Why is pickpocketing a thing?

[KateMicucci]

Games basically gice you two options:

Invest in pickpocket skill
Get caught anyway
Entire town trying to kill you now
Just reload until you succeed

OR

Put zero points into pickpocketing
Never miss it at all

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Because pen and paper RPGs had them, and they could do it well. The DM wouldn't just be like "lol, the entire town turns hostile and starts chasing you down", if you failed you would get someone chasing after you, and maybe get thrown in jail. But if you got away, everything would be okay, and maybe the guy you stole from would recognize you later. Meanwhile the digital DM can't do something that intelligent, so everyone in town turns hostile and tries to kill you. If the game is slightly more intelligent the guards will run up to you and let you pay gold to avoid getting torn limb from limb, or maybe just throw you in jail if you get caught.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

I blame Bilbo the burglar.

 

[Gargaune]

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Pickpocketing in CRPGs is crap because game developers won't design interesting consequences for failures as long as most people keep savescumming. Still, games like Realms of Arkania did just fine.

 

[KateMicucci]

Pickpocketing in CRPGs is crap because game developers won't design interesting consequences for failures as long as most people keep savescumming. Still, games like Realms of Arkania did just fine.

There's no interesting rewards for success either. Oh I succeeded on my pickpocket, great I got 14 gold and a small health potion.

 

[Lord of Riva]

You could make a game around pickpocketing, as it stands it's always some underdeveloped side skill.

 

[Fargus]

Cuz thieves are gay. Stealing is dishonorable and weak.

 

[NecroLord]

Pickpocketing is very powerful in Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2. Especially Shadows of Amn,tons of powerful items can be stolen.
Pickpocketing is near useless in PnP. Honestly,has anyone ever done a dedicated cutpurse character? I certainly have not.

 

[damager]

Pickpocketing in CRPGs is crap because game developers won't design interesting consequences for failures as long as most people keep savescumming. Still, games like Realms of Arkania did just fine.

There's no interesting rewards for success either. Oh I succeeded on my pickpocket, great I got 14 gold and a small health potion.

What you talking about? There are several games in between.

Also there are close to zero games that let you succeed without investment.

 

[Raghar]

Pickpocketing in CRPGs is crap because game developers won't design interesting consequences for failures as long as most people keep savescumming. Still, games like Realms of Arkania did just fine.

There's no interesting rewards for success either. Oh I succeeded on my pickpocket, great I got 14 gold and a small health potion.

FOR FREE.

 

[Thal]

Games basically gice you two options:

Invest in pickpocket skill
Get caught anyway
Entire town trying to kill you now
Just reload until you succeed

OR

Put zero points into pickpocketing
Never miss it at all

No, what you're supposed to do is to overdose on Potions of Master Thievery and bag those scimitars and rings of regeneration

 

[lukaszek]

it only make sense in gaymz having deterministic pockets picking, like aod or dos.

dos2 had this funny interaction where prior to fight you place in your enemy pockets some magical arrows and grenades, then you initiate combat by sabotage - explode such items

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

How else is a respsectable Illusionist/Thief supposed to make an honest living while trying to sell illegal flasher bruisers?

 

[Delterius]

Games basically gice you two options:

Invest in pickpocket skill
Get caught anyway
Entire town trying to kill you now
Just reload until you succeed

OR

Put zero points into pickpocketing
Never miss it at all

RPGs exist to gloriy negative archetypes and undermine western culture.

 

[Norfleet]

Games basically gice you two options:

Invest in pickpocket skill
Get caught anyway
Entire town trying to kill you now
Just reload until you succeed

This is basically the flaw in "non-interesting random binary fail" scenarios in games in general, really. There's no point in having the player just fail at random in a situation where nothing else is occurring and there is nothing interesting that happens when you fail. It's not like a combat scenario where 5 different random things are all happening at once and you have an entire continuum of results with interesting outcomes. This is just pass/fail with no interesting gameplay to explore on fail. It doesn't really matter if it's speech checks, or lockpicking, or whatever. The point is that only one outcome does anything interesting and the others are pointless and may as well not exist. Either make the failure state interesting or just don't bother having one.

 

[lukaszek]

The point is that only one outcome does anything interesting and the others are pointless and may as well not exist. Either make the failure state interesting or just don't bother having one.

skyrim had you thrown to jail so you can break free. Not like save scumming isnt easier/faster though

In The Quest, thief character cant enter tiles with guards. Its funny as it forces you to smuggle yourself in&out of cities

 

[Dakka]

Without mods, Skyrim pickpocketing wouldn't let me get to 100% chance of success. It's pure luck, then I reloaded when I failed because I felt that having to go to jail and escape was a chore. What a strange design, and yeah, it does seem to be a holdover from pen and paper RPGs where this kind of dice roll system made a lot more sense.

Maybe as AI tech advances, we will start seeing robot game masters take over. At that point, why not replace the other players as well? You'd never have to worry about scheduling conflicts or drama ending your game ever again. Just open the simulation and play, whenever you feel like it.

 

[Dickie]

I also like how there are usually no limits to what you can steal. I remember stealing a minigun from R. Lee Ermey in Fallout Tactics.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

There's no interesting rewards for success either. Oh I succeeded on my pickpocket, great I got 14 gold and a small health potion.

Neverwinter Nights of all games strangely had a few decent rewards for pickpocketing. It's actually pretty reliable once the skill is up there, but by that point the 20gp you'll get most of the time is worthless. This is yet another issue with how shitty and unrealistic the average economy is in RPGs. Gold is far far too abundant.

Moreover, it should take a master pickpocket to nick the good shit, but another issue is there's no passive skill in games that points out lucrative or easy marks. The player is left to guess with little to no representative visual queues to inform your decision. You'll hit a random wizard with all sorts of baubles or a noble that appears decked out in jewels and you'll still make out with little more than that 20gp and a "fuck you and your time". It's even worse when you have to deal with sprites like in the IE games where there's basically nothing to go on.

I always thought the rumor systems when drinking in inns in the IE games could have randomly given out info on potential marks as well aside from the usual idle chatter. There are many different ways that skill could be made to be worth a damn, but no devs ever do anything with it.

 

[CanadianCorndog]

It would be interesting in something like a modern day urban survival rpg where you start out in complete poverty and could choose being a pickpocket to pay for food and shelter. Pickpocketing wands or machineguns is pretty dumb.

 

[gaussgunner]

Entire town trying to kill you now

That's complete bullshit. No one would care. If you scream "get her, she's a thief" she just yells "no you!" or "rapist!!!"

Pickpockets usually work in thick crowds so they can just slip away when thwarted. No consequences besides tipping off your mark. The other way is to have your party distract a lone mark while your thief sneaks around behind his back. If he catches you, he's outnumbered, you can either beat him up or let him run away.

Also, it's a poor kid's skill. Instead of leveling it up you should just start the game with it depending on your background/class, unless you're playing one of those rags-to-riches full life sim RPGs.

 

[plem]

in DOS2, pickpocketing is hilariously OP. you can just peruse a merchant's wares, find the most valuable one, pick it and then teleport away via waypoints. having high thievery almost completely bypasses the need for money and bartering.

in Underrail, you can find Oddities by pickpocketing which could mean getting a level or two early if you're using the oddity XP system.

 

[Zlaja]

I really enjoyed how pickpocketing worked in Kingdom Come. It's the only RPG I can remember playing where I was spending a fair amount of time dabbling in pickpocketing. Usually, that skill is hard pass for me in games, but in that game it was really enjoyable.

Also, it was possible to both pay off the guard and persuade them to look the other way if cought. Reloading wasn't a must.

I remember stealing a minigun from R. Lee Ermey in Fallout Tactics

Ooh nice, he's looking the other way. I'll just squeeze out this huge gun that he stored in his backpocket. Haha, sucker! No way he'll notice it's gone until it's too late.

 

[Norfleet]

in DOS2, pickpocketing is hilariously OP. you can just peruse a merchant's wares, find the most valuable one, pick it and then teleport away via waypoints. having high thievery almost completely bypasses the need for money and bartering.

Yes, that's basically how it works in California too. It isn't even illegal there.