Recovery from reputation disaster?

[Sir Rechet]

Let's say you're a merry little thief, cutpursing around until a critical fail foils up the smooth sailing. To top it off, your overly eager teammates snipe off a few commoners before you realize what happened. So now your reputation reads something along the lines of "demote to the prince of hell" and every guard within ten mile radius homes in on you like a pack of frenzied bloodhounds.

Is there an actual, reasonable way to recover from this? I can figure out that you pretty much need to get to a temple and do some serious donating, but what happens to the people that witnessed the crime and/or guards that got summoned? Will they stay put in the area map or follow you around? Do they alert other NPCs to become hostile to you? What if there is a pack of guards just outside the temple you run into to get back on the track still wanting my blood afterwards, is it safe to just rout them into some far away corner or are they going to call backup to haunt me ever after?

It's okay if it's just the person you tried to steal from that holds the grudge against you for the rest of the game, but I don't want to find out a few chapters later that some game-critical NPC is now forever hostile just because he happened to stroll too close to the action at the wrong moment.

Anyone?

[T2Bruno]

Reload.

[Sir Rechet]

Well, I've always used PW: Reload on the spot. So far.

Just asking what would you actually need to do if you were on a, say, no-reload run?

[8people]

Pretty much donations, perhaps a few reputable quests, then polish off any still following me with pitchforks in as discrete a manner as possible.

[Paracelsi]

On a no-reload run I'd stick to stealing from stores and stacking Potions of Master Thievery effects. I'm not sure if the game "rolls" a d20 like it would when you do anything else when it comes to stealing/pickpocketing. I don't remember ever failing at these skills after reaching 300+ in pickpockets.

[saros]

In a no-reload there are several important rules when attempting stealing:

1. Of course, buff well the thief with potions, to maximize the chances of success.
2. Make sure you steal at the appropriate time/place. For example, looting the guards in the Promenade should be done on daily basis, to ensure that a nearby fence is not turned hostile if the robbery attempt fails.
3. Pick a few targets that actually have something valuable rather than looting everyone for random items.
4. If stealing from the Shadow Thieves, prepare to side with Bodhi if a theft attempt fails. And of course, prepare to protect PC from Arkanis Gath's Killsword +3.
5. Make sure you start stealing after you kill all groups of Cowled Enforcers + Zallanora (unless you want to skip them altogether and/or have paid for the spellcasting license). Because dropping reputation below 4 permanently disables the Cowled Enforcer patrols which appear otherwise when a party member casts an arcane spell on the streets.
6. It's best to complete all quests/ other agendas in a certain area before stealing from NPCs in that area, because an important NPC may turn hostile prematurely.
7. Usually it's best to kill all witnesses which may turn hostile, but that again depends on the situation.
8. All in all it's much more profitable to fight for most of the items (even with the reputation loss and all) rather than stealing them.

EDIT: Regarding the post above, there is always a chance of failure, and bringing pickpocket to 300+ is not a good idea, since the value wraps around at 255%. A value of 220-240% is enough.

Edit: For recovery, barring donations (which bring rep to 18 only), it's always good to not have completed some reputation-increasing quests (for example, I often keep Neb's head, the Mantle of Vaukeen and the guard in front of the Circus tent intact for later usage) and thus be able to increase reputation to 20 ASAP.

Edit: Guard enforcers chasing you when reputation is 3 and lower usually appear at fixed places. They also appear at random intervals (no less than 1-hour interval), so you may exploit this the following way:

Go to the promenade s-e corner. Kill all vanilla guards there, travel up and down, groups of guards will appear. Kill one, buff with invisibility, rest, travel a bit in that same area, a second group will appear. You will collect tons of items/gold/xp if you continue killing those, and they're killed easiest by setting traps pre-resting in their spawning point. When satisfied, kill one more group, and then travel fast to the promenade's temple to increase reputation. As stated, you have quite some time before the next group appears, so you should safely reach the temple and raise reputation.

[Sir Rechet]

Did some quick testing with TuTu, killing off a few commoners (in N section of Baldur's Gate, if it matters any).

Seems like the only NPCs turning hostile are the ones that immediately see the crime(s) in question. No others turned hostile, not even after talking to them with my shiny new reputation of 1. Pretty soon after you WILL get attacked by a group of enforcers, and if you stand and fight, they'll just summon another group after a while so there's not much point in doing that.

It wasn't really tough at all to just walk into a temple (tried the ones beside Friendly Arm Inn and Beregost) to fix the reputation, and the enforcers were gone when I came back to the area(s) I had committed the crimes in. However, the NPCs stay hostile even after several day's worth of resting so they're pretty much "gone" from the game. Might as well kill them off so that you don't have red circles running around like headless chicken if you already reached reputation 1. Just be careful to not aggro even more NPCs while doing that..

Also, if you happen to have enforcers in hot pursuit when you enter a temple, they're still going to be there after you fix the reputation hiccup once you exit the temple proper. That could easily become problematic unless you can run past them without killing anyone. Once you do, however, they will be gone again once you re-enter the map.

In other words - nothing you'd want to do deliberately (as it should), but not really a game over situation either.. unless you happen to commit your crimes near someone important. But you pretty much only need to double-check the immediate surroundings, not every map on the continent.

Any other special cases I might have missed?

[saros]

For BG1 TuTu it's even easier, because you may use Algernon's cloak, charm your victim and lead it away from any NPCs, then try to loot it. Same may be applied to crime witnesses, in order not to anger more and more NPCs - charm everyone red-circled , lead them away and slaughter them.

For example, if you want to obtain the Ring of Free Action on Dushai in Ulgoth's beard, safest way to do so is charm her and lead her away before trying to pickpocket her (or you may as well kill her right away).

Edit: Also killing enforcers in BG1 will provide your party with a good supply of Arrows of Dispelling even in early game chapters (but you have to be fast to kill the enemies before they shoot that arrow). In BG2, I think enforcer patrols don't disappear after resting/ regaining reputation - same goes about enforcer patrols appearing in houses where your stealing activities may be noticed - I usually avoid such places because frankly, in such houses there is nothing valuable to be picked anyways.