Ok first off I just finished playing a stealing thief.
I like to think that as far as game mechanics go I did a pretty good job. I loved the class and I found a use for every single one of the skills except for maybe bribe mercenary and the only reason I did not use that so much is because very few people had mercs.

I only had two problems with the thief path that I took. One of them being the counterfeit skill. Now dont get me wrong, I think that skill is top notch and I found many interesting ways to use it. One of the more underrated of the skills on that particular thief path. My gripe about counterfeit is that you get it too late. Meaning you get it after acrobatics which is where most thieves seem to stop if they are indeed learning from that path. Counterfeit was very useful when the "deed" was being done but it really became quite the calling card when the "gig was up".

My second gripe is that it seemed rather unfair to me that a thief who dedicates all of his guild points towards the stealing guilds has the EXACT same steal skills as someone who only went halfway.

I think an great solution to this would be to put warning skill at the level you get deft touch, put counterfeit at the level where you once got warning skill, and then put deft touch AFTER acrobatics somewhere.

It makes sense to me that the thieves who devote their life to stealing be better than other thieves who are not.