Sleight of Hand improvement

[Yevelian]

Those few characters who can sleight of hand with a bit of investment have no other usage of the skill except on PCs. Using the skill on NPCs can be used, but no one ever carries anything that can be sleight of handed. I would suggest developing a inventory for NPCs which could be pick pocketed. A few coins, odds and ends, etc. Thoughts?

[[DM] Grinning Death]

There are a few problems I can see with that right off the bat.

One, if the NPC catches you, it turns hostile automatically. This in turn would force PCs to defend themselves and kill NPCs without DM interaction, which is a no-no.

Second, it might be exploitable, in that those PCs would go after the NPCs all the time. The only way I can see this working, is if a script is activated to throw the PC in prison if caught by an NPC.

But then, that and the release would be more dev work, which isn't a priority right now.

[Memnoch1962]

I'm not trying to speak for Yevelian, but I think he may have meant NPC's that are hostile already. Gnolls, goblins, etc.. and make it to where only some have items that can be found.

But I can see how it can be exploited if not done correctly.

[Thief Of Navarre]

I'd hardly call a hard pursuit exploitation. May as well call divine spells exploiting faith since that's by far what it is. To pick pocket someone with any degree of success would take an extremely high dex, skill focus & perhaps outside means to 'exploit'

[[DM] Grinning Death]

I'd hardly call a hard pursuit exploitation. May as well call divine spells exploiting faith since that's by far what it is. To pick pocket someone with any degree of success would take an extremely high dex, skill focus & perhaps outside means to 'exploit'

Actually, it's a flat DC 20 to pickpocket a NPC who isn't hostile, 30 for one who is. Which means anyone with a single point in sleight of hand has a decent chance of getting the item, and anyone who actually has a bonus to dex and puts in a few points has a very good chance of getting it.

And it's exploiting, it's because it evokes a reaction from the NPCs that can't be controlled by the DMs.

[Poltergeist]

I'd hardly call a hard pursuit exploitation. May as well call divine spells exploiting faith since that's by far what it is. To pick pocket someone with any degree of success would take an extremely high dex, skill focus & perhaps outside means to 'exploit'

To clarify, the exploit GD was referring to is not the ability to pick pockets. It's the ability to force NPC's to go hostile that are otherwise not meant to.

[Farmboy2003]

There's a quest-specific item that, when used in a certain manner, once caused me to off a few NPCs... I cannot recommend setting the whole server of NPC's hostile on you.

Unless you take your time to set each NPC to their own subfaction, which I'm not sure is even possible or realistically done, could this be doable.

[thaelis]

I think the point is that they don't want us to be able to set any NPC we like hostile and then kill them...?

[Yevelian]

Note: Faction aggression is appropriate if caught, I would think. Even so, there seems to be a timer for hostility, if you manage to escape the area that is.

Even then, items in NPC inventory can be marked "stolen" in the toolset can't they? Rendering them... black market only items?

[Poltergeist]

If someone becomes hostile to an NPC, they can kill that NPC. If someone can become hostile to any NPC, they can kill all of the NPCs.

This is where roleplay has to take a backseat to mechanics. If we enable this, a player could kill every NPC on the server after a restart. People have done similar things before, and we've come down hard on it. It's not worth the effort for us to do more policing, and more scripting to put other safeguards in place, just to let a lvl 20 assassin steal a street urchin's pocket change.

[Doubtful]

There are other complications as well, someone toggling a faction hostile via failed rolls can have disastrous effects across the server as it can toggle NPCs to start hacking up other NPCs.

[Thief Of Navarre]

To clarify, the exploit GD was referring to is not the ability to pick pockets. It's the ability to force NPC's to go hostile that are otherwise not meant to.

Oh I see, my bad.

Does the NPC's spot come into call or is that just PCs?