I've been robbed!

[MaDMaX6161]

I've been robbed and I feel so . . . so .. . violated!

Last night I was pick pocketed and had to pay the extortionist's price to get my item back. I was OK with this.
Evidently it is all "legal" (he claimed to have the DM's approval) as long as it's all done OOC. I was OK with this too.
This is the part that I feel violated about. Although we both handled this as mature players, I really didn't get any thing out of it. I don't just mean that I had to pay the market price to get my item back. I mean that I didn't get a chance to get any real RP experience out of it and neither did the thief. I was NOT OK with this. Since it was all done all OOC I was not able to negotiate the return price or role play me freaking out and getting others players involved and starting a manhunt or something else that it would have added something to a relatively boring "sit around the fire and talk night". I didn't even get any XP out of it. Maybe you thief's ought to report the OOC RP to a DM so we can get some XP benefits out of it.
I also thought the item he picked would have drawn the attention to the many that where around that night. There could have been many witnesses. There where about 9 people around that night.

OK DM's please chime in and let us know how much OOC rights we have and what we actually can do so we can keep Sundren a fun place to be.

I'm looking at this as a chance to enhance the RP element in Sundren and not start a war, but we "victims" need some guidelines to RP with

[Verrath]

by OOC do you mean out of character? That sounds backward somehow? And if it WAS OOC - the player should not have asked to have you pay. He should have returned the item he stole.
I'm no DM and I have no say whatsoever in this, but anything that happens out of character should not have IC consequences such as money or item loss.

Unless you meant to say IC - in character?

[Dune]

Not sure why this was handled OOC myself. On another point on pick pocketing, I think the rule was nothing over 10 pounds in weight, or it would be quite obvious that was missing.
Really this probably could of been handled IC and I wouldn't see why not, but that may just be me.

[MaDMaX6161]

Yes OOC is out of character.
I guess the idea was that he should profit from his stolen item. IE he could have sold it to a fence but by selling it back to me he gets some money and I get my hard found item back rather that losing it altogether.
And just to clarify a point, He picked my pocket IC but the negotiations & return of the item where done OOC.
The item was well over the 10 lb limit and was approx 3 ft long.

[Radiance]

Sleight of Hand
Epic Sleight of Hand

Going off the rules from the SRD, unless he got a skills check of fifty, there's no way he should have been allowed to steal that weapon. Further, a huge pile of gold would be heavy and noticeable as well. In a case like this, I'd say it would be best to either...

1) Do the entire thing without actually using the botched implementation of Sleight of Hand, doing the entire thing IC sans engine, ending with you giving him something he could reasonably steal, like a gem, a small stack of gold, a wand, or a dagger, or...

2) He trades you the item he couldn't possibly steal back and you give something that he could conceivably steal.

[Dark presence]

I just like to try and beat it into people that they should not pickpocket using the hardcoded stupidity! Roll your dice, and emote!

There are a lot of issues with hardcoded pickpocket, not the least of which being how you can steal absolutely anything, without any limitations on where or how it would logically be on your body (its not realistically possible for a human to draw a greatsword from their back without grabbing the blade in several spots, so why would a halfling be able to do it at all?). That no one else gets a spot roll in a circle of people is another problem. That you can pickpocket while stealthed, thats yet another! Your victim has zero chance to recover the item without going through the barter screen, that should obviously look like a problem to everyone.

Anyways, I think I can safely say the biggest problem with what you describe is that it was done OOCly. There is no excuse for that, and you really should have grabbed a DM right away.

[Dune]

Well, anyway, we have many threads on the pick pocketing rules and even in our wiki. I'd say keep all pick pocketing IC and there should be no need for OOC to sort it out.

[sharringtonm]

I told him to contact you OOC to see if the item was 'special' to you. If it was he would sell it back to you so there was no hard feelings. He was jsut gonna go fence it otherwise.

It was as a gesture of fairness that we did this, not to ROB YOU of RP. Next time I'll let him sell it at the store.

Man, we try being nice and people bitch. I'm all done being nice to people.