Justifying the 'steal' command in video games

[No brains]

One thing that has always bugged me is the idea of the 'steal' command in Final Fantasy and other videogame RPGs. I don't understand what's going on in the fiction of the game. Why is it that the player can only steal an item while a creature is alive? How do you, or better yet, the text of the game, explain this?

Does this mean stealing is more about somehow interrogating the creature? You're not taking the item off them so much as learning where they left their treasure? Like the use of the steal command represents taking the time to see that this monster keeps eyeing a hollow up in a tree during a fight?

It can't always be that the item is fragile and thus doesn't survive defeating the creature because sometimes resilient armor is what you're trying to steal and other times its items that would have visible repercussions if destroyed, like a bomb. Not to mention, sometimes you can find those after clobbering an enemy anyway.

Perhaps the steal command does represent stealing the item before the creature can make use of the item themselves, though if this were the case, I would like it if using the steal command came with some other repercussion like effectively lowering the creature's stats. It it's to be assumed that the creature is wearing an armor or drinking a potion, successfully stealing those items should make the creature easier to fight after that.

Maybe in some mega-abstract sense, it's about attacking an enemy's unseen support units, like their servants or baggage trains. Maybe a monster has some backup nearby that's holding its stuff, and if the monster loses, the support runs away with whatever they were holding? This is a REACH, but it's SOMETHING.

How do you justify using 'steal' in your head? Are there some games that actually spell out how it works for you?

[tonberrian]

"Stealing" in a video game is just rolling on a loot table, sometimes a different one than the enemy normally drops when defeated. It doesn't make any sense to look at it as anything more than that.

In Final Fantasy Tactics, most thief skills allow you to steal equipment that you can see the enemy is wearing. But then there's other stealing abilities, like Steal Heart or Steal Exp, that are stealing metaphysical concepts like affection or the literal knowledge of the target. How this works, and how it's not magic despite being physically impossible in the real world, is never discussed.

[OracleofWuffing]

I'm having trouble finding the exact image, but the Adventurers! webcomic once joked that the act of defeating enemies is a chemical reaction wherein introducing sufficient energy causes targets to break down into GP and XP molecules. That explanation probably doesn't work too well when you look at it too closely- but, under such a lens, one's just removing an optional body before the reaction goes critical.

Multiplayer pokemon battles have targets return to a pokeball when knocked out, so it almost makes sense why you can't steal held items after a pokemon's knocked out. Granted, it doesn't explain what happens with wild pokemon, but it's an attempt.

[Cazero]

What bothers me with the steal command in those games is how it invariably has a ludicrously low success rate, making it painful to use, combined with huge boons like early access to higher tier gear. It creates weird combat dynamic where you're stalling for a hundred turns and that's what kills you. It's frustrating.

[Zombimode]

One thing that has always bugged me is the idea of the 'steal' command in Final Fantasy and other videogame RPGs.

To be clear: the "steal" action is very much a Final Fantasy thing. Only FF games and those that are directly inspired by FF have this in this style.
It is not that different to having the "silenced" status effect that just shuts down any ability use (instead of just silencing the target), or some variationg of a Phoenix Dawn that ressurects characters in combat.

[tonberrian]

To be clear: the "steal" action is very much a Final Fantasy thing. Only FF games and those that are directly inspired by FF have this in this style.
It is not that different to having the "silenced" status effect that just shuts down any ability use (instead of just silencing the target), or some variationg of a Phoenix Dawn that ressurects characters in combat.

It very much isn't just a Final Fantasy thing. Western RPGs are chock full of characters that have loot you can only get by stealing from them, even not dropping it on death. Baldur's Gate 3 has it, BG1 and 2 had it, Divinity Original Sin 2 I believe has it, there's instances all over the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. People like the idea of loot that you can only get by being a pickpocket, regardless of whether they're JRPG or WRPG fans.

[Zombimode]

It very much isn't just a Final Fantasy thing. Western RPGs are chock full of characters that have loot you can only get by stealing from them, even not dropping it on death. Baldur's Gate 3 has it, BG1 and 2 had it, Divinity Original Sin 2 I believe has it, there's instances all over the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. People like the idea of loot that you can only get by being a pickpocket, regardless of whether they're JRPG or WRPG fans.

And all the instances of the possibility of pick-pocketing you have listed are a completely different beast than the FF-style "steal" action that the OP is about.

If you steal from an NPC in any Baldurs Gate or any Elder Scrolls game you actually take from the inventory of that NPC. There is no need to wonder "what's going on in the fiction of the game" because stealing in those games is just that: stealing.

[tyckspoon]

It very much isn't just a Final Fantasy thing. Western RPGs are chock full of characters that have loot you can only get by stealing from them, even not dropping it on death. Baldur's Gate 3 has it, BG1 and 2 had it, Divinity Original Sin 2 I believe has it, there's instances all over the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. People like the idea of loot that you can only get by being a pickpocket, regardless of whether they're JRPG or WRPG fans.

Still gets pretty weird in some fairly common situations, like where a character has their -entire- equipment set in their stealable inventory and you can 'pickpocket' a tower shield or suit of armor from them or where a shopkeeper is treated as a container item that has their entire shop inventory accessible by stealing from them... 500 units of ammunition, a minigun, and a palletful worth of medical supplies? Sure, just pickpocket the counter clerk.

[veti]

When the creature is dead, all its possessions become loot. "Steal" means helping yourself to some of the loot before the end of the fight.

In my D&D days there was sometimes much debate about what constituted "dead" in the context of enemies. We came to the consensus that "if you can loot them without fighting, they're dead enough".

[oxybe]

One thing that has always bugged me is the idea of the 'steal' command in Final Fantasy and other videogame RPGs. I don't understand what's going on in the fiction of the game. Why is it that the player can only steal an item while a creature is alive? How do you, or better yet, the text of the game, explain this?

Does this mean stealing is more about somehow interrogating the creature? You're not taking the item off them so much as learning where they left their treasure? Like the use of the steal command represents taking the time to see that this monster keeps eyeing a hollow up in a tree during a fight?

It can't always be that the item is fragile and thus doesn't survive defeating the creature because sometimes resilient armor is what you're trying to steal and other times its items that would have visible repercussions if destroyed, like a bomb. Not to mention, sometimes you can find those after clobbering an enemy anyway.

Perhaps the steal command does represent stealing the item before the creature can make use of the item themselves, though if this were the case, I would like it if using the steal command came with some other repercussion like effectively lowering the creature's stats. It it's to be assumed that the creature is wearing an armor or drinking a potion, successfully stealing those items should make the creature easier to fight after that.

Maybe in some mega-abstract sense, it's about attacking an enemy's unseen support units, like their servants or baggage trains. Maybe a monster has some backup nearby that's holding its stuff, and if the monster loses, the support runs away with whatever they were holding? This is a REACH, but it's SOMETHING.

How do you justify using 'steal' in your head? Are there some games that actually spell out how it works for you?

Personally speaking, I just don't think about it.

It's a loot table drop. Why is that the common Slime has a 1/32 chance of dropping a MagicalHerb upon being killed? Because that's how loot works in the game. Why does the Slime have a 1/128 MagicalHamshank steal rate? because that's how the steal loot table work.

If I was looking to have it make narrative sense though?

If you engage in the scripted fight and kill the GoblinCheif before you can steal his GoblinBangle armor, it's not that it magically disappears from his inventory: your thief has actively searched him over multiple times in combat and just couldn't find anything of value on him before you killed him, and upon looting his corpse you find that he only has the 120G and the 1/1 drop rate GoblinBlade.

In this timeline/instance of the gameworld it's not that the GoblinBangle stops existing from the GoblinCheif upon his death, GoblinCheif simply didn't have a GoblinBangle, period. If your Thief is able to steal the GoblinBangle, it's not that the item magically starts existing: the GoblinCheif would surely have dropped it, but the Thief simply nicked it early, before the fight ended.

In short: "Steal" is Shroedinger's Loot Drop where the loot only exists upon being perceived, and if it isn't perceived, well it never existed in the first place.

[Anymage]

In this timeline/instance of the gameworld it's not that the GoblinBangle stops existing from the GoblinCheif upon his death, GoblinCheif simply didn't have a GoblinBangle, period. If your Thief is able to steal the GoblinBangle, it's not that the item magically starts existing: the GoblinCheif would surely have dropped it, but the Thief simply nicked it early, before the fight ended.

In short: "Steal" is Shroedinger's Loot Drop where the loot only exists upon being perceived, and if it isn't perceived, well it never existed in the first place.

This makes sense in settings where steals and drops focus on the same list. In FF games with differing lists between the two, it's harder to justify why enemies only carry certain items when they meet thieves who can steal them. Or for that matter, why many enemies carry items at all. What possible reason would that t-rex have for carrying a katana around?

Then again, final fantasies in particular tend to fall apart quickly when you try to look at their mechanics as coherent world elements instead of just fun mechanics. Not thinking about it too hard tends to be the best take.

[darkdragoon]

This makes sense in settings where steals and drops focus on the same list. In FF games with differing lists between the two, it's harder to justify why enemies only carry certain items when they meet thieves who can steal them. Or for that matter, why many enemies carry items at all. What possible reason would that t-rex have for carrying a katana around?

Other adventurers who thought "I have a katana! surely I can take this dinosaur out"

[warty goblin]

What possible reason would that t-rex have for carrying a katana around?

Dinosaur ninjas, obviously. It's why all the other dinosaurs went extinct. Why don't we see the ninja t-rexes around? They're ninjas.

Then again, final fantasies in particular tend to fall apart quickly when you try to look at their mechanics as coherent world elements instead of just fun mechanics. Not thinking about it too hard tends to be the best take.

Really most to all videogames fall utterly to bits if one starts thinking about the mechanics very hard. RPGs are particularly vulnerable to the problem because a lot of the time they just show you their math, and owing to their structural need to give you ever increasing amounts of power, that math is utterly bonkers.

[KillianHawkeye]

Just the fact that monsters have random loot at all doesn't make sense and is simply a gaming genre convention that goes back to random loot tables in D&D.

If I can kill a swarm of flies in Diablo 2 and have an entire suit of armor and a pile of gold drop out of them, how does anything in the world of video games make sense?

Don't overthink it.

[veti]

If I can kill a swarm of flies in Diablo 2 and have an entire suit of armor and a pile of gold drop out of them, how does anything in the world of video games make sense?

Don't overthink it.

Well, obviously the stuff was lying on the ground, and you had to beat off a swarm of flies - probably enjoying its former owner - to get to it.

If anything, the part of random loot that makes no sense is how little of it there is. I mean, here am I cruising about with 1.4 million gold in my pocket, but nobody else in the whole world has more than a couple of hundred?