Yes npcs should be able to steal the player's property, as long as it is part of short stories and the player can retrieve their belongings. Or the alternative is to offer a player LOCKABLE locations that can not be gotten to unless the thief pickpockets the skeleton key off the player. Of course situations like this should be rare unless Bethesda can implement a GOOD karmic system that isn't annoying or unrealistic.

Would make people more aware of where they hide their loot.

Buying better locks might be necessary

I think it would be fun the first couple of times.Other than that it would get stale and make you want to carry most of your better loot.

You know what? If what OP suggest happens, I would simply murder every potential thief in town in cold blood.

It isn't fun to have your things stolen. So if you know who the future thieves are in town, why not just butcher them like pigs as the first order of business?

You want realistic thieves? Fine. I will act accordingly to defend myself. If I have to make the local ghetto run red with blood then that's what I will do to protect my property. Prevention is better than cure. Once all the people with low responsibility scores are dead, I can rest easy in my house like I am suppose to.

^This. Combine the above with the amount of items that fall through the world and disappear forever when you just wanted to drop it for a second. If people stealing from me is in then I want to cast invisibility on my house. Also the ability to put magical fireball/lightning traps on every surface and door and have them stay there when I leave the cell. I spend a lot of time getting my character's equipment "just so" and random npc's shouldn't be able to screw that up by taking a piece of gear that may take another sixty hours to find. Such things would cause me to play other games instead of Skyrim.

Only if I can track them down and teach them how it is not nice for someone to steal the items I so righteously stole in the first place. String 'em up.

yes only if you can hire guards/ people who will protect your house, but may also allow people to break into your house if they bribe them (also if you can lock your door/ windows/ etc to the highest lock level) ,and if your house is broken into it may start a (possibly thieves guild/ or imperial legion or something like that/ local peace keeping authority) quest or something...

Talk about two statements that have absolutely zero to do with each other.


What do high-level gold sinks (since you don't get a house until you're mid-to-late game and pretty rich) have to do with some hyperbole about equipment at level 1?

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But on the topic of the first thing - maybe I just never played a single character long enough, or don't buy & sell properly, but I've never gotten to the point of "nothing to buy" that a few people have complained about in other threads. (Of course, I also don't see a problem with that, since having enough money to no longer care about expenses feels like a normal part of late game and/or "being powerful". Having buckets of money is a sign of success. The game doesn't need to keep supplying you with ever more expensive things to spend it on. :shrug: In my opinion, "gold sinks" are for multiplayer games with persistant economies - the sinks are there to try to keep down the inflation rate. In a open-ended, free-roam, single player game? There's little point to them.)

I voted no. If I discovered something missing from my chest/wardrobe/whatever in my house I would assume it was due to bugs and glitches, frankly. That said getting robbed out on the street, or wherever, by a speedy thief would be pretty cool. Similar to AC2/AC:B. ^_^

While the idea is novel and seems only fair, at least I would like to be able to set traps and lock my doors to make it harder for my hard earned items to disappear. I would, however, be really mad to one day find one of my most favored items to go missing. At least there should be a way of recovering items even though if it might get expensive.

Edit: or even hire *trustworthy* guards.

I'd actually quite like it, assuming you could lock everything away and a quest starts to find the thieves.

as long as they don't steal my rares or my one-of-a-kinds

Yeah, anyone who seriously talk about gold sinks has no idea how singleplayer works. Gold sinks are a necessary evil in multi-player to ensure there is a viable economy and to hold down inflation. But there is no such thing as inflation in a singleplayer game because all prices are fixed to one person. Your avatar.

The logical part of me says that I should be subject to thefts just like NPCs. But the guy in me who would get super pissed if my artifact weapons got stolen says "Hell no!".

The reason it doesn't make sense to have thieves in your house, is that it wouldn't take long before thieves realised stealing from a Dragon Slayer would cause them to be flayed alive by the owner.

It is not realistic for anyone to steal from you. Not if they want to live.

I'm pretty sure everyone is thinking about this wrong.

Using Oblivion as an example:

The house in the waterfront, unless a member of the Thieves guild, would be a common target to a thief. It should merely be used to slep and store cheap items.

The house in Chorrol would be significantly better. While it would attract the occasional experienced thief (hence - needing harder locks), it would rarely be visited by lowly thieves, and most of the experienced thieves would actually rather target a bank or the castle.

This pretty much means level of money = level of security

It would also require me to upgrade my home every few levels, to ward of thieves. (and I should be able to sell/rent out my old home after)

Also a bank would COMPLETELY nullify the stealing rate.


Also a lock spell would lower the chances of loot being stolen. It could also have skeleton key come into play as a locking item, aswell as a lockpick. I could lock things to give a 0% break in chance with it.




This could also be nice with any kind of town running abilities. Considering the civil war in Skyrim, it makes perfect sense that a town may very well fall under your control in the chaos. Perhaps a kind of RTS gameplay could be involved with upgrading the town and what-not. Pretty much how I assume most of us thought about Kvatch. Having poor areas in town would attract thieves who would often steal form the bank treasury, and civilians. idk, just a brain-fart.


Oh, and remember - of course, this is all optional.

Only if you can install security measures to prevent such things. Aka traps / locks.

But then you also start to expand the game into managing a home. Opens up other wants like hiring guards, maids, decay, maintenance etc...

It doesn't matter how much a lock lowers chance of something been stolen; if it isn't 0% chance, it is no safe. A lock would thus be a complete waste of money.

And the same apply to a house; if you can't store things in a house safely, no matter how cheap, it isn't worth buying. You are better off just sleeping in Inns.

In fact, why buy a house when you can just murder someone and take his home? A house you buy with no safe containers is no better than a house you get by killing someone. Because safe containers is the ONLY reason you would pay for one.

To have thieves breaking in completely destroys any reason to buy a house. If you think it's fun to have houses that are useless for what they are designed for, I am glad you are not making this game.

Yeah would be a great idea.

It would have to be done correctly though, you'd have to know what was stollen, or as others have said, you could think it was just a bug.

You would need to have some way of making sure you never lose anything, like guards or whatever, or it could get annoying if something really special goes missing.

You would need to be able to retrieve the items so they are not simply lost forever.

yes. and it should trigger a quest. if you find an epic piece of loot and store it in any house it should trigger the quest no matter what town the house is in. then, talking to other npc's will lead you to info on who stole it and how to track them down to retrieve the item.

I'd like to see people breaking into other people's houses, it would show the game does have crime.

However, if they could break in to mine, I probably wouldn't put anything really valuable in my house, and it would take away from the purpose of having a house and display cases.

Unless their was a way to guard your valuables while you were out, having your stuff stolen after a couple of times would be more of an annoyance than anything.

On the other hand, having the ability for the NPC's to track YOU down for stealing their items would be pretty cool.

I think it would be cool, if there was a way to know that missing items was from an actual burglary. Like items scattered all over the floor from looting. Otherwise, if there is no proof of the burglary, then everyone is going to think missing items is due to a game bug.

It would only be cool of you could increase the security on your house as you level up

Yes they Should, but there also be some Companions/lover emploee, what ever you like.

So it dosent hapend to often. also you should be able to lock your stuff, so its harder.

Etc Etc.

It could be cool to go to you place, to look for X item to notice its gone with all your stuff because you left your house empty for far to long!

But you could also join the Thief guild, and with that most dont want to brake the rules!

I voted a little too quickly in this poll. At first glance at the question I thought to myself that it would be terrible to come home only to find that my stuff had been stolen. But then I read this reply, and it does sound like fun if one were able to hunt down the trespassers, vanquishing them and taking not only your stolen goods but their stash as well thus adding to your wealth. Just as long as it does not happen to often that the fun is lost.

Yes but only in the form of a quest that happens only once.
Otherwise it's going to end up like this: "Oh noes! a thief stole my things for the 1234th time! Well, time to catch that thief again!"