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Origomar
2018-10-01, 11:04 PM
How do you deal with PC's not paying for and stealing things from NPCs? Game is pathfinder, but general not rules related advice also welcome. Everyone in the party is level 6.

This ranges from them bluffing/diplomacying their way through a shop to convince them to either give them the items for cheap/free or them outright stealing stuff.

The town guard as i have currently written them, and in order to make sense within the confines of the story doesn't really have a way to stop them outside of the fact that they aren't high enough level to live in a pocket dimension(and they can't leave town/the area they are in for story reasons).

Koo Rehtorb
2018-10-01, 11:13 PM
There being stores with expensive merchandise lining the walls at all is an anachronism. Really what they should be doing is finding a craftsman, paying them to make them the item, and then picking it up when it's done. And if you cheat/rob the people making you stuff then people aren't likely to make you other stuff.

NichG
2018-10-01, 11:17 PM
Shops should have protections proportional to the total value of goods they keep on hand, just like the treasure/CR relationship for any encounter. This may mean that goods are not kept on hand (e.g. price is negotiated and the item is delivered a week later, giving plenty of time for Diplomancers/dominate/etc to lapse and for the shopkeeper to realize the error). Or, if goods are kept on hand, springing for protections like mind blank on employees, interacting through low intelligence elemental servitors (so that the salesman can detect that the diplomancer is in play without being affected directly), demiplane storage, cursed items fused with all goods, to be removed on sale, etc.

If the shop physically contains 2 million gp of goods at any point in time, that's roughly a CR 30 encounter.

Mr Beer
2018-10-01, 11:26 PM
Depends on campaign setting, maybe they're supposed to be stealing stuff (heist campaign) or I just don't care.

Usually I play it as Actions Have Consequences and go from there.

If they pull off a quiet careful job for moderate stakes and then leave town, probably nothing happens.

If they're just wandering around openly grabbing items because no-one can stop them, well usually someone can stop or at least impede them. If not immediately, the town asks for help from a powerful noble or neighbouring town. Priests request divine help or at least the assistance of the wider church. Eventually other groups of adventurers show up to fight the marauding evil party.

In between ratcheting up the opposition, the townsfolk are likely to be uncooperative and unwelcoming to bandits living off their hard-earned stock. Expect sullen opposition; if the PCs escalate with violence, they will probably get frightened but reluctant cooperation; the good groups of adventurers will arrive more quickly in light of the worsening situation.

Also if the town has a group of powerful violent thieves living in it that no-one can tame, various unsavoury, manipulative people will see an opportunity to weaken or eliminate rivals or simply get revenge for some slight. Expect the party to get requests for help from various 'victims' that very much have their own agenda.

Darth Ultron
2018-10-01, 11:27 PM
Well, let them steal stuff. Easy enough.

Though there are two basic spins:

1.Dark World: You basic want a world with nothing to steal. The shop has common mundane stuff...and that is it. Anything the players really want....is not in a shop. This is very easy to do.

2.Powerful World: If you have a magic shop....it's not a boring dull mundane shop with a boring dull commoner shopkeep. Instead the 'shop' is a Killer House Mimic, and the 'shopkeep' is an Illithid. Or there is the 'powerful law'.

Both work very well.

On the other hand, if you have stuff the PCs can take...just sitting out like dangling targets...you can expect the PC's to take them.

Xalyz
2018-10-02, 02:25 AM
Personally I'd allow the diplomancer to get a discount (~20% maybe). But for stealing I'd have them become notorious for theft but warn them in game (bounty posters). If they continue, have shop keepers turn them away, raise prices, or have multiple guards. Have city guards be suspicious of them and follow them. Also try talking with them if they want to play fast and loose with the law, change the game accordingly.

16bearswutIdo
2018-10-02, 07:22 AM
Actions have consequences is the best way to deal with stealing, IMO. Unless the shop that they go into is specifically owned by a wizard, it feels a bit cheap to have magic defenses at a simple item shop. It works sometimes, but it's case dependent. Sometimes it's best just to have the townsfolk alert the guards and do things the old fashioned way.


My PCs stole in their last group, then promptly all wiped when they left the town. The new characters in town have seen a bunch of WANTED posters with rough sketches of the past characters with a bounty out for them. Makes the only surviving member sweat a little bit every time they walk by one.

NichG
2018-10-02, 08:38 AM
Actions have consequences is the best way to deal with stealing, IMO. Unless the shop that they go into is specifically owned by a wizard, it feels a bit cheap to have magic defenses at a simple item shop. It works sometimes, but it's case dependent. Sometimes it's best just to have the townsfolk alert the guards and do things the old fashioned way.


My PCs stole in their last group, then promptly all wiped when they left the town. The new characters in town have seen a bunch of WANTED posters with rough sketches of the past characters with a bounty out for them. Makes the only surviving member sweat a little bit every time they walk by one.

Well, the issue is that there really isn't such a thing as a 'simple item shop' given the way D&D economics works - even something like a shop that stocks one of each type of +1 weapon (about 50 types) is carrying around 100000gp of wealth, easily employ the population of a small town for a few years...

Thinker
2018-10-02, 12:19 PM
Even if the town guard isn't able to do its job, the merchants might be getting upset at being taken advantage of over and over again. They can hire their own muscle/guards or take out a hit on the party. Also, don't let them get away with using diplomacy to get them to be gifted with these valuable goods. Even if the merchant really, really likes the wizard, the merchant won't go hungry to get in the wizard's good graces.

Beneath
2018-10-02, 04:28 PM
Well, the issue is that there really isn't such a thing as a 'simple item shop' given the way D&D economics works - even something like a shop that stocks one of each type of +1 weapon (about 50 types) is carrying around 100000gp of wealth, easily employ the population of a small town for a few years...

That's a good reason why you wouldn't find a shop keeping a +1 everything on hand. Any one of those weapons is comparable in price to a house or a small ship (a keelboat will run you 3000 GP; a +1 longsword will run you 2315, a house, by the downtime rules, will run you 2580 if you buy it outright) and buying it in cash means dropping something like 50 pounds of gold, 64 years' income for a commoner earning 3 gp/mo, or about six years for a craftsperson or professional earning 7 gp/wk. Transactions of that scale are rarely done off the shelf even if you have the liquidity to afford it.

The way the economics look to me, also, I'd expect there's a large amount of off-screen labor going into making the components a wizard bought for 1000 gp to make each of those, too, which makes the existence of this store even less viable.


Even if the town guard isn't able to do its job, the merchants might be getting upset at being taken advantage of over and over again. They can hire their own muscle/guards or take out a hit on the party. Also, don't let them get away with using diplomacy to get them to be gifted with these valuable goods. Even if the merchant really, really likes the wizard, the merchant won't go hungry to get in the wizard's good graces.

Also this. A helpful attitude is "will take risks to help you", not "will take a guaranteed loss to help you", nor does it mean they'll risk their life or livelihood. Among freelancers I know (which is a similar situation), someone feeling entitled to a discount or free services for being your friend means they're not your friend. Applying that to your PCs, then, shopkeepers they've buddied up to might be willing to extend credit to them that they otherwise wouldn't, maybe give them items for half now half after the adventure, say, but then also in turn they'll expect their friends to extend them loans when their times get rough.

thenucleus
2018-10-02, 04:41 PM
There being stores with expensive merchandise lining the walls at all is an anachronism. Really what they should be doing is finding a craftsman, paying them to make them the item, and then picking it up when it's done. And if you cheat/rob the people making you stuff then people aren't likely to make you other stuff.

I second this - it wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that stores of this type began to spring up. If you are looking to emulate a medieval type setting, buying off the shelf would be extremely rare.

Reversefigure4
2018-10-02, 05:19 PM
"PC walks in, slaps down 2000 gold, and walks out with a +1 Falchion" is an abstraction of the much less fun to play real version: "PC walks in, places order, deposits an agreed upon amount of gold, shopkeeper contacts wizard, wizard crafts Falchion, Falchion arrives by guarded caravan 6 to 8 weeks later". The abstraction is fine as long as players don't try to cheat the system by robbing merchants.

If the town guard are insufficiently powerful to protect the merchants (quite likely) and the merchants are unable to hire external adventurers to protect them (less likely, but possible depending on the circumstances and locality of the town), then you need broader solutions.

- If the PCs are stealing comparatively cheap and valueless things (rope, trail rations, soap), the merchants are likely to just sigh and put up with it. Perhaps they can begin treating the PCs as a Thieve's Guild, offering to pay them protection money directly to avoid the theft?
- If high-end items are going missing, then stock-outs begin to occur. Once you steal the Alchemist's Fire, the shop doesn't replace it. Why would it, if it's just going to get stolen again?
- Shops do not buy back stolen items (again, why would they pay cash for something that's just going to get stolen again?), meaning the PCs can only take things they can use, because their cash value is effectively zero in this town.
- If enough items are taken, the shop itself goes out of business. The merchant packs up and moves to another town, or closes up the store and stops selling. Since he's losing money operating, why would he continue? The PCs now have nowhere to buy and sell goods.
- If the only adventurers are the PCs, have merchants tried hiring party members to retrieve their stolen goods from other party members? Presumably moral scruples are not a big issue with this group.

First and foremost, those, I'd talk to the players about what type of game you want to have. A game where the players run a Thieves Guild, terrorizing a town can be a lot of fun, with threats coming from external adventuring parties, escalation coming from the town dying around them due to the choked commerce, and quest hooks in the form of merchants demanding service for their protection money ("If somebody doesn't stop those goblin raiders, I can't afford to pay you your monthly cut"). But it's worth making sure this is the type of game all the players - and the GM - want to play. If not, you need to clarify to the group that actions have consequences, and stealing will lead to this type of game (and if you don't want to GM it, then the game will end).

Jaelommiss
2018-10-02, 08:01 PM
A master burglar (L15+) hears about this growing band of thieves. He comes along, steals EVERYTHING from them, and then goes back to his base. If the characters can track him down he'll give them jobs and teach them to become better. If they can't then he keeps their belongings as an application fee.

LibraryOgre
2018-10-02, 11:31 PM
Bluff and diplomacy are not magic... they won't make a merchant give away his livelihood. They may reduce the price, but it should seldom result in free stuff, especially en masse.

But for an answer? Churches and guilds. Have churches preach against them. Have guilds refuse to deal with them. No kne is willing to touch them socially, since it brigs the wrath of the guilds

Mystral
2018-10-03, 03:51 AM
How do you deal with PC's not paying for and stealing things from NPCs? Game is pathfinder, but general not rules related advice also welcome. Everyone in the party is level 6.

This ranges from them bluffing/diplomacying their way through a shop to convince them to either give them the items for cheap/free or them outright stealing stuff.

The town guard as i have currently written them, and in order to make sense within the confines of the story doesn't really have a way to stop them outside of the fact that they aren't high enough level to live in a pocket dimension(and they can't leave town/the area they are in for story reasons).

At that level, minor towns should have little to steal from that is worth the time of the party. Rich people have their own security measures, and when a wave of crime follows the party, the authorities will piece two and two together and get professionals on the job.

A shopkeeper would never give away items for free, no matter the bluff or diplomacy check. They might sell them at a slight loss at the most, but only as an exception.

weckar
2018-10-03, 01:36 PM
There being stores with expensive merchandise lining the walls at all is an anachronism. Really what they should be doing is finding a craftsman, paying them to make them the item, and then picking it up when it's done. And if you cheat/rob the people making you stuff then people aren't likely to make you other stuff.
Anachonism? You know yhis has nothing to do with history, right?

JNAProductions
2018-10-03, 01:49 PM
Anachonism? You know yhis has nothing to do with history, right?

D&D is, at least in theory, set in a medieval setting. Now, there are lots of anachronisms present, but this is a good chance to make it a little more realistic.

Frozen_Feet
2018-10-03, 02:19 PM
Pathfinder, and all versions of D&D I know of, have fairly straight-forward rules for stealing things, so I'm confused of what's supposed to be the issue.

Seriously. Either they succeed in the requisite skill checks and make away with what they wanted... or they don't, and they suffer the full wrath of the merchant and whatever law enforcement is present. Rinse and repeat untill the players decide they have enough stuff or their characters have been hung from the nearest tree.

Quertus
2018-10-03, 02:49 PM
... and this is why Quertus' precognitive "we know what you want, and have it ready before you ask for it" magic item shops will quickly push out all these inefficient, idiotic business models.

Have NI +1 weapons on hand? Well, that's a lot of gp you've got tied up in inventory, just waiting for someone like the PCs to steal it.

Don't have anything pre-made? Well, that doesn't appeal to the "want it now" generation, who, well, want it now, and aren't willing to wait a day per 1000 gp (let alone however much of a back-order the wizard has).

No, Quertus' precognitive sweat shops, which have the items ready by the time you have the money and the desire, are the only long-term viable business model in the "modern" D&D gaming environment.

Oh, but for those losers you're describing? Um, how about a nice "Locate Object" to hunt down their stolen goods?

weckar
2018-10-04, 09:33 PM
D&D is, at least in theory, set in a medieval setting. Now, there are lots of anachronisms present, but this is a good chance to make it a little more realistic.
For fun I just cracked open my phb and dmg, but neither of these actually says that :p
I wonder where this mass perception comes from?

LibraryOgre
2018-10-04, 10:41 PM
For fun I just cracked open my phb and dmg, but neither of these actually says that :p
I wonder where this mass perception comes from?

Swords, knights, and nobility tends to do this.

Personally, I like to look at it as a Western in Medieval drag.

Lunali
2018-10-04, 11:12 PM
Pathfinder, and all versions of D&D I know of, have fairly straight-forward rules for stealing things, so I'm confused of what's supposed to be the issue.

Seriously. Either they succeed in the requisite skill checks and make away with what they wanted... or they don't, and they suffer the full wrath of the merchant and whatever law enforcement is present. Rinse and repeat untill the players decide they have enough stuff or their characters have been hung from the nearest tree.

The problem is that modern style shops are convenient for everyone, but modern style security and law enforcement is treated as unreasonable.

Mr Beer
2018-10-05, 01:12 AM
For fun I just cracked open my phb and dmg, but neither of these actually says that :p
I wonder where this mass perception comes from?

Because D&D looks exactly like a quasi-mediaeval setting with an enormous grab-bag of magic, monsters and myths thrown at it.

Beneath
2018-10-05, 01:30 AM
The problem is that modern style shops are convenient for everyone, but modern style security and law enforcement is treated as unreasonable.

Now I'm imagining a store with inventory control tags that have to be deactivated at checkout on their magic swords.

Or, a modern security mechanism that you'd be likely to see: valuable items kept in locked display cases that the merchant has to open for you. If you want to go fully magical it doesn't even have to be glass; you could use, say, iron, mithral, or adamantine that has been magically made invisible, or walls of force. Either way you can display items without removing them from your safe. With Arcane Lock[i] you even get the benefits of a biometric lock.

In completely fantastic security: in 3e the [i]Medallion of Thoughts costs 12 grand (so six swords) and allows you to detect thoughts at will. If you regularly deal in magic items, having a guard in the shadows to scan the minds of anyone who you don't have an established relationship with so that you can know who is contemplating theft (and expel them from the shop, or at least keep a closer eye on them)

Then there are traps. A Symbol of Persuasion makes a supremely effective trap while also not being too hazardous to yourself or your staff even if they weren't attuned to it at casting. Couple this with your items being displayed in invisible safes (invisible except for the latch on the door) with Arcane Lock and Symbol of Persuasion on the latch and a magic mouth spell on something triggered to go off when the Symbol does to command the charmed victims to leave a written apology (which you take as evidence), maybe trick them into reading something (leave a slip of paper with "lock passwords" as the heading, maybe) and put a Sepia Snake Sigil on it, and you have yourself a nice little heist adventure. Security is expensive, but if you're moving a substantial amount of goods and have a 100% markup, you can afford it.

The Glyphstone
2018-10-05, 01:33 AM
Truly determined robberhobos will just see security as a potential for extra loot. They'll even find a way to steal the intact traps, then use them in combat later somehow.

NichG
2018-10-05, 02:06 AM
Because of the power asymmetry, only security that literally makes it impossible to obtain what one wants if they misbehave makes sense to bother with. Detect Thoughts offers a save, adamantine can be overcome given time so long as the criminals e.g. steal the entire case, kill the shopkeeper, etc. A shop has to assume that the shopkeeper would be dominated/killed/etc, and that the culprits could get themselves hundreds of actions unopposed before a practical response can be mustered (and even that assuming the guards would be able to overpower them when responding).

That is to say, rather than having a cash register with a really good lock, it's better to empty it regularly and put up a sign 'clerk keeps less than 50gp in cash register'.

In the case of magic items, this simply means that you do not keep them on the premises, or even all in one location. Instead, the shop takes a percentage of the price up front, arranges delivery, then bills the customer for the remaining value at the point of exchange. If the customer e.g. attacks the seller and keeps their remaining half of the value, then the shop can determine this by e.g. the seller failing to report a receipt for the completed transaction and can (through a shared guild structure) suspend the rights of that customer to participate in business entirely until the discrepancy is investigated and resolved satisfactorily.

It doesn't require overly expensive fancy security systems, and its pretty hard to crack. Even for a Diplomancer, as long as the up-front price is high enough (say, 50%), it is impossible to practically make a profit by constantly talking one's way out of giving gold to the seller on delivery. Directly stealing from the shop would at most gain about half of the price of a single item, and that would depend on timing (since for very high value items, the shop might not actually have sold anything at that scale on a given day).

Kardwill
2018-10-05, 02:49 AM
Or, a modern security mechanism that you'd be likely to see: valuable items kept in locked display cases that the merchant has to open for you. If you want to go fully magical it doesn't even have to be glass; you could use, say, iron, mithral, or adamantine that has been magically made invisible, or walls of force. Either way you can display items without removing them from your safe. With [i]Arcane Lock[i] you even get the benefits of a biometric lock.

Online shopping from the wizard's guild : the display case anly contains an permanent illusion of the item, and a certificate of autenticity from the enchanter. The actual magic sword has to be either delivered (or teleported) from a secure location, teleported, or is locked in some pocket dimension that only the merchant can access. It only happens after money has changed hands and has been secured in a similar way.

Of course, the merchant can still be dominated/put under duress, but if you did so, congrats, you just assaulted a low-leve-but-good-standing member of the kingdom's wizard guild, and they have a very dissuasive policy about this kind of things.

Or you just do away with magic items shops because the entire magic item economy is silly, apart from mysterious, dangerous, dimension-jumping, customer-choosing venues like Fritz Leiber's magic bazaar.

But more seriously, talking to the players might be the better option. "Hey, guys, your silly diplomancer thievery is getting to my nerves, so might we not do that anymore at every freakin' session, please? thanks."

Pelle
2018-10-05, 02:57 AM
Insurance.

Just have a powerful insurance company that every shopkeeper pays fees to. If someone steals from them, they get paid back from the insurance company. The insurance company has access to divination spells, locate object etc, and will send someone powerful to reclaim the stolen goods. If they are effective and harsh enough, the threat will deter most people from stealing from insured shopkeepers, which makes this business lucarative and not too laborsome. Which means that a high level wizard can have it as a side business to generate revenue for his studies.

Frozen_Feet
2018-10-05, 03:27 AM
Did "being hung from the nearest tree" sound especially modern to you?

D&D has explicit rules for how big a settlement has to be for certain value of items to be found there and how many characters of which levels you ought to find there. Pathfinder, as what's essentially a D&D retroclone, either has those rules too or they are easily ported back in.

So one look at the shop's inventory tells you exactly how many and how strong people the PCs have potentially pissed off by their thieving ways. The type of the shop and type of law enforcement don't really matter. Whether the PCs end up running from the sheriff, the police, the town guard, a thieves' guild, hired assassins, angry lynch mob or other adventurers requested to violently dispose of them, is a matter of taste.

TeChameleon
2018-10-05, 03:36 AM
Well, speaking for myself, if I were DMing the game in question (and out-of-game talk hadn't solved things), I'd probably go the 'actions have consequences' route as well.

If they persisted in treating Diplomancy as quasi-mind-control, they'd find their favoured shops robbery targets had gone out of business, and if it the niche filled by said shop was vital enough to the town economy to have a replacement spring up, the owners of the new store(s) would be hostile and suspicious of the PCs, with a much steeper challenge rating for any diplomancy nonsense.

If that just shifted their focus to outright theft, then they'd find that there actually was a thieves' guild in town, and that said guild did not appreciate the PCs horning in on their territory. The first time the PCs are drugged and rolled might serve as a good wakeup call. If not, the knives in the dark might start coming out, and the players would learn to be very, very paranoid of unexpected Fortitude checks.

Slipperychicken
2018-10-06, 10:25 AM
The actual solution is talking with your players, in real life, like adults. Talk with them about what they wanted to achieve by stealing (loot, fun from fooling NPCs, roleplaying acts of theft, etc?), the reasons why their behavior isn't okay, and that they need to stop because it's distracting from the sort of game you want to play with them.


Also I'd consider both the offsite warehouse idea and revised rules for haggling. Say, every 5 points of difference modifies purchase/sale price by 5%, and the players can't do arbitrage (i.e. buy cheap at one shop, sell high at the next). When price is determined, then that's the price for the week (month for expensive items), PCs can take it or leave it, but cannot achieve a better price in further negotiations -the outcome of their roll represented their best effort. That rewards your talky players, keeps the haggling down to one roll, and keeps things from getting too silly.

You could even cut out rolling for haggling entirely; just say that the players' haggling skill simply reduces their prices by a fixed amount (in a 3.pf game that could be 5% for every five points of modifier, or 10% in a 5e game. Maximum discount 50% for regular items, 75% for magical ones). The idea is to let them have a benefit without it breaking the economy.

Quertus
2018-10-06, 01:24 PM
The actual solution is talking with your players, in real life, like adults. Talk with them about what they wanted to achieve by stealing (loot, fun from fooling NPCs, roleplaying acts of theft, etc?), the reasons why their behavior isn't okay, and that they need to stop because it's distracting from the sort of game you want to play with them.

So, I strongly agree with this, except for the bolded part. Perhaps it's not OK for the GM to want the game that they do when all of the players are having fun playing crooks and robbers.

In other words, it's not an issue of behavior not being OK; rather, it may be an issue of misaligned expectations. And there, I wholeheartedly agree with you - communication is the best solution.

Jay R
2018-10-07, 01:12 PM
"If you do that, you will no longer be Lawful, you will no longer be Good, and you will no longer be heroes. You will be outlaws, and the enemies of society. All the high level real heroes in the world will hunt you down and kill you, because you are a threat to their ability to continue to buy magic items."

And if that doesn't work:

"Look, you people want to pretend to be villains. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't enjoy it, and won't run a game for it. And there's nothing wrong with that, either. If you want to pretend to be heroes, then I will enjoy running a game for you to do so. If you want to pretend to be villains, then I hope you have good luck finding a DM. But it won't be me."

Devils_Advocate
2018-10-12, 07:37 PM
Valuables should, as a general rule, be protected by security measures proportional to their value. These measures can take the form of locked doors, locked chests (an outright staple of D&D's genre), traps, guards, secrecy, or numerous other things, but if there are no security measures protecting something valuable, it's liable to get stolen, which is why such security measures are put in place. In a game like D&D, that's partly because of a basic assumption that rewards are to be earned by overcoming appropriate challenges, but it's also a verisimilitude thing.

See, even if the player characters are the only high level people around, with deadly superpowers and whatnot, expensive merchandise can only be sold to wealthy people who can afford it. That means that, with insufficient security, unscrupulous potential customers will use their economic power to just hire a bunch of thugs to steal said expensive merchandise. Without enough security to make stealing something somehow a worse option than buying it, the purveyor of the thing in question is essentially relying on the honor system. And that might make sense for an odd utopia that the player characters can then seriously disrupt through their actions, but not so much for a typical society.

Now, player characters may decide to take on the appropriate difficulties involved in stealing expensive things, but that's not inherently a problem. Nor is the easy theft of minor goods inherently a problem; it's fine for characters to achieve inconsequential gains through inconsequential efforts. (The d20 System and Pathfinder even have rules for earning money through the Profession, Craft, and Perform skills.) If you want to DM a game where the PCs are monster exterminators and your players decide to play robbers instead, then that can be frustrating, but it doesn't break the game and/or the setting in the way that not gating loot behind appropriate challenges does. If you want to run a game for characters of a particular type, you should say as much.

Bohandas
2018-10-13, 06:58 PM
For magic weapons and armor you could replace the local shopkeepers with unscrupulous high-level traveling arms dealers who are selling to both sides-

Bohandas
2018-10-15, 07:04 PM
How do you deal with PC's not paying for and stealing things from NPCs? Game is pathfinder, but general not rules related advice also welcome. Everyone in the party is level 6.

This ranges from them bluffing/diplomacying their way through a shop to convince them to either give them the items for cheap/free or them outright stealing stuff.

When you say "outright stealing stuff" do you mean armed robbery, smash and grab, or pocketing stuff?

LordEntrails
2018-10-15, 08:00 PM
Even "powerless" peasants are powerless.
- Pee in your beer
- dump in your bed
- no room at the inn
- wanted posters of PCs'
- Bard songs describing the vile PC's and how impotent they are...
- no matter how good they are;
- - A merchant won't give something away for less than cost unless coerced
- - - A coerced merchant is going to take action after the fact
- - divination magic can always identify a thief, if the item(s)/problem is big enough, someone will invest the time and money in figuring out who.

1) Even in fantasy a store has security commensurate with the value of its goods, or it will quickly no longer have those goods because of the PCs or evil-doers
2) actions have consequences

Androgeus
2018-10-15, 10:05 PM
... and this is why Quertus' precognitive "we know what you want, and have it ready before you ask for it" magic item shops will quickly push out all these inefficient, idiotic business models.

Have NI +1 weapons on hand? Well, that's a lot of gp you've got tied up in inventory, just waiting for someone like the PCs to steal it.

Don't have anything pre-made? Well, that doesn't appeal to the "want it now" generation, who, well, want it now, and aren't willing to wait a day per 1000 gp (let alone however much of a back-order the wizard has).

No, Quertus' precognitive sweat shops, which have the items ready by the time you have the money and the desire, are the only long-term viable business model in the "modern" D&D gaming environment.

Oh, but for those losers you're describing? Um, how about a nice "Locate Object" to hunt down their stolen goods?

This sounds like a lot of work for such a meagre prophet

TeChameleon
2018-10-16, 01:50 AM
This sounds like a lot of work for such a meagre prophet

Just a precog in the machine, eh?

Unavenger
2018-10-16, 03:10 AM
So, the players are playing the game the way that they want to...

What's the problem?

Consensus
2018-10-16, 08:40 AM
So, the players are playing the game the way that they want to...

What's the problem?

It's not the game the dm wants to play

Unavenger
2018-10-16, 03:15 PM
It's not the game the dm wants to play

I mean, have they actually said that? They only have one post in this thread, and that post doesn't say it's not the type of game they want to play. It may well not be, but it's equally possible that they're just allowing themself to think that PCs being the bad guys is a bad thing because that's what they've heard from other gamers, say.

LordEntrails
2018-10-17, 01:25 PM
I mean, have they actually said that? They only have one post in this thread, and that post doesn't say it's not the type of game they want to play. It may well not be, but it's equally possible that they're just allowing themself to think that PCs being the bad guys is a bad thing because that's what they've heard from other gamers, say.

But this is the internet. Everyone is supposed to take a simple question and extrapolate it into the end of the world, or as close as they can get to it.

JNAProductions
2018-10-17, 07:02 PM
Presumably the OP has at least some issues with this style of play, else they wouldn't have posted the thread.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-10-17, 07:38 PM
I read it as the OP not knowing how to challenge them.

Ninjadeadbeard
2018-10-17, 08:40 PM
Just sic PCslayer on them.

He's like Goblinslayer...but for PCs.

Cealocanth
2018-10-17, 10:06 PM
If your party has a tendency to swindle and steal, and you don't want the party getting high level items because you're having trouble balancing around it or it's leading to a game you don't want to play, then you simply cannot use listed price as a reason that the party cannot obtain a certain item. I learned this trick while running a post-apocalyptic game. Everyone is poor as dirt, a case of bullets is the best thing on the shelf, and gasoline is worth its weight in blood. To get a pre-war gun the party was seen raiding a moving raider war caravan and using their tech and magic to slaughter about 24 people, risk colliding with asphalt at 80 miles per hour or getting a bullet in their head, and risk the wrath of the raider warlord that they were inciting. Magic items are worth an awful lot if you know that a certain group or person 'probably' has the item you're looking for, but you actually have to play the game to go and get it.

Now, this doesn't work with worlds that are supposed to feel like high magic worlds with strong civilizations, but in that case, just make the kinds of things you don't want people to get easy access to illegal. The party has to go through the black market (note: not ever a literal marketplace), bribe guards, file off serial numbers, smuggle items, work with local gangs, etc. to get ahold of that +2 Flametouched Sword. Anything to put an adventure between 'I want this thing' and 'I have this thing'. If your world is supposed to be high magic and the world is supposed to have easy and ready access to magic items, then you really shouldn't be expecting to play a game where the party doesn't have easy and ready access to magic items.

awa
2018-10-18, 06:13 PM
There was one d&d computer game that did this well at one point you acquire a magic ring that summons a genie shop keep who dealt in high end magic items.
This is a good idea if the magic item shops are controlled by extra planner beings who simply cannot be cleaned out. Taking it out of the hands of humans does a lot to make it make more sense a magic mart makes no sense economically a wizards time is simply to valuable to waste making magic pig-stickers for fighters.

Bohandas
2018-10-18, 10:43 PM
There was one d&d computer game that did this well at one point you acquire a magic ring that summons a genie shop keep who dealt in high end magic items.
This is a good idea if the magic item shops are controlled by extra planner beings who simply cannot be cleaned out. Taking it out of the hands of humans does a lot to make it make more sense a magic mart makes no sense economically a wizards time is simply to valuable to waste making magic pig-stickers for fighters.

I posted an idea for an NPC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23297029&postcount=254) like that a while back on another thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?482528-DM-s-Aid-Share-Your-Campaign-Plothook-and-Encounter-Ideas/page9):


NPC: "Psychopathic Sammy"

Psychopathic Sammy is the proprietor of a magic weapon shop called "Psychopathic Sammy's Armament Emporium". The sign on the door advertizes "homicidally insane prices". True to the sign's word Psychopathic Sammy buys and sells weapons and magic items at a lower profit margin than standard. As the PCs grow in levels, the store seems to begin to follow them to different cities and towns, always appearing the same on the inside as it did in it's initial location. When the PCs become high level and start to deal in large amounts of treasure the Store begins to appear in places where it absolutely could not be, such as in the trunk of a tree or embedded inside of a one foot thich wall which definitely doesn;t have his shop on the other side of it. In truth, Pychopatgic Sammy is a yugoloth, and the store remains where it has always been; in a suite on the 203rd floor of the Wasting Tower in the gray wastes of Hades; (which, btw, imposes extensive hidden penalties to any non-evil PC that enters the store until such time as they exit the store). The door is a reconfigurable portal that can be sent where it needs to be. Often appearing in the dead of night so that Sammy can have time to murder the previous occupants of any building whose door his shop has replaced and set up a copy of his window display in the window. PCs with high spot skills will notice that the window display on the inside (which generally has an illusory street beyond it; another permenent magic item) doesn't quite match the window display on the outside, especially as regards people on the other side of it. If the PCs try to attack or rob the store knowing who Sammy really is they'll find themselves swarmed by yugoloth guards and the portal gone.

If the PCs, having found out Sammy's true nature, ask why he's doing business with them, the heroes, of all people, Sammy will become offended and say that he wouldn't be a very good arms dealer if he cared who he was selling to; (the only important things are that thet have spare magical weapins to be sold off and more importantly they have money to but more expensive ones; he wishes only to make money and ensure that the world is supplied with instruments of death). Pursuant to this, anything which the PCs sell to him has a very high chance of making it into the hands of their enemies (or at least the important non-random-encounter enemies that can afford magical stuff), at the same low price (represented by an amount of additional gear corresponding to the discount) at which Sammy sells to them. Over time they may find that they;ve sold him the same few items many many times. If they start to wonder if this Yugoloth is selling them cursed stuff or whatever he'll show them an item which has made it's way back to him a few times and laughing reply something to the effect of "I'd say that you lot are curse"

Additionally, if the PCs ever find themselves in jail his door may appear in the wall of their cell with an offer to sell them weapons (and in this case only weapons) on credit. He may also let them temporarily hire some thugs on credit. He will not sell them anything else on credit nor will he use his portal to drop them off somewhere else.

JNAProductions
2018-10-18, 10:48 PM
NPC: "Psychopathic Sammy"

That's good stuff!

AceOfFools
2018-10-22, 08:34 PM
Throwing it out there, shops carrying adventurering tend not to be overly busy, and heavily armored stranger from out of town tends to be sufficiently suspicious that, "My X is missing, you must have stolen it" is pretty solid logic.

Hell, it's how a lot of thefts are detected even today. Object goes missing while a customer is in the room, especially a customer that browsed, but didn't buy? Accusing that person is a reasonable course of action.

Mutazoia
2018-10-22, 10:31 PM
So, I strongly agree with this, except for the bolded part. Perhaps it's not OK for the GM to want the game that they do when all of the players are having fun playing crooks and robbers.

Except, that we can assume that the DM isn't having fun, since he's here asking for advice on how to deal with it.

Anybody that would have a stock of extremely valuable magic items, would be able to afford some major protection for said inventory, and they wouldn't be just your average zero level schmuck.

Not knowing the magic "tech level" of your campaign, about all I can do is list broad generalizations..... Feel free to mix and match!


All shop items are cursed. The shop keeper removes the curse once the item is sold.
All items on display are fakes, with a Magic Aura spell cast on them to make them look like the real thing. Actual merch is stored in an extra-planar space (portable hole, etc) and retrieved when sold.
All shop keepers that sell magic items (and other adventuring sundry) are retired adventurers themselves, and are MUCH higher level than the PCs (why/how would a zero level schmuck be running a shop with inventory that cost more than his entire town would make in 100 years).
Everything in the shop, including the shopkeeper, is an illusion. Upon purchase, said item is teleported to the customer on top of the illusion (a seamless transfer that only a 90+ DC spot check would catch).
Anyone entering the shop is automatically affected by a Geas spell not to steal the inventory.
The shop is actually a sting operation set up by the Crown to catch a gang of bandits and the PC's just sprung the trap.
Having been in business for years, the shop keeper has insanely high Diplomacy and sense motive scores...much higher than a mere 6th level adventurer.
Mind control (Diplomacy) doesn't work on [shop keeper], only money.

Lord Torath
2018-10-23, 09:37 AM
Except, that we can assume that the DM isn't having fun, since he's here asking for advice on how to deal with it.
<snip>
5. Anyone entering the shop is automatically affected by a Geas spell not to steal the inventory.
<snip>I actually really like this Geas idea. Post a sign on the door that by entering the building, you are agreeing not to rob/burgle/assault the proprietor and other patrons. As you enter, the Geas spell interprets that as voluntary acceptance of the terms, and you get no save and no attempt to resist the spell. Sort of like how Huon's cup interprets drinking from it as accepting its enchantment, making it impossible for you to resist.

But the best answer is the one the greased poultry gave at the top of the page: talk to your players about the kind of game you want to run.