this on me earlier this year, so i'm not speaking in hypothetical this time. Mechanics wise with my negative spot they should've gotten away with it, it was a complete fluke they failed their check. From the dialogue I had with them OOC after, they said they did it because I wasnt responding to their roleplay. There was no roleplay on my end due to stealth, with 1080p footage to back it up. So, they did it without any prior roleplay or current roleplay because they thought they could get away with it, being undetectable by me under usual conditions and/or AFK to their perspective. An easy mark.

My overreaction that followed their attempt I'm not proud of and affected my characters' view of himself. Made him realise how quickly someone could become a killer for the most pettiest of reasons. Removed the uniform off my character he was wearing and resolved to stay away from the region where it happened.

[EarlofEtheria]

It's interesting to see what people think of Pickpocketing. I've only pickpocketed my own character (hello Gremiska familiar), and have long wondered if NPCs would even have rewards for trying it upon them (honestly I thought it might be an act requiring DM oversight for, but then again the outcast system does act as a form of stand in).

Abuse of the system towards fellow players doesn't contribute to the telling of stories and is a no-no (and it seems this tread tells how easy it is to become victim to such abuse). The rules have an example to follow, and there might be cause to add OOC messages to victims so the Players know what's up.

[Zyemeth]

Personally believe pickpocket should be a disabled mechanic as far as use on players should go. Maybe kept for NPCs if possible but generally it should be an RP only skill. It's too open to abuse with no realistic way to police it's use that doesn't involve DMs watching people at all times. If two people want to RP a pickpocket scene on their own then they can just do the skill checks and trade said item. A DM event would have the DM asking for a skill check anyway.

[Maragrouf]

Having used Sleight of Hand strictly through RP Emotes/Interractions and a DM plot, I'd be on board with Zyemeth's suggestion of just getting rid of the gameplay mechanic, as it either brings nothing to the table in PvE (Stealing a whole Plate armor is dumb...) or could be used and abused beyond measure in PvP (Stealing a whole PLATINUM GILDED ADAMANTINE Full Plate armor is DUMB). And while some people may think "Nobody wants to get stolen from", I'd say that nobody wants to get tortured or dismembered, yet it happens. Shocking? Not really. Just like any other PvP scenario, you pretty much have to choose who to go through with it and you really can't know who's up for it or not until you ask people "Can I try to steal from you?"

Now the big main issue I've been faced with is : the Ruling. There is close to NOTHING on the forums regarding the way Pickpocketing should be handled. You can use the game's wiki to get a rough idea of what rolls to use and oppose, but overall it was always... messy. Thankfully, even with this lack of clear rules, the people I've interacted with were always good sports and played along, some even going "overboard" with what my character managed to snatch away (*cough* glasses on a nose).

[Duayne]

Every player-made pickpocket action against another player is flagged to the DM's. They know about every attempt, so while the current form of SoH pickpocketing looks to be easily abusable, you really won't get far if you use it on a player with no decent IC reason to. Source: Testing, and accidently spamming DM's




Lacking a pickpocketing interface, I think it is ridiculous that there is no restriction on what you can yank out of someone's pocket, or even off of them themselves - been a few years but I'm pretty sure I stole someones lantern out of their hand and they were none the wiser. If anything, and if possible, pickpocketing should be made to follow the SoH rules, and only pickpocket objects of 1x1 size regardless of weight.

[jimkaf]

It's reassuring overall that dms get notified though unfortunately some of us mostly play at times when there's no DM activity. I like the 1x1 suggestion and actually when I started playing here again and saw the 1x1 looting with SoH I thought it had actually been changed to work the same way vs other PCs, alas that's not the case.

[Calad]

Having a 1x1 rule like NPCs comes with its weird quirks.

There are not many 1x1 items. Those there are, can be extremely valuable. And many things people would want to steal from another (Keys, letters) are 2x1 or 2x2. We have an issue with items' sizes getting represented properly in game. A potato is 2x2 and so is a bounty head.

Having it 1x1 would mean you're almost %100 going to lose one of your valuables. Size variety means they can steal something that's hopefully not worth much to you. Though, there'd at least be a counter to this; filling a bag with useless 1x1 items and praying the odds are going to be in your favour.


This is a finicky matter that I am trying to think of a solution to that'd reduce having to go to the DMs and the griefing but to be frank the only way that'd get reduced is if the mechanic is disabled in PvP entirely, and is dependent on player consent like any other RP rolls in PVP unless a DM is present.

[Dardonas]

Increase the cooldown from 6 seconds to get 6 minutes or more, but if you do, allow for more value to be taken based on the sleight of hand skill.

[Zyemeth]

There have been scenarios where players have even griefed MPCs, stealing near a stack of 50 varnish and then bragging about it ICly after fleeing to places MPCs can't follow. I won't keep posting on and on beyond this point but the mechanic really detracts far more than it offers.

[Maffa]

I never pickpocketed a player character. I would argue that putting someone in the situation of having something either precious or irreplaceable (at random on top of that) because we have no way to leave precious things somewhere safe is quite griefing.
I don't know if I would completely disable the mechanic, if DMs get a notification it's good enough for me, but that opens up another situation about retconning which is always embarrassing. Moreover I don't know what can be stolen, if bags could be stolen that would be disastrous.
It's a difficult balancing act, and I don't know how much pickpocketing happen in game in Pvp. If there is a potential for disaster and little use, I would also argue for its disabling (I am talking pvp, and pvp only) or restricting it to item below a weight threshold which are not worn nor inside a container, or paper sheet like. Ideally One could have a list of pickpocket - able items per type, so that one could still steal keys or letters or rings, which are the stuff that get stolen the most. That's a lot of work tho...

[Ryujin]

If i recall correctly:

It is possible to steal character-locked items. There have been times when the OOC token was accidentally snatched, bricking both characters until it is resolved through DM.
Unless this is (Already?) fixed i would advocate just... not using SoH/pickpocketing mechanically.

I've had a few pickpocket scenes happen to me, and it was all in RP. It can work that way, depending on if the other person is willing to co-operate. 

[Foxy]

There is a tag on items that makes them pick-pocketable or not, so now the OOC token cannot be stolen anymore.

As for how the pick-pocket system works, i think it's very well implemented, because if you want to steal a 1x1 key, you'll always succeed, that's why it's random so you have the change of getting a full plate and break your stealth rolls.
And if you want to take an item for RP reasons, a key for example again, and everyone that has the said key just says NO to your "Please can i steal the key?" then it's the end of RP and the end of said pick-pocket. So i believe if you have a reasonable IC reason to take something from someone, it should be done by the already good pick-pocketing rules.

[dutchy]

i always seen SOH as a dangerous talent.

and on this one i am assuming and its a question into 1.
if under the spell invis, does SOH break invis?   if not that means no roll what so ever can be made to counter to spot said SOH action, no amount of spot or listen will stop said thief.

if that is the case (gods i hope not)  then the SOH is severly broken.

i also read trough here we talking about key's interesting point, cause what if faction keys, or rental keys get stolen? 
i personally feel that should be a dm event in the form off:

(char 1 sneaks to victem1)
dm roll SOH
victem roll spot

it gets beaten you get said item you wanted, cause by the sound of it now it seems you can get lucky on the first try or robb them blind.

i always find it odd you do not notice the weigth loss or better said that it's not factored in.
again an example, i know when my tape measurer is not attached to my pants or in my pocket, and most of us know more or less what such thing weighs, so how can a char stand there losing all sorts of things and never notice it simply cause it is a mechanic?

if the mechanic is broken (and i always felt SOH was) then it needs a different aproach or better oversigth.

[Foxy]

I can confirm it breaks invis.

Tested it.