Good uses for the steal maneuver?

[SangoProduction]

Ignore the resources that it normally takes to be even almost-sorta-halfway-not-really decent at maneuvering at all. Also ignore the one note nature of such over-specialization. And ignore that you are giving up literally all of your attacks in a round to maybe steal one thing.

Just assume you magically have the ability to use the steal maneuver with reasonable reliability.

What are the best use cases for stealing? Perhaps spell pouches. Maybe for the McGuffin? ....anything else?

[Incorrect]

"As the enemy general towers over you, he raises his shadow-crafted vorpal demon blade"

The glaive wielding tripper build is nothing but a bag of HP without his glaive.

Combined with a clever spot check it can often be used to render humanoids a lot less useful. Identify who has equipment that is critical for their tactics.
Does the caster have a backup component pouch? Not in most pre-written campaigns.
Does the holy man have more than one holy symbol? Okay, maybe.
Does the melee dude have a backup weapon? Definitely not one as good as his primary. Same with a bow-user.

It would likely be the same check to place something on the enemy. Bombs, poison or incriminating evidence.

[SangoProduction]

"As the enemy general towers over you, he raises his shadow-crafted vorpal demon blade"

The glaive wielding tripper build is nothing but a bag of HP without his glaive.

Combined with a clever spot check it can often be used to render humanoids a lot less useful. Identify who has equipment that is critical for their tactics.
Does the caster have a backup component pouch? Not in most pre-written campaigns.
Does the holy man have more than one holy symbol? Okay, maybe.
Does the melee dude have a backup weapon? Definitely not one as good as his primary. Same with a bow-user.

It would likely be the same check to place something on the enemy. Bombs, poison or incriminating evidence.

The deal with holy symbols and weapons is that steal maneuver doesn't allow targeting of anything that's being wielded, because that is arbitrarily a completely different maneuver called disarm.

[Psyren]

While the maneuver exists, the drawbacks are substantial as mentioned. Your best bet to make it worthwhile is on a class that can be optimized for it, like an Investigator with Stealing Strike.

The biggest obstacle to getting use out of it is defining exactly what falls into each of its three buckets. These are:

- Loosely Attached (no modifier)
- Fastened (+5 DC)
- Closely Worn (cannot be stolen)

Generally you want to be targeting the first bucket, because the second and third are often wasted actions. Some examples for each are given in the maneuver, but few of these are useful targets, and for other categories of item your GM will eventually have to step in. It also has the Disarm/Sunder problem whereby you're optimizing a tactic that has very little use against monsters that don't use gear.

[gijoemike]

Spell pouches and focus have been mentioned. I say go for the spells themselves.

The bonus to stats becomes permanent only after 24 hours of use with a stat boosting item ( headband of intellect, charisma, wisdom). These are worn on the head and are not wielded, they don't even have a chin strap. Prior to the 24 hour bonus you don't get extra skills or spells.

Roll up behind a wizard and yank that exposed headband off. "You drop this, bro?" And the poor lvl 7 Wizard with a base 18 int and +4 int item just lost the second bonus spell from lvl 1, lvl 2, and lvl 3; 14 skill points (That is more than 2 full levels of skills), 2 off their spell DCs. The best part... even if you hand it back to them and they put it on. They only get the +2 dc back as it hasn't been in their possession for 24 hours. If your DM is super lenient and rules that it didn't attune to anyone else they still lost the bonus spells for a high ability as those went POOF when you stole it.

Cloaks of Resistance are super nice to steal too. Lower all saves by 3 will make your caster love you if they toss around Save or suck/die spells.

You cannot steal a bow or perhaps the quiver. But you can steal those arrows from inside the quiver. If you can steal a handful of magical arrows/bolts that can shut down some archers. I mean they fire at least 3 arrows per round even at low levels and magic arrows are bought in batches of 50. If you just stole 15 arrows that is 5 full rounds of attacks that was just denied. Do npc's always have complete batches of arrows? Quivers are bought and sold in batches of 20 so that NPC may have only had 30 arrows. A steal maneuver on the 3rd round of combat could end it faster than HP damage. Beware of endless quivers.

[Psyren]

Headbands are arguably clothing and thus likely count as "closely worn" - making them impossible to steal. This is exactly the kind of headache i was talking about, just using this maneuver is a quick route to bogging your table down with arguments and making PF1's already slow combat even slower.