I qualified some of the examples earlier in the thread where it might be acceptable RP-wise to do it to other players...but it's fairly rare.
If you wanted to extend all RP, then all neutrals would need a good reason to kill elves on the Eregion (just like they'd need a good reason to kill PC elves). If the game really worked that way, neutral and good would be drastically different and much much harder to play.
And the net result is that good and neutral would be almost non-existent and everyone would roll evil because of not having to explain yourself all the time. To me that's a concession in order to make the game playable. Looting other people for their gear regardless of your alignment is not a harmless concession to make the game workable but rather, a harmful workaround for actually having to RP your alignment when dealing with other people ;). And yeah to me, RP'ing to an empty room is definitely different than RP'ing with another person - the former is kinda silly since the computer really doesn't care.
To add this further it's not just gear. No one cares if you kill Tarus, people do care if you kill some random herald dwarf. You don't need to explain yourself to Tarus, you do need to explain your actions as they relate to other players though. Doesn't matter if you take a single item or even if you fail to successfully kill them, your actions when dealing with other *people* have vastly different repercussions than dealing with NPCs pretty universally throughout the game.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2014 01:01AM by Death_Claw.