GameBanshee Forums

Why is it that a thief with 100% skill in Pick Pockets can fail to pick pockets? Also, why are there some NPCs that you fail about 60% of the time even if you have 100% skill?

There is ambiguity in the thief's skills: on the potions and items it mentions '+20% to pick-pocket' for example, whereas on the list of skills on the character page there is no percentage symbol; it just lists skill points. They can and should go over 100, so they are best *not* viewed as percentages.

I think the 'magic number' for pick-pocket is 160, or maybe its 200. At that level there is no fail (possibly 1 in 100 chance to fail i guess).

Items and potions that increase skills can be stacked. When i used to do thieving sprees i would drink 3 or 4 potions of master thievery, and had no problems even stealing from stores.

It's not 100%, but 100. The value is set against another value for the person your NPC is trying to pickpocket.

Every store in the game has a "Steal Difficulty" that is matched against your Thief's Pickpocket score every time you try to shoplift. For example, Gorch has a Steal Difficulty of 70%, Roger the Fence has a Steal Difficulty of 47%, and Bernard has a Steal Difficulty of 128%. As you can see, some merchants are more difficult to steal from than others.

Your Thief's Pickpocket score can range from 0 to 255. Any points over 255 "wrap around" and start at 0, so you don't want to go over 255. I think there's always a 1% chance that you will get caught, but if your Thief's Pickpocket score is 100 points higher than the person you're trying to steal from, you have a 99% chance of success.

I'm not sure exactly how pickpocketing works, but I suspect that if you try to pickpocket another Thief, the game compares your Thief's Pickpocket skill to the other Thief's Pickpocket skill. If your Thief drinks a bunch of Potions of Master Thievery and raises his Pickpocket score to about 240, he'll be able to pickpocket anyone in the game about 99% of the time.

Open Locks and Find Traps function in a similar fashion. Locked containers and traps have a difficulty score that determines how many ability points a Thief needs to open or detect/disarm them. Most traps and locks have a difficulty less than 90, so if your Thief has 90 points in Open Locks and 90 points in Find Traps, you'll be able to deal with most traps and locks. I don't recall any traps and locks that have a difficulty higher than 120 (there are only a handful over 100 in the entire game), so ability scores of 120 or higher will guarantee 99% success.

As far as I know, the scores for Detect Illusion, Set Traps represent a percentage chance of success. I'm not exactly sure how Hide in Shadows works, but I know there's a penalty if you try to hide in broad daylight, so an ability score over 100 in Hide in Shadows does help.

There is *always* a 1% chance that any attempt with a thief skill will fail as well.