Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Ideas for better pickpocketing/stealing mechanics.

For a lot of rouges and other characters a big part of their skillset involves sneaking, pickpocketing and theft. Many games have implemented this in some form or another to varing degrees of success. I am in the middle of a Pillars of Eternity 2 playthrough and the disappointing pickpocketing mechanic has got my think about what could be done to improve on it. I don't know if the developers look at the posts here, but maybe if they do they might find some good ideas the could try.

Sneaking up to a npc, accessing their inventory and just taking what you want is kinda boring. I did like in DoS2 how they would notice something missing quickly and go to the pc and check. This was definitely abuseable with the magic pockets thing but it was a good step in the right direction.

If you get caught sneaking in shops/sensitive areas they should become suspicious or kick you outside. Maybe have a speech check to mitigate this.

A burglary spree should cause guards to patrol more and people to get on edge, locking away or possibly hiding their valuables. Stolen merchandise should have to be sold through a fence at a lower rate to avoid getting caught, or again have a bluff check involved to convince someone it is not stolen.

Implementing disguises would be cool in general.

The Thieves guild should not be happy without getting a cut.

Assassin's should have more options to poison someone in secret. I don't know if this is possible though since it's doubtful npcs will sleep or eat since there isn't going to be a day/night cycle.

Any other ideas?

One thing that I've always hated about picking pockets in these kinds of games; the rewards are always bad.
Like, I know they can't be GREAT or people will feel like you HAVE to be a Rogue. But 3 copper is not worth ticking everyone off by getting caught. :P

Well in BG, there are D&D mechanics which can prevent abuse. For example, you need to do a Sleight of Hand roll to pick a pocket, and targets have perception and passive perception, and if you get blown, you get blown instantly instead of being locked into a conversation, thus adding more risk to the "talk to NPC while a party member picks their pockets" routine.

If they also make it a rule that stolen items can't be transferred through Magic Pockets within 90 seconds after you get them, that can make it less abusable.

In DoS2 you can also teleport yourself to another statue waypoint, you do not even have to use magic pockets to avoid being caught.
Besides the way you can exploit pickpocketing in Dos2 the rogue mechanics were cool: the NPCs could see you, they know if you are being robbed, you have a weight and prize limit in the items you rob, you can only pickpocket one NPC and they try to find you if you rob them, but you can try to convince them.
I preferred the way they handled it in the Beta, where the robbed NPC called his friends and they seek you as a mob.

I do not know if you can teleport in BG3 but if you cannot and you can avoid that exploit you will fix a lot of things.

It would be cool if you can poison the food or put bombs in someone else´s pockets to use pickpocketing in a mean way.

Also, I would like to see a way to put stolen items in someone else´s pocket so you can frame them for your misdeeds.


I liked that in the TES games like oblivion the merchants recognize stolen items so you can only sell them to a fence, so the thieves guild get a cut.

I kind of did NOT like how TES did it; how the heck does that Guard know that ONE loaf of bread out of the 40 I have is stolen?
How does the guard know THAT sword is stolen? I know swords have craftman's markings on them, but how does he know THAT ONE is stolen? Esp. if I'm across Skyrim from where I stole it? He should not even know it was stolen! The merchant would pay more in gold to send that info to every bloody hold than he'd make on the swords sale. :P

The same with stolen reagents; how does a merchant know I stole THAT Buttery Wings? Out of the 40 I have, I can't sell that one specific one to anyone except a fence. :P

It felt like all of Skyrim was a hive mind. Even the smallest item was unsellable to a merchant 2 days ride away from where you stole it.

I'd accept 'You can't sell stolen items to the merchant you stole from; he would know'. But I HATE when items are 'flagged' stolen because then it feels like every guard & merchant somehow knows every item in the entire city and knows exactly when an item is sold vs being stolen.

It's kind of the same argument I had with New Vegas's karma system; if I stole a single bottlecap flagged as 'owned', even from an abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere without a single other living being around, I would lose Karma. Which meant people Just Knew I stole it..somehow.

Edit: Heck, I'd kind of WANT merchants to know if you tried to sell back to them an item you stole from them & called the guard. But ONLY if you're selling a stolen item back to the merchant who owned it. If I steal a sword and go across town to a different merchant, I want to be able to sell it fine.

I agree for most mundane items. I think it should be limited to unique or valuable items that someone would have a reasonable suspicion to believe are stolen. Or have consequences after you sold a bunch of stolen stuff. Maybe have a value limit for how much stolen goods you could sell then some time later have guards approach you to interrogate you unless you took measures to cover your tracks, like a disguise or speech check or something.

There's many ways thievery could be approached. If relations between shopkeepers are tarnished from picking pockets, it would be nice to have either a disguise kit or a (reliable) contact you can pay to retrieve items from a shop/NPC you're outlawed from. Drawback would be would have to wait for them to deliver the item after a short time, items may "happen" to cost extra on top of the service fee.
Add a feature for a delayed alert trigger timer out based on how much was taken or value of the item, the more taken/more valuable, the more time is hacked off from triggering the NPC's alert. NPC's will count you as suspicious if they found something missing and had seen you sneaking around or interacting with them very recently. Where as stealing something and taking a while for it to be found they'll be less suspicious of a theft unless the conditions become obvious, then they'll go into an alert.

Picking locks -
If a door is simply picked then it becomes obvious to the NPC that will contemplate whether it was broken into or they misremembered leaving it unlocked, if something is missing they will soon after deduce the lock-box/room/home/cupboard was broken into. results could be neighboring shops homes and NPC's raising caution of suspicious individuals, and they'll triggering condition: Neighborhood watch, guards in or around personal property. Finding unlocked locks will make them investigate for stolen items or other unlocked items.

Picking Pockets -
easiest to get caught, also easy for someone to alert something is missing depending on the item(gold, weapons, valuables). I don't like when NPC's have something stolen and they immediately happen to be looking for the item to find it's missing. Triggering condition: increase guard patrols on the streets and around shops with public perceptions to thieving increased. Difficulty can change based on whether the target is in crowded area, and distracted aside from other skills or racial abilities that might make them more perceptive to being mishandled. I like when picking pockets also show up in some dialogue options to demonstrate misdirection. Make it so pick pockets can fail to not take the item while also not always alerting the NPC

Stealing -
Depending on the value of the item, it might go unnoticed or quickly discovered. If you get caught, prepare to have to convince them your intention wasn't to steal, they'll either take the item back or report you, even attack you in some conditions (NPC that has no guards, or more evil)

Fall Guy - Maybe stealing in some aspects will certainly result in suspicion and interrogation of you, which could make it crucial to be able to have a fall guy, where if you can create the right conditions, clues can be left to blame shift to another NPC who will end up redeeming you of your sins, but not removing suspicions. If you get caught and all things increasingly stack against you, you'll be stuck with a ton of fines, jail time-- and considerably execution!

If certain common items expenses add up, then it can increase the value and appeal to resorting to theft, making it more tempting for the player, so that more upright individuals will not take risks or compromise their integrity if they really need to stick it through when they're low on gold or can't find much specific equipment that they may be able to steal from others. Like an economy, things often need to be balanced out to increase the impact of alternative options and make its systems effective.

Search skill could also be used to enhance findings of picking pockets, and to discover valuables in unusual places that would be previously less evident to the unkeen eye (items that can also be stolen creating more possibility to more bland/impoverished homes.)

Would also be great to see a minor trade simulating mechanic like with the option to smuggle in stuff which can expand horizons to all kinds of things depending on needs of people for quests, be it weapons, drugs, bodies, riches, slaves, shopkeepers illegall acquired goods, etc.