August 2020 Newsletter : "we have some thoughts on the thief profession"....

Victim_Of_Siege

Thread  is getting a little hefty, after those wall of texts Popps may need some help

Nikard

Stealing mastery

Passive - Gives you the ability to steal from other players

Active - Use a disguise kit to change your name and appearence

Lol just kidding. *TRAMMEL*

popps

Nikard said:

Stealing mastery

Passive - Gives you the ability to steal from other players

Active - Use a disguise kit to change your name and appearence

Lol just kidding. *TRAMMEL*

Aside from the Stealing Mastery which I suggested here https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/45491/#Comment_45491 , and, out of fun called "Nimble Fingers", another Stealing Mastery could be one that permits to Thieves to "see" into NPCs backpacks and target steal what they really want, including Artifact drops which the Monster would drop when they got killed, rather then having to rely on random stealing...

This would of course need to change the current time of creation of a Monster backpack from its death as it is now, to its birth.... "if" that given Monster is spawned with an artifact drop, say for example Navrey Night-Eyes which can drop a Tangle, then the Thief might be able to steal that Tangle, if the one Navrey that was spawned had one in its backpack to start with....

It could be called something like "Deep Searchin' " and, whereas the Rogue was to have all real skill points, 120 Stealing, 100 Snooping, 100 Lockpicking, 100 Detect Hidden, 100 Remove Trap, 100 Hiding (total of 620 real skill points) he/she, when this Mastery is activated and chosen, will enable the Thief to steal artifacts from High End Monsters that can drop them.

As an alternative, if creating a backpack for NPCs at their birth rather then death was to be too complicated, codewise, it could instead be changed to "add", whereas the Rogue was running this Mastery, a chance to steal an artifact that is a drop related to that given Monster.

So, in the example above, whereas Navrey Night-Eyes has a chance to drop a Tangle, the Rogue running this Mastery would have the chance of stealing one from Navrey without the need to kill it first.

Not saying that it should be a 100% guaranteed chance to steal an artifact, but neither an impossible 1% one....

It should be a decent chance whereas a Rogue could, for example, in 1 hour of stealing on high end Bosses, at least be able to get home with 1 artifact having been stolen.... possibly 2 if they were lucky....

Another Rogue Mastery which could be explored, could be one that added "new" items which currently do not exist to Monsters and Dungeon Chests' Loot Table and which can only be stolen or looted from Dungeon Chests if, and only if, the Rogue is running this Mastery.

That is, this Mastery, let's call it "Deep Swipe", still requiring a high number of Rogue skills in "real" skill points such as 120 Stealing, 100 Snooping, 100 Lockpicking, 100 Detect Hidden, 100 Remove Trap, 100 Hiding (total of 620 real skill points) when up and running, would "trigger" for the Thief or the Chest looter the ability to steal from Monsters of find in Chests such new items not findable/obtainable otherwise.

With some creativity, I am sure that better Masteries for a Rogue could be found that those that I am suggesting out of fun....

The principle though, should be that of "promoting" the investment of REAL skill points on the Template rather then using skill items....

Therefore, whatever Masteries will be thought over, to my opinion they should require many skills, and the more the better, and all "real" skill points in order to provide more wealth and benefits to the Rogue Template.

Dukarlo

The only time they should involve abilities with real skill is when there are balance issues. I personally only use a mark of travesty and shadow dancer legs . 90 real skill and 120 with the 2 items. I imagine some people use more on items but who cares. Noone complains that thieves are overpowered nowadays. They are the most nerfed class in the history of uo Popps, the only thing that would happen from your suggestion would be that the few of us that still play a thief .would have to redo our suits. One of the nice things about the items with thief skills is it allows a lot of the under utilized and less pvp specific skills to be incorporated into the build. 
As far as a thief mastery goes that would simply be a nerf to me as I already use the ninja mastery and I really dont wanna have to lose that simply to be able to do what I already can do with the stealing skill. Why would you want to steal something from a player with no chase involved? Theres a reason there is a delay between stealing and hiding. 

keven2002

Yes... let's make it so thieves never become revealed ever and can steal everything in the game; that way you don't even need smoke bombs. While we are at it, lets make it so Shadow Jump works like a recall and will teleport you anywhere you want... oh and let's also get rid of the criminal flags that come with stealing...in fact let's make it so instead of flagging grey for 30-60 seconds, the thief actually turns yellow and become invulnerable!!

Stop trying to make everything so overpowered it gets nerfed into oblivion (much worse than it would currently be left alone).