I don't like any of these ideas and I don't think there's a problem. If you don't want to steal, then you, personally, have the choice to not steal. Heck, I have a thief character and I mostly steal from those who I'm already planning to kill (because they're evil). I still have a lot more money than I'm likely to spend. (200,000+ at level 17)
Well I like them. Having more consequences for stealing being part of the game makes it more interesting, balanced and realistic.
That would be incredibly obnoxious and tedious having to switch all your gear each time you enter town.
Then the character that had done the deed would have to face up to the consequences of stealing and sneak around town or stow his gear away. What's the point in having items marked as stolen right now after you teleport away from all trouble to a waypoint?
Even if you couldn't sell back to those you stole from (which I don't mind), there are lots of vendors around anyway. There was one particular quest item which is flagged as stolen and forces all guards to search for it when you come near, but I sold it to a random merchant anyway.
No, you'd only be able to sell gear marked as stolen to fences. Or people with Scoundrel skill books, if you will. And they should get less base gold per hour, of course.
Even the most painless addition of a fence for stolen stuff would still be an extra step to take, which adds nothing but annoyance to the game.
It adds more balance and interesting mechanics to the game. Of course it's more annoying to people who just want to steal their way to victory.
Here's the problem with this idea: You do not give civil points very often. You cannot be both good at stealing and good at persuading. So you get screwed over even more, which means even more irritating swapping of stuff on your character. Terrible.
Either you'll have to get your persuasion specialist to talk your way out after sneaking away with your thief specialist, or Larian will have to give each character enough Civil points to invest in more than one ability, which is a balance suggestion that I'd actually have to endorse myself.
Bribing usually doesn't work anyway, not that I've tried it much.
It's worked every time for me.
If you fail a check and end up in a fight with merchants you wanted alive, you'll just do what everyone always does and reload.
Not if I'm playing properly, or on Honor difficulty. Don't make me use the "c" word. I'd have to make do without the item if I kept reloading my game and stealing, because the check would keep happening.
This isn't an open world game and we don't need an evil bounty hunting party on our asses because someone stole a fork.
Not just for a fork, I'm talking about the consequences of murdering the shopkeeper after he catches you.
No. By the way you can only steal once per character. So already people aren't going to bother stealing until they think they've got as many points into Thievery as they're likely to get. So the lower levels of thievery won't serve a lot of purpose.
Which brings me to the other balance idea I had; you should be able to steal as many times as you like but the VALUE and WEIGHT LIMIT counters should persist in any future thieving escapades. So as you improve your steal ability, you can steal more and more up to your max thieving level. Even if another one of your characters goes to steal, the VALUE and WEIGHT bars remain as they were, unless he has a higher thievery level, in which case he can steal a couple of more items, etc.
Definitely not. Have you even played this game? That will just break itemization in a frustrating way.
Because of the way scaling on happens, every piece of gear lower than your current level is bad and buying it is a waste. Weapons above your level lose 20% chance to hit per level above, so if you get a bunch of weapons 2-3 levels above your character or 1-2 levels below your character, that's no good. Armor above your level makes you a lot more powerful than you are expected to be.
I have definitely played the game and the itemization needs fixing, but then again lucky charm is quite powerful last I heard. Shopkeepers having the latest and greatest stuff is also unbalanced and weird.
