Im game for this, I think it adds a bit of flavor to the game as long as the players arent being ***** to eachother about it. The thing that is making this difficult is that my players want to be able to steal from a PC without the other the person knowing. It's hard to do that when I have one person roll perception and i refuse to tell them what it is for while another person is rolling and then 10 minutes later they find that all their gold is missing. I told them the other person can know and just roleplay but they are deadset on this. Any ideas or should I just have them suck it up?
Allowing player characters to steal treasure (gold/items) from each other is likely to prematurely end a campaign.
I strongly suggest sitting down with any players that want to have their characters steal from other characters and ask them why they want their character to do this.
Walk them through the consequences of their actions, as it is almost certain that their character's thieving ways will be discovered at some point. This will likely lead to their character being imprisoned or killed. Possibly they escape, but they still can't adventure with the party any longer, so the character is still unplayable.
I've had players that wanted to do this before - 1st edition AD&D even rewarded it by granting XP for stealing treasure if you were a thief.
However you handle it, please bear in mind it will cause issues between your players.
Additionally, if you decide you're fine with it: Sit down with the ENTIRE GROUP and ask them what they are okay with allowing and not. Hey guys, would you be comfortable with your fellow party members being able to steal from you? If you steal from someone, are you fine with the group turning on you if you're discovered?
It can work. In the Barovia-set campaign I play in, the Rogue will steal things from people - but for story, or comedy purposes. Someone refusing to show him a letter? He steals it, reads it, then hands it back to them, and we have a good laugh. There was another situation where something was stolen early on, and became a story point later, and the group was fine with it. If he started to steal treasure from us? That would probably not be as fine. So it can work, but everyone needs to know that it's possible, and the person who is doing the stealing NEEDS to be coming at it from a story and fun based place for everyone, not for personal gain/selfishness.
I think part of the problem with this type of thing in general is that, whereas the DM is often in it for the overall story, the players have a more personal take on the experience — and what's fun for one player, is sometimes bad for all the other players and the story.
Ideally a group of players would be able to say all these things out loud, and be confident the others won't metagame, with them going along with it to make an awesome story. But it's not always possible.
Having one player set on the other player not knowing it, and I get that it's implied they don't want them to have any chance of finding out (assuming it works), smacks of out of character, one-upmanship. Especially if it's just against one player, to take gold. Do they have a good reason or is it generic greed? Is there a chance this will ever be discovered if it works? Will it actually add flavor, after those questions?
If so, you are in luck. Perception checks are generally active efforts. Against stealth, and sleight-of-hand, it's typically their passive perception this should run off of — at least, I've always done it this way, for both monsters and players. All you need to do is keep an up-to-date list of everyone's passive perception scores, and if people want to do hidden things, have them write and pass you a note, and you can pass one back after they've told you the roll. The victim of the crime does need to actively roll.
Just make sure you have a rough idea where each character is keeping their important items. You don't want to say someone's taken something from somewhere, and the other player had actually equipped it or locked it somewhere else two sessions ago.
Scott Weiland always played a Chaotic-Neutral Elven Thief...
As Dungeon Master, I was the director of each game. Sometimes when people wanted to do something without consulting with the group, they would pass me a note stating their intentions.
"After I pick the lock on the chest, while everyone is looking inside, I am going to pick-pocket Tim and steal his Ring of Invisibility," said a typical note from Scott, demonstrating all at once his utility to the group and his mischievous nature. And he could get away with anything. I would roll the dice, privately, to see if Scott was going to pull it off this time. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't, but even when he was caught red-handed, literally with his hand in the wizard's pocket, nobody ever really held it against him.
He would smirk, with about the most perfect Alfred E. Neumann look you can imagine, and take the bashing the others gave him, knowing full well that they wouldn't be mad for long.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves.
Im game for this, I think it adds a bit of flavor to the game as long as the players arent being ***** to eachother about it. The thing that is making this difficult is that my players want to be able to steal from a PC without the other the person knowing. It's hard to do that when I have one person roll perception and i refuse to tell them what it is for while another person is rolling and then 10 minutes later they find that all their gold is missing. I told them the other person can know and just roleplay but they are deadset on this. Any ideas or should I just have them suck it up?
Regarding the meta-game aspect (making your players paranoid because they are making nebulous dice-rolls and then hoping they don't act on that info to infer whats actually happening in game), you can just make those roles yourself. If you don't want them to hear dice I'm sure there are dice rolling apps on your smart phone that you could use. It's not unfair provided you do no more than that to protect the guilty.
Regarding the general "Is it good for the campaign" question, just let them role-play it out and let the consequences come, whatever they may be. If the thief is wise and only party-thieves when there are other party members or NPC around then maybe it leads to the victim pursuing an innocent player/NPC, and that could be fun. If the thief isn't so wise and thieves the item when nobody else is around, well, that won't be to hard for the victim to figure out, and maybe you end up with a dead player or maybe it turns into a subplot of one-upsmanship between the players playing practical jokes on each-other. Let it play out. If it goes poorly then the players learn something about party dynamics.
I don't think letting people steal is good Everyone in my campaign was so mad at one player for wanting to steal gold from someone that they were ready to kill the character. Because their excuse was that they were rich enough not to care for the player was one of the wealthiest stealing from the poorest Don't let people steal, or else there could be a fight and an end to the campaign
You're game for this? This is PvP. Make sure everybody is fine with it and are willing to have their characters die at the hands of the other characters.
To make it work, what you can do is have the thief roll a d20 for you, claiming it's anything you want to. You can even have everyone roll a d20 at random times to throw off suspicion. You then add the Sleight of Hand modifier and if it beats the target's passive perception then it is successful. When they finally look for their gold, tell them it's gone.
Well, since this thread got necroed, I'm just going to say that I've never seen an instance of a PC stealing from another PC end well. "Best" case scenario is the thief getting permanently ejected from the party. Worst case is the gaming group breaking down completely and nobody wants to talk with each other anymore.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
There are two types of D&D games. Story-driven games and emergent story games.
Modern D&D focuses primarily on story-driven games which means that the primary focus of the game is on the adventure, with the plot created by the DM and the story archs of the individual characters. In such a game, doing "other stuff" that might result in emergent stories, is generally bad for the game because it will inevitably derail you from the games main focus.
Emergent gameplay is where players make characters, the DM lets them lose on a living breathing world and they use their own characters' motivations as a drive to find a story, while the DM simply responds to what is happening in the game and the story of the game becomes whatever shakes out from all this interaction. This is how D&D is played in the OSR and how D&D was played up to around the 90's when it started to shift to the modern method.
The issue is that these two playstyles are really not compatible, its sort of like they step on each other's toes. Back in the early days of D&D it was expected that player characters would go off on their own periodically and do stuff related to what their class was good at, which would inevitably create adventures for the group. The Thief might for example decide "I'm staging a robbery of the alchemy shop, who's with me" and the group might try to pull off a heist and however those events shook out that would become the story of the game.
If players are doing that sort of thing while they are on a quest to stop the big evil necromancer raising an army of the dead.. aka, the plot written by the DM, this immediately conflicts.
PvP, getting involved in politics, kingdom running, joining thieves guild, stealing from each other... all this kind of stuff has the makings of emergent gameplay and is going to derail a plot-story-driven game.
So I mostly agree with the advice above, this style of play I can vouch for, it is a lot of fun and creates amazing gaming experiences, but it requires a mature player group and an understanding that this sort of emergent gameplay is a very different thing than a story-plot driven game. You kind of have to go into a campaign with the understanding "ok this is what we are doing". Trying to do it in a game planned to be a story-plot focused game is going to be super disruptive and usually ends up with frustrated players and an early funeral for a campaign.
Im game for this, I think it adds a bit of flavor to the game as long as the players arent being ***** to eachother about it. The thing that is making this difficult is that my players want to be able to steal from a PC without the other the person knowing. It's hard to do that when I have one person roll perception and i refuse to tell them what it is for while another person is rolling and then 10 minutes later they find that all their gold is missing. I told them the other person can know and just roleplay but they are deadset on this. Any ideas or should I just have them suck it up?
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersAllowing player characters to steal treasure (gold/items) from each other is likely to prematurely end a campaign.
I strongly suggest sitting down with any players that want to have their characters steal from other characters and ask them why they want their character to do this.
Walk them through the consequences of their actions, as it is almost certain that their character's thieving ways will be discovered at some point. This will likely lead to their character being imprisoned or killed. Possibly they escape, but they still can't adventure with the party any longer, so the character is still unplayable.
I've had players that wanted to do this before - 1st edition AD&D even rewarded it by granting XP for stealing treasure if you were a thief.
However you handle it, please bear in mind it will cause issues between your players.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Additionally, if you decide you're fine with it: Sit down with the ENTIRE GROUP and ask them what they are okay with allowing and not. Hey guys, would you be comfortable with your fellow party members being able to steal from you? If you steal from someone, are you fine with the group turning on you if you're discovered?
It can work. In the Barovia-set campaign I play in, the Rogue will steal things from people - but for story, or comedy purposes. Someone refusing to show him a letter? He steals it, reads it, then hands it back to them, and we have a good laugh. There was another situation where something was stolen early on, and became a story point later, and the group was fine with it. If he started to steal treasure from us? That would probably not be as fine. So it can work, but everyone needs to know that it's possible, and the person who is doing the stealing NEEDS to be coming at it from a story and fun based place for everyone, not for personal gain/selfishness.
I think part of the problem with this type of thing in general is that, whereas the DM is often in it for the overall story, the players have a more personal take on the experience — and what's fun for one player, is sometimes bad for all the other players and the story.
Ideally a group of players would be able to say all these things out loud, and be confident the others won't metagame, with them going along with it to make an awesome story. But it's not always possible.
Having one player set on the other player not knowing it, and I get that it's implied they don't want them to have any chance of finding out (assuming it works), smacks of out of character, one-upmanship. Especially if it's just against one player, to take gold. Do they have a good reason or is it generic greed? Is there a chance this will ever be discovered if it works? Will it actually add flavor, after those questions?
If so, you are in luck. Perception checks are generally active efforts. Against stealth, and sleight-of-hand, it's typically their passive perception this should run off of — at least, I've always done it this way, for both monsters and players. All you need to do is keep an up-to-date list of everyone's passive perception scores, and if people want to do hidden things, have them write and pass you a note, and you can pass one back after they've told you the roll. The victim of the crime does need to actively roll.
Just make sure you have a rough idea where each character is keeping their important items. You don't want to say someone's taken something from somewhere, and the other player had actually equipped it or locked it somewhere else two sessions ago.
Site Rules & Guidelines - Please feel free to message a moderator if you have any concerns.
My homebrew: [Subclasses] [Races] [Feats] [Discussion Thread]
Reminded me:
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves.
I don't think letting people steal is good Everyone in my campaign was so mad at one player for wanting to steal gold from someone that they were ready to kill the character. Because their excuse was that they were rich enough not to care for the player was one of the wealthiest stealing from the poorest Don't let people steal, or else there could be a fight and an end to the campaign
You're game for this? This is PvP. Make sure everybody is fine with it and are willing to have their characters die at the hands of the other characters.
To make it work, what you can do is have the thief roll a d20 for you, claiming it's anything you want to. You can even have everyone roll a d20 at random times to throw off suspicion. You then add the Sleight of Hand modifier and if it beats the target's passive perception then it is successful. When they finally look for their gold, tell them it's gone.
Well, since this thread got necroed, I'm just going to say that I've never seen an instance of a PC stealing from another PC end well. "Best" case scenario is the thief getting permanently ejected from the party. Worst case is the gaming group breaking down completely and nobody wants to talk with each other anymore.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
There are two types of D&D games. Story-driven games and emergent story games.
Modern D&D focuses primarily on story-driven games which means that the primary focus of the game is on the adventure, with the plot created by the DM and the story archs of the individual characters. In such a game, doing "other stuff" that might result in emergent stories, is generally bad for the game because it will inevitably derail you from the games main focus.
Emergent gameplay is where players make characters, the DM lets them lose on a living breathing world and they use their own characters' motivations as a drive to find a story, while the DM simply responds to what is happening in the game and the story of the game becomes whatever shakes out from all this interaction. This is how D&D is played in the OSR and how D&D was played up to around the 90's when it started to shift to the modern method.
The issue is that these two playstyles are really not compatible, its sort of like they step on each other's toes. Back in the early days of D&D it was expected that player characters would go off on their own periodically and do stuff related to what their class was good at, which would inevitably create adventures for the group. The Thief might for example decide "I'm staging a robbery of the alchemy shop, who's with me" and the group might try to pull off a heist and however those events shook out that would become the story of the game.
If players are doing that sort of thing while they are on a quest to stop the big evil necromancer raising an army of the dead.. aka, the plot written by the DM, this immediately conflicts.
PvP, getting involved in politics, kingdom running, joining thieves guild, stealing from each other... all this kind of stuff has the makings of emergent gameplay and is going to derail a plot-story-driven game.
So I mostly agree with the advice above, this style of play I can vouch for, it is a lot of fun and creates amazing gaming experiences, but it requires a mature player group and an understanding that this sort of emergent gameplay is a very different thing than a story-plot driven game. You kind of have to go into a campaign with the understanding "ok this is what we are doing". Trying to do it in a game planned to be a story-plot focused game is going to be super disruptive and usually ends up with frustrated players and an early funeral for a campaign.