Obsidian: could we please fix pickpocketing?

[thelee]

Sleight of Hand is definitely a trap skill choice.

 

I recently rolled a rogue, investing in sleight of hand, and I was going to thoroughly document every single pickpocket opportunity to see what was good and worth it.

 

I got through most of the game world, and it's... extremely underwhelming.

 

First of all, I only put a few points into sleight of hand, and then used the Obsidian dragon pet for another +1. I barely missed out on anything the entire time, and the stuff that I couldn't pickpocket because it required a higher sleight of hand varied wildly in quality (mostly it was mundane daggers, sometimes even hardtack. one person in dunnage has an exceptional dagger, but that's essentially the only thing worth having that was locked behind a modestly high skill check and it was only a 7 required skill).

 

Second of all, sleight of hand is actually gated frequently by stealth, to the point that stealth is actually much more important for pickpocketing than sleight of hand itself. All the sleight of hand skill in the world won't matter if you're trying to pick the pockets of two townspeople facing each other to talk.

 

Third, most of the pickpocketing is just ~30-50 gold pieces (in various forms of currency). In some harder areas, it can go up to like 100-200, but if I'm putting non-renewable skill points into this, I would expect way more than an amount of money that becomes trivialized once I can start looting/selling exceptional or superb gear.

 

Fourth, it would be great if sleight of hand actually influenced reverse pickpocketing of explosives, but:

• despite having been a "known issue" since 1.0, you still can't reverse pickpocket onto hostile npcs, which is most encounters in the game. and,
• see point #2 above: there are no sleight of hand checks involved for reverse pickpocketing, so you are actually gated on stealth (and to a lesser extent explosives), not sleight of hand

Fifth, even in some of the cases where sleight of hand can yield significant rewards, it's actually no different from investing in mechanics, because you're pickpocketing keys off people to open store chests. Except arguably mechanics is much more useful since you can also use it for disarming/setting traps.

 

The simplest fix would be to just bump sleight of hand from one of the "Active" or "combat" skills and turn it into a "passive" or "conversational" skill like diplomacy or intimidate. The one difference is that you could actually use sleight of hand as an early game money maker.

 

The best fix would be to make sleight of hand actually worth being an "active" or "combat" skill. Meaningfully gated rewards (possibly even scaling with your sleight of hand skill), making it so that you're not either extremely reliant on stealth or extremely redundant with mechanics, and possibly linking reverse pickpocketing to sleight of hand in some meaningful way (and reverse pickpocketing is actually more useful).

Edited September 4, 2018 by thelee

[thelee]

by the way, if anyone's curious, here's the list I was putting together. this only documents "notable" pickpockets, i.e. not random folk you just get some money <100 cp from. As a general rule, named NPCs tend to have better stuff, but not always. I haven't done beast of winter with this char, and I don't think I ever will because I was starting to get bummed at how crummy sleight of hand actually was. The only really notable thing that you can pickpocket is deltro's caged helm, which ISTR was part of some build in one of these forums.

 

Port Maje

Torri - candied nuts

Norgrund - key to his locked chest (mechanics 3?) Cinder bomb 3x, whiteleaf, ripple sponge

Savia - port maje jail key

...Satahuzi

Eofania - Huana Carving (alternate quest solution)

Mokeha - rinco's coin purse

 

Queen's Berth

Wealthy gentleman - extra

Zamar - extra

Valian commoner - extra

Martino - ring of the marksman 6soh or kill as part of quest for Zamar

...The Wild Mare

Luca - Luca's Key for chest (and Khapa Leaf)

Aenalys - Aenalys key

...Valera Estate

Orso - 471cp

Atello - ~230cp

Martino - 282cp

...Bardatto Estate

Ezzalk - 256cp, white yefner, potion of mental prowess, deltro's cage helm (!!!) (6soh)

...Sanza's Map Emporium

Sanza - key to lock (6mech)

 

Periki's Outlook

Mataru Ship Owner - amulet of health, 150cp

White March Merchant - ~50 cp, ring of minor protection

...Cuitzli's Exotic Herbs

Cuitzli - ingredients

...The Dark Cupboard

Fassina - Arkemyr's Manor Key

...Mahiri's Metalwork

Mahiri - Mahiri's key (8mech)

...Iofri's Raiments

Iofri - 262cp

... Arkemyr's Manor

Yellow-eye three - quest item for vault

 

Serpent's Crown

...kahanga palace

Prince aruihi - folded note (garbage), 156cp

 

The Gullet

Overseer Hitenga - marked Soule (???)

Begger - ruby

...The Hole

fyrna and tavern server - ruby

...pitli's

Pitli - Halgot's Warmth

...dereo's lair

Dereo - potion of Ascension, scorching venom, 171cp

...delvers row

Rust - razorgill dust, Jade, 198cp

Bruiser (in ernezzo) - ernezzo supply room key, 35cp

Pirate guard (in ernezzo) - 2x razorgill dust, 24cp

Ernezzo (in ernezzo) - Coral snuff, key to ernezzo supply room

The Spindle Man - the spindle man's key (10 mech)

 

Sacred Stair

Dawnstar Vendor - ~ 3x antidote [5soh]

Temple Vendor - ~150cp, 2 palm slats, 2x antidote

Tiabo - 127cp, solution

...Spire of the Soul Seekers

Flaune Elette - 306cp, 2 reagant, potion of the focused mind (6soh), Blood-Soaked Correspondence

 

Brass Citadel

...Fleet master's office

Fleet master wakoyo - small key (15 mech)

Aedyran Bodyguard - Ruby

...uto's gunsmithy

Uto - key (14 mech)

 

Fort Deadlight

Snake eyes Condwen - peculiar dice

Pirate guard (ramparys) - deadlight horn (??)

 

Dunnage

Barquami - fine dagger

Carlo Fortuni and Kae Polzech - extra cp

...Kings coffin

Pirate - Black Pearl

Jacob Harker - fire kelp extract, tavern owner key (12 mech, 1328cp)

Pirate (up top) - emerald

...radiant court

Dessiral - exceptional dagger (7soh)

...balefire beacon

Captain furrante -126cp (5soh), oiled iron key (5soh, ?? Mech much later in questline)

Edited September 4, 2018 by thelee

[Wormerine]

Tis true. I don't think it's a super big problem as, unlike many other RPGs, you don't choose between key usefull skills and the fluff stuff. I would also like to mention that "sleight of hand" appears in conversation/scripted interactions as well.

 

But overall I did have the feeling with Deadfire, like somewhere early on was a desire to create a more open, mechanically driven RPG (pickpocketing/reverse prickpoecting/ stealth/bombs) but those pop up only occasionally in very specific, pre-determined situations.

[Michael_Galt]

If you haven't played it... I would give Arcanum a shot.  One of the only games that I feel gets pickpocketing right (besides Fallout).

[InsaneCommander]

I feel the same way, especially about stealth. I feel compelled to steal everyone and sometimes it gets very complex to move npcs with sparkcrackers and talking to make them look another way (for example: Dereo's Lair). And then, after all that effort you get a few copper and a hardtack.

[thelee]

Tis true. I don't think it's a super big problem as, unlike many other RPGs, you don't choose between key usefull skills and the fluff stuff.

Thing is, Sleight of Hand isn't one of the fluff skills. It's one of the skills "at the top" which means it definitely does compete with key useful skills like mechanics or alchemy.

 

That's why I said the "easy fix" would be to bump it down to a fluff skill that just so happens to earn you some money. But I would much rather the "harder" fix of making it worth being competitive with something like explosives or athletics.

Edited September 5, 2018 by thelee

[Rheios]

One way might be if they tied it into recovery time on swapped weapons, or allowed faster quick-slot item usage or something. Something that doesn't impact everything but does create a benefit to juggling things out of your belt or using multiple items at once.  Or heck, allow using pickpocket unstealthed on a foe in combat to flat disarm them.

[SChin]

Hey Thelee,

 

You've got quite the amount of information about pick pocketing laid out!  I'll put it in a report and run it up the chain for Systems to look into.  If you have anything to add, feel free to add it to this thread as I will be linking this for them to use as a reference.

 

Thanks for the insight Thelee!

[MotelOK]

I recall pickpocket being underwhelming in the Infinity Engine games as well. A shame they couldn't jazz it up a bit.

[Wormerine]

 

Tis true. I don't think it's a super big problem as, unlike many other RPGs, you don't choose between key usefull skills and the fluff stuff.

Thing is, Sleight of Hand isn't one of the fluff skills. It's one of the skills "at the top" which means it definitely does compete with key useful skills like mechanics or alchemy.

 

That's why I said the "easy fix" would be to bump it down to a fluff skill that just so happens to earn you some money. But I would much rather the "harder" fix of making it worth being competitive with something like explosives or athletics.

Beside athletics I didn't find any of those to be too useful. Unless we talk about solo runs. with full team I find it easy to have a character inverst heavily into pickpocketing without sacrificing anything else.

 

Which plays into another issue: I never felt like I am really choosing what skills I will have or specialize. With "team support" system and individual skill checks in scripted interactions I find it way too easy to pass majority of skill checks throughout the game. 

 

As a side note, I do support OP plead. Improving on Sleight of Hand, and skills overall, would be a great boon.

[-dib-]

I recall pickpocket being underwhelming in the Infinity Engine games as well. A shame they couldn't jazz it up a bit.

 

Not really since you could steal directly from many stores in those games and in BG2 you could even exploit that to get infinite money right from the start of the game.

[thelee]

 

I recall pickpocket being underwhelming in the Infinity Engine games as well. A shame they couldn't jazz it up a bit.

 

Not really since you could steal directly from many stores in those games and in BG2 you could even exploit that to get infinite money right from the start of the game.

 

 

Barring exploits:

 

In BG1 you really couldn't get much with pick pocket (most stores you could steal from just sold mundane items).

 

In BG2 it was a bit better, but most stores didn't let you pickpocket. There were a few specific NPCs that had a decent item to pickpocket.

 

In BG2:ToB I think they forgot to block pickpocketing from the few stores there existed. Boy that was a mistake. But even then at this point most of the best stuff you got was crafted, not bought.

 

I agree with a PP that few RPGs have really gotten thievery right. Most of the fallouts have done well in my experience, but even then there were issues (infamous fallout 2 save corruption bug if you reverse-pickpocketed an activated explosive and then saved your game; fallout:nv has more possibilities than 3 but also fewer big hub areas to go wild with pickpocket/reverse pickpocket). Still, given that Obsidian has a direct lineage to the fallout games (especially New Vegas) I expected better from deadfire.

[thelee]

Random shower thoughts I had on improving sleight of hand:

 

1. Make a separate button on our action bar that appears if you have sleight of hand (like athletics's second wind), and make it usable outside of stealth--but not in combat. this would fix the problem with pickpocketing being heavily gated by stealth. it would also fix the problem of being unable to reverse pickpocket on hostile foes, because the pickpocket option wouldn't be overridden by the "attack" option when hovering your cursor over them. You would still need good stealth if you wanted to reverse-pickpocket on hostile foes, but I'm fine with that.

 

2. When reverse pickpocketing, you can only reverse pickpocket explosives that have a PL less than or equal to your your sleight of hand skill. (yes i know a patch reset all explosives to PL0, but whatever PL they used to have could be the threshold needed to plant them on an unsuspecting foe).

 

3. random loot tables on top of existing pickpocket for pickpocketing people. you can pre-generate a random seed at character creation to prevent save-scumming. but i'm talking about like pickpocketing a random commoner and having a low, but meaningful, chance to see that they have an Emerald or Adra Ban or Scroll of Maelstrom ready to pickpocket behind a sleight of hand skill of 15 or something. both encourages aggressive pickpocketing and investment in sleight of hand. plus, the idea of seeing a commoner with some randomly great item that you can't pickpocket later but have to make a note of to come back later is fun to me.

[TT1]

I think this is a great idea for a mod. You should request one, on modding subforum