Long ago, when my character first came to Winterrun, she was stopped by a Battle-born who asked me if I backed the Greymanes. I said "No, I love you" and then proceeded to loot 90% of the Battle-born house WITHOUT stealing anything due to how much they now liked me.

However, I noted some items were still marked "You can only steal this", so what I'd like to see is saner restrictions on what they'll let you take and what you'd have to steal.

An even more ridiculous example are the Jarls, where doing their quests lets you LEGALLY loot about 50% of their palaces.

Also stuff like common household items (plates, cups, pots, etc.), ideally, I'd like to see restricted to stealing only.

Yeah, it's a bit weird that I can take bits & bobs of Alvor's armory without much problem - It also adds a bit of a weird dimension where some of the items I sneakily "borrow" from people aren't stolen at all. It's a relatively minuscule problem, though.

This is typical of Bethesda's "choice and consequence" system. It either doesn't exist, or it is severely unbalanced. In my mind, character disposition should be on a 200 point scale with 0 being the happy median, -100 would be absolute hate (I will attempt to kill you on sight regardless of the risks to my own safety), and 100 being absolute adoration (I will defend you at the drop of a hate to the death if necessary). I think it should be very difficult to reach either extreme. For instance, your spouse should have a threshold of about 80 (in most instances), but rarely so high as to throw their life away for you (especially considering how shallow marriage is in the game). Furthermore, -80 would mean the character will look for every opportunity to harm you, but won't unnecessarily endanger themselves in the process.

I agree it's pretty ridiculous. I don't care if your my best friend in the whole world. I love my best friend, but I'd kick his ass if he started taking all of my stuff. I'd let him eat some (not all!) of my food, maybe even BORROW something. But wtf? I would not sit idly by while he packed up half my apartment.

If your best friend was the only hope of saving the world from rampaging dragons how would you feel then? I think that's the point, you're accomplishing all this stuff, people who you get on the good side of are probably like "yeah just take what you need you're the hero."

I was thinking along those lines, I'm the frickin dovahkiin [censored], I need your cash or your kids get eaten by Alduin

It is a bit unbalanced though, I'd definitely use a mod that made the effects more sensible.

That'd make sense, except at least half of these people you get on their good side for silly things like "help them defeat their love rival", or "I hate the Greymanes", or simply joining a guild as a newbie who's barely helped out at all. I'm not saying do away with the feature, just tone it down. I believe there were multiple mods for Oblivion (the most famous being OOO/FCOM) which set out to do this for guilds, which let you loot 'em blind without penalty.

I simply don't take it.

If I do, I would go by what others have said. "I'm dragonborn, I need your stuff."

It's really strange. You make one friendly comment to someone and suddenly they act like you've been best friends for years and you can take all their stuff.

The dialog is just as strange. You tell the guy that you favor the Battle-Born and every other time you walk by him he says, "You've been a friend to me, I won't forget that."

We just met two seconds ago.. You were a pretty imposing Nord dude who I didn't want to have to try to kill at level 2... So, I told you what you wanted to hear. We're BFF's now?

I make him some of my world-famous ramen soup, pat him on the back, and then send him on his way. If he saves the world but took all my stuff, what am I gonna do then?


*SCENE: Post MQ, hundreds of homeless, starving, poor people lining the streets because the Dovahkiin saved their lives... but they have no possessions left because s/he took everything they owned.*

And they're all naked too, since Pickpocketing is so easy and rewarding, and they don't report me if I'm caught.

A couple of things here. First, I consider it more as a flaw of the disposition system rather than an isolated issue with regards to "borrowing" from NPCs. Secondly, the player's "significance" as the Dovahkiin is rather diminished when you consider everyone is capable of killing dragons (as they often do so without the player's aid) and many express skepticism with regard to the dragonborn legend.

I get what you're saying, but the player would have to have some demonstrated uniqueness to be able to enjoy such benefits in my book. Overall, even if this was their reason for letting the player take whatever they like it doesn't make any sense that you fall in and out of their graces based on such arbitrary things as random compliments or errands.