I'm starting my first campaign in a week and I've previously ran a one shot. The rogue in my party pick-pocketed everyone, just wondering how much gold should be acceptable if they do it this all the time or if there are other items they could gain from it.
Not much. The player is hogging all of the time by pick pocketing so I wouldn’t reward that bad behavior. When the player complains ask him how much money he has with him and how much he has in the bank. Wouldn’t the NPCs in your world do the same thing? Keep a few copper pieces and a couple of silver pieces on them and leave the rest somewhere safe?
The rogue may not be aware that spells like locate object exist. That's only a 2nd level spell and can be cast by a Bard, Cleric, Druid, or Wizard of 3rd level or higher, amongst others.
Imagine the party arrive at a town to meet a contact to get paid for an adventure. The rogue sees a wealthy looking merchant in a crowd and steals from them, gaining a pouch of coins and a nice, golden medallion. That medallion is important to the merchant, so they use connections to get the town watch involved, along with suitable casters. At the very least, the rogue is going to be run out of town, possibly with the other party members if they've been seen together. That could prevent the party from being able to collect their reward as well as becoming wanted criminals.
In short - actions have consequences.
That's how I run my games anyways. 😊
If the rogue is stealing from other party members, I strongly urge you to talk to the entire group in advance about what PvP (player vs player) is acceptable within the group. Theft from other members will have consequences that may be resolved violently. Discussing ground rules like that is a good call anyway!
Doing a lot of pickpocketing is basically practicing a profession, with the usual effect of offsetting lifestyle costs. Pickpocketing people who are likely to actually have nice stuff is likely to also get you in trouble, unless you're an 11th level rogue (reliable talent) you're going to fail occasionally, even if you don't fail there are other ways to get caught, and people with good stuff are likely to also have effective ways of making their displeasure known.
So in old school D&D (we are talking Basic Set days), here is what we did.
First of all, in a lot of the old modules, every single NPC has a list of what items they have on them just in case a thief wants to pickpocket. In those modules, they would list things like, "A small pouch containing 2d12 copper," and "a silver dagger," and "a lucky rabbit's foot." They had this stuff for every NPC in the module, as I say. And the way we ran it was, if you pickpocketed successfully, the DM rolled randomly among the items to see what you got. The example above, with 3 options, DM would roll 1d6, and 1-2 was the pouch, 3-4 was the dagger, 5-6 was the rabbit's foot.
When we made up our own NPCs (i.e. not a published module), we had a lot of inventory items on them, and the odds were the thief was going to get something that was mostly useless. After a while we stopped bothering most of the time, unless there was some visible item that could easily be palmed -- the DM might let us make a specific try for that item. But I believe, like a "called shot" in attacking, there was a penalty for a "called item" rather than just a random item (higher chance you'd fail).
I'm starting my first campaign in a week and I've previously ran a one shot. The rogue in my party pick-pocketed everyone, just wondering how much gold should be acceptable if they do it this all the time or if there are other items they could gain from it.
Not much. The player is hogging all of the time by pick pocketing so I wouldn’t reward that bad behavior. When the player complains ask him how much money he has with him and how much he has in the bank. Wouldn’t the NPCs in your world do the same thing? Keep a few copper pieces and a couple of silver pieces on them and leave the rest somewhere safe?
Professional computer geek
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersThe rogue may not be aware that spells like locate object exist. That's only a 2nd level spell and can be cast by a Bard, Cleric, Druid, or Wizard of 3rd level or higher, amongst others.
Imagine the party arrive at a town to meet a contact to get paid for an adventure. The rogue sees a wealthy looking merchant in a crowd and steals from them, gaining a pouch of coins and a nice, golden medallion. That medallion is important to the merchant, so they use connections to get the town watch involved, along with suitable casters. At the very least, the rogue is going to be run out of town, possibly with the other party members if they've been seen together. That could prevent the party from being able to collect their reward as well as becoming wanted criminals.
In short - actions have consequences.
That's how I run my games anyways. 😊
If the rogue is stealing from other party members, I strongly urge you to talk to the entire group in advance about what PvP (player vs player) is acceptable within the group. Theft from other members will have consequences that may be resolved violently. Discussing ground rules like that is a good call anyway!
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!"🔊
Doing a lot of pickpocketing is basically practicing a profession, with the usual effect of offsetting lifestyle costs. Pickpocketing people who are likely to actually have nice stuff is likely to also get you in trouble, unless you're an 11th level rogue (reliable talent) you're going to fail occasionally, even if you don't fail there are other ways to get caught, and people with good stuff are likely to also have effective ways of making their displeasure known.
So in old school D&D (we are talking Basic Set days), here is what we did.
First of all, in a lot of the old modules, every single NPC has a list of what items they have on them just in case a thief wants to pickpocket. In those modules, they would list things like, "A small pouch containing 2d12 copper," and "a silver dagger," and "a lucky rabbit's foot." They had this stuff for every NPC in the module, as I say. And the way we ran it was, if you pickpocketed successfully, the DM rolled randomly among the items to see what you got. The example above, with 3 options, DM would roll 1d6, and 1-2 was the pouch, 3-4 was the dagger, 5-6 was the rabbit's foot.
When we made up our own NPCs (i.e. not a published module), we had a lot of inventory items on them, and the odds were the thief was going to get something that was mostly useless. After a while we stopped bothering most of the time, unless there was some visible item that could easily be palmed -- the DM might let us make a specific try for that item. But I believe, like a "called shot" in attacking, there was a penalty for a "called item" rather than just a random item (higher chance you'd fail).
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.