Rogues stealing from their own party

[diaglo]

Stealing from the party is fine, but the player must accept any consequences their player faces if caught. The thief might find themself not getting healed or helped in combat.

i'm fine with that as long as in character there is a reason.

what i'm not cool with and i will get my revenge soon. is another player using OoC knowledge to punish my character.

which is what has happened.

i have been waiting over a year now to get Power Attack so that i can CdG the offending PC.

 

[Rykion]

i'm fine with that as long as in character there is a reason.

what i'm not cool with and i will get my revenge soon. is another player using OoC knowledge to punish my character.

I agree. I meant to say "Stealing from the party is fine, but the player must accept any consequences their character faces if caught." I accidently put player both time. Using OoC knowledge in game is never cool.

 

[Victim]

In the game that I ran, several PCs and 1 NPC formed a subgroup within the party to sell off all the evil loot the party found...unholy weapons, poison, and other icky items all found their way to the black markets, with the party's Paladin none the wiser. He eventually seemed to catch on that all the Unholy Weapons were being sold, often back to some of the villainous groups the party just killed (through a series of intermediaries, of course). As such, he began destroying all the "evil" stuff the party found, including books about necromancy and the like. This caused some nice party tension

Actually, it's more like the other way around. The paladin was going to destroy the evil loot in that case too, but the value was high enough that some of the characters didn't want to see that much treasure go to waste. Later on, he just started destroying the "evil" (or evil looking - he burned any book on necromancy) stuff right away. But I believe we've already had the debate on selling/destroying evil stuff.

As a general rule, stealing from your party is pretty stupid.

 

[spectre72]

We deal with characters stealing from other players in the same way we deal with players who betray the rest of the party.

There will be a reckoning when we find out, and it may be as simple as expulsion from the party or as drastic as death of a character.

So if you can get away with it fine, but you better be carefull.

Scott

 

[Chiaroscuro23]

Realism? What would you do "realistically" if a coworker stole from you? Kick the bastard out, that's what you'd do. And if you were Zog the Archmage of Energy, you'd probably incinerate him as well.

You see, there is a social contract between players: You don't abuse meta-game forces that keep our characters together (I mean meta-game in the neutral, descriptive sense). Because you and some friends are gaming together and all have characters, the characters are lumped into a party, even though realistically Sir Otto Von Ratzenbanger the Highborn would probably have nothing to do with grubby Roguely MacStealingstuff. We, as D&D gamers, ignore a fair amount of "realism" for the sake of making the game work.

But stealing/harming other PCs takes betrays that system and takes advantage of it, to the detriment of the game. If you feel your character should be free to steal from the others, then the others should be free to say "we don't want your character in the party. Roll up a new one."

Precisely. It's a social contract issue, and I am strongly on the side of teamwork and agreement. The game's balanced for a certain amount of wealth, and you're not to hoard it for your PC. Divvying up treasure can be hard without stealing. It's not okay on an OOC level, so no IC justification can legitimize it.

-C.

 

[was]

We've mutually agreed that any pc that steals from the group gets killed in a very slow fashion.

 

[ThirdWizard]

This is nicely wrapped up in my House Rule #1: Players may not roll dice against other Players. It covers a lot more problems than theft.

What if the theft involves no dice rolling? Do you make sure the players understand that HR1 covers more than actually rolling dice?

 

[MonsterMash]

I don't necessarily prevent it as a DM, but as a player if my character discovers another character has been stealing from them that other player might be going through character creation real soon.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

What if the theft involves no dice rolling? Do you make sure the players understand that HR1 covers more than actually rolling dice?

Can you give an example? I can't see any method that wouldn't involve at the least a bluff check.

Put another way, if there was a way to steal with no risk of failure (the only way you wouldn't need dice) shouldn't the thief be rich and retired from using it on npcs?

 

[ThirdWizard]

Can you give an example? I can't see any method that wouldn't involve at the least a bluff check.

PCs arn't technically bluffable. But, for the sake of argument, say the PC thief in question was left guarding the horses while the others went out to investigate some issue and pocketed a few gold out of another PC's bag that would never be noticed.