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Picking pockets vs killing?

Can anyone correct me where I'm wrong in this list, please, and possibly add where I've missed?

Picking pocket pros:
You can interact with the NPCs again after

Picking pocket cons (if successful):
Somehow every merchant knows that the items were stolen and the items are both harder to sell and reduced in value.

Killing pros:
All dropped items sell at normal value to appropriate merchants

Killing cons:
You can no longer interact with the NPCs
Possible reputation hit
In crowded areas, it's possible that other NPCs will turn hostile
Difficult to justify a good aligned character killing people just to obtain items when roleplaying

I'm wondering if there are any items (in any of the EE games) that you can pick pocket, but won't drop if killed. It's been a *long* time since I actively tried picking pockets in any of the EE games, but I thought that some NPCs somehow know that you've picked their pockets even when successful and act accordingly. Reputation is fairly easy to repair, so, unless NPCs do have items that can *only* be obtained by picking pockets or if the NPC is in a crowded area, killing the NPCs seems to have the real advantage. Any extra insight on the topic is appreciated.

Comments

  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    You can sell the stuff you get by picking pockets anywhere without any issues. It's only stuff you steal directly from stores, (which uses the pickpocket score but is not picking pockets), that has to be sold to a fence.

    Anyway, the two pros of picking pockets over killing are the ones you identified. You can interact with the characters afterward and you don't take a reputation hit. This is a big deal, since almost all characters with items worth stealing are characters you're going to want to keep interacting with, or characters you don't care the slightest bit about but who are flagged to trash your rep if you kill them.

    This is more of a thing in BG2. Ribald has cool toys, but if you kill him you can't shop at his store anymore. Random nobles and soldiers can have top-tier spell scrolls, but there are dozens of them, they're mostly in heavily-populated areas, and killing them pretty irreparably destroys your reputation since there are fewer "free" reputation points just lying around waiting to be claimed.

    In BG1 there are fewer good pickpocket targets, and it's a lot easier to justify the reputation hit when it's pretty much just for Algernon.

    (On the subject and worth noting: the 5th level mage spell Feeblemind can be cast on blue-circle NPCs. If the spell fails, they don't go hostile because you didn't do anything to them. If the spell succeeds, they don't go hostile because they have the intellectual capabilities of a pinecone. And after they've been feebleminded, you can attempt to pickpocket them as many times as you want; there's no longer any penalty for failure given that bit about the intellectual capabilities of a pinecone.)

    Either way, by far the biggest advantage of pickpockets isn't the ability to pick pockets, it's the ability to rob stores.
    SkatanThacoBell
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    Jidokwon said:

    I'm wondering if there are any items (in any of the EE games) that you can pick pocket, but won't drop if killed.

    Oh, also, forgot to address this.

    Technically, no, there's not anything that you could pickpocket that wouldn't be sitting on their corpse if you killed them instead. But on the other hand, there *ARE* NPCs who you can pickpocket but you cannot kill.

    If you attack some plot-critical NPCs, for instance, the game sends an unkillable assassin after you to punish your hubris. If you're doing Jahiera's personal quest, you'll (twice) run across Elminster in disguise. You can pick that sucker's pockets completely clean, then wait until he comes back and loot him all over again.

    There are also items that you can pickpocket which will *ALSO* drop when killed. These used to be more common-- you could get two Rings of Gaxx, for instance, (the best ring in BG2). Pickpocket the enemy who had it for one, kill him for another. You could get two or even three Rings of the Ram.

    The EE has fixed most of those, but as of 1.3 at least, (which is what I'm playing because I play on iPad), there were still some left. The Elminster trick falls in this category. You can still get a pair of Rings of Acuity from Lavok. That sort of thing. Nothing really earth-shaking, (though Elminster coughs up a *LOT* of high-quality cloaks and rings of protection), but useful nonetheless.
    Skatan
  • JidokwonJidokwon Member Posts: 395
    @SomeSort: Thank you for the replies. It's nice to see that there are considerable advantages to raising the skill, other than robbing stores.
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    Jidokwon said:

    @SomeSort: Thank you for the replies. It's nice to see that there are considerable advantages to raising the skill, other than robbing stores.

    Well... there are considerable advantages to the skill, but depending on your level of cheese tolerance, there are very few benefits to *RAISING* the skill. This is because Potions of Master Thievery give you +40% to your pickpocket score, and the game's creators, in their infinite wisdom, made it so that they *stack*. Which is so, so broken.

    (I'll use the beginning of BG2 to illustrate, since the beginning of BG2 is where this skill is by far the most broken.) Say you have a 10% pickpocket score. Pretty much anything you try to steal will result in failure. Now say you purchase six potions of Master Thievery for about 2,000 gold and you drink them all at once. Now your pickpocket score is 250, which I believe is enough for a 100% success rate at every single pickpocket check in the game.

    Not only can you run through town pickpocketing every character in the city for some solid loot, (high-level mage scrolls, mostly), but you can go to stores and steal hundreds of thousands of gold worth of elite, end-game-caliber gear before you fight your first enemy.

    Some of the stores are flagged so that you can't steal from them because security is just too tight. This isn't a problem; you can go to a fence, someone willing to buy stolen gear, and sell all the stuff you stole from the other stores. Then you can steal all that stuff back and sell it back again. And then again. And you can steal/sell everything as long as you like until you have theoretically infinite gold.

    Not only does this let you buy every item you want from the "no-stealing" stores legitimately, (or "legitimately"), but it also destroys the entire premise of Chapter 2, which is supposed to be about managing your money and doing quests to raise 15,000 gold to save a friend.

    If you have a mage in your party, you can steal every scroll in the city, have your party mage fill up his spell book, then erase all the spells and scribe them all again until you've scribed every scroll in town. Depending on how crazy you want to go with it, this will give you millions of XP. Since companions' levels are tied to your level when you recruit them, you can do this with just a thief and mage in your party so the XP gets split fewer ways, then recruit higher-level versions of your companions afterwards. (The highest-level versions come with 1.2m XP.)

    And the potions of Master Thievery last long enough that you can do all of this without even having to refresh them. And the kicker is, while it takes six such potions to start the cycle, you'll wind up with more than a dozen new ones for free by the time you're done.

    So, to sum it all up, the second you gain control of your character after the prologue ends you can, with just 10 points in Pick Pockets and 2,000 gold:
    * gain functionally infinite money
    * gain a million XP for your entire party, (6m total)
    * load up on end-game gear, including a handful of the most powerful items in the entire saga
    * Grab enough enchanted arrows / bolts / bullets that your archers will never fire non-magical ammo again
    * Fill up your mage's spell-books, including with rare high-level spells, and
    * Complete Chapter 2 and advance to Chapter 3, (which gets you more sweet gear in the process).

    And you can do it all without fighting a single enemy or doing a single quest. If you're willing to exploit it, pickpocket is arguably the most broken thing in the game. All without investing a single point.

    (I'd recommend against exploiting it. I house-rule that I'm not allowed to sell anything I steal because it breaks the game's economy, and I also house-rule that I'm not allowed to use more than one potion of Master Thievery at a time, so if I really want to steal with impunity from the tougher stores I'm forced to sink 150+ hard points into my pickpocket skill.)
    ThacoBellOrlonKronsteensarevok57
  • 11302101130210 Member Posts: 381
    I never found much use for the pickpocket skill. It's so weird, I would pickpocket and no one would really have anything!

    Perhaps it's more a skill that's used in the actual AD&D board games more than in a computer game.
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    1130210 said:

    I never found much use for the pickpocket skill. It's so weird, I would pickpocket and no one would really have anything!

    Perhaps it's more a skill that's used in the actual AD&D board games more than in a computer game.

    ya just need to know where to use it :)

  • ZaghoulZaghoul Member, Moderator Posts: 3,938
    Rogue Re-balancing implements a better pick-pocketing routine. Gives options to talk your way out of a failed attempt based on certain ability scores, rep, and lore. Same with guards and robbing shops or houses, a chance to pay a fine on the spot to get out of it.
    Great and lovin it.
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