How is it dubious gameplay mechanic? It's a known feature in many games and a firmly established mechanism.
It's the misguided people that brand it as dubious because it doesn't fit into their perfect image.
Anything that requires more effort, more clicks, more actions is by quite a few deemed to be bad mechanism.
What they fail to realize is that the
implementation is at the core of the problem, not the feature itself.
This RFE addresses the problem of poor implementation of pickpocketing in ADOM and tries to find a way to counter that, instead of seeking to remove PP altogether as some advocate.
If it's not chaotic to attack or even backstab nonhostile monsters (not peaceful, just nonhostile) why on Earth should it be chaotic to rob them? Why not just change that too?
But it is chaotic to attack/backstab non-hostiles. It's also chaotic to attack hostile lawful creatures even when the PC was not the one that made them hostile.
I never said it should be chaotic to rob non-hostile monsters. I think you misunderstood me.
The current situation is this: you pickpocket a non-hostile creature of ANY alignment, your alignment drops.
If you pickpocket any hostile creature of ANY alignment, your alignment does not drop.
We're assuming that the PC did not trigger the hostility, i.e. the hostile monster was hostile upon level creation.
All I'm suggesting is making PC's alignment drop dependent on the creature's alignment instead of its hostility status.
For an N or L character, a non-hostile balor is no less evil than a hostile one, thus stealing stuff from it is not an evil act, quite the opposite.
Unless of course you employ morality based on actions without greater context, yet still without encroaching on the grey zone of "ends justify the means" philosophy.
For attacking/killing, the situation would benefit from the same approach - L char attacking a non-hostile balor should never be penalized by alignment drop.