[Moderating]
You can if you want make a new thread for open spoilers, but on my quick scan through, I’m not really seeing any unblurred spoilers here. If there are some posts with unblurred spoilers, flag those posts specifically, and I or one of the other mods will blur them.
Annoyance: I’m in a settlement, probably the first settlement most people will reach. My rogue’s fingers are a bit sticky and so, Go Turn Based, Successfully Hide, Sneak, Yoink, Profit. But 30 seconds later the game just goes “People saw things being stolen, you’ll need to defend yourself!” Then a conversation check or straight to jail. It makes the whole sneaking and swiping part feel stupid because you seemingly can’t actually “win” it. Fortunately my Deception skill let me say “He went thattaway” and scoot but I don’t care for it. I had the same thing happen when picking a pocket: Successful hide roll, successful Sleight-of-Hand roll, move along and one room later and I’m forced into a cut scene about being suspected of petty larceny.
You can’t even handwave it with “Well, you’re new here so if something goes missing you’re the prime suspect” because I’ve had two or three social encounters in town that involved theft. This place was having a property rights issue long before I rolled in.
On the plus side, Shadowheart is rocking that 100% discounted Breastplate +1. You go, girl.
Hmm, I wonder if that’s a bug? I would think the theft mechanics would be more fleshed out than that.
I wonder if the problem is whatever your other characters were doing at the time? I am playing as a pretty honest character, so I haven’t messed around with stealing much yet, but I did do a little bit - minor spoiler involving Speak With Dead mechanics -
at the Druid camp, I asked the guy who got shot when opening the gate where his valuables were, mostly to test Speak With Dead. I then looted a bunch of gold off his bedroll - dude was loaded! And this obviously counted as theft. But my whole party was there with me.
Maybe you need to leave your party members somewhere out of sight when you go on a shoplifting spree?
Hah, I meant to do the same thing but got distracted. Not sure if it’ll still be an option next time I swing by or if they’ll have cleaned up by then.
Also, I apparently picked Charlatan instead of Criminal which makes me feel a little better about my Inspiration opportunities (got a few by tricking people which I would have done anyway). But you get Inspiration dice from your companions as well? I assisted some people in combat training and got an Inspiration die off my approving fighter-type companion.
Yes, each companion (and origin story if you play as them) had a unique background. Custom characters have your selected background, which comes from that list that includes Sage (mine) or Charlatan (yours), but origins are more specialized I believe, and tie in to that character’s background.
As I understand it Inspiration is a shared party resource. So a fighting-his-origin Dark Urge can pair off with heroic companions to get heroic inspiration points.
Goddamn, this game doesn’t pull punches. I’ve stumbled into multiple fights that I was not ready for and I’m not exactly pushing for the edges of the map.
Some extremely funny stuff in this game. The facial expressions of the characters are great too. And the dialogue choices are often very ambiguous in terms of morality.
Yeah, I’m banging my head against a fight now…
Location Spoiler
Phase spider matriarch in the caves under the blighted, goblin-infested, town
…and I think this is a “come back later” sort of thing. I’m talking one-hit ranged kills and some very unfavorable geometry for me. A far cry from other fights in the area.
I encountered that area at level 3, triggered a fight, and noped out of there. It definitely looks like a “do some other stuff first and then come back” situation.
Same.
I saw this discussed somewhere else (but I forget where). The RP of it is the person you pickpocketed notices they have lost something and you seem the most likely culprit so they get in your face about it.
You can then talk your way out of it or go to jail or fight.
Role playing.
I think the notion that I can pickpocket willy-nilly with no consequence (as long as you succeed) is the less desirable result.
Just my $0.02
Sure. I just don’t really accept that handwave when the place has multiple other thieves and scammers running about. And no one thinks that they misplaced something? Dropped it? Something disappears and a half-second later you’ve narrowed it to the culprit? It feels like forcing a mechanical solution (added ability checks to make theft harder) under a flimsy pretext of role playing.
It also actively hurts the RP experience in my opinion because, whenever my supposedly skilled rogue (with expertise in Sleight-of-Hand) lifts something, it’s immediately known. Wow, don’t I feel skilled? Maybe later they can make sure every innkeeper is a retired Level 20 Paladin because that’s another thing DMs do when they don’t like how you’re playing and need to sledgehammer a solution.
Success is literally the point of investing in Sleight-of-Hand (or any other skill, really).
In older games if you made a skill check you could steal absolutely everything and get away with it. Take the shirt off their back and walk away.
The RP is not a handwave. You are the new person in town. You were near them when it happened. Etc.
It is different than failing the skill check and being caught. You can talk your way out more easily.
If you pick a pocket successfully, then get confronted about it, and talk your way out of it, do you keep what you stole? (I haven’t done that so I don’t know, I know in Elder Scrolls games for example, you can fend off guards to avoid a fight after stealing but still have to give up the stolen goods.)
If you get to keep the stuff, that seems to me to be the reward for success, regardless of whether you also need to talk your way out of it later.
I was sneaking around a goblin village and pickpocketed a goblin. Even though I didn’t enter line-of-sight (I think), I got confronted by a goblin and forced to give the money back.
I’m a little confused on how this dynamic is supposed to work.
We’ll have to disagree there. It very much feels like one to me and landed with a thud in the immersion department.
So don’t make worn shirts able to be stolen. Problem solved. It’s pickpocketing, not pickstripping.
Yes. With a vague warning about next time…
That’s the reward for succeeding at a Deception/Persuasion roll, not the reward for succeeding at the Sleight-of-Hand. The whole point of Sleight-of-Hand is that you do things without them being noticed.
It’s the premise that counts.
I think in the good old days pickpocketing was just free money. Once you had enough skill you could loot a whole city population of their stuff with no consequence.
BG3 doesn’t want to make it that easy for you. I agree. YMMV
So if you pick a pocket and fail, you get the item, they immediately ask if you picked their pocket, and you can say that a squirrel did it and if they hurry they can still catch it? And then you keep the item?
If so, then that makes the sleight of hand skill completely worthless. 
Then don’t leave a bunch of stuff out. Thinking that the BG3 mechanics for making theft harder are poorly done doesn’t mean “I want to steal every candlestick and spool of thread”.
Honestly, since my other expertise is in Deception, it’s not even much more difficult, it’s just more immersion breaking and feels much lamer to have a rogue who can’t accomplish petty theft without everyone pointing and staring.
That seems like a failed pickpocket attempt to me. Successfully pickpocketing someone means they don’t notice.