The single best thieving system I've come across to date is that of . Burglary, shoplifting, pocketpicking, coshing-em-and-nicking-all-their-stuff, you can do it all, and make a career out of it without ever once taking a life. It's been a while since I've played there, and I'm afraid I can't remember whether such nefarious activitiies themselves earn a character xp. What I do recall is that Discworld boasts what it calls a TaskMaster system, whereby every use (or attempted use) of a skill has the chance to imiprove the character's facility with that skill.
The likes of , , or take this concept of skill oriented development even further. These games have no generalized experience points. Want your character to become a beefy warrior? Get out there and bash things up. Want them to become a stealthy thief? Get cracking those safes! Your character gets better at doing what they do by doing what they do. I dearly wish there were more games out there going this route; I now find train-n-prac or learn-as-you-idle games clunky and unrealistic by comparison.
One last suggestion as to how to avoid killing kobolds to improve your pickpocketing: you might like to try roleplay intensive games such as , or , which place emphasis on the development of your character as a fleshed out, living entity rather than just the improvement of a set of statistics.
Good luck with your search for the perfect Mud, and if you find any gems out there, let me know!
Maia
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