Thievery Ideas:

[The Crazy Animal]

This is probably the 5th time I?ve typed this up I seem to keep loosing it. These are some ideas I had about thieves and or other classes with thievery as far as abilities that they should have packaged together under the thievery skill. While it isn't a fix all for theives in certainly would enhance their abilities a little.

Appraise:
This ability checks an items approximate value with out needing to be preformed in a shop like it normally does. The accuracy of the check should be stat dependant intel or perception based.

app <item> or appraise <item>
You would get approximately <value> for the <item name>.

Fence:
This ability allows the thief to attempt to sell an item to a shop even if that shop normally will not buy that item. The chance of getting the shop to buy the item is based on charm and thievery stat. Any items sold this way are removed from the game similar to selling to a junkyard.

Item Lore:
Gives basic info about an item like what town it comes from, if it?s common or rare, or who normally has them in a game.

Peek:
This ability uses a perception & thievery test verses targets perception and level if passed this skill allows you to look at target with out giving them the normal look message. If failed it

Pickpocket: Steals a random item from a PC or NPC. Items on monsters could be generated by a textblock similar to chests or they could be actual items in their inventory. If failed NPC would have a random chance of attacking.

Purse:
This ability uses a perception & thievery test similar to peek except it looks at targets inventory. If the test fails it warns the target with a message such as: <player> is eyeing you very suspiciously.

Steal/Rob:
The ability works just like the old rob command did.

Rob shop ? Provided shops are put onto a budget this ability would steals cash from shop. It?s basically a game of chance the longer you stay in the shop the more money you get. However the longer you stay in the shop the greater the chance of the guards coming.

Shoplift ? Steals a targeted item from shop. Failing would cause either the shop keeper to attack or guards to come and the PC to be tagged with a special shoplifter ability. Being this is a powerful ability I was thinking it should come at an equal risk so getting jailed for this carries a fine equal in value to the item you attempted to steal plus the stolen item if it is still in your inventory. This could be from either your inventory or bank account. The way it would basically work is via that shoplifter ability the abilities value would be equal to the item number. If the PC is then caught with in an allotted amount of time the fine kicks into effect if not the ability flag is removed.

Detect thievery ? Gives a bonus to spotting someone trying to uses one of the thievery abilities while you?re in the room. However this skill only warns the player with this ability. Secondly it raises the difficulty to be stolen from.

[Colt]

Sounds like a very good idea. would make me want to open PVP on my BBS

[Ian]

Yeah, I especially like the idea of shoplifting.  Need to stop it from being abusable though.  Eg, in another game you can shoplift, then drop the item somewhere, speak to the guards and pay your debt (they'd usually take the item too), then you're off scot-free with the item.

So maybe make it non-droppable/sellable/giveable/robbable until the allotted time is up.
Something like "This item is too hot to move!" :)

Detect thievery and fence look pretty cool too.  Nice work.

[The Crazy Animal]

Yeah, I especially like the idea of shoplifting. Need to stop it from being abusable though. Eg, in another game you can shoplift, then drop the item somewhere, speak to the guards and pay your debt (they'd usually take the item too), then you're off scot-free with the item.

Well being the fine would be equal to the value of the item I don't see it as being that abuseable. If you have the item still on you then its the Item + its value too.

[The Crazy Animal]

Note - I like the idea of flagging items with abilities but maybe something like a simple ownership flag would be easier so if you get caught at anytime for any crime after steeling something it gets taken.

We could then have magic spells for checking who actually owns the item.

I think we talked about this for limited items and NPCs though.

[Ian]

Well being the fine would be equal to the value of the item I don't see it as being that abuseable. If you have the item still on you then its the Item + its value too.

True, I'd forgotten to take that into consideration.  I guess as an extra punishment, if you don't have the item to hand back, the fine could be some arbitrary increased percentage of value, eg fine = 150% * item value.

Note - I like the idea of flagging items with abilities but maybe something like a simple ownership flag would be easier so if you get caught at anytime for any crime after steeling something it gets taken.

What'd be cool is to have shops/NPCs that will remove signs of ownership from a stolen item.  Kind of like respraying a car.  So if you pay a little extra cash, the stolen item will be yours for good, instead of being recognised as stolen and taken by the guards.  Perhaps an NPC in a thieves guild in each town could provide that service.

[The Crazy Animal]

True, I'd forgotten to take that into consideration. I guess as an extra punishment, if you don't have the item to hand back, the fine could be some arbitrary increased percentage of value, eg fine = 150% * item value.

Sounds reasonable. I was thinking with jail time and stuff like that it might be enough. Maybe introducing a bail fee though could cover this though.

What'd be cool is to have shops/NPCs that will remove signs of ownership from a stolen item. Kind of like respraying a car. So if you pay a little extra cash, the stolen item will be yours for good, instead of being recognised as stolen and taken by the guards. Perhaps an NPC in a thieves guild in each town could provide that service.

Sounds like a good idea maybe the price could be set dynamicly based on the items value. So you would pay a portion of the price rather then a set fee. I know I really want there to be more useful and active thieves guilds in the game.

[Ian]

Sounds reasonable. I was thinking with jail time and stuff like that it might be enough. Maybe introducing a bail fee though could cover this though.

Yeah, exactly what punishment is just the fine details.  Can be worked out during beta.  Gotta remember though, shoplifting will be a powerful ability.  Needs to have a heavy risk associated with it.

Sounds like a good idea maybe the price could be set dynamicly based on the items value. So you would pay a portion of the price rather then a set fee. I know I really want there to be more useful and active thieves guilds in the game.

Nod.

[Colt]

Note - I like the idea of flagging items with abilities but maybe something like a simple ownership flag would be easier so if you get caught at anytime for any crime after steeling something it gets taken.

We could then have magic spells for checking who actually owns the item.

I think we talked about this for limited items and NPCs though.

OK, so I steal something (Pick Pocket) I then hide it, I get caught and go to jail for taking this item, I have thereby paid the price for taking it. once I get out. I go and get the item, The item is still a stolen item and when and if I get caught again, do I go to jail a second time and lose the item. Do I just lose the item (Timeing should make a difference here) or do I get to keep the item....?

[The Crazy Animal]

OK, so I steal something (Pick Pocket) I then hide it, I get caught and go to jail for taking this item, I have thereby paid the price for taking it. once I get out. I go and get the item, The item is still a stolen item and when and if I get caught again, do I go to jail a second time and lose the item. Do I just lose the item (Timeing should make a difference here) or do I get to keep the item....?

Well to start we were taking about this for shoplifting not pickpocketing. In any case of going to jail you would be going to jail for what you got caught doing rather then just having the shoplifter flag. The shoplifter flag on the player would be time removed. We were also talking about a flag that would be put on the actual item though that could only be removed via the thieves? guild. However once in jail though if you are discovered to have a stolen items or that shoplifters flag that?s a different story. My thoughts were at the end of that story would be the item would be removed unless the item has had its stolen tag removed.

As for the price of the fine that?s adjustable at this point but there needs to be that type of trade off of risk vs reward it just needs to be balanced out against the best outcome which is getting away with it. I know the fine looks huge right now but you have to look at it as something that could have devastating effects on the monetary aspects of the game. If I could steal a 90 runic item from the game then fence it for say 30 runic that?s 30 runic that is not supposed to be in the game at that point. If you take into account that could happen when the average player might only have 4 or 5 runic in the bank that?s a lot of financial power for a single player to accumulate through one act.

For pickpocketing I was thinking a similar type of ownership tag could be used but it?s a different type of crime. In the crime of pickpocketing the item has been paid for once so it doesn?t affect the same aspects of the game. So the objective in this punishment would different, I would think the end act would be some type of attempt to return the item back to who it was stolen from. There does need to be some continuity though with the punishments so I?d expect some type of fine to be involved too but only if caught with the item itself. However there is one exception I can see that needs to be made and that is when stealing items from NPCs with the alignment chaotic evil which is the majority of bosses and monsters as they don?t apply to the same rules and regulations as the rest of the games inhabitants. I?d like players to be able to go try to steal stuff from NPCs like Thrag?s gold teeth stuff like that they should be able to do with out fear of repercussions via punishments.

[Silentz]

Would the fine for shoplifting come out of the player's bank account? Because if that is what you were planning, all you would have to do before you try to shoplift is stash your money somewhere. At that point, you either succeed and get the item, or fail and have no money to lose for being caught. I don't know if you would be able to place some sort of lien against the player's future bank account in order to have the fined paid at a later time if they deposit their money back into the bank.

[The Crazy Animal]

I thought about that route already and your right for the most part. I was thinking that it would be either from a bank account or a combination of items worn and cash from account. So you'd have to dump any valued items plus you cash. The risk to that though would come via the NPC cleaners though as they would pick up any items/cash the find.

I do like the idea of having the fee taken out of the account when ever the money becomes available though. That way if you pull something like that off and get caught you couldn't really use the banks till the fine was payed off :) To be fair there would need to be some way for these people to keep their money safe while they can't use the standard banks. So I'd probably want to put in some type of underworld bank that comes via a fee and maybe a chance of loss of some cash every now and then.

Of course there is always the option available to execution players for not being able to pay a high fines. <giggle> However, it would really suck though to be rolled for shoplifting too much. At anyrate theres plenty of things we can do though to make there be some type of non-loop holed trade off.

[Ian]

I thought briefly about withdrawing all cash before shoplifting an item, but in the current game, the banks are too far apart to make it worth while.  Say you've got cash in all banks, are you really gonna go to Arlysia, Lost City, Rhudaur and Silv and withdraw all money before shoplifting?  I think (depending on DC's banks) it would probably be too much effort to take ALL money out of banks before shoplifting.  And as TCA said, NPC cleaners might clean you out.  If not packrats searching every room.

It all comes down to the risks vs the rewards.

Can you steal and get away with it, or do you wanna stash money and risk THAT instead?

</drunk>

[Silentz]

Would the penalty from one town carry over to the bank of a different town? If I can't access the bank from the city across the world, why should they be able to get money from it from the crime I did in that city? Also, there are bound to be rooms that there are no scavangers to find your stash.

[The Crazy Animal]

Well actually we?ve talked about being able to transfer money from bank to bank already. What we figured out was that we would probably charge a small fee and then have a delay to simulate the time it would take to move the cash across the realm. The banking system is just another one of those things that need to be looked at a little more closely. How it?s done though really depends on how the banks end up being set up though.

The way I picture medieval banking is that it was mostly done via families. So you might have the house bank of Blackfoot in 3 towns and then the house bank of Shirewood in another 4. So if you were fined in a town where the bank is a Blackfoot branch then the money could come from any of those related branches similar to how Silvermere and Khazarad have linked banks. The transfer function would only be needed for moving money between Blackfoot and Shirewood banks then.

I know one thing I?m really adamant about is that I don?t like the idea of people being punished for a deed done in one part of the realm while they are in totally an unrelated part. I really think the punishment system needs to move away from a global alignment system and over to a zoned retaliation system. This is because you can be a saint and still piss a rather large group of people off enough to lynch you. However the feelings of one group of people do not necessarily translate to another group its simple social dynamics. I?ll be posting about that later though as I?m revising some of my earlier thoughts on how to deal with crime and punishment.

Getting back on subject though I said in my last post I really like the idea of putting a lien on a person?s future account. If the banks are set up like I said above this would effectively black list offending players from groups of banks across the realm. So basically if you got blacklisted in Silvermere you would also be blacklisted in Khazarad and would have to travel to one of the other far off banks to deposit money safely. Over the course of a game though you could potentially run out of banks and well it doesn?t take much thought to know were that will leave you. You have to imagine though that if you?re given improved thievery abilities so will any NPC thieves in the game.

As far as scavengers go any non-animal monster could be set to do this I think it would be in favor of classes with thievery to have them do it too as it makes more targets for them. I?d also really like monsters to keep inventories and possibly even have armour stats and attacks to go with their worn gear. It is really the only way pickpocketing is going to be really worth its estimated exp value. So you will have to really look for places that are actually safe to stash stuff unlike you did in MMUD because things will be looking for stuff to pick up.

Anyway enough of my babbling this is long enough for now.