about how the whole thieving thing is handled in Skyrim.

My (at least, for now) pure thief is level 10, skilled only in sneaking, lockpicking, pickpocketing and alchemy; wearing regular clothing with no enchants and unarmed. Being a successful thief is all about noone knowing that you're a thief, no? I won't even start on skill related guard comments. But I will start on Hired Thugs. On how stupid the hired thugs idea is in the first place, and how mind bogglingly idiotically it's executed.

So, I've never been caught stealing, yet some of my.. patients.. somehow know I stole a dried elven leaf from them. Makes sense, because, for all they know, the culprit might as well have been Brunwulf Free-Winter, the true master of deceit. So those all knowing all seeing patients then hire a bunch of best equipped heavily armoured and even more heavily armed thugs (not that I know of any organization or guild that offers mercenary services in Skyrim other than Companions), who then assault the unarmed unarmoured uncombatskilled me in broad daylight right in front of city guards. The same guards who rush to avenge everyone's not so stolen sweetroll, but won't lift a finger when a frail unarmed girl is getting assaulted by three ironclads right in front of them. But wait, it only gets better when the guards start throwing the usual tavern brawl spectator lines (I'm guessing, because I fought unarmed?). And when the thugs finally lie dead on the ground, only then the guards approach, lean over a corpse and say "What happened?"

Double facepalm, Bethesda.

Bahahaha, yep its annoying. It really is impossible to role play anything other then a tank warrior in this game.

But I'm sure someone will have some absurd way you can imagine it never happened that way.

So I'm not the only one who experienced "The guards will protect you, so long as they can't get hurt in the process"?

I thought it was a bug when the Westwatch Tower guard peacefully gives way to two angry giants and watch as I spend 100 arrows to kill the two.

I just run away. Speedy thief is quicker than armour clad goons!

A good thief doesn't fight in those situations anyway. He goes *poof* and slips away undetected. See ya svcka's. And maybe those guys paid off the guards not to interfere. And maybe in a land where the gods still talk to people, ghosts walk freely, and the undead rule the underworld, someone would have an idea what you did even though they weren't there to see you do it. See, it's a fantasy world. Real logic need not apply. Anyway that's my take on it, absurd or not.

I agree with you Op, it's like they got rid of the all knowing guards but instead now you have all knowing everything else when it comes to theft. It's really too bad that the NPCs are not all knowing about stuff like I don't know you saving the world you know meaningless stuff like that.

How do you slip away when you're surrounded in an open area with nothing to run to?

You don't, you get your [censored] handed to you.


LOL, so true.

Yeah, perhaps they asked Stendarr "Oh my God, who stole my Staff of Fireballs?" and Stendarr, out of mercy, told them about it.

It's simple enough to just sprint away from them. Not quite 'slipping away' but preferable to fighting. I was confronted by thugs at the gates of Solitude - I ran off and hid in the stables but they found me, so I swam across the river and spent the day hiding out in the swamp. When I returned eventually, they were gone. Combat isn't the only solution in this situation.

Ring of invisibility + 1.. or Jar of blinding light... I guess you could use a scroll of entanglement... or maybe if you have a staff of teleportation... I have also seen it done with the "alt" key.. you know the sprinting key..

People seem to be conveniently avoiding the fact that the guards don't guard against anything bar the PC...

If by all knowing guards you mean guards in Oblivion, then being a high ranked Thieves Guild member and all, I am yet to encounter an all knowing guard or anyone else other than guild members in Cyrodiil. Clean theft = no bounty = noone knows, and that's how it should be in Skyrim, too. Or, if it still has to be some divine revelation, it still shouldn't be an encounter with a bunch of ironclads whom I can't even bribe away or do something other than combat.

Maybe they had an enchantment of tracking placed on their loaf of bread.

Betcha didn't think of that.

No laws against entrapment back then

I've seen guards kill dragons, thieves, skeevers, frostbite spiders, vampires, necromancers, bears, saber cats, and a lot of other things.

I've even been able to get them to go after the Hired Thugs, although that was mostly due to a lucky dodge and my opponent hitting a kid in Riverwood.

The guards got my back.

oh [censored], my dried elven leaf is missing! whats that fellow towns-person? you say you saw a woman of this description suspiciously leaving and/or entering my house while I was at the mill? dear me, perhaps I should delve deeper into this possible lead of inquiry!

my dear shop keep, have you per-chance had anybody come through of this particular aesthetic selling a rather exquisite dried elven leaf? you have! why my friend would it be at all possible for me to take a perusory glance at said dried elven leaf to attempt and validate it's origin for it may indeed be the belonging of the fine gentleman before you. sold to a traveling khajiit merchant you say, I must venture forth outside the city walls then in order to find the closure that i so desperately desire!

oh dear, it appears the caravans have already moved on from my humble town! whats that my brave and noble guardian? they headed "that-a-way"? but that long and desolate trail leads to none other than the glorious solitude! I must venture forth, but not before securing my traveling gear that i have not donned since before i retired to the mill where i spend my days saving septims to spend on my wonderful collection of rare dried plantations from the forests of valenwood, a land so hard to harvest that even leaves must be covertly separated from their respective trunks. and so I set forth on my journey on which i encountered nothing of interest because I traveled by cart and as you may well know i quite enjoy the gentlest jostle of the cart and it sent me to sleep like a mere svckling.

as I approached the walls of this our fine capital I can't help but feel in awe. ah! fine trader of feline persuasion, i have tracked you from across the land in the hopes that i may feast my eyes upon the greatness of your wears! A-HA! it is as I suspected, this leaf is the very leaf that sat on my night-stand not two nights ago, I shall purchase it from you as you had no way of knowing of its origins before you yourself purchased it to sell to me. ah I am so happy, to have my dried elven leaf back, I could not bare the thought of time spent without it, and now i shall retire to the inn and perhaps drink some mead, at the establishment with the name that rather resembles that of a skeever that has learned the arts of the charm.

hello fine fellow whom I see is dressed in iron, would thou mind if i were to occupy the seat that is directly beside and abriast with yours? you would not? than I shall sit and start an idle conversation about the trivialities of my life after retirement, for you see I was once an adventurer like you, but then I suffered from the most dreadful injury that I can bear not the thought of! what is this, i see you wonder, that I grasp as tho it were my most valuable of valuables? it is my most prized of prized possessions, it is my dried leaf of elven origins, one which I myself plucked from a tree while I was out venturing, it is my only reminder of a time more happy and gallant than that of my current life. I have been on an epic journey to this very local in order to retrieve it after a great in-justice occurred in which it was stolen from my house by a woman of this description, I agree, it is the most foulest of acts and I would not wisheth it upon my most dastardly of opponents, but alas I am weak from journey and as I am no longer a stout young adventurer as yourself I fer that I shall not have the energy to carry out the justice that my hard work entitles, if only I had somebody with such skills and strength to carry out my justice for me.

Is my luck truly such! could it be that in my adventures I have stumbled into precisely the man who could help my in my dilemma? i have only a mere few septims left in my pack, but you can have it all if you would truly deal with this matter, I know you will do such a job of it that perhaps I may never be troubled by thieves again, why thank you friend for such a kind deed, I cannot wait to hear word of your success! and it was with that that I merrily mustered up the strength to practically prance out of the province and all the way home!

now I know what you are thinking, the man I hired didn't truly succeed, so when the word of failure reached my ears how did I feel? the answer is I felt nothing, for I died a happy man at the hands of a rabid wolf pack while clutching tightly to the dried elven leaf that had for so many years brought me nothing but joy. the moral to this story is that it may just be a leaf to you, but it may in fact be someones livelihood.

I like the idea of "they paid the guards off not to interfere"

Town watches in medieval societies were notoriously corrupt.

Nice one! Sadly, we all know that honest merchants do not buy stolen goods, not even dried leaves of elven origins.

I've had the trio of hired goons come after me, after stealing items from a person I had already killed. I didn't steal anything until the NPC was already dead, and yet they somehow hired goons to come after NOT for killing them, but for stealing some dried elves ear leaves.

It's like the dev's spent countless hours on animating bodies of water in this game, and just chucked AI in as an afterthought. I've seen NES games with better AI than half of this game.

you saying an old man can't have connections?

That was some epic proportions of awesome sauce..

In another playthrough, the inkeeper of Morthal sent those goons after me the very next morning after all I did was rent a room at her inn and I never stole anything in that inn, not even a dried leaf.

[censored].

I Rp Thieves, Pirates, Jacks of all trades, Assassin's, Mage's, Hell i even Rp a psycho cannibal chef.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ngaHOiRDk3o#t=10s

I get where you are coming from, and to agree slightly with what someone else said about it only being possible to roleplay a tank warrior, this is always true of Elder Scrolls games, and it's something I find really annoying.

There's so much content, and there are character options, guilds and everything. But the point is that they never think about these quests and how they relate to the main quests, and at the end of the day, most quests involve going out to kill everything in a location, to retrieve item x.

I've rerolled so many times because each time I create a character, I just dont feel right with it. It will start with a few good ideas, but eventually I'll encounter something that just sits awkwardly with me.
My last "main" was a Thief, that started out a pure thief in the cities, who then expanded on to taking loot from dungeons etc as they got better at their art, and grew better connections.
I started the stones of Barenziah quest, and that was a mistake. Possibly the best "thiefy" style quest in the game, by actually having you go after some priceless set of missing gems, but one that FORCES you to join the mages guild......ffs. Also forces you to pick a side with the Dark Brotherhood, i.e. join them or destroy them, because you're not getting one of the stones otherwise.

Ultimately, i got rid of the character because I was experiencing Mages guild content that I didnt want to do until I created a mage.
I couldnt justify well enough exactly what my thief was doing in the mages guild. And the other thing that annoys me about the guilds is that there is never an option to just 'be a member'. You either end up ruling the guild, or you stay in a permanent state of stagnation whilst you ignore a quest in your log.

In fact that's the biggest thing that bugs be about Elder Scrolls games is that there is never a let up in quests that gives you the option to do nothing, or to go and do something else. Every damn quest is of the highest importance.
For example. Say you want to be a thief and want to do the main quest too. well how will you do that? The main quest is a series of OMG DO IT NOW OR THE UNIVERSE WILL EXPLODE!!!, that means you feel very awkward just going off and doing something else. But if you *do* do the main quest line to the end, you come back conqueror of the universe, only to be told by the thieves guild to frame some local peasant by putting a ring on him. And then you get to be their lackey for a bit, but also conqueror of the universe etc.
It just makes no sense.

Glad that's out of my system

Ever hear of invisibility potions? Even a low level thief can have these. Drink one and *poof* where'd he go?

Later it's even easier with either high level invisibility potions or the invisibility spell or you can even go into sneak and use the sneak roll to move away quickly. Amazingly they will lose track of you rather quickly when you do that. But potions are the best way since you can pause and take them meaning you disappear before they have a chance to get a single hit off on you.