CLOK BBS

A way to follow someone while hiding without their knowledge would be really nice.

Seconded.

I personally wouldn't mind this mechanic as well as long as it's programed with failure possibility. I've seen it implemented with no fails in place and it went horribly bad. So bad that it got to a point where thieves ended up being the least desireable class to play simply because their actions were all logged by gm's and they had to actually give reasons appended to thefts and such. basically they had to justify everytime they stole something because the mechanic got horribly abused since it was perfect.
example:
thief tags along behind Bob.
Bob has no clue that he's taking thief into the pub with him. A supposedly relatively well lit area with a few customers. jack, jill, and denise are also in the room and they are all high level players planning a big group activity. Thief then proceeds to steal from everyone and nobody sees him as he's still using bob for cover.
I know it seems obvious to keep the two separate abilities of shadowing/stalking and pickpocketing seperate but I think that your difficulty level should increase from normal pickpocket if you are in stalking mode as that's two things you'd have to concentrate on.

I can stand in the middle of mistral and steal from people as they walk by.. I want to stalk so I can be a creeper.

But in all seriousness. We all expect there to be a possibility of failure. That's only fair, and it's already the precedent in CLOK. As for thieves being thieving thieves I'm confident that the GMs share my view on it, which is that a thief needs no other reason to steal other than being a thief. Some people take that for granted, which is why I would have no trouble being able to steal from Bob and his friends without needing to stalk him to the Pub. They almost surely would have advertised their meeting place all over ESP.

Por favor.

Fifthed.

Generally, I don't like this type of char. I'm not the sneaky, thieving type. I lie horribly in RL, and feel guilty doing it even in good, honest roleplay. I've also been on games where the thieves were, to put it mildly, intimidating to the point of being scary for me to be around OOCly, because they didn't make the game fun for me.

Now, with that said, I do think a fair system for stalking could be implemented, my personal issues aside, with chance for success or failure dependent on skill, lighting, perception of people in the room, etc. But I think too much of a good thing is not a good thing, so it would need to be handled with great care.
Some chars are invinsible, and should not be. Nor should they be the weakest on the ladder simply because they're thieves. I've seen this, too, and it wasn't fun for the people who played them.

Nobody is invisible. Except Harry Potter.. but he is teh cheatz.

There will be something like this eventually (been on my to-do list since near when the game was first started), and yes, there will be chances of failure involving skill rolls and environmental properties, just like other stealth actions.