CLOK BBS

I think it'd be nice to have NPC thieves in the invisible crowds in each room of a town or hamlet. They could have a small chance to try and steal from you every so often, and when they do, it acts just like a normal PC trying to steal something. If your perception is high enough, maybe you could even have a chance to catch them or something.

The reason I suggest this is simply for atmosphere. A lot of people act like it is something very rare and uncommon when they are stolen from, and act like it can be easy to tell who did the stealing because they saw them sneak out of the room. While this may be true in the middle of the forest or somewhere similarly isolated, on the road and in town I feel like common thieves probably aren't all that uncommon, and the average person who looks like they may have a bit more riln on them than the common townsperson (like players, who are often dressed up in elaborate outfits) would usually find that he or she has lost a couple of riln or so while walking from one side of town to the other, or perhaps they lost that fancy dagger they bought from Fan Sie's shop that was made of pure gold with a solid diamond hilt.

My point is, PC thieves aren't the only thieves in existance, and people are acting as if they are. I have a few other things I wish would change about how people react to thievery (like throwing a huge pile of riln into a stuffed backpack and expecting to be able to find and dig every last one out without having any slip through any holes or opening while going from point A to point B; seriously, I find this to be on the edge of metagaming, but I won't go into that here), but I think making it clear that thievery isn't a rare, world-shattering occurrance would definotely be a step in the right direction.

I'm in favor of this, and would actually like to ask it go a step further, with rooms randomly triggering off on an NPC thief. This would allow players that have actually managed to train perception to still benefit from them from an NPC the same as a PC trying to steal from them. Additionally, the presence of an angry citizen stomping through town looking for the thief would help familiarize players with it and lower the occurrence of the "OH GOD SEARCH EVERYWHERE AND SECURE YOUR STUFF" reaction.

I've wanted to this for a really long time, actually - back in the early days when I had ideas for tagging clothing articles so they'd identify marks as particularly wealthy and more likely to get robbed/mugged in seedier areas of town.

I like that idea a lot! I think it's an issue when everyone treats every thievery as a PC action. And it'd give people reason to not loiter in towns and cities, too!

It would also cut back on AFKing in towns. Imagine, you step away from the keyboard while in the square in Mistral, come back 30 minites later and you've lost 300 riln and all those fresh, tasty pies you were saving to stab merchants with.

I would really like to see the Justice system apply equally to NPCs and minions who are caught stealing from you, or attacking or killing you, etc.

And for the same license to apply to retaliatory acts against thieving NPC's as when a player steals from the crowd and the NPC with the rapier is permitted to slay without penalty.