+1 that the stealth/theft system needs work.
- If you succeed on your stealth/theft check, there should at the very least be a delay period before the target notices something is missing. Additionally, they shouldn't immediately suspect who the culprit is. Or maybe the NPC should need to make an Insight check or something to suspect you.
However, those changes would probably break the game, making thieving even more trivial. Roughly in increasing order of complexity, I'd personally want
- A hearing-circle of detection around NPCs would be great. You need to make a stealth check to actually sneak behind them (instead of it being automatic), then another check to actually steal any items. Requiring 2 successes would make it much harder to steal, replacing the immediate post-theft accusations.
- theft to be more difficult (and realistic), at least against merchants. They should have guards/ a locked chest full of their wares / something more than "I steal from the merchant themselves, making a single check to steal plate armor right out of their pockets."
- There is some threshold at which merchants/entire towns start to automatically suspecting the party, as they've noticed a correlation between the party arriving in town and items going missing. At this point, their behavior approaches the current BG3 implementation.
- Day/night cycle, with different conditions for thieving.
