hello everybody, i was thinking about the item ownership system in morrowind, and i asked myself if there was a particular reason why if i steal let's say an iron longsword, and i've bought another iron longsword which is now in my inventory, guards (or merchants, or whoelse) can recognize the stolen one from the "legally owned" one...
if the reason to explain this exists, i would like to ask if exists a mod that adds some kind of falsifiers, maybe within the thieves guild, who can make stolen items unrecognizeable (technically speaking, NPCs who can, for money, remove the ownership from your stolen item/items).
if such mod does not exists, what do you think about an idea like this? since they are falsifiers, they could also make false documents, like honorable writs of execution and so on

That sounds like a cool idea!

It doesn't quite work like that, not for Guards.
Guards will see that any Iron Longsword you have is stolen, even if you didn't steal it. Every Iron Longsword in the game will be treated as stolen, forever.

I can't quite remember for sure, but don't Merchants only recognize the specific item that you stole from them? This is likely because that item has their own personal Ownership on it, and they can "see" that somehow. Or if I'm remembering incorrectly, it works the same as Guards.

i apologize if i misunderstood the real system, but if it's like you say, well it looks even worse, and my idea looks even better to my very own eyes hehe

edit: if the ownership situation is so bad, maybe you know if something has been done trying to fix it?

Once you steal an item, all items of that type will be marked as owned (and hence stolen) by whoever owned the one you stole.

No mod I know of fixes this...i made a topic a little while back, might have more info for you:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1153531-stolen-item-flag/

Owned and stolen items are a bit different.

Owned items only exist in the game world. Once you pick them up, they are no longer owned. If you drop them from your inventory after stealing them, they will not be owned again. Containers can be owned however, and if you take something from an owned container it counts as stealing, even if you put the item there yourself.

If you steal an owned item (whether you are detected or not), the ID of that item is added to the stolen items list. From that point on, whenever you surrender to a guard all items of that ID will be stripped from you.

thank you, i understood that the matter isn't as simple as i could imagine



this is very close to what i was thinking, but it relies on a tool which is unreliable itself...

@adul: thank you too for these clarifications, and just a question: is there any way to edit that list with basic scripting or script extender? i mean if enchanted editor can access that list, maybe...

*hoping*

Nope, I don't think that would be possible. Perhaps an exe patch like the MCP could achieve something like that. Otherwise the only way I know of to edit that list is with the Enchanted Editor.

zomg :unsure: thank you anyway for all the info unfortunately i'm not a coder, so this will remain an idea until some good soul decides to give it a try

There are. They are called traders, and there you can sell the stolen sword and buy one without ownership.

Joking only nice idea, I always thought that the guards shouldn't be able to know if you have stolen or not.