So I am DMing my first campaign (homebrew if its relevant) and one of my player characters is a theif. And his quirk is that he is super greedy and always looking for stuff to steal. Like they show up in a town that was recently destroyed by a large monster and his first reaction was "im going to go to the bank and grab as much cash as I can" then he ended up crawling through the local theives guild and every single room he entered "I look for anything worth value" anytime he meets a new npc "I roll stealth and go to pickpocket". Not only is it getting on my nerves when every few minutes hes just looking to expand his inventory and he takes up a lot of time that other players are trying to RP or do other things and other players have came to me and asked me to do something about it and I just don't know what to do. Everyone else has their own thing they do on occasion but he has tried stealing from other PCs and whoever he comes into contact with. Any help is appreciated.
The first thing to always remember when being a DM is (in my opinion): if there is a problem, talk to the interested parts, they might not realize how disruptive something they do is for you and the rest of the party.
A player like this would get on my nerves pretty quickly as well, I have to say, but I believe that talking to them, separately first, is the best course of action. Ask them why they are pushing this quirk so much and if they do not think it could be detrimental to the other players involved (you included, the DM IS a player at the table, they just have a different role). If they do not seem to get the message, or if they seem completely obvious to the possibility, tell them plainly that you have received comments from the other players, suggesting the thief player might be taking it a bit too far (trying to steal from other PCs without a motive beside "because that's my quirk" it's a BIG NO in my book)/playing their quirk a tad too often.
The Background motives, bonds etc. are a nice element of the game, but they are not sacred scripture on how a character behaves, they are RP hooks and suggestion that can help give ideas on how to play a character with a certain backstory. Seems like this player is taking them too literally maybe.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I would just have someone notice his thievery. It sounds like his stealing is mostly spur of the moment/always ongoing. If that's the case, then someone is going to notice. Once they do they will likely take action against him. If he stole from the thieves guild then the thieves guild will probably track him down and try to kill him. If he stole from the people, then he will probably end up on trial and in jail/executed. If he stole from a mage, then he's a newt. Actions have consequences and a thief who cannot control himself will not be a thief for long.
I would just have someone notice his thievery. It sounds like his stealing is mostly spur of the moment/always ongoing. If that's the case, then someone is going to notice. Once they do they will likely take action against him. If he stole from the thieves guild then the thieves guild will probably track him down and try to kill him. If he stole from the people, then he will probably end up on trial and in jail/executed. If he stole from a mage, then he's a newt. Actions have consequences and a thief who cannot control himself will not be a thief for long.
While I do agree in principle, it is very risky to start punishing a certain behavior "out of the blue". If the thief has been able to do their thivery with relative ease so far (not sure, the OP has not said if he has taken in-game consequences of any kind into account), suddenly finding themselves with half a city at their heels will just help frustrate the player, which can only achieve making the air even more tense.
Addressing the person, and not the character, should be the first step. If even after they have been confronted on it they still believe they are not doing anything wrong, or they do not care they are affecting everyone else's fun, then at that point it is only fair to warn them that things will get more difficult for them if they keep this kind of behavior with their character.
Play with the bulk and encumbrance of those valuable items he keeps stealing. No reason at all to make everything of value small gems and coins. How about a 3 foot by 5 foot framed painting on canvas...
Sooner or later he is going to get caught. There will be consequences. Especially if he gets caughtstealing from the wrong person the consequences will be unpleasant. Let the other players deal with his stealing from their characters as those characters see fit, don't give him "Player Character" immunity.
And tell him to knock it off, or at least dial it back. "I'm just playing my character" is never an acceptable excuse for being a jerk at the table and spoiling other people's fun.
I agree that the first approach should be speaking to the player. Plenty of disruptive people struggle to notice the effect they are having, and to a degree I can relate, if noone bothers to raise an issue then everyone is clearly fine with whatever they are doing. But if he falls back on "that is just what my character does" or something similar then this may be a symptom rather than the issue itself. So see how the initial dialogue goes and if he continues to cause problems you can come back looking for advice on dealing with self centred and problematic players. Even if he does reel things back to a sensible level then theft still has all manner of possible concequences.
Now for the fun bit, in game consequences. If you have just been asking for a stealth role then letting him pickpocket as much as he pleases with no additional roles that seems too generous to me. I get my players to make a slight of hand check for each victim, at low levels it should not take long for someone to notice and cause a scene. Particularly valuable items may well be protected by mechanical traps. An item stolen from anyone with magical proficiency may be trapped to sound an alarm, explode in his face, be a decoy, allow the owner to track it... (browse the PHB for magic ideas, Alarm, Locate Object, and Glyph of Warding are a good starting point), the thieves guild will likely be able to trace how things stolen from them got back into circulation. The town guard may need to get involved and imprison him... unless the powers that be have a use for his skill set, in that case he may just need to work off the debt. Even without direct consequences people will probably notice a pattern pretty quickly and rumour will spread, causing the party to receive a cooler welcome than usual and be more alert when he is nearby, making future thefts more difficult.
It sounds like his character is less than subtle, so it is reasonable to expect the other characters to notice, then if their possessions go missing he is an obvious culprit. A lot of lawful and/or good characters would have issues traveling with such a miscreant, probably starting with a diplomatic approach. But as soon as their own possessions start disappearing the characters are going to react, at the very least refusing to travel with him, but a hot headed character might immediately attack, while a calmer and more devious one might solve the problem in his sleep, or 'miss the opponent' in the middle of combat and just happen to drop the thief.
Hopefully the conversation is productive though, so in future he tends to avoid targeting his allies and consequences could be an occasional fun side adventure without derailing everything.
One more on the "talk to them about it" bandwagon.
As to other ways to handle a thief who isn't Tasslehoff, there's a lot of cute ways to deal with them. I had a rogue who thought that if an item wasn't nailed down to the floor it would become his, he also fudged his rolls so that he never rolled less than a 13 in 24 sessions. We happened to be playing Sunless Citadel, which made this a lot more fun when I finally got tired of his antics. First I addressed the table that dice rolls would be done on the table and left where they lay until the player's next turn. Then I made comments to him that stealing everything was probably not the best course of action as eventually it would backfire on him. I like to be polite about a player's choices even if I don't agree so I'll warn them that their actions have consequences and they should change their approach or be ready for the results of their actions. I did this a few times, I also believe in the three strikes rule.
He decided to be bold and walked over to a shrine, in the main chamber of a bunch of kobolds, and said he wanted to steal a carving off the shrine. I had him roll stealth and sleight of hand, there were over a dozen kobolds and his party present. He managed to pull it off, rolling amazingly high for both checks. At this point in time he now had every one of the carvings that the module said were present. I had fun, I explained that with all of the carvings in one location, touching each other, their mystical power started to reignite. He began to glow with a soft green light. The kobolds recognized this, as the carvings were theirs, and it caused quite the fiasco for him and his party. I didn't make the punishment purely his, I didn't make the punishment deadly, and I didn't stop him from doing what he wanted. Instead I used a little touch of DM fiat to show that his actions could have consequences that reached far beyond his character sheet.
In another instance I had a different rogue who would steal much like your player. There was an obligatory conversation about actions and consequences as well as explaining that this type of thievery was not always the best course of action. For this player, since they weren't being rude about it, simply playing a character that was very opportunistic and extremely prone to take things spontaneously, I chose a much more subtle route. This player found that fencing stolen items was a difficult process, and certain items were so difficult to sell that he wound up with a bunch of items that were, in a sense, worthless to him. This caused the player to pick and choose more carefully in the future what, and if, he was going to lift something.
Just a couple ideas on how you can use the game to help highlight the actions of your player without taking away their skill set. Give them reason to consider what they're doing in the setting as opposed to the character sheet.
That said, here's a possible way to handle it. Run with it, but don't require rolls most of the time. I mean, this player may really want the character to be a kleptomaniac. It may be a central part of his character concept.
So you can handle it like this. The party all attend a formal ball thrown at the governor's mansion. They do their role-playing, whatever mission they were on (trying to located the secret tunnels, etc.), and when they are done, they leave. At that point, you, having created a table for these purposes--or having specific plot reasons for making certain careful decisions--just inform the thief about what he's managed to steal that night :D
You just say "Okay, Sneaky Cutpurse...here's what you managed to grab while you were in the mansion. A small silver goblet, a jeweled bracelet off one of the women while you were dancing with her, an expensive looking book of ancient poetry, and a deck of cool looking cards." Done. No rolls necessary, no hijacking the session, no random badly rolled die that spoils the entire mission/session/night. He gets some stuff, because he's a klepto. And the game goes on.
Benefits:
This is fantasy, and the party are supposed to generally be good at what they do. A thief and pickpocket PC should by-and-large be able to successfully steal random unimportant things when he wants to.
You can decide beforehand what is stolen--you can have prices determined, whether it can even be sold, etc. Make a random table of random crap, and roll on it until you need to make a new one :)
You can use this as a way to introduce plot hooks. The woman he stole the bracelet from? She's a powerful priestess, and she has two suspect for who stole her bracelet. He is one of them. Or those cool cards--turns out they are a method of communication for the spy ring that the players are looking for.
You can use this as a way to further the plot by getting the thief in trouble. If you and the player now just assume that he's stealing stuff wherever he goes, then you get to just announce at any given time (pretend to roll some dice if you want) "So as you're walking through the market, a shop-keeper spots you stealing a ring." This leads to a chase, which is when a sympathetic member of the local death temple shows up to hide them from the guards, and by the way the death cleric has important information for them :)
If his klepto issues are a thing the party decides they want to deal with (and now maybe because the characters are frustrated, not because the players are frustrated), you can introduce some more serious consequences. For example--this guy steals so much stuff, does he even remember everythng he's stolen? One day, he starts to notice that he's not hiding as well as he used to...people are spotting him more often, even when he makes really good stealth rolls. And he can't figure out why. Turns out, it's a small cursed ring, sitting in the bottom of a pocket of his backpack, that he doesn't even remember stealing. Just grabbed it from a table somewhere. But it's cursed. And now he has to deal with it. :)
The idea is to turn his stealing into
mostly an automatic thing, so long as what he's stealing is unimportant shiny things--treat it like the Bard wanting to sing a song to entertain an inn full of people at night for no real plot-benefit, just to make a few bucks. You're not going to make him roll for that, right? So don't make the thief roll to steal unimportant stuff.
not a distraction to the players and yourself
still an important part of his character
still something he benefits from (like the Bard making a few bucks by singing)
something you can use to develop plots.
I hate the phrase 'win-win' generally, but this sort of solution can work for everyone. And you can still let him make big decisions. Just tell the player "Look, we're going to handle it like this from now on. But, if you decide that you want to try to steal things that are clearly important or very difficult to steal, you can still let me know." For example, you're meeting with the Queen. If he wants to try to steal her scepter from next to the throne...he can certainly bring that up :) You can also let him say things like "Oh, we're going to the mansion? I'm going to try to steal some silver forks while we're there!" Okay, noted, and you can make that decision later, off-camera so to speak.
So ill be realistic I did not expect so much feedback so quickly. I'm loving all the ideas you all have given me and before anything i will have a talk with him first and if he decides its something he really wants to roll with (haha get it) then how we handle things from there will be a topic of another conversation or the outcome of a session.
You could have him steal a cursed item like a ring, that cannot be taken off and shouts THIEF every time he touches anything of value.
That's funny :) But you also don't want to punish him for doing what his class does. If the Bard player is singing too much at the table, you want to avoid cursing his character whenever he sings :)
Wizards are reading their spellbooks a lot, I'd guess. But you don't have to (or want to) roleplay which chapter he's reading. Similarly, thieves gonna steal. The difficulty is that this player wants to RP every single time he steals. And it's not necessary. You can let him steal stuff, and just not RP it when it doesn't matter.
So I am DMing my first campaign (homebrew if its relevant) and one of my player characters is a theif. And his quirk is that he is super greedy and always looking for stuff to steal. Like they show up in a town that was recently destroyed by a large monster and his first reaction was "im going to go to the bank and grab as much cash as I can" then he ended up crawling through the local theives guild and every single room he entered "I look for anything worth value" anytime he meets a new npc "I roll stealth and go to pickpocket". Not only is it getting on my nerves when every few minutes hes just looking to expand his inventory and he takes up a lot of time that other players are trying to RP or do other things and other players have came to me and asked me to do something about it and I just don't know what to do. Everyone else has their own thing they do on occasion but he has tried stealing from other PCs and whoever he comes into contact with. Any help is appreciated.
The first thing to always remember when being a DM is (in my opinion): if there is a problem, talk to the interested parts, they might not realize how disruptive something they do is for you and the rest of the party.
A player like this would get on my nerves pretty quickly as well, I have to say, but I believe that talking to them, separately first, is the best course of action.
Ask them why they are pushing this quirk so much and if they do not think it could be detrimental to the other players involved (you included, the DM IS a player at the table, they just have a different role). If they do not seem to get the message, or if they seem completely obvious to the possibility, tell them plainly that you have received comments from the other players, suggesting the thief player might be taking it a bit too far (trying to steal from other PCs without a motive beside "because that's my quirk" it's a BIG NO in my book)/playing their quirk a tad too often.
The Background motives, bonds etc. are a nice element of the game, but they are not sacred scripture on how a character behaves, they are RP hooks and suggestion that can help give ideas on how to play a character with a certain backstory. Seems like this player is taking them too literally maybe.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I would just have someone notice his thievery. It sounds like his stealing is mostly spur of the moment/always ongoing. If that's the case, then someone is going to notice. Once they do they will likely take action against him. If he stole from the thieves guild then the thieves guild will probably track him down and try to kill him. If he stole from the people, then he will probably end up on trial and in jail/executed. If he stole from a mage, then he's a newt. Actions have consequences and a thief who cannot control himself will not be a thief for long.
While I do agree in principle, it is very risky to start punishing a certain behavior "out of the blue".
If the thief has been able to do their thivery with relative ease so far (not sure, the OP has not said if he has taken in-game consequences of any kind into account), suddenly finding themselves with half a city at their heels will just help frustrate the player, which can only achieve making the air even more tense.
Addressing the person, and not the character, should be the first step. If even after they have been confronted on it they still believe they are not doing anything wrong, or they do not care they are affecting everyone else's fun, then at that point it is only fair to warn them that things will get more difficult for them if they keep this kind of behavior with their character.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Play with the bulk and encumbrance of those valuable items he keeps stealing. No reason at all to make everything of value small gems and coins. How about a 3 foot by 5 foot framed painting on canvas...
Sooner or later he is going to get caught. There will be consequences. Especially if he gets caughtstealing from the wrong person the consequences will be unpleasant. Let the other players deal with his stealing from their characters as those characters see fit, don't give him "Player Character" immunity.
And tell him to knock it off, or at least dial it back. "I'm just playing my character" is never an acceptable excuse for being a jerk at the table and spoiling other people's fun.
I agree that the first approach should be speaking to the player. Plenty of disruptive people struggle to notice the effect they are having, and to a degree I can relate, if noone bothers to raise an issue then everyone is clearly fine with whatever they are doing. But if he falls back on "that is just what my character does" or something similar then this may be a symptom rather than the issue itself. So see how the initial dialogue goes and if he continues to cause problems you can come back looking for advice on dealing with self centred and problematic players. Even if he does reel things back to a sensible level then theft still has all manner of possible concequences.
Now for the fun bit, in game consequences. If you have just been asking for a stealth role then letting him pickpocket as much as he pleases with no additional roles that seems too generous to me. I get my players to make a slight of hand check for each victim, at low levels it should not take long for someone to notice and cause a scene. Particularly valuable items may well be protected by mechanical traps. An item stolen from anyone with magical proficiency may be trapped to sound an alarm, explode in his face, be a decoy, allow the owner to track it... (browse the PHB for magic ideas, Alarm, Locate Object, and Glyph of Warding are a good starting point), the thieves guild will likely be able to trace how things stolen from them got back into circulation. The town guard may need to get involved and imprison him... unless the powers that be have a use for his skill set, in that case he may just need to work off the debt. Even without direct consequences people will probably notice a pattern pretty quickly and rumour will spread, causing the party to receive a cooler welcome than usual and be more alert when he is nearby, making future thefts more difficult.
It sounds like his character is less than subtle, so it is reasonable to expect the other characters to notice, then if their possessions go missing he is an obvious culprit. A lot of lawful and/or good characters would have issues traveling with such a miscreant, probably starting with a diplomatic approach. But as soon as their own possessions start disappearing the characters are going to react, at the very least refusing to travel with him, but a hot headed character might immediately attack, while a calmer and more devious one might solve the problem in his sleep, or 'miss the opponent' in the middle of combat and just happen to drop the thief.
Hopefully the conversation is productive though, so in future he tends to avoid targeting his allies and consequences could be an occasional fun side adventure without derailing everything.
One more on the "talk to them about it" bandwagon.
As to other ways to handle a thief who isn't Tasslehoff, there's a lot of cute ways to deal with them. I had a rogue who thought that if an item wasn't nailed down to the floor it would become his, he also fudged his rolls so that he never rolled less than a 13 in 24 sessions. We happened to be playing Sunless Citadel, which made this a lot more fun when I finally got tired of his antics. First I addressed the table that dice rolls would be done on the table and left where they lay until the player's next turn. Then I made comments to him that stealing everything was probably not the best course of action as eventually it would backfire on him. I like to be polite about a player's choices even if I don't agree so I'll warn them that their actions have consequences and they should change their approach or be ready for the results of their actions. I did this a few times, I also believe in the three strikes rule.
He decided to be bold and walked over to a shrine, in the main chamber of a bunch of kobolds, and said he wanted to steal a carving off the shrine. I had him roll stealth and sleight of hand, there were over a dozen kobolds and his party present. He managed to pull it off, rolling amazingly high for both checks. At this point in time he now had every one of the carvings that the module said were present. I had fun, I explained that with all of the carvings in one location, touching each other, their mystical power started to reignite. He began to glow with a soft green light. The kobolds recognized this, as the carvings were theirs, and it caused quite the fiasco for him and his party. I didn't make the punishment purely his, I didn't make the punishment deadly, and I didn't stop him from doing what he wanted. Instead I used a little touch of DM fiat to show that his actions could have consequences that reached far beyond his character sheet.
In another instance I had a different rogue who would steal much like your player. There was an obligatory conversation about actions and consequences as well as explaining that this type of thievery was not always the best course of action. For this player, since they weren't being rude about it, simply playing a character that was very opportunistic and extremely prone to take things spontaneously, I chose a much more subtle route. This player found that fencing stolen items was a difficult process, and certain items were so difficult to sell that he wound up with a bunch of items that were, in a sense, worthless to him. This caused the player to pick and choose more carefully in the future what, and if, he was going to lift something.
Just a couple ideas on how you can use the game to help highlight the actions of your player without taking away their skill set. Give them reason to consider what they're doing in the setting as opposed to the character sheet.
I agree about talking about it. So do that :)
That said, here's a possible way to handle it. Run with it, but don't require rolls most of the time. I mean, this player may really want the character to be a kleptomaniac. It may be a central part of his character concept.
So you can handle it like this. The party all attend a formal ball thrown at the governor's mansion. They do their role-playing, whatever mission they were on (trying to located the secret tunnels, etc.), and when they are done, they leave. At that point, you, having created a table for these purposes--or having specific plot reasons for making certain careful decisions--just inform the thief about what he's managed to steal that night :D
You just say "Okay, Sneaky Cutpurse...here's what you managed to grab while you were in the mansion. A small silver goblet, a jeweled bracelet off one of the women while you were dancing with her, an expensive looking book of ancient poetry, and a deck of cool looking cards." Done. No rolls necessary, no hijacking the session, no random badly rolled die that spoils the entire mission/session/night. He gets some stuff, because he's a klepto. And the game goes on.
Benefits:
The idea is to turn his stealing into
I hate the phrase 'win-win' generally, but this sort of solution can work for everyone. And you can still let him make big decisions. Just tell the player "Look, we're going to handle it like this from now on. But, if you decide that you want to try to steal things that are clearly important or very difficult to steal, you can still let me know." For example, you're meeting with the Queen. If he wants to try to steal her scepter from next to the throne...he can certainly bring that up :) You can also let him say things like "Oh, we're going to the mansion? I'm going to try to steal some silver forks while we're there!" Okay, noted, and you can make that decision later, off-camera so to speak.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
So ill be realistic I did not expect so much feedback so quickly. I'm loving all the ideas you all have given me and before anything i will have a talk with him first and if he decides its something he really wants to roll with (haha get it) then how we handle things from there will be a topic of another conversation or the outcome of a session.
You could have him steal a cursed item like a ring, that cannot be taken off and shouts THIEF every time he touches anything of value.
That's funny :) But you also don't want to punish him for doing what his class does. If the Bard player is singing too much at the table, you want to avoid cursing his character whenever he sings :)
Wizards are reading their spellbooks a lot, I'd guess. But you don't have to (or want to) roleplay which chapter he's reading. Similarly, thieves gonna steal. The difficulty is that this player wants to RP every single time he steals. And it's not necessary. You can let him steal stuff, and just not RP it when it doesn't matter.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)