This is how I like to begin: after escaping Irenicus'dungeon, I do the slave quest in CC. Then, wonderful items are available in the CC (axe+3, sword+3, axe anti-undead, searching sling...). I get master thief potions, my thief gulps enough to get +- 200 pickpocket, and he lifts all the objects! Then, my party goes to all the good places for thieves in city, so the party is well fit for free.
On the way, they even pickpocket Ribald.

Is this cheesy?

Well, strictly speaking I would say no, it is not cheesy. Maybe a little bit cheap. :rolleyes:
Of course, if you PC is a paladin or some other lawful goody-two-shoes, then IMO it turns immediately into cheese. :D

No he's no paladin, he's some disgusting dwarf!

I'd say it might be cheesy for this reason:
You steal a bunch of good stuff from a vendor (in this case, Bernard). Now, if you never go back to see that same vendor ever again, you're OK. But, if you were to visit him again, do you not think that he would notice the fact that you are carrying the very items that have mysteriously disappeared from his inventory?

Also, when you say your party "goes to all the good places for thieves in city, so the party is well fit for free", do you mean you visit the fences? And if so, what do you do?

I'll guess it's ok then. Since it's offering you the ability to steal from shops, you do it. It was intended when they made the game, so why not?

I don't think it's cheesy, especially if you are evil -- such a move certainly compensates for the discounts that can be obtained by a high reputation.
One hint, though, no matter how high your pick pockets rank is, there's always a 1% chance of failure. If you don't want to inadvertantly kill a lot of innocents and lose boola reputation, I'd shut my AI off while thieving.

Strictly speaking, it's cheesy. Imagine you stealing a huge 100lbs suit of armor right out from under his nose. If you pickpocket Ribald (not through the buy/sell window, just his pockets) you get a shiny new ring of Regeneration. Sweet-ass!

Now I detrermined that stealing all the nice objects in CC after the slaves quest is cheesy, and besides the objects are not very expensive.
But stealing the nice objects in Trademeet is defensible in a roleplay view: You are the heroes, so even if the merchant notices, he will dare say nothing. But you shouldn't visit him ever after.
Likewise, stealing nice objects in Maevar's guild just before you sell him out looks defensible to me.
Likewise, stealing nice objects in the Drow city just before you leave looks defensible.
Objections anyone?

Objections anyone? Only the part about stealing from Trademeet because you are the hero. But since you aren't going to visit him again, you're OK. You seem to have understood my point completely. :thumb:
(Of course, alignment is still a factor)

I think it's a little bit cheesy.
OTOH this clearly is the way the game was intended to work by the designers. Is it unrealistic? In some ways, yes. You'd think the merchants would have magic ways of stopping theft. But then the thieves can also employ magic, so who would have the upper hand?

One easy partial fix would be to not allow good aligned thieves to steal.

"One easy partial fix would be to not allow good aligned thieves to steal."

I don't agree with this words, you might be good-hearted, but you can always justify yourself: "nobody will care if I take this.." "This is the very last time, I promise,..". To steal little bits from people who has plenty of everything might not be so evil. Robin Hood, a bastard or a saint???

After all, even if you are the kindest person of the world, you will probably backstab that drow mage before he could cast any filthy spell upon you; or would you prefer a confrontational situation?? Thieves aren't paladines!!, leave honor to others!!

I think stealing is one of the things a good aligned thief should be able to do. Thiefs generally do bad things, so a good alignment isn't very fitting. But I think assassination is a lot badder than stealing.
Besides, maybe the good thief is going to do something good with the stolen stuff...

Certainly takes a bit of fun out of the game.

One easy partial fix would be to not allow good aligned thieves to steal.From www.dictionary.com (http://www.dictionary.com):
thief n.
One who steals, especially by stealth.We'd have to change the name then. There's nothing wrong with good people stealing, but thieves should not be able to be lawful.

So if my lead character is a Wizard Slayer, does this mean I am not allowed to have magic users in my party? If six people walk into a store, how is the proclaimed leader of the pack responsible for the actions of one of his friends. Granted, if he's caught, the group is in trouble. Then again, if the storekeeper didn't see him take it, who's to say the protagonist didn't notice either? In PnP, it's not announced to the party that the party's thief has attempted to pilfer unless he is caught. What the Paladin protagonist doesn't know doesn't affect his alignment. Unless of course the thief is stealing an object specifically for the Paladin, which would most assuredly end in disaster. Alot of times it is taken for granted that your PC is calling every single shot and controlling every action of each individual NPC, and IMHO, that is just not feasible.

Backstabbing an evil enemy in the process of committing an act of violence is hardly comparable to taking property you know you have no right to. Just because you can rationalize it -- "well, I can steal and still be considered good-aligned, because I'm doing it for a noble purpose (convenient disengenuous rationalization) and the ends justify the means" -- doesn't mean the rationalization is valid. Most evil people feel justified in their crimes, too, but that doesn't mean they ARE justified.

Part of the problem here is the term "thief," which is better replaced with the term "rogue." Too many idiots seem to think that being in the thief character class automatically makes you a kleptomaniac -- just like being evil means being homicidal, being chaotic means being an unpredictable lunatic, being lawful means being anal retentive, etc.

I've always thought of "thieves" in D&D as not neccesarily being criminals, but merely people who have skills not normally called for in the every day life of a normal person. I think sometimes it is better to think of the thief as more of a spy type of character, etc. So it can be easy to be a "thief" -- or better yet, "rogue" -- without being a criminal or a thief, and even good-aligned; and good-aligned "thieves" really shouldn't be stealing! :D

IMO, good-aligned thieves should only from steal from fences, not "legitimate" vendors. And thieves can't be lawful.

@Trimm:
A lawful leader may not be able to prevent a party member from stealing, but he/she certainly wouldn't tolerate the thief staying with the party once the theft was discovered by the rest of the party (or at least, the leader would demand that the thief return the stolen item). Thus from a roleplaying perspective, IMO you can't steal if you have a lawful leader; of course, if you're not roleplaying, then it doesn't matter.

[ September 25, 2003, 05:11: Message edited by: Splunge ]

In my current game, Nalia does the shoplifting. She steals the rich to give ... er... to us. More Jesse James than Robin Hood.
Stealing isn't absolutely necessary, there is enough loot to find, but in cases where it seems acceptable, why not? In Maevar's guild, you end up killing everyone, normally you could get all the items there.
The master thief potions are "stackable", if it's cheesy to drink 2 or 3 in a row, it's the game designers fault. They allowed this, because even a good thief (+100% pickpocket) doesn't stand a chance of success.

I don't see why assasination should be branded as "evil".
Killing is killing and if we accept killing - as we do in a fantasy setting - then the method of killing is hardly reason enough to call someone good and another evil.

Stealing from shopowners in general is IMHO hardly a good deed and I stand by my view that good thieves should be at least restricted in who they can steal from and from whom they can pick pocket.

And thieves can't be lawful.They cannot be lawful good. They can be true lawful, which doesn't make sense.

Earl Grey - we can accept killing in this fantasy setting because :

a) fighting orcs/gnolls/bandits/evil wizards will, in the long run, make the world a better place.

b) fighting epitomes of evil, such as demons and dragons (and debatably, drow), make the world a better place.

Killing an innocent person in cold blood usually doesn't make the world a better place.

In a real, hardcore, fantasy setting (think Brothers Grimm), there are noble acts and ignoble acts. Killing the evil wolf face-to-face is noble. Jumping out of the shadows and stabbing the nice king ignoble. And not very nice either.

---

On the topic, anyways:

Good thieves can certainly steal. Even lawful good thieves. Let's the suppose the following scenario:

Chaotic Good Thief Melissa is stealing a holy sword from a big dragon. The big dragon is so big, no army in the world can kill it. But it's very lazy, so a sneaky girl like Melissa could take it, and hand it over to a paladin (or just use it herself). The sword might be used to slay the dragon, or be used to wage war against demons, either of which is a good thing (in terms of alignment).

Now let's replace Chaotic Good Thief Melissa with a Lawful Good Paladin Mary. Mary learned how to sneak around, and is smart (although she is very brave) to not face a dragon she can't defeat in combat. Instead, she just goes and plucks the sword from the dragon's hoard when it's asleep.

Now what's not Lawful Good about this? This sword might unite the nations of the world, certainly a lawful act. It might go on to fight evil, certainly a good act. A noble paladin might use it in crusades, certainly a lawful good act.

As for vendors, just replace "big nasty dragon" with "lousy, greedy, evil, merchant who beats people up for money." You get the idea.

As I remember, nothing was said about stealing in the description of Lawful Good. It might be an irregular thing to do, but no one said you couldn't do it. Which is the idea that Thieves can't be LG is silly.

@Rastor - you're right; my mistake. It just never occurs to me to make a thief lawful, since I am definitely going to be using him/her to steal (which of course was part of your original point).

@Oaz
I agree that the example of stealing from a dragon might make sense, as long as you were going to kill him anyway. However, stealing from a vendor, no matter how nasty, is IMHO still a no-no for a lawful character. A lawful character recognises the importance of laws and would report the vendor to the proper authorities, but he would not take the law into his own hands or break the law himself by stealing - two wrongs don't make a right.

[ September 26, 2003, 16:23: Message edited by: Splunge ]

not allowing a theif to be lawful good makes sense to me. Think about it being a theif means stealing,and backstabbing, both of which normally dont appeal to those of LG alignment, and besides that being a theif means you steal which is unlawful.

@trimm
i can think of a number of books/true stories where there was an evil person in a generally good party I.E> the avatar trilogy in the first and second book. cyric was with midnight and kelomver, cyric was chaotic evil while the others were good

But what happens when the merchant, is actually, say a demon? The demon wouldn't recognize the city guards or the nobles, as it's simply not part of its society. What happens then?

In my opinion, this is one of the silly things about the descriptions of alignment in Baldur's Gate II. I think that if a person is stealing from the demon, he/she is doing an act in favor of law and good (if this demon is chaotic evil) by killing the demon, regardless of whether he/she did so with or without theft.

Oaz, I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at with your 1st paragraph,; the fact that the demon doesn’t recognise the guards doesn’t prevent the guards from taking action.

You’re 2nd paragraph, however, seems to be confirming exactly what I said, ie if you’re going to kill an enemy anyway, then stealing its stuff is OK. Of course, if the enemy hasn’t gone hostile, then a lawful character IMO would obey the law and not kill it (nor steal from it), even if it is a demon, since it hasn’t attacked you (yet). I don’t see anything silly about the alignment descriptions; a lawful character obeys the law, plain and simple.

LAW means the rights of the group outweigh the rights of the individual.

CHAOS means the the rights of the individual outweigh the rights of the group.