I'm playing a thief, but I've found that I can't steal from stores -- at all. I can drink potions and get my pick pockets to 300+%, but still cannot steal successfully. Seemingly, I can't steal from any stores under any conditions.

I'm playing on insane -- does that affect it? Thinking it might, I dropped it down to the easiest mode to see if it would work, but it wouldn't. I even tried clearing the cache and reloading the areas with stores while using the easy setting. Still nothing. Anyone have any idea what's wrong?

No sorry, erm... I assume you have selected your thief? Have you tried every store?

Yes, I have selected my thief. ;)

I haven't tried every store, but I've tried an awful lot of them, including some that I used to be able to steal from when I played a thief before in normal mode (like in Ust Natha).

Maybe it's a bug.

I have heard you don't want to go above 255% in your skills because beyond that point they're actually worse, not better.

That's right. Don't take it above 255. I'd say it's because they use a single unsigned byte to store pickpocket scores, or the value is truncated to an unsigned byte somewhere in the calculation.

I'm sure many of you already know this, but 255 in binary looks like "11111111". 256 looks like "100000000". Obviously, if you've only got enough space to store the last eight bits (i.e. 1 byte), and you lose the leading bit, the number you have is "00000000", or 0 in decimal. Theoretically, if you took your pickpocket skill to, say 511, it would work again, because 511 is "111111111", and if you lose a bit, you've still got 255. Of course, take it to 512, lose the two leading bits, and you're back to 0. I'll try this this evening and post the result (just for the sake of interest).

On a different note, has anyone else noticed that Bernard in the Copper Coronet needs a score of 200+ to pickpocket reliably, and even then you'll be caught regularly?