I'm happy to introduce the new PICKPOCKET ability for members of the
Serpent class. With this ability, everyone's favourite shadow lurkers
can liberate gold and items from the inventories of players and denizens
alike!

Pickpocketing a denizen will reward you with gold, and occasionally an
item of varying levels of rarity and value. This includes some items
that drop from a denizen when they perish (for example, karma items), or
items designated for use in an event. There are limits on how much gold
a denizen has, or gains, so once pick pocketed, they will not be able to
be stolen from again for a while. Your chance of success or detection is
based on many factors, but thieves may increase their chances with high
dexterity and a high subterfuge skill level.

Players are a similar situation, a percentage of the gold in their hands
can be liberated by skilled pickpockets. This has an upper limit of gold
per attempt, but should the mark not be paying attention, you may be
able to pickpocket them multiple times. Wary adventurers may protect
themselves from these vagabonds by employing selfishness(*) to ward off
any stray hands in their pockets.

Of course, there have to be some changes to forced-action theft to
accompany this new system. Effective immediately, players from any
applicable class can no longer force you to drop or give away your
possessions, nor can they force you to put your items in a container
that you may or may not own (**). They can, however, force you to remove
any gold from containers in order to perform a pickpocketing.

The role of a thief is a valid path for a character in Achaea, but the
the cost to the victims is often beyond what we consider to be
reasonable. With the addition of pickpocketing we hope to retain the RP
aspects (and rewards) of being a thief or cutpurse, while minimising the
heavy cost that is often associated with being a victim. In addition,
denizen pickpocketing allows more concrete ways for a player to roleplay
a thief without requiring heavy involvement in PvP.

Don't be mistaken: anyone can still be a victim of theft, especially if
you are standing around AFK. But there is no longer the risk of losing
days, weeks, or even months of in-game effort for a few moments of
laxity.

We'll be monitoring the outcome of the new system over the coming days,
and making tweaks where required to make this change as seamless as
possible.

(*) To go alongside this change, it will now be permitted to strip the
SELFISHNESS defence in order to pickpocket from them. This still opens
you up to the usual rights of self-defence. The VIGILANCE ability has
also been updated to take these changes into account.
(**) There are exceptions to this rule, to retain many combat-related
strategies that go along with forced actions.

Penned by My hand on the 15th of Sarapin, in the year 593 AF.