Mostly i think PickPocketing is one of the worst ideas noobs do it 24/7 and earn more items than us working for it.
A better solution would be to have some sort of tone or alert-message saying that "_____ has joined your party" without having you actually having to waste time to accept them.
This skill has its origin (like all rpg) in DnD, but there was a skill called Spot, there was a skill vs skill roll, putting skill points into spot could make you thief-proof. There's nothing in FO that stops thiefs, if he dosen't run away,you can shoot him if he fails, if a npc seen that, you can pick up your items if you get to the body first. That's a lot of ifs.
The world would be so much better if only people would listen to me...
What makes least ammount of sense is that players can't stop someone from stealing you by any other way than running away. Thieves basically play tag in safe towns and nobody can stop them if they just don't get caught. It has always baffled me how can someone come next to me, take my items and walk away protected even if I withnessed the whole act? Wouldn't it be reasonable that even if thief succeeds to steal, he becomes unprotected but there's no mention about it from guards? So if the victim notices that something was indeed taken from him and he knows who did it, he can just shoot that thief. This way the steal skill% only calculates if you manage to grab the item, not whether nobody saw it or not.
The only reason you know and see is because you're looking for it.
It's not reasonable for thieves to become unprotected when they didn't fail.
That's pretty obvious. Wouldn't it be sufficient if careful players could keep their belongings and deal wasteland justice instead of being forced to play tag? I mean the game should reward smart gameplay and discourage carelessness or otherwise it turns into circus. It is if they steal crudely without any finesse. Think of it as purse-robbery: A thief grabs an item and makes a run for it. Better thieves would steal so that there was no trace, too bad the game doesn't have much additional options for thieves to use than target someone with steal skill. It'd be completely okay to implement some further sneaking features to be utilized by thieves if obvious stealing would result in getting caught. You haven't got anything against challenge do you?