A group of friends and myself have started up a new game of D&D3.5. The party works well together sometimes, but we sometimes have problems. The problem that I keep coming up with is the rogue. The rogue and the bard have a bad habit of taking the biggest part of the treasure and lying about it. The rogue's sleight of hand, bluff and the bard with his bluff skill make it impossible to tell they are lying. An example of this is when they opened a chest after checking it for traps. Their was one thousand gold in the chest but with a bluff and sleight of hand, everyone split 500 of it. The rogue and the bard pocketed the other 500. As the DM I know what they did, but as a character my rolls and modifiers can not compete. Do you guys have any advice to help fix this.
They way we've handled this in the past, which has become my favourite and default way, is not for everyone and doesn't work for every gamestyle, but here it is anyway...
House rule:
Intra-party conflict is forbidden. No physically attacking another PC. No unsolicited casting of spells on another PC. No stealing from another PC. No betraying the party.
IOW, I just plain and explicitly forbid these in my games,
unless the players unanimously decide together that it fits with the story.
So if the players decide that the Rogue in facts should steal from others and should end up with more equipment, because it fits with the characters and story, then I let them do it. However, if the other PCs discover the thief and the players (once again unanimously i.e. including the Rogue player) decide to execute him or cast him away from the party because it fits the story, I let them do it.
But if at any point even
one player disagrees, I enforce the house rule, and it just won't happen.
Because I just know that this leads only to trouble and even enmity between players.
//
So in your case, if everybody is fine with the idea that they all get less equipment than the Bard and the Rogue, and they like the story that these cleptomaniacs screw their friends all the time, fine for me.
If at least one of the players doesn't like this, I would overrule that the Rogue and Bard just cannot do it.
Then I make sure to tell everybody that if they get discovered, it will be once again up to them to decide if they get forgiven or not, but once again they will all need to agree. I won't let them kill the Rogue if the Rogue player doesn't want this too. They should probably know this beforehand, and think twice before deciding to let him steal in the first place.
Oh and by the way,
this also applies in the case we're playing an "evil campaign" with evil PCs. I don't care if
some players think that evil characters should screw their allies all the time, either
all players agree, or nobody just don't ever do this! If they don't like this setup, we don't play an evil campaign at all.