@ derwoodly: you raise some good arguments, and thats what forums are for, to discuss and speak your mind on the subject..
@ burned man: being rude will lead you know were, remember not every one thinks like you and on top of that no one is obligated to follow your way of tinking i\'d advise you to tink 2 twice before posting next time..
ps. ill post after lunch to go back on topic..
*edit*
1st. sry for double post
The level idea has been suggested before. The problem is PS does not have levels. You will have to use skill points instead. And if you don\'t have any restrictions High skill level thieves will rob low skill player?s blind. You can add a restriction to only allow thieves to be able to steal from players within 5 skill levels but this will favor more combat oriented players. Those with high crafting skills will be attacked by high level thieves and will have no chance at dueling the thief to get the items back. This will put pressure on the bounty hunter system that you proposed. It will be up to good-natured players who can stand around for long periods of time just waiting for players to get into trouble.
mm i never sugested character level, but stat and/or skill level.
the stats/skills evolved could be in this case of theft in the thieve (agility + pickpocket) and remenber i did mension a cap \"70%\" that will limit the thief to that maximum success rate(+- 2/3 chance of success but that cap can be edited for a harder success amount...)
the whole point of this system is that.. to exist heros there has to be evil too.
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PS already has a server of these. There called GM\'s. Finding more players who do not want to be GM\'s but do want to be bounty hunters will be difficult as being a GM has desirable perks that bunt hunter will not have.
GM\'s task has nothing to do with this... unless a thief is griefing another character
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Even if you succeed in creating a vibrant thief bounty hunter system you will still have problems. Very few players will want to be the victim; they will want to be either a thief or a bounty hunter. Now your game will be reduced to a game-that-shall-not-be-named kind of game.
the idea is not to create a vibrant thief system, but one that could work.
in real life few to none steal for pleasure, is more of a nessecity. thats what im trying to describe.
check my post and you will see that i mensioned in the end that a punishment could be aplyed to the thief.
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You act as though a thief would back away from a challenge. In my experience this is not the case. This would just be more braggin rights if successful. And who says a thief would attack alone? When a band of 6 thieves comes upon your group of three, then what will you do? You bring a knife to a sword fight and your gona loose, err, well, if your dagger skill is not high enough you will.
not my intention, maybe you got it wrong.. the point is to make it a chalenge to the thief, making him act more strategicly then bluntely rob, imagine a thief in the hydla plaza trying to rob a player there...
he will have 1st to chose hes victim, 2nd if the area isnt to crowd then he will have to chose what path he would have to take to strike and then chose one escape root in case things go wrong...
i dont tink banding is viable.. a random timer on victim to get robed again could aply here, to avoid griefing a group theft would work similarly like the group loot system but this would be only 1 theft attempt per victom, the only thing is that has a group the thief would be more protected and could face a larger N? of players here again they would have still have to think strategicly to achieve theyr goal.
ps: i know theres spelling errors in there...
Don\'t apologize for a double-post. Just don\'t make one, and edit your last post instead to add new information. --Karyuu