Let's fix PRY and STEAL

Currently a thief can pry someone's worn equipment by guessing the weight (weightless, light, medium, heavy IIRC) and it is removed from character and put in thief's inventory.  Nobody likes this.  However, it's crucial for a thief to debuff their opponents and this is the only other way besides traps and plant (which requires an open slot, which requires pry).

My suggestion:

Prying an item with correct weight puts it in the owner's inventory.  Guessing the wrong weight breaks the item and moves it to inventory and has increased chance of waking opponent as it currently does I believe.  Item can be repaired later in repair shop.  Thief can then steal the item like usual or plant on the open slot.  Successfully planting an item on a slot worn by another item would also move the worn item to the inventory without being damaged.  Thief can then steal the item like usual.

Put a rare and container item max on Steal.  Just like looting from a Moderate corpse there needs a point where a thief gets some kind of warning like "If you need to steal more stuff, you're doing it wrong." but with better RP.  The max could be a function of how many rares the thief currently wears/carries or just some static number like 1 container and 4 rares per char.  Other non-rares like potions would continue to have no max. 

Thoughts?

As written, this is a straight nerf for thieves, who are already pretty weak.

You can simply remove pry and steal from the game and give them fighting capability to compensate. But please, please don't make it another warrior rogue like what happened to ninja. So much potential in the stealth game.

I agree with @Celerity on this one.  I don't want yet another warrior rogue.  Hit and run tactics should be viable but they need combat skills and debuffs to compensate.  A rogue should have higher burst damage than a warrior.  But, it should be isolated and situational and the rogue given skills to help set that up.  antimagic, Blackjack, backstab combo is a great example of that.

If you leave thieves with steal, I'm fine with that.  But, prying is another story when you combine it with hide.  A lot of people are thinking offensively for thieves.  I'm concerned with their defense as well.  Right now, out of combat, they are the only class that can steal from you, pry your equipment and never give you a chance to get it back.

30 minutes ago, Archbishop Monk said:

 

If you leave thieves with steal, I'm fine with that.  But, prying is another story when you combine it with hide.  A lot of people are thinking offensively for thieves.  I'm concerned with their defense as well.  Right now, out of combat, they are the only class that can steal from you, pry your equipment and never give you a chance to get it back.

My suggestion means they have to both PRY and STEAL an item if you are wearing it.  Instead of just prying it right off.  That means victim chance to wake is greater per worn item that a thief wants.  It also allows for the necessary debuffs if they just pry it and purposefully break the item at the expense of greater chance to wake.  It puts more limitations on prying is what it comes down to. 

Having a steal cap makes it less likely people will log out.  BUT it also forces the thief to be strategic in what they steal.  Do they need a new suit? Or trying to kill you?  Difference choices.

1 hour ago, Celerity said:

As written, this is a straight nerf for thieves, who are already pretty weak.

It's just been a while since someone played a really nasty one that wasn't a Gladiator.  I personally don't think they're weak and I don't think my suggestion nerfs them.  Right now if they fail a pry, they just fail it.  I'm saying if they fail pry, they break the item and it goes to inventory with a slightly higher chance of waking opponent.  If they succeed, no damage to item, and it goes to inventory, same chance of waking victim as currently.  So in one way it's a buff to pry but it's also a buff to players if that thief also wants to steal the pried item in the form of two chances to wake up for one item.

Edit: It also gives the thief a good place to set an ambush if they break something really nice ;)

A thief already doesn't have enough time to do what they need to do after a blackjack. Requiring pry and then a steal makes them even slower. This is equivalent to just adding more lag to pry if they want to actually obtain the item.

Breaking items instead of prying is a thought, but I don't think I would add it as the 'failure' condition of pry. I think this is better for nodrop/noremove items so the thief can debuff those. Seems like new skill material to me.

This is a step towards dividing thieves towards killers (break item, other time for traps) and thieves (get as much stuff as possible and run) since you don't have time to do both.

The issue is that the 'thieves' portion isn't well-received by anyone else. The only way you are going to get away from this issue is to turn thieves towards rogues and away from thieving (steal/pry) in general.

To do this, we have to think about ways to make them strong and flexible enough without pry/steal.

Part of the reason 'thieves' are not well received is because of the smaller playerbase and skill/armor requirements for a fight.  A 'thief' just stealing and running off with let's just say two amulets of lloth, makes anyone planning on fighting a cleric have to make other choices that may be inferior.  The fact that there is no way to make the thief come out and fight without risking losing more adds to that frustration.  I don't mind a thief trying to kill me so much.  I can defend myself.  I do very much mind a thief who is just trying to steal and pry, which currently the mechanics of how they are built allows.  Nothing stops a thief from decking themselves out in nothing but -ac and saves and stealing/prying from everyone.  Will they get a kill on anyone?  Not likely.  Will they keep people from even thinking about entering town?  Yes, yes they will.

Okay I'll make some suggestions.  My problem is thieves are one of the funnest and coolest classes to RP.  I'd like to keep it that way.

Keep Pry/Plant.  Make it so the pried item goes to the victims Inventory and can't be worn for 24 hours. (Not a broken flag)

Make pilfer only available when you're not affected by being blackjacked.

Make Steal only available when A person is AWAKE.  So you can't just pry, then Steal

Increase Knocking out bigger classes.  (Thief hits you in your nerve and you passout)

Give them Dual parry period.

25 minutes ago, Izzzzy said:

Okay I'll make some suggestions.  My problem is thieves are one of the funnest and coolest classes to PK.  I'd like to keep it that way.

Keep Pry/Plant.  Make it so the pried item goes to the victims Inventory and can't be worn for 24 hours. (Not a broken flag)

Make pilfer only available when you're not affected by being blackjacked.

Make Steal only available when A person is AWAKE.  So you can't just pry, then Steal

Increase Knocking out bigger classes.  (Thief hits you in your nerve and you passout)

Give them Dual parry period.

Lol, there.  Fixed it for you.  Literally every example you gave is PK related, not just RP.

3 hours ago, Archbishop Monk said:

Lol, there.  Fixed it for you.  Literally every example you gave is PK related, not just RP.

I don't care what anyone says PK leads to RP.  If you are getting your ass kicked.  Odds are you're not doing noteable rp.  Write all the journals you want.  I prefer to keep all my RP ingame.  I hate writing journals.  If I'm in a good fight.  Hell yeah I'm gonna rp with the character I am PKing with.

I don't want to see thieves lose the ability to Pry and take peoples stuff.  They are very important guild within the forsakenlands.  In a way they help spread eq.  I'd just like it to be more difficult then a 1s job.  Why wouldn't a thief know how to dual parry with daggers?  Seems like this is the class that it would make most sense to give it to.

3 minutes ago, Izzzzy said:

I don't want to see thieves lose the ability to Pry and take peoples stuff.  They are very important guild within the forsakenlands.  In a way they help spread eq.  I'd just like it to be more difficult then a 1s job.  Why wouldn't a thief know how to dual parry with daggers?  Seems like this is the class that it would make most sense to give it to.

This right here is somewhat incorrect.  Thieves don't spread EQ because people just avoid them entirely.  A thief present in town means no one will be RPing in town and risking losing their armor or life.

Just now, Archbishop Monk said:

This right here is somewhat incorrect.  Thieves don't spread EQ because people just avoid them entirely.  A thief present in town means no one will be RPing in town and risking losing their armor or life.

You shouldn't be in town when there is a thief, and its not like they can't still hide.  With Dual parry, they might not resort to just camping in town and maybe try and KILL some people.  With people not so worried about loosing their things EASILY, players wont just quit when they see thieves.  It can now turn into some rp with the said thief when you're on the counter end of the blackjack.

I think thieves problem is they've forgotten the importance of PLANT!  If I play a thief.  Your blackjacked.  I'm swapping your rings with shitty ring and Im backstabbing you.  I Haven't played a thief in 12 years, and trust me you don't want me too.

1 minute ago, Izzzzy said:

You shouldn't be in town when there is a thief, and its not like they can't still hide.  With Dual parry, they might not resort to just camping in town and maybe try and KILL some people.  With people not so worried about loosing their things EASILY, players wont just quit when they see thieves.  It can now turn into some rp with the said thief when you're on the counter end of the blackjack.

That is the point right there.  That is supply side type of economic thinking.  Make theives buffer and people who play them will play differently which will lead to more RP.  Supply side never increases anything but profiting from those who have the most invested in the supplies.

If that argument held true, then we should also give warriors detect hidden because then thieves couldn't just steal and run away.  They would have to RP more just to keep from being bashed to death.

7 minutes ago, Archbishop Monk said:

They would have to RP more just to keep from being bashed to death.

Drow thief is not getting bashed to death.  To quick, and if your not enlarging yourself then you're just silly.  I will legit roll a drow thief and carry around a dagger to give me dual parry perm, and you won't like it as is.  Not only are you loosing your things,  If I do land a blackjack you're dead.

The problem with playing theives these days is the foot traffic.  You're not getting numbers, so people aren't meeting other players in the city.  If we had numbers, the thief class would be one of the funnest to play.

Now you've got me thinking about rolling a thief.  Do thieves still get that sticky web trap?

The entire city/tribunal/rogue gameplay loop has been disrupted.

The cause is the lower demand for going to cities.

This can be fixed by making town stops vital for food/consumables, you could even make it that unless you're certain races/classes then sleeping outside is detrimental, sleeping in town could be looked at as a solution too.

Bring people into the cities, which will attract rogues which will enrich the Tribunals.

I like it all @Wade.

On 3/22/2020 at 5:25 PM, Wade said:

you could even make it that unless you're certain races/classes then sleeping outside is detrimental, sleeping in town could be looked at as a solution too.

This is a very interesting idea and it spawned a bunch of sub-ideas in my head I'll categorize into home court advantage.

Maybe some races get bonuses from certain area types. Storm giants in water, faerie in air, fire giant in fire rooms, etc, but also add a hometown effect-- you heal best in your city,not just any city. These areas become basically their "high ground" in pk and going there gives them a huge edge on catching ticks, they land blows more, better rolls, etc. I like dynamics that give an edge to the pursued at the cost of the pursuer, because if the pursuer loses, he can start running to where has the advantage and reclaim the edge, and it could help balance the scales a bit on characters being dominated by another character-- instead of logging out go to your home area. Your super unwinnable fight is now at least half-feasible to win. If the other guy doesn't like it, he doesn't have to fight you on your turf. Most places aren't anyone's turf so it creates "safe zones" without making them no-pk areas, but just tilting the odds.

The object of a thief is to de-buff an opponent through steal and pry, then they will fight. If you want to get your stuff back, wait it out and try to out fight them.