Pick pocketing in IWD

[Gavindale]

I made it through a good portion of the game but am starting the game over because I missed some things. My question is this... what is the significance of the rogue's pick-pocketing skill? I read you can find a bunch of great items and such through pick pocketing. But is the skill necessary? Is it recommended? If I put my skill points into it, should I walk around trying to pick pocket everyone, or is there some sort of discretion?

[ElfBane]

Can't answer the question, but I can rant!
What I don't like about PPing is the finality of it. IIRC you can get a Ring of Free Action from Arundel, but why take the chance of making him hostile?? So that leaves you to only PP NPCs that don't break the game... and they probably don't have really good stuff. I don't reload in these situations, so I think long and hard before PPing.

[Azred]

I concur--pick pockets is next to useless in IWD. Sure, you can get a handful of rings of free action and maybe some gemstones but the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits. I do not recall which stores allow you to steal from them (they allow it? that's an odd way of looking at it) because I never put any points into pick pocket. For IWD I maximize find traps, open locks, then hide in shadow/move silently.

[Gavindale]

So what I am hearing is that pocket picking is basically useless, aside from the occasional gem or small item and such. Do I have this correct? And here I am, starting the game over, which at this point I don't want to do, but also at this point I have rather forgotten the storyline! A good portion of the RPG experience is the storyline. I guess I could read the journal, or maybe read a FAQ file for the storyline (but it's not the same) ...