PP Revamped

[Korr]

Why dont we given stolen items a closer relationship to relics. No entering FD/Ave if you have a stolen item on you, no taking a boat ride if you have a stolen item on you, etc. This would be the essential "chopping of the hand". You would have to find the epic store to sell any loot above 9th level or do a transfer outside of the neutral areas (which is a free zone to steal ur stuff on the ground). Dragons and walking would be your only transportation because no boatkeeper wants to have you on his ship . . . what would the other customers think? Let alone if you rob HIM blind.

This falls in with the RP of Ave and FD as well, considering they are neutral towns they would not want a thief in there, nor would they facilitate a black market for thieves.

For the boat keepers when you talk to them with a relic on youre back they say something along the lines of "Youre crazy if you think Im letting that thing on my boat". We could do something like "Youre crazy if Im going to let YOU on my boat, Im the only gold swanderer in this area!"

[mgrjebbo]

Congratulations, NS4 has moved into a new realm of operations....we officially have no devs. Thats right, none. We have 1 ns5 dev that does bug fixes out of the kindness in his tiny little heart...but ns4 has no devs to call its own.

[Rainswept]

Why dont we given stolen items a closer relationship to relics. No entering FD/Ave if you have a stolen item on you, no taking a boat ride if you have a stolen item on you, etc. This would be the essential "chopping of the hand". You would have to find the epic store to sell any loot above 9th level or do a transfer outside of the neutral areas (which is a free zone to steal ur stuff on the ground). Dragons and walking would be your only transportation because no boatkeeper wants to have you on his ship . . . what would the other customers think? Let alone if you rob HIM blind.

This falls in with the RP of Ave and FD as well, considering they are neutral towns they would not want a thief in there, nor would they facilitate a black market for thieves.

For the boat keepers when you talk to them with a relic on youre back they say something along the lines of "Youre crazy if you think Im letting that thing on my boat". We could do something like "Youre crazy if Im going to let YOU on my boat, Im the only gold swanderer in this area!"

That's not permanent, all that would do is remove items from the game so that no one gets them, not to mention if someone takes your item just to anger you and then sold it, you'd be less than pleased, and rightfully so.

[Korr]

The thought behind that is would have to chance to hunt them down while they search for an epic shop. No recalling to FD/Ave or entering FD/Ave to easily sell a stolen item. For as long as you have a stolen item on you you wont be allowed in avendell or FD sounds pretty permanent unless they ditch the item somewhere.

And to Jebbo, all of page 17 and 19 of the NS4 changelog come after the date of the post of "no more NS4 devs"

[Rainswept]

So... the pickpocket you couldn't see in the first place, couldn't see when he stole from you, and may not ever know who is... needs to walk stealthily over to Dwarf Home forge and wait for a portal, where he can sell off your items...

or perhaps the Disarmer who already took your weapon and killed you once... all you gotta do is find him.. somewhere on any of the planes that have portals to the planar store, and kill him this time.. without your good weapon, and when he knows to expect you just in case you do find him...

Or either of those people simply log out and come back when you aren't on to go sell.

Sorry man, I see no merit in this idea.

[mgrjebbo]

To Korr- good point.

[Korr]

Rain, I think this is getting into the moot point of not every build can do everything. You can spot to can see the PP attempt, you have discipline youre not as susceptible to disarm. The list of such things goes on, with fort saves, will saves, reflex saves, HPs, AC, etc, etc, etc. I dont see why PP should be singled out just because there is a very small chance for an item to be stolen from a person. As far as I have seen if you could successfully PP someone the chances of getting an item from disarming is much higher than getting an item from PP.

As I see it its about 20-30% to be able to PP an item as opposed to just gold. Within 5 levels theres a 50% chance (up to 70% I think with a whip) of your weapon dropping to the ground to be picked up.

[burrahobbit]

To use any argument involving disarm to get pp changed is, well....... silly.

PP is too easy to exploit, too easy (with the changes you want) to clear folks out, and too easy to used in a mean and vicious way. I like pvp, but when i die, life is a respawn away and i can go try again. I have probably disarmed 60% of the server at one time or another and i always gave their weapon back. I would hope that it caused some of you to blow a few feats on disc. I learned the hard way (thank you pup, who incidently didnt give anything back). I would also like to think that by giving weapons back i never ruined someone's fun. Thats what this game is about right, fun? Not all of the servers patrons are on 6 hours a day. You could PP FoN, DD, and PWnD for weeks and i dont think any of us would run out of gear, might as well PP CLAD, they dont know how to use the stuff the have....... (just kiddin) Their ability of some of the other players to have decked out characters is very limited. Who knows, maybe "fun" is stealing items all day.........

[Korr]

The only changes I would like to see implemented is the ability to actually use it in any fashion other than ganking 60 gold. If the cooldown for PP has to be 10 minutes to make it acceptable to actually steal something, then so be it. But in its current state its useless unless youre flat broke.

[burrahobbit]

good

[Rainswept]

To use any argument involving disarm to get pp changed is, well....... silly.

PP is too easy to exploit, too easy (with the changes you want) to clear folks out, and too easy to used in a mean and vicious way. I like pvp, but when i die, life is a respawn away and i can go try again. I have probably disarmed 60% of the server at one time or another and i always gave their weapon back. I would hope that it caused some of you to blow a few feats on disc. I learned the hard way (thank you pup, who incidently didnt give anything back). I would also like to think that by giving weapons back i never ruined someone's fun. Thats what this game is about right, fun? Not all of the servers patrons are on 6 hours a day. You could PP FoN, DD, and PWnD for weeks and i dont think any of us would run out of gear, might as well PP CLAD, they dont know how to use the stuff the have....... (just kiddin) Their ability of some of the other players to have decked out characters is very limited. Who knows, maybe "fun" is stealing items all day.........

But is it fun to have items taken forever? From my perspective, PP and disarm are inseperable, because they are the only things on the server that let one player adversely affect another player for more than a short time, ie permanently. In every other area, the server works hard and well to make sure exactly that thing doesn't happen. That's why you don't lose xp when pk'd it's why there are no harrassing rules, it's why relics give a bonus, but there is no penalty for not having any relics at all. The point in most cases is a brief demonstration of superiority, some bragging rights, and a lot of rules to make sure you don't ruin someones day. Believe me when I hear stories about people losing their Glimmer Blades to disarm, their day was ruined.

I'm all for disarm as a battle tactic, hell ya if you can knock a sord out of someones hand they deserve to go down, and that's all part of the game. I just don't think they deserve to lose their gear forever. You're clearly nice enough to give it back, but I think it's broken that people don't have to.

Korr, clearly you're not addressing what I say at all, presumably on purpose. I can't make it any clearer that I do not feel it's a positive thing for the server that hard to get items can be taken from player permanently simply because someone has a skill that beats theirs. I do not disagree with you at all that pp could be more usefull, what I'd like to see is a way for the skill to be usefull without causing players to lose stuff they worked their tail off to get.

[Dazrield]

I was pretty irked when I found out that disarmed weapons weren't returned here the hard way. My very first night here a few weeks ago someone I was adventuring with gave me 2 tigerclaws(lvl 30 kukri), I drooled over them for the next 26 lvls or so wondering how cool it would be to use them.

I finally got my chance and was promptly disarmed of both after being KD'd by some spell shortly after. I politely asked for them back, the person simply said 'no'. He had a companion that offered me 2 daggers and said his friend wasn't required to give them back, and as I had been told by another player that weapons were returned upon disarm, I told him I had heard different. He then said 'check the rules and read them again'(which i thought was a bit rude for just coming into 2 awesome kukri's of mine.. a little cuddling after bending a newb over might have gone a long way to me not being as bitter about the whole ordeal). The disarmer later said he'd give me the one kukri back(he managed to 'misplace' the other or simply left it laying on the ground apparently).

So, there I am, lvl 30 with like 10 other people on the server(none within my adventuring lvl) and me with lvl 20 kukris. I suppose I could've gone out into the FD wilderness and adventure, but that's where the hostile party was to begin with, so.. I really had no where to go. Can't craft worth anything as I am a SD(which i should've and would've used had I known about the other person keeping my weps). I probably would've just went server hunting again had not some kind soul donated another set of kukri's to me.

If you guys change PP into an easier skill, the people that have been around awhile will simply have to start stocking more on their mules when they go out gear hunting with their lvl 40's, but to us newbs.. we'll have nothing left. Lets face it, the exploiters will do it just to irk people, and what fun is it to steal from someone that has 10 of everything? None, they will target the newbs that it will actually have an effect on when looking to get a rise outa someone.

[Korr]

Rain it seems that I come from a different world than you. My first experience with an online game was one called "MajorMUD" this game is HUGE (as far as areas). Alot of areas you cant get into without special preparation. For those who dont know MUDs are text based games (or atleast were when I played them) originally (generally everything is a MUD now since it stands for Multi-User Dungeon). Many servers let you "script" to get experience considering the leveling rate in MajorMUD vs NWN is about 1000 times faster in NWN (thats being generous and not a joke). So when you are scripting afk overnight in some area and someone decides to come kill you, well say he does manage to kill you too. All your items are gone except a few quest items (like plot items in NWN) that are "loyal". So in order to get your stuff back you have to make it back to where you died and hope the guy didnt make off with anything. Generally all your stuff (atleast the good stuff) is gone, and you have to go get it back.

So when I see something like a COMPLETE lack of effectiveness of a skill like PP I wonder why. Yes it can be expoited, yes its "permanent" as you want to say. The thing here is that this server IS a PvP server, its designed very much around that. This being said that would mean you could get yourself a HUGE advantage if you suddenly stole a FoM rod off someone and have the ability to slow bigby him. . . nothing he can do anymore! Or raise scrolls off someone, no longer can they raise an enemy.

The simple thing I think alot of people are missing is that PP (in an effective state) is ALOT easier to overcome than you think. Go buy 1 stack of level 1 arrows in avendell, split them across your inventory and when you get PP it looks something like this.

Attempts 1-5 : gold between 50-80
Attempt 6 : a chance for an item, with 100 arrows split in inventory vs lets say an average of 50 other items the chance of getting an arrow is 2:1
Attempts 7-12 : gold between 50-80
Attempt 13 : a chance for an item, with 99 arrows left and 50 other items, the chance of gettin an arrow is still about 2:1

In fact were looking at having to PP well over 100 times to get a DECENT chance at getting something OTHER than arrows.

Im sure this will spark the notion to people of "Well why do I have to prepare to be pick-pocketed?"
Because thats a PvP server for you. . . you have to be prepared to be bigbied, disarmed, sneak attacked, death attacked, Scythe WM critted, etc, etc, etc.

[Nyeleni]

Putting a lot of useless items in your "rucksack", imo, is exploiting. Many mods don't allow it.

I'd say just put - in addition of a a weight limit - a lvl cap like lvl25. All above isn't possible to pp. But make the skill useful again.

[renarð]

Some thoughts. I admit I am not entirely clear on the current implementation, but pickpocketing would fit in nicely with my reroll of D2 =)

1) Disarming can only target a weapon, not anything else, so it is very limited in scope. PP would need to also be similarly narrow.

2) You know exactly who disarmed you and you can see it coming (I have never seen a stealther that disarms, much less disarms effectively). Stealth seems very exploitable with pickpocket.

3) It's easier to build for disarms than pickpockets (at least the original implementation, and presumably a buffed pp). Discipline is available to 6 of the base classes, spot is available to 2. Discipline is very much encouraged in both pve and pvp play, spot has a few gimmick uses in pve and is pretty much a pvp skill (not that this really bothers me).

4) Casters and monks can be effective without weapons and can be functionally immune to disarm without dumping a single skill point. I'm hard pressed to think of something that would work against pp in a similar manner.

5) Spot gear is slim (a few bows, one chest piece, and helmets), disc gear is everywhere (helms, rings, a wrist, belts, probably more I am unaware of), not everyone is a caster.

When it comes down to it, reflex save and spot skill just aren't as useful as discipline and AC. In its revamped form, pp would need to be still need to be sufficiently nerfed from the bioware implementation to make sure 95% of existing toons weren't wide open to pickpockets and every new toon didn't have to dump tons of feats or be able to cast trueseeing and c/c just to have a chance to resist pp'ing shadowdancers that you won't be able to spot.