How to Steal from the Party and not have them hate you for it Version 2

[BoutsofInsanity]

How to steal from the Party and Not have them hate you for it. Version 2.

Exactly what it says on the tin gentlemen. A how to guide for all the enterprising entrepreneurs out there to make out like a CEO with a Platinum Parachute.

Background Information: This is a rehash of a previous thread I started a long time ago to jumpstart a series of D&D articles I want to write about in character to help give ideas to players and DM’s in an entertaining fashion. I welcome discussion and ideas to contribute to the thoughts and ideas presented in the articles and look forward to feedback. I intend to tackle, magic item creation, villains, playing evil, the Paladin, boss battles and being a player character and dming player characters. I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Greetings fellow thieves, scoundrels, rogues and ninjas. You all have approached this thread to learn how to steal from the party and not have them hate you for it. It will be 20 gold...

Kidding kidding.

Now you are wondering, "Man, I risk my neck for these guys finding dangerous traps and opening chests and I have to split my money with the "muscle"? Why shouldn't I take extra from the chest of loot and not tell them?"

Well, you should! But in a specific way. What follows is a guide to make sure at the end of the day your party will not kill you!

RULE 0
Ask the Players: Make sure the people behind the characters are down with what you plan to do. Pitch the following rules to them, find out if they are ok with it and negotiate from there. Some people (Navar100) for example really don’t want stealing at all. So make sure its kewl.

1st rule.
Be economical! Why of course you should take more, but not to much, you don't want to ruin your investment. If these working relationship with these others works out, then you don't want them to leave you high and dry! Why cultivate their loyalty, make sure you are worthwhile to them. They are making you rich after all! :smallbiggrin:

2nd rule
Discipline! Yes, there is 10000 gold pieces in that chest, which will even split for a four man group into 2500 each. But if someone were to reduce it to 9555 before the party found out, none would be the wiser. Then you can seem generous when you offer to take the lesser cut.
(A good rule of thumb, only take so much that won't be missed, only enough to get some consumables and wands, or that final upgrade.) Bonus points if its healing potions and you share your "Last One" with the wizard, and the Paladin notices!:smallamused:


3rd Rule
Invest! Now, obviously you want the party to like you. And that Paladin can get annoying if he were to become displeased, and the Barbarian is a dangerous fellow. Here are some ways to make sure they don't kill you for "Procuring extra loot." First, the extra gold you got from the chest earlier, make sure you buy the big lugs a couple of rounds of beer, and the rooms to sleep in. Then donate 10% to the church. Make sure that the Paladin notices. That will appease the Paladin and make sure that you have good favor with the guys upstairs!:smallsmile:

4th Rule
Invest Moar! Now, you just found a wand of silence, and a swanky uber belt. Now I know you want to take both, but hear me out. Yes the belt looks good on you, but it matches the paladin's eyes. Say to him "Hey, I just found this rinky dinky belt, it matches your eyes. You should wear it."
This will do three things for you when the people you inadvertently pissed off in the past come hunting you, Paladin buddy will...

A) Give a compelling testimony about how generous you have been and turned a new leaf. And given money to the church!
B) Be better equipped to save your rear when the Barbarian charges the oppressors for oppressing his "Best Drinking Buddy"!
C) And he will look good doing it!

If you follow these simple guidelines, you too can steal from the party without them hating you forever!

Step 1. Dangerous Occupation Tax. Step 2. Profit :smallcool:

[BoutsofInsanity]

The meta behind this thread

I love story telling. And one of my favorite character archetypes is the happy go lucky thief. I love playing these guys and I have always wanted to be the guy who steals and is snarky and curious. So what above is trying to exemplify is a way to succeed in bringing this archetype to the table.

However, you having fun shouldn't detract from other players fun too much. The main rule is to not steal anything that will harm the party. Examples will follow. First, this thread assumes a couple of things.
1. You are playing with reasonable people who are o.k. with what you are doing.
2. You are following some sort of Narrative as a team and aren't playing with people who want PVP or to tpk the party themselves. There are no hidden backstabbers in the midst and there is a common goal you are working toward.
3. We are following a group of Wizard, Rogue, Paladin, Barbarian, Druid and Ranger who are following in game design philosophy. (No Planar Shepherds, uber chargers, and unsurpriseable characters.) Loud and proud Barbarian, mysterious Wizard, Wise Druid, Aragorn style Ranger, and redeemer Paladin who believes in second chances.

First example of in my mind, a perfect scenario for this to happen.
You're playing the rogue as you scout ahead. The DM is telling what you are seeing as you crawl through the dungeon alone. The other players listen as you attempt to stealth past a guard and disarm a trap. (By listen I mean one is in the bathroom, the other is smoking, and the other is texting under the table. But I digress).
You manage it and sneak into the loot chamber and open up the chest. You see a monocle, 10000 Gp, uberswag belt of strength, wand of silence, and a Holy Avenger sword.
Now the players know what you have. But the characters don’t. So you take it all and sneak back out. You tell the characters you only found 9000 gold. Blow through the bluff check because the Paladin didn't have enough great rolls to max out Wisdom and Charisma, and Strength and Constitution, and the Druid was in the Restroom and head back to town.

1. Go to the church and donate 100 gold so the Paladin sees it.
2. Arm wrestle the Barbarian, then give him the belt.
3. Replace the Wizards, monocle with the new one and see if he notices. (Make sure it isn’t cursed).
4. Spend the rest of the gold on contacts, potions, food, room and board. Make it seem like you're a generous guy.
5. Finally, mysteriously tell the Paladin you have an important thing to do and wander off. Come back later and tell him how a mysterious woodland creature gave you this sword to give to the worthiest person you know. Throw in a sappy compliment and gift him the Holy Avenger sword.


The next time your enemies come looking for you or that lawman comes to get you, you will have a beefy Barbarian throwing out intimidate checks, a Paladin swearing up and down about your character’s character, and a Wizard who will roflstomp the rest because he is Batman.

[heavyfuel]

Let me see if I got this straight. You want a larger share of the loot, and for that, you ask the players (not characters) if it's ok for your character to steal from theirs. This way the players are cool with you.

But, you only steal a bit, and have them trust you. See, this is where it starts to get confusing... Don't their characters get Spot checks to see you stealing? It's an opposed check to palm a coin-sized object. How exactly are you making 445 coins disappear without anyone noticing?

Even if you're the Rogue and going ahead, "ahead" will most likely mean "just outside the area of bright illumination of my torch/lantern" because Rogues like to take their sweet time with traps and locks (taking 20 takes 2 whole minutes, that's 2 minutes per 5ft you walk, if you only search for traps in a straight line) most characters can keep up with you. Also, when you tell the chest only had 9555 GP, or that that's your last potion, don't they get a Sense Motive? Hell, a Sense Motive with a bonus if they caught you lying about stuff before.

Or maybe you're really going on ahead, like, you're gone for a few hours before you come back to them. That would explain the lack of a Spot check (Sense Motive is still on the table), but won't explain how you haven't been killed yet by monsters with Scent, Tremorsense, Blindsight or maybe just a high Spot check while adventuring alone. Unless you can take these monsters by yourself, in which case there's so little point to the group's "muscles" you might as well be playing a solo adventure.

And when you tell the Pally that "a mysterious woodland creature gave you this sword to give to the worthiest person you know"... Ok. By this point I'm pretty sure this is a joke topic... What you just did is pretty much the definition of a bluff that "is way out there, almost too incredible to consider". A woodland critter that just happened to have a Holy Avenger will most certainly give him a +20 to sense motive! How exactly are "blowing through that" is beyond me. Unless, of course, you're spamming Glibness, but since you didn't mention it, I don't think is the case.

You also have a Ranger in the party... A Ranger is pretty much a Rogue's worse enemy. High-ish Wis, loads of skill points with Sense Motive, Search and Spot as class skills, and get 2 rolls for every one you get (Animal Companions get rolls just like everyone else).

The only explanation I can come up with is that the characters themselves do't care if yo get extra loot. In which case, and the reason this whole post bothers me, is why did you have to ask them OoC if they're ok with it in character? Why not just tell them, straight forward, in character, that you think you deserve more loot. Since they're already, in character, letting you get away with this attitude, you might as well cut out the hassle of it.

[sideswipe]

i once stole from my party and nobody ever cared.

i was a warlock and the "healer" and by that i mean lesser vigor wands.

every time i used a charge i would take the cost of the charge from the player. sometimes i gave them for free.

well i was chaotic evil. knowing i could cause more havoc as a party of adventurers then on my own.

[Spore]

I love this thread and my main complaint is why this hasn't been up sooner. I also loved (past tense) my happy thief. Sadly I played him terribly. I was too greedy, stole from the wrong people at the wrong times and got nearly killed every other encounter. He lives a happy life of NPCing now but sometimes I wish I hadn't given up on him so easily.

My failures as listed in your "commandments".

Rule 0) Now I didn't ask the players but they were fine with it. But I didn't ask the DM and he kind of had it out for me because of that. "Thou art of good alignment. Thou shalt act accordingly." And yes I did. We stole a decanter of endless water and gifted it to the desert city to build a well. But hey, since I stole it I HAVE to be persecuted for it. Ugh...

Rule 1) Well yeah. At least this one I followed. I would've broken it if it weren't for that annoying ranger and his perception/spot checks.

Rule 2) Funny that you bring modesty up. This one time I tried to steal a bow worth 8 grand and it only cost me two fingers and provided me with a nice tattoo (Mark of Justice). Even thinking about the huge mistake I made...

I am kind of frustated now thinking about my past mistakes. =(

@ heavyfuel

I think the point of the thread is roleplaying an opportunistic thief while neither destroying the group dynamic nor playing uncharacteristicly altruistic. Normally the whole thief schtick is stopped by the: "But you stole that sword. We can't use its unimaginable power to stop the Dark Lord from conquering the world. That would be wrong." thing good aligned guys always bring up.

[Giddonihah]

In a Kingmaker game my Rogue had the habit of taking for herself the first piece of loot found for herself then sharing the rest with the party. I probally shouldnt of bothered as my Rogue was ALSO the appraiser and we got generous amounts of nonmagical loot that actually required Appraise/bartering to sell (I was also the Barterer). The party would leave me alone to do all this work and half of the kingmaker work.

Course the quirk of fate, is that for some reason the GM had a tendency of putting the most valuable things first. I once looted some doillies that turned out to be worth like 10k each, with the initial one I grabbed for myself was worth 20k. I thought my quirk was actually going to be harmless for once..

Thing was we were also using the Downtime system in conjunction with kingmaker, and I was a very very active investor, by my figures within a year or two (it was a kingmaker game with a timeline of 10+ years) I could deck everyone out with Magic items produced from my own shops for near free, and get the Crafter in our party working on crafting magic items for a very tidy sum. And have a Gryphon rider strike force armed with magic weapons and armor.

Though the key thing here, is that as soon as anyone suspected anything, I gave them a large chunk of gold to appease them, they knew I was taking gold for myself when I went to appraise and sell, but they never did figure out how much (and they were actually quite happy with the amount of loot they had been getting). Since its kingmaker, I then secretly built magic shops and stuff, then went to the kingmaker side and convinced them to sell magic items from those shops in order to get money we could withdraw, which the gm ruled that I benefited from the patronage.

Anyways long story short, using downtime rules with Kingmaker rules in Pathfinder is broken, and other players shouldnt shovel all the work of running a kingdom and dealing with loot on a underaged Rogue.

[jaydubs]

I'm one of those players that is very, very against stealing from the party. But, sometimes being a thief is part of the character concept, and stealing some things, some times, helps the RP. So here's how to approach someone like me, and get approval.

1) Explain that the goal is to be true to the character idea, and not to actually take wealth from the party. If it's not true, and you're trying to obtain wealth over and above other party members, default BoutsofInsanity's Rule 0, and just don't steal from the party. Proceeding with it anyway will result in mutually destructive escalation.

2) Make clear (and actually carry through with it) that anything pilfered will end up going to party consumables. Potions, cure wands, situational scrolls, etc. These are things that should come out of party contributions anyway, you're just diverting it in a more RP heavy way.

In character - Sticky Hand McGee swipes 800 gold off the treasure horde before the rest of the party gets there. He giggles to himself, and hides it, making sure the others can't see what he's acquired.

Out of character - Hey guys, I'll pick up a wand and potion of cure light wounds when we get back to town. We were pretty close to needing some anyway.

3) Steal from someone other than the party, and from someone the party wouldn't have gotten wealth from in the first place. I know, it's not the topic of this thread, but it's a good way to handle "I'm a thief" without also falling into "now the players hate my character." Street vendors, passing nobles, etc. This increases your wealth without decreasing the wealth of the other PCs.

[Elkad]

1) Steal from party.
2) Don't get caught.

Never mind all that other stuff.

[XmonkTad]

I once played a Grippli rogue (only really made it to level 5) who stole from the party and lied to the party all the time. Often he was out doing fairly immoral things in an otherwise decent party (gotta kill someone to be an assassin, etc.).

The way the (IC) party reacted was generally intimidate based. I got a lot of "where have YOU been!?" type of questions and would always cop to the truth if threatened (didn't even take Craven!)

As for stealing, it was mostly played for laughs. The cleric would basically just pick me up and shake me till all the stolen loot would come tumbling out of my pockets while onlookers pretended not to notice ("nothing to see here" "we have reason to believe this frog man has been stealing from goblins").

But the players were good natured about it. We all had fun, and the character did contribute to the party, and needed them too.