Stealing Items

[Felithvian]

The art of taking someone else's object for one's own is a common practice among many players. A character's effectiveness in stealing is governed by the PickPocket skill in most Black Isle/Obsidian games. In games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Planescape Torment, If the player is witnessed stealing an item, all npc witnesses become hostile. Let's not forget the Elder Scrolls system, which can fairly be used in Project Eternity.

 

Although generally identical, some differences are noticeable.

 

//Icewind Dale Series//

 

To steal in IWD, one must select the pick pickpocket icon and choose the npc. You can't steal valuable items from the Buying/Selling menu of the merchants. You'll always steal what they have in their pockets, not in their stores.

 

 

 

//Baldur's Gate/Planescape Torment Series//

 

In BG & PST, we can either steal from the npc's pocket, or go directly for the items he's selling. The Buying/Selling menu adds a Stealing icon, which can be used to obtain valuable items from merchants. Although it's better than Icewind Dale, players might end exploiting the system ("Gold Trick").

 

 

 

//Elder Scrolls Series//

 

In Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, one can steal any item on sight. All items are placed in the merchant's store. You can steal anything you want.

 

[kenup]

Let's not forget the Elder Scrolls system, which can fairly be used in Project Eternity.

Not sure if serious.

[Osvir]

None of them. I'd like to see a new system of sorts, in the form of "Tasks" when you are in cities. The Rogue could have a "Mug" ability to steal from enemies on the battlefield (taking the sword from the enemy in battle might be a good thing after all).

 

You get to a city and you get to send your party members on tasks, you could take your Rogue and send him out on Burglary runs while you run around the city and do quests, buy items and so on and so forth. When he returns he gives you some random loot (depending on his skill) from the Existent loot that doe exist in the town/village/city. He could get caught too whilst he is doing it, being sent to jail, get a Wanted status.

 

A Town/City/Village could have a "Heat" level as well, if you Burglar one city too much it'll be more readied and have more guards and people will be more on their toes (lessening the chances of successful Burglary as well as heightened chances of getting caught). When your Rogue is in jail you can either bail him out or break him out, or wait til he has served time.

 

EDIT: More info in one of the WoT posts

Edited November 16, 2012 by Osvir

[Hormalakh]

^err..that would be assassin's creed, wouldn't it?

[HansKrSG]

Anyhting thats not nailed down I say. Thats one of the features of the Elder scroll games I do want in PE. And it should be possible to sell common items to a merchant, even if it stolen. As long as the merchant shouldn't understand that the item is stolen, why have them be omnicient?

[Osvir]

^Brotherhood? If: Didn't play far enough to get a brotherhood, a long time ago I played it (Mostly Multiplayer). From this discussion, Parties in Cities.

 

To make the example more dimmer let's only look at Burglary:

 

You get to a town, you set your Rogue on Burglary, he disappears from your Party temporarily for a duration of time doing his business. With lots of dice rolls real time if he'll succeed or not. Perhaps if he gets caught red-handed by a thug group in an alley the game will auto-pause (or alert you) that your Rogue got caught in a fight and you'll have to run to aid him (in a random area, it isn't a random generated area but a randomization between existent areas on the map). It could be strategical to place one of your characters in middle town so they can aid in random events (such as random thugs/enemies/guards etc. etc.).

 

When he returns he'll have some loot depending on what his Skill in Burglary is. For example sake, a town has only 3 items and a total of 50 Gold.

 

Got to town, sent Rogue on Burglary. I go about and do my business with the Quests and whatnot, Rogue returns with 1 of the items and some 16 Gold, he successfully looted about 30% of that town. This would cause some consequences, 30% of the town's economy and that prized sword at the museum is now gone, should cause some suspicion (Heat).

 

In a bad situation, my Rogue gets caught and sent to jail and I have to pay more than what I could've gotten (depending on his Skill, so the better the Thief, the higher the price to bail him out, a sense of infamy). Or you bail him out, though that'd most likely make the city always look for this specific character (Which would force him to stay outside the city until things calm down/time passes and he isn't recognized anymore... in this sense maybe you could even change some equipment around and he is instantly harder to recognize... put a Monk robe on him).

[Sacred_Path]

All I want is a system that doesn't force you to reload if you fail at stealing. Give us some other options, like a high chance that noone will notice your first failed attempt. Or an option to bribe the guards that want to arrest you. Or the option to speak up for yourself in court (like in Daggerfall). If people want to abuse the hell out of their pickpocket skill by save scumming, so be it.

[Nanakamado]

I voted BG/P:T style. It's simple, classical and fun.

 

 

And I don't like Osvir's idea:

I'd like to see a new system of sorts, in the form of "Tasks" when you are in cities.

You get to a city and you get to send your party members on tasks, you could take your Rogue and send him out on Burglary runs while you run around the city and do quests, buy items and so on and so forth. When he returns he gives you some random loot (depending on his skill) from the Existent loot that doe exist in the town/village/city. He could get caught too whilst he is doing it, being sent to jail, get a Wanted status.

 

I like to control my whole party, all the time.

 

One exception is:

The Rogue could have a "Mug" ability to steal from enemies on the battlefield (taking the sword from the enemy in battle might be a good thing after all).

 

It could be interesting, but also extremely annoying, when used by enemies. So i'm not sure about it.

Edited November 16, 2012 by Nanakamado

[Archmage Silver]

Voted for the Baldur's Gate series - without the ability to steal everything from stores and fence it.

[necromate]

You get to a city and you get to send your party members on tasks, you could take your Rogue and send him out on Burglary runs while you run around the city and do quests, buy items and so on and so forth. When he returns he gives you some random loot (depending on his skill) from the Existent loot that doe exist in the town/village/city. He could get caught too whilst he is doing it, being sent to jail, get a Wanted status.

 

EDIT: More info in one of the WoT posts

 

I don't see where's the roleplaying in that... It would degrade the game to the level of annoying facebook games, this idea, in my opinion, would only work if the rouge would get a "crew" feat at some lvl after becoming a master thief or something similar, and by well earned respect he would command his little army of lowlifes from the shadows.

 

EDIT: I voted for the Morrowind style stealing when it comes to "shoplifting". It's really illusion shattering to know that in this house/shop there's all kinds of good stuff for the taking but I'm not able to get my hands on them, in spite having a rouge/thief character in my party.

You can't get the best items from vendors anyway...

Edited November 16, 2012 by necromate

[PsychoBlonde]

I actually hate stealing in games. I try never to steal. Even if it's incredibly lucrative. It's not like I was *poor* in Fallout 3 after selling all the loot that was just lying around free for the taking. I still regularly ran every merchant in the game out of caps.

 

Actually, one thing I did like about the Elder Scrolls games were how you couldn't just steal everything and then sell it (although IIRC you could get to the point where standard merchants would buy stolen goods).

[Malkin]

I believe you should be able to attempt to steal everything, but I don't believe you should be able to steal actually get away with every time if your skills are high enough. I mean what kind of merchant does not notice you walking out of their shop with 5 new swords, and a full suit of plate armor stuffed under your robes.

 

If anything there should be more of a beak in at night while the shops are closed, and then you should run the risk of real repercussion. For instance being branded a thief, and having merchants and guards know this about you when you walk into a shop. Also merchants should treat stolen as stolen and offer you less or more depending on scarcity of an item. A well respected merchant is probably not going to want your stolen goods.

 

As far as merchants not knowing what goods are there. Blacksmith, armorer, and other craftsmen having been marking their goods for centuries as a way to show off their craft, and skill. They should at least be able to tell their own work from another trades man.

 

 

Edit: I selected the Elder scrolls option.

Edited November 16, 2012 by Malkin

[Hormalakh]

In terms of repercussions, why not have several different ones.

 

1) Single individual gets hostile and attacks you. You either kill him or run away. If you kill him in front of a guard, the guards attack you. If they hit you in front of guard, the guards attack you. J/K If he hits you in front of guard, guards attack him.

 

2) Individual finds guard to tell on you. If he finds guard, guards attack you.

 

3) Individual "protects" himself (you are no longer able to succeed in pickpocketing.)

 

4) Individual runs away.

 

5) Individual steals back what you stole from him.

Edited November 16, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Boof]

Chose Elder Scrolls not for the mechanics of it, but because there was flexibility for failing. In IE games it was either succeed or reload.

[Agelastos]

Chose Elder Scrolls not for the mechanics of it, but because there was flexibility for failing. In IE games it was either succeed or reload.

 

Ditto.

Please, Obsidian, don't make every NPC in the area turn aggro if you fail. Make it so that we can choose to pay a fine or even go to jail if we fail to persuade/bribe the guards.

It doesn't have to be an actual jail cell. Just let the screen fade to black and have the in-game clock jump forward an appropriate amount of time (which could possibly result in failed timed quests).

[Jojobobo]

I'd like Arcanum's stealing process: any person could see what an NPC had on them and then you could select items from their inventory and drag it into your own (with equiped items or large heavy items being much harder to steal than say keys). Using this, you can actually focus on what you want to take from someone - like a real thief would. This process could be refined, by having checks for whatever correlates to perception in this game to be able to assess properly what small items someone has on their person and where they might be squirreled away (maybe have them just not in their inventory if your perception isn't high enough, or maybe you have a "lucky dip" option where you try and take from their pockets but without being able to perceive what you are after the chance of success is lower), with equiped items evidently visible but very hard to steal.

 

This is similar to the Elder Scrolls way of stealing from someone's person, but as your Elder Scrolls suggestion focused on stealing items on shelves and such in a shop/house which I don't think could be implemented well in an isometric perspective, I went for None of Them which I'm taking as your "Other, please state" option.

[Osvir]

I don't see where's the roleplaying in that... It would degrade the game to the level of annoying facebook games, this idea, in my opinion, would only work if the rouge would get a "crew" feat at some lvl after becoming a master thief or something similar, and by well earned respect he would command his little army of lowlifes from the shadows.

 

Your group is one unit, sending one Rogue out to do some gathering and be at risk for doing it where you have to come to aid in some way. Crap your Rogue got sent to jail when he was robbing a house, you'd have to get him out or leave him there to serve his time. How is that not roleplaying material?

 

Scenario, you get to town, send your Rogue out on Burglary. You can still pickpocket characters with your character and/or rob houses and get caught yourself while doing it. You could send out your Rogue to gather "gossip" and information. Instead of running around the entire map. Perhaps you could just press "M", Right-Click, Select Task, send Rogue to AoE. Done).

 

I can see where you are coming from with the Facebook aspect. I try to look at it like this, "Facebook, okay. Are there any general concepts underlying the whole media screaming?". You'd still be able to walk around, whilst your character is off on his skirmish. A Cipher could act as a communicator between the group, tell the Rogue to come back with what he got up til now but a penalty. Some obscure information and quests could even be integrated into this system, something you can't get in normal terms.

[jezz555]

Elder scrolls games get a little ridiculous with the amount of crap you pick up. I mean I'm not totally opposed to the mechanic but I always thought it was a little idiculous that I could just walk into a store and rob a guy blind, mostly without him noticing beyond the odd "HEY, YOU THERE!" from the shop keeper.

[Brother Pain]

I'd pick the Fallout way of handling stealing. You can steal anything that's not actively equipped (though this was different from person to person and from Fallout to Fallout 2 - perhaps whether you can steal equipped items should be based on your skill) but the larger and heavier the item, the harder the check is. Sneaking up from behind an enemy should make the stealing easier than if you run up in front of them.

 

If you get caught, what happens could depend on who you stole from:

 

- Beggar or other easily intimidated person: they'll run away, perhaps getting other of the same type nearby to run as well.

- Ally or friend: disposition toward you will get worse and you'll get told to knock it off.

- Someone capable of fighting you (like a mercenary): Attack you.

- Someone that's part of a group: Call their friends, while their own level of bravery/cowardice should define how they react themselves.

 

In most cases, starting off with a dialogue that tells you to hand over your stolen goods or face the consequences would probably be good, and of course, some people wouldn't talk before running or taking action. Perhaps some value for your intimidation factor (from level, force of personality, size, race, weapon size, reputation, as well as any intimidation skill) should affect how cowardly the person will act. After all, a 7 foot guy with inhuman features, wielding a giant sword will likely be slightly more intimidating than a cuddly halfling with a slingshot.

[LordBlade]

Personally, I'm for stealing everything that's not nailed down. But maybe that's just cause I like to horde stuff.

 

I think that we should be able to steal any item a character is carrying within reason. So stealing their money, a potion, or even their weapon out of its scabbard would be great (if hard to do). Stealing their armour while they're wearing it... eh, not so much.

 

I also like being able to plant stuff on people as well.

 

I think the best example of stealing would be Arcanum.

You could take just about anything someone had that they weren't equipped with. And to get around that you could plant stuff in their inventory in the hopes of them switching their gear around. Put a set of armour on someone and watch them switch out their old gear, which you can now take.

 

I definitely hope that PE has AT LEAST Arcanum's level of depth when it comes to stealing.

 

As for being caught, I think that should come down to who you're stealing from and your skills and relations with them.

A silver tongued character could fast talk their way out of too much trouble, though would still look a little bad. Someone without such a talent would simply be caught red handed and have to face the consequences.

 

However a peasant catching you will most likely run away. It's not like Bob the Farmer is going to attack the heavily armoured adventurer. They'd most likely tell you off and lock the door on you. A shopkeeper would be calling for the guards, not attacking you themselves... though a blacksmith might. Guards would beat you senseless for it, however I don't think they'd fight you to the death, that would be stupidly extreme. If you get caught, you get beat up and possibly locked up for it.

 

There should however be ways to rectifying the problem. Be it through "magical" fixing or doing something to make up for what you've done.

[Brother Pain]

Oh, I completely forgot about planting items. I definetely would like that. I remember it was a tactic in Fallout if there was someone you wanted to kill. You could plant a live bomb on them (I'm sure there'll be something similar in P:E, though perhaps it'll be magical instead of something with a lit fuse) or if you wanted to be completely sneaky, you could put a live bomb in a container and drop it by the target and get the hell out of there.

A sneaky enough type should be able to do so directly without being noticed though. Until the bomb(-like thing) explodes of course