So you want to nerf stealth....

[Fredd]

So, let's talk about this. Let's see if we can't find a few answers that wont make my favorite type of character useless.

I have 2 honest suggestion that I think will smooth over the rougher edges of this part of the game.

Hide+Steal = You have no chance to defend yourself against repeated fails:

This is an actual problem. As a stealth lover I have to admit this. Even the most disciplined of us can spam steal on someone for various reasons.

So I suggest a theft timer. If the person has CAUGHT or NOTICED a steal attempt on them, that person is no longer a valid target for steal attempts for 30 mins. It would return an echo like thus:"
"This person is being vigilant against thieves." or "This poerson has noticed thieves in their pockets recently, and is keeping vigilant."

This would stop spam steals. This would ALSO help the stealth game a lot. Right now one thief can run aorund the cities after reset and gobble up all the coins and belt knives on NPC's. Leaving nothing for newer thieves to practice on/make a living with. Adding a 30 min timer to fails would really help this.

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"There's no counterplay to thieves.": Let's add a bit of counterplay that wont completely break the game then. Here's 2 great ideas, one of which has been floated several times over the years.

Reveal: A command that lets people reveal hidden people they can see via scan.

Guard: If a player is being guarded, there are peopel actively around them, stopping people from getting close, and watching suspicious activity. Being guarded should increase the difficulty PER PERSON GUARDING.
This means if they noble has 2 servants and a guard watching them, their fancy knife might just be safe to show off.
Bodyguard services in the city might even become more of a thing, creating more rp, and more jobs.

[Tisiphone]

I would like for every failed stealth action that doesn't reveal the user to activate an 'alert' flag on the victim (for lack of a better term) of a certain duration, set by the skill and nature of the failure, that makes further failures and discovery more likely. Cumulative failures could add to a penalty, or accrete length to the flag, or simply reset the flag timer - all these options would be good.

This seems to me like a minimal change which would eliminate or reduce the danger of harassing people with repeated failures while still according mastery of stealth the benefits it should have.

[Alesan]

I would like for every failed stealth action that doesn't reveal the user to activate an 'alert' flag on the victim (for lack of a better term) of a certain duration, set by the skill and nature of the failure, that makes further failures and discovery more likely. Cumulative failures could add to a penalty, or accrete length to the flag, or simply reset the flag timer - all these options would be good.

This seems to me like a minimal change which would eliminate or reduce the danger of harassing people with repeated failures while still according mastery of stealth the benefits it should have.

This sounds pretty reasonable.

I like the guard idea too.

[Brytta Léofa]

If the person has CAUGHT or NOTICED a steal attempt on them, that person is no longer a valid target for steal attempts for 30 mins.

Yes!

Right now one thief can run aorund the cities after reset and gobble up all the coins and belt knives on NPC's. Leaving nothing for newer thieves to practice on/make a living with.

Yikes, are people repeat-stealing on NPCs? with fails? like, "steal coins dude; steal coins dude; steal coins dude"?
I am too afraid of the staff to do this.

I would also suggest making more NPCs available to steal from (intentionally vague). Maybe you get <10 coins. Maybe it doesn't actually deduct from their number of coins in inventory. But there I'm still assuming that people won't just utterly twink the fuck out.

Reveal: A command that lets people reveal hidden people they can see via scan.

Yes. I think I would prefer "reveal <shadow/blur> <to person>" to the "reveal to whole room" version.

Being guarded should increase the difficulty PER PERSON GUARDING.

Yes, 100%. I would also make it so that you cannot guard a person who is guarding someone else. Both because it makes sense (guarding is a full time job, you can't have a dude hanging on your arm trying to guard you, and guard-circles were always a near pointless tactic), and because you know in 3 weeks the Byn will be teaching runners to guard each other in circles at the Gaj for theft prevention. <3

I would like for every failed stealth action that doesn't reveal the user to activate an 'alert' flag on the victim (for lack of a better term) of a certain duration, set by the skill and nature of the failure, that makes further failures and discovery more likely. Cumulative failures could add to a penalty, or accrete length to the flag, or simply reset the flag timer - all these options would be good.

Yes, that's a very solid idea. So this is steal + plant + peek + latch + unlatch?

[Athapaxis]

These are both fantastic ideas.  Elegantly simple but I think would be very effective.

[Fredd]

If the person has CAUGHT or NOTICED a steal attempt on them, that person is no longer a valid target for steal attempts for 30 mins.

Yes!

Right now one thief can run aorund the cities after reset and gobble up all the coins and belt knives on NPC's. Leaving nothing for newer thieves to practice on/make a living with.

Yikes, are people repeat-stealing on NPCs? with fails? like, "steal coins dude; steal coins dude; steal coins dude"?
I am too afraid of the staff to do this.

I would also suggest making more NPCs available to steal from (intentionally vague). Maybe you get <10 coins. Maybe it doesn't actually deduct from their number of coins in inventory. But there I'm still assuming that people won't just utterly twink the fuck out.

Reveal: A command that lets people reveal hidden people they can see via scan.

Yes. I think I would prefer "reveal <shadow/blur> <to person>" to the "reveal to whole room" version.

Being guarded should increase the difficulty PER PERSON GUARDING.

Yes, 100%. I would also make it so that you cannot guard a person who is guarding someone else. Both because it makes sense (guarding is a full time job, you can't have a dude hanging on your arm trying to guard you, and guard-circles were always a near pointless tactic), and because you know in 3 weeks the Byn will be teaching runners to guard each other in circles at the Gaj for theft prevention. <3

I would like for every failed stealth action that doesn't reveal the user to activate an 'alert' flag on the victim (for lack of a better term) of a certain duration, set by the skill and nature of the failure, that makes further failures and discovery more likely. Cumulative failures could add to a penalty, or accrete length to the flag, or simply reset the flag timer - all these options would be good.

Yes, that's a very solid idea. So this is steal + plant + peek + latch + unlatch?

Valid point on the guard circle exploit. That would likely need to be put in there.

Good catch

Also, the increased difficulty per fail seems like a good idea too.