nefring thiefes and weapon gonna be great feature.
also vote for instant death in fonline !
How about using items with bonus to steal. That way, thief would have something to loose, in exchange for better chance, or in case of enclave at least some chance to be succesful.
It sounds nice but it does not work well. The bad thing is how skills work. So that when item boosts the skill, it'll usually become obsolete if you just put more points in there. If not, it'll usually make you go full 300 which is not really healthy either.
1) It will not become obsolete, because you can benefit from the item even with 300% Steal. Because you will need for example 375% Steal to have 75% chance to rob an NCR Ranger.2) Items could add something else, than plain skill or chance %. I can imagine a jacket or robe, that works like one of Thiefs support perks. With this item equipped, your steal CD halves.
A little more complicated system could use those items you wear to increase the amount of items you can steal in one go, starting on very zero. Because you're right, if you had a wear with pockets you can hide your loot, otherwise it'd be a bit silly to walk around with stolen stuff and pretend to be innocent, right?