You know...
I never thought about the idea of penalizing those that steal from the poor peasants. I never bothered to steal from them cause I'm always the good guy and they never really had anything worth stealing.
But it does bring up a good argument.
How about this question though:
Fallout: Tactics has a certain commentary in the tutorial about how stealing from dead bodies isn't dishonorable. Now, this was directed to the Tribals who evidently thought that stealing WAS a bad thing to do. Especially from those that were dead.
So the Chosen One should have lost Karma, technically, from stealing from the deceased.
I think Karma should affect a person based on their specific way of life.
For example, if Fallout 3 would give you choices upon character development of what sort of group, organization, or land your character is from, perhaps saying you were a tribal would give you perks such as scouting, healing, skinning, and high attributes in melee, outdoorsman, and throwing skills. But your character would suffer major draw backs such as low bartering, low gambling, low big and energy weapons. Things like that. Plus...you'd suffer a penalty from stealing from dead bodies.
So while you can make more money by skinning Geckos, or maybe tanning Brahmin hide to make leather armor...you wouldn't be able to take something not belonging to you from a dead person, otherwise risk being known as someone evil.
Now if lets say you were from the Desert Rangers (from Wasteland). Maybe you'd get the sharpshooter, ranger, weapon handling perks. You'd get high attributes in skills like small guns, traps, and outdoorsman. Being more civilized and not fearing the dead, and also being a survivalist, you probably wouldn't have much of a problem from taking things from the bodies of the dead.
BUT! Rangers were generally protectors of the wasteland. They were the good guys, at one time the last hope for mankind. So if they would steal from the poor and the deprived then their karma would hurt them incredibly.
Now, lets say that you are a Bandit from some Circle of Thieves. You would get perks such as pickpocket, thief, and night vision. You'd have high skills in stealing, sneaking, and lockpicking. You would not get penalized from stealing from bodies and you wouldn't lose Karma from stealing from anyone since it is technically your job to steal from people.
An interesting twist would be the guy that chooses to be the simple "drifter". Aka: Mad Max. He'd get perks in loner, survivalist, and rad resistance (a bit interesting, but a drifter from experience probably knows pockets of radiation or automatically carries a geiger counter. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have been a drifter to long). His skills would then be small guns, bartering, outdoorsman.
The drifter would then be set on how to survive. He's good with using shotguns, pistols, and rifles. He knows a bit about the great outdoors and how to survive in it, and he knows how to barter the things he finds. Interestingly enough though, I'd actually penalize the drifter for NOT raiding the dead that he encounters. Because his survival is generally on the finding of things for trade and such. I'd also penalize him with negative karma points when having people join his party.
So the drifter or survivalist would actually have to be a loner through the entire game. He'd be a better fighter and ideal for salvaging things from places that have radiation in them. He'd make generally more money than most with his higher bartering skills, and his life remains pretty simple. So lets penalize him also for taking "save the world" sort of quests.
Which basically means, you'd have to make Fallout 3 non-linear with multiple endings.
You'd also be able to customize your hero. The perks and such I mentioned just sort of help you to come up with your own idea. I think there would be more general characters to come up with too.
Obviously you'd need a mad scientist sort of character. Your standard field medic type of character, your rich city boy kinda character, whatever. And each one would have sub classes.
Like maybe your a ranger/field medic. Ya know? Sorta like how NEverwinter Nights does it.
But at any point you can always CUSTOMIZE and make your own character too.
I suggest that they allow for mutations. More than just growing a sixth toe. I think that if you grow certain appendages they might help you in battle, but might perhaps lower or raise karma. Perhaps if you're a tribal and you grow another appendage you'll raise it since the people will be in awe. But if your civilized you'll karma will lower. Especially if your a thief since three legs would probably put you at a disadvantage. And even if you think four arms would be better (multiple weaponry firing at once) you would lose your innocent look. You'd have the attention of everyone everywhere, something a thief doesn't want to attract.
"I don't know what World War 3 will be fought with, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein.
