Alright help me out here.

[Legacy_tmanfoo]

               I'm forever coming up with questions that I just love to put
to others for feedback on.
So here goes.



I'm playing a thief, in a party with a few others.  One falls in battle, and
happens to be the one with the Raise Dead scroll or similar.  In game it may not be possible to loot their corpse, or ask them if it's OK by them.



What are the moral ramifications of using Pick Pocket to steal the scroll, then
use it to return that player to life?



Is this a good action, bad, neutral?  Just a little good because my heart
was in the right place, or still bad since I stole something?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par tmanfoo, 01 octobre 2010 - 06:49 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Eurypterid]

               You're not stealing anything if you're using it to raise him. If you buggered off with him and left him dead, that would be another matter. I see no moral implication at all other than possible an act of good, since you actually bring him back to life.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tmanfoo]

               This is about what I landed on too, but it’s always nice to bounce these kinds of things off others.



I started outlining a system to adjust alignment over time based on player action/inaction, and this old scenario popped into my head.  It's weird to think of assigning values to actions.  So it seems like stealing is less bad than bringing someone back from the dead.  Maybe I should incorporate the worth of the item to determine the 'badness' of the theft?  This is getting more complicated by the second.  I think I see why I scrapped the idea ages ago.



I think I'll go check the vault, someone has undoubtedly written something like this already.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               As long as the character is dead, it's not stealing. Personally, I wouldn't even raise them and if they happened to return to the living and had something to say, I'd point it out they're meta gaming as there is no way their character would know you would have taken anything when they're no longer alive.

FP!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Fester Pot, 01 octobre 2010 - 07:11 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               A corpse is a corpse.

Because the game mechanics draw a distinction between how a PC can interact with different corpse objects, you have been limited to the pickpocket dynamic to achieve the same goal as a mundane loot action.  I view that action itself as having no effect on alignment whatsoever unless there is a custom global alignment shift effect for all looting of corpses (a distinct possibility).  I mean, who knows if that random corpse you found a Ring of Protection on down the street from your house was actually one of your drinking buddies who got mugged while leaving the bar, right?

Now, the resurrect action would definitely open itself up for an alignment change, but then the question arises: Should it be an alignment change that benefits the resurrector or just a boilerplate Good shift?  For example, a BG or assassin who is living "on the cusp" may think twice performing an action which may render them unable to advance in their chosen profession.  In that case, either no shift or one towards evil would be preferred. Just one idiosyncrasy that may crop up throwing alignment shifts around.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tmanfoo]

               Hah, good point there.  I didn't even think of the meta-gaming angle.  Seems like the more I talk to you all, the more ideas I wind up with.



Thanks for the feedback folks!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jmlzemaggo]

               Too late I'm afraid, you're a good man already. Live with it.
I'm sorry. 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par jmlzemaggo, 01 octobre 2010 - 07:27 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_avado]

               

Fester Pot wrote...

As long as the character is dead, it's not stealing.

Oh really?  This is starting to say something about the moral fibre of humanity if this is accepted as is.  "Well your honor, he was dead already (after someone else killed him) so I am justified to take everything that he owned" , really?  Oh, i see, its a CHARACTER!!  got it.  '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               Do gold teeth count as loot? *reaching in his back pocket for a pair of rusty pliers*
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               I agree with Fester Pot, as long as you're playing a hero. Heroes never commit crimes, because if you try to arrest them they'll fight the guards hack the guards into small pieces.

There's also the hero's code to consider: anyone worth fighting will have something worth stealing, and anyone with nothing worth stealing isn't worth fighting, so you can sort of gloss over the morality bit.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_avado]

               LMAO!  All that said, there are very few that I personally leave standing.. if any.  And ALL are looted!  Not too sure how familliar you are with Diablo 2, but i was a HUGE magic finder (not botting, just killing bosses and cows for items).  When i started nwn, that continued!  



After all, its a game!  There are no morals in video games.  AND you CANNOT, i dont care how "dedicated" you think you are, you CANNOT Role Play a single player game!  For RP you NEED other people, otherwise you are talking to yourself (a form of master bastion, i guess).  THere are those who convince themselves that set dialogue makes RP, but in all my days, there have been few if any choices my characters would really want to give.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mirgalen]

               

tmanfoo wrote...

What are the moral ramifications of using Pick Pocket to steal the scroll, then
use it to return that player to life?

Is this a good action, bad, neutral?

From what you said, it's all good because you need to look at your character's intention. Why did he/she loot that scroll (purpose)? Also you may ask yourself about how that character feel while looting the corpse (e.g. "X reluctantly search the corpse hoping to find a raise dead scroll" versus "Y apparently enjoyed taking everything from Z who just got killed by a trap").

In a SP module my character took a corpse that was on the ground in order to return him to his family or try to give him a proper burial and got alignment shift to Evil which was bad design IMHO. It would had been correct however if the corpse was properly buried or in a sarcophagus. 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Mirgalen, 03 octobre 2010 - 04:43 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Arwen73]

               I think the act would be good. You are taking the scroll and using it to raise the person. Evil to me would be what the other poster said. You steal the scroll run off and cackle madly leaving the person altogether.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Arwen73, 04 octobre 2010 - 01:03 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Downslide]

               I wouldn't even look at this as "stealing." The limitations of the game engine put you to it. You aren't really "picking his pocket," as much as you are "getting the scroll from his pack to raise him." But the mechanical limitations of the game engine require that the "Pick Pocket" skill be used to do it.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tmanfoo]

               Wow, thanks for all the feedback folks.  I was working on an outline for a script that would evaluate and adjust alignment, dependant on player decisions.  Sadly I scrapped the idea when I started getting into how much of a pain it would be to hook all the events and deduce intention.  It's just outside the scope of the game to look at multiple actions over time.  Looking at a good number of the responses, there would be little point to having a server-side morals & ethics rule set.  In the name of fun, we look the other way!  



So thanks for taking the time to answer my silly question of the moment.

Cheers,

T