Grek wrote:An actual functional stealth system would look something like this:
To sneak, make a Stealth skill check. The result of this check is your Stealth Rating. Anyone who can perceive you while you are making your Stealth check remains able to detect you while you are sneaking. You remain undetected by everyone else as long as your Stealth Rating remains greater than their Perception Rating. A character knows their own Stealth Rating, but not the Perception Rating of observers unless they have a feat or special ability that says otherwise.
You may take up to one move action per round without hindering your stealth. Taking a second move action reduces your Stealth Rating by 1. A standard action reduces your Stealth Rating by 2. Run actions and Full Round Actions reduce your Stealth Rating by 3. Additionally, your Stealth Rating naturally decreases at a rate of 2 per minute sneaking or 1 per minute of hiding in place without moving. Certain actions (such as speaking too loudly or opening noisy doors) may cause additional reductions to your Stealth Rating and certain terrain types (such as noisy metal floors or exceptionally brightly lit areas) may increase the cost in Stealth Rating to move across them. The GM should always inform a character trained in the Stealth skill of such actions and areas before the character interacts with them and before reducing their Stealth Rating. If the character's interaction with the item is do to the player's choice (as opposed to another character throwing flour at them or pointing a spotlight) the GM should generally allow the player to change their mind and take some other action.
Observers have a passive Perception Rating equal to their modifier on Perception skill checks. Actively searching for hidden intruders requires a standard action and a Perception skill check. This does not provoke an attack of opportunity. As long as the character continues to concentrate, their active Perception Rating is equal to their skill check result. If something interrupts the character's concentration, they make another Perception check in place of the usual Concentration check to ignore the distraction and continue searching. A character's Perception Rating receives a -1 penalty for every 5' between them and the sneaking character and a +4 bonus if a character who has already detected the sneaking character calls our their location.
Pretty sure it would look very much not like that. First of all, it's completely absurd for walking quickly down the unguarded corridor to fuck your stealth tally when you get to the next guarded area. Secondly, to even vaguely come to grips with that issue you'd need to let people reroll their stealth whenever they started creeping again, which since they know their own stealth number is just telling everyone to take 20 all the time.
Really, you just need to generate a stealth number as soon as it is important, and to have it apply to a set of people you are trying to be sneaky relative to rather than being a number that follows you around. And the amount that your stealth number beats their perception (or vice versa) creates a
set of criteria that would let them detect you.
Fucking around with modifiers for moving various speeds and shit is missing the point. If you roll good enough that you can move full speed without giving away your position, you should just do that. The key is
set of criteria for detection, not counting modifiers. And further, those criteria should be relative. Being in someone's presence for X amount of time should break stealth. But the
area that is defined as presence should be defined by their perception check (so more perceptive characters act as sentries over larger areas). On the other side, moving quickly breaks stealth if your stealth and their perception are close enough, but "quickly" is defined by your literal stealth number (low stealth characters have to move at half speed, high stealth characters can do silent running).
It has a couple moving parts, but it could actually work.
-Username17