Current state of pickpocketing
 

Can any experienced rogues fill me on on what the pickpocketing skill is like in p99 today? Is it at all useful in the early/mid levels? Can you engage in true roguery, sneaking around a dungeon and picking the mobs dry?

It's... okay...

When I was in Highkeep mid-late 20s, unable to get a group and unable to solo because I was a rogue, I could steal goblin ears semi-reliably. Yes, I got caught sometimes, but not as often as you might think. It's not incredibly profitable (unless you find something like goblin ears), but it's also not too hard and essential for the epic.

I don't see any Rogues offering to ML. That was always the fun thing to do. Pick Pocket all you like and split at the end of the session.

Well I say you are a pretty good rogue if you can steal a goblin's ears!

It's just a variation of the classic 'got your nose', really.

It's just a strange quirk of the system; you can't pick pocket certain classes of item like anything equipped or with NODROP, but the ears were never given any of the flags which stop pickpocket working.

Groups often get pretty salty if they catch you doing it while grouping. Just a heads up. As mentioned above, if you ML for the group to split afterward, you can level up the skill while killing without making people mad.

Yeah, and they will catch you because suddenly, every single non-verbal mob learns how to shout <Stop, thief!>

It isn't classic. You should be able to steal from non-animal/elemental and maybe non-undead.

Basically anything Allakhazam would have listed as a "monster" (not having those flags) or a humanoid. I lost that fight because I was told by Nilbog there's no such thing as a monster flag, but it was supposed to be anything within level limits that lacked those specific flags.

As it stands now.. It's like humanoids and hill giants, the latter was as far as what we managed to get changed to PPable, but there's still a wide range of targets you should be able to snag gems from. I contend that stealing from Seb bugs was legit in classic but people were smart enough to not talk about it.