Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Pickpocketing Traders

Maybe It's an unpopular opinion, but I think the fact that you can pick all kind of different armours, weapons, magic items etc from a trader pocket is really stupid.
1) It doesn't make any sense, people don't go around with all that stuff in their pockets both because of practicality and physical encumbrance;
2) It becomes extremely boring real soon. I was playing DOS2 with three other friends and one of them refused to go on on the quest until he had pickpocket all the traders visible on the map because you know, better equipment.

I think that one simple solution to this would be to have the trader having all of his inventory in a chest near him and just the key of that chest in his pocket. This way you just need to take the key from him (not the entire shop) and then find a way to distract him from surveying the chest.

Yeah, not a fan either.
I'd prefer for the trader inventory to be mostly "virtualized", with only a limited amount of money and a couple of hand-placed small items being available for pick pocketing.
And YEAH, I expect it to be an absolutely UNPOPULAR opinion, too.

I wonder if anyone but us think this makes no sense ^^'

+1

yeap it's just cheeesy like hell, no fun

And a big reason why gold has no value. Honestly, I had fun with it in DOS, but I don't think it's as appropriate in this game. I could see having the option for small things (like letters or a small bit of gold), but being able to steal everything is a bit much.

Yeah, it's pretty stupid. They shouldn't even have so much crap worth stealing. We plumb the depths of long hidden, dangerous crypts to find one item that ends up being inferior to the wide selection of loot available from your average potato vendor. I'm exaggerating, of course, but the point is made.

Larian was asked early on (I think during the AMA) is BG3 would be a loot bonanza like DOS2. They said 'no.' So far, I don't see the difference.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense that the trader would have his entire selection of wares and goods on his person. But it would at least make sense for him to have them close by, either on display or in some kind of containers that you then could steal from.

but if you are able to simply steall and cheese the game the gold is still worthless, and the items you get after much effort as well

they said that?
there is so much magical stuff lying around every corner. and some of that stuff is so overpowered, it's laughable.

but back to topic:
yeah pickpocketing everything a trader has is cheesy and it's the wrong kind of cheese.
if you like cheesing the game, it should be by some complicated or unforseen way, so you can feel great about yourself, when doing so.
but simply pickpocketing everything is silly.

This is why gold has no value, gear, and the like... and this leads to the resting mechanic is NOT LIKE 5e rule.... You can just long rest, and the vendor refill their gold amount. You pick pocket them again, rinse and repeat.

Actually BG3 stealing system is pretty much the same as in the first 2 games ; it was a bit harder then (you only had one -hard- skill check at the beginning) but in the end it was the same result.

Only change is now people cannot tell if an item is stolen or not, wich is far more logical. Previously even gold had to be in separate stacks iirc, "stolen gold" and "honest gold"...

But yes stealing should be a lot harder and/or impossible for powerful items, and gold should not be accessible to steal until key/chest/kill merchant as you mentioned.

In my last run I stole gold after selling and buying stuff I wanted, the trader was left with literally empty shop, and my party ran away with about 12k gold plus all magical weapons and arrows... :p

is that really a thing ??? GOD

Think it makes perfect sense, representing not being on their person by immediately close by them. Difficulty should be a tad higher, I think.

My Wood Elf Warlock is pretty much an exceptional pickpocket. Mediocre to bad at nearly everything but thief skills and casting friends on himself.

You can absolutely cheese getting a ton of items this way, but I'm of two minds about it. I think the store owners should have their gold purse on them, and maybe some personal items that aren't for sale.

So you're stealing money but you wind up having to pay them back to buy anything really good.

I also think there should be auto successes for pickpocketing, but that the difficulty gets higher the more times you try to pilfer from a single target in a row.

Something where it starts off rather easy and gives some validation to rogues and rogue-like characters, but gets harder the more chances you take so you can't abuse it too much without save scumming.

I have really struggled to find decent magic stuff(especially overpowerd stuff). It's certainly not around every corner to me.
Am I looking in the wrong place?

Also, I have only managed to find like three traders in early access. The 'smithy' in the druid grove and the short little worshipper dude in the grove too. The third I found was
one of the guys in the(zentharim?) hideout under the stables at waukeens rest.

but do you agree these 3 have excellent equipment for sale and you can just steal it all ? doesn't it look cheesy for you ?

I like that idea. Maybe even just allow one successful attempt and then no more, because the trader (or whatever NPC) discovers he's been had, and is more careful now.

Or tie the number of attempts to the game's difficulty level. You only get one successful pickpocket on the same trader on Hard, Normal gives you a couple of times before the trader notices, and Easy gives you the current trader pickpocket cheese. It could also be done with adjusting dice rolls needed, but I like the "you only get a limited number of attempts on the same merchant" idea because it seems more realistic.

There are traders with valuable items, for example the zhentarim. But even if all the traders just sell junk, the system is still wrong on principle.

But having the vendor devalue your items to nothing makes sense?

If I can steal from them, I will, because frankly they are robbing you just the same by giving you nothing for your warez. You can't even buy a helmet without selling 100 things for 1 - 10 gold each.

The barter system is a joke.