Stealth (D&D)

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Stealth (D&D)

Post by Kaelik »

I've been doing a lot of off and on thinking about an actually functional stealth system, which I don't think exists in any version of D&D or any other game I've seen. This is my current work up, for D&D, it's intended to be possible to just jam this into any D&D 3e/3.5 type system you are running, and to work. You shouldn't have to recalculate monster skills, or drastically change your own character, or really, change the types of actions that seem like a good idea for you normally. It just takes a system that doesn't work, and replaces it with one that does. It's not perfect, but it probably is the best stealth system in any D&D like game, period.

Stealth

Stealth is where one creature is trying to do things without other creatures noticing that it is there. So the first major difference, is that Stealth doesn't cover when someone else knows you are there and is trying to pinpoint your location, Stealth is what you do to prevent them from finding out that someone is there, until they actually do.

Stealth replaces the Hide Skill in D&D, and ranks accordingly. This will be phrased as if from the view of PCs stealthing at enemies, but the rules are identical when monsters stealth at PCs. The Spot skill is replaced with "Awareness" as it reflects sight, sound, and scent, and touch, but racial bonuses, ranks, and items remain the same.

Fundamentally, the way it works is you roll stealth, opponent rolls awareness, and you choose to perform actions that give the enemy increasing bonuses until his awareness exceeds your stealth.

Implicit in this is that you don't know his awareness, since it's based on lots of information you probably don't have, like his spot mod, his spot roll, and if he has true seeing, then you might think you have total concealment when you don't, if he can see in dark and you don't know, ect.

So each action you take risks him responding by getting the jump on you, because you tried to do something, and he caught you. But if you are right about your risks, you can get in position, and do something messed up to him, possibly even just killing him.

Range:

For the purposes of Stealth, there are five ranges: Adjacent, Tight, Middle, Far, and Outside Far

Adjacent is being either 5ft away, or within the same square as an object or creature.
Tight Range is being less than 60ft away, but more than 5ft away.
Middle Range is being more than 60ft away but closer than 300ft.
Far Range is being more than 300ft away but less than 1200ft away.
Outside Far Range is being more than 1200ft away from something.

Any ability that previously halved range penalties to spot, now doubles each of those ranges for the purpose of acting as a detector.

If no path around exists, 10ft thick blocking terrain that provides Total Cover and Total Concealment adds one range to any detector, with additional 10ft thick blocking terrain separate or contiguous, adding another range category. If a path around exists, that path adds to the distance.

You probably can't detect someone within 60ft if 30ft of stone wall is between you.

Beginning Stealth:

When you want to approach and do something without people noticing you, you start by declaring that you being acting stealthily, and then rolling a stealth check. This creates a "Stealth Value" of 1d20+Hide Ranks+Dex Modifier+racial/item modifiers to the hide skill. This is a roll, you can take 10 on it, but you can't take 20, because there is a penalty for rolling low, you get detected sooner. You roll stealth when the PC(s) decide to start being stealthy. A specific rolled stealth session ends either when PCs stop trying to be stealthy, such as when they choose to do anything not compatible with stealth, like resting to regain spells, buying things at the market, or moving at a hustle pace, or when a bunch of enemies have all noticed them and start shouting about their presence. While characters are acting stealthily, they may not move faster than their base speed in a round. This does not limit their actions, so they can move as move action, and then spend another move action opening a door, or a standard action casting a spell. But moving at a faster pace such as making two move actions is impossible when moving stealthily.

Enemies, based on their current circumstances, should roll and have a "Base Detection Value" which is the result of a generic awareness check, before any circumstantial modifiers based on the creature they are attempting to detect. Circumstantial modifiers based on the creature making a awareness check still apply as detailed below.

This Base Detection Value is further modified each round based on which, if any, of the stealthing creatures have circumstantial modifiers with respect to the creature, creating a separate detection value for each creature using stealth.

Modifiers are presented in groups, in all cases, only the largest absolute value bonus of that group applies.

Circumstantial Modifiers to Base Detection Value based on the spotting creature.

-5 if detector is focused on another subject.
-10 if detector is concentrating on another task.
-20 if detector is asleep or otherwise in a state of extreme nonsensory perception.

Circumstantial Modifiers to Detection Value based on the stealthing creature.

+0 Within Far Range
+2 Within Middle Range
+5 Within Tight Range
+10 Within Adjacent Range

-4 for every size category the stealther is smaller than than the detector.
+4 for every size category the stealther is larger than the detector.

+5 if the stealther is within the detectors Scent range.
+10 if the stealther is within the detectors Blindsense range. (Or otherwise a detection method that gives the square, but not full information, such as Tremorsense, Touchsight, Mindsight, ect.)
+20 if the stealther is within the detectors Blindsight range. (Or comparable detection method.)

-10 if the stealther has a minor impediment to a primary sense of the enemy, such as Cover, Concealment, or supernatural or magical flight that reduces movement noise.
-20 if the stealther has a major impediment to a primary sense of the enemy, such as Total Cover, Total Concealment, or a Silence Field.

Ultimately, at the end of all this, you have a Stealth Value for each PC, and a Detection Value for each enemy against each PC.

If, at the onset of stealth, the PCs are Outside Far Range with respect to any detectors, then they are automatically not detected. If on the other hand, they are Far Range or closer, check to see if the Detection Value exceeds the Stealth Value, if it does so, they are detected. If they are detected, then provide the detecting enemies with a surprise round, and proceed to "In Conflict Uncertainty."

Taking Actions While in Stealth

The list of actions that can be taken from stealth is below. There is no possibility to pass time without taking actions, if the stealther wishes to wait, then they must choose the waiting action for the appropriate time period listed below.

When a stealther chooses to perform an action from below, the associated bonus is provided to all detectors within at least far range until they leave far range for that detectors Detection Value against them. Successive actions provide cumulative bonuses that stack with each other without end.

If after resolving any non attack action, the Detection Value of an detector would exceed the Stealth Value of the corresponding stealther, then the detector may take a standard action as a surprise action, at any point before or during that action. After that, you should probably start rolling initiative. Apply this to the action of casting spells, but not if the result of the spells casting is what alerts the enemy, in which case, resolve the action of casting the spell, the spells result, and then roll initiative.

If after resolving an attack action but before resolving the attack, the Detection Value of a detector would exceed the Stealth Value of the corresponding stealther, you should roll initiative.

If after resolving an attack action and the attack, the Detection Value of a detector would exceed the Stealth Value of the corresponding stealther, you should resolve the action, the attack, and then roll initiative.

Bonuses Accrued to Detector for Actions Taken By Stealther: (Grouping rules from above still apply)

Wait: If you wait for a time, you may cease waiting and take other actions at any point, however, the bonuses accrued to detectors remain the same based on the originally chosen time.
+2 one minute
+5 10 minutes.
+10 1 hour.
+20 8 hours.
+40 one day.
+80 one week.

+1 Casting a spell with no components.
+5 Casting a spell with a somatic component.
+10 Casting a spell with a verbal component.

+5 whispering to a creature within 10ft.

+10 for moving an object in the detector's zone that predated your arrival.
+20 otherwise significantly effecting the enviroment in a highly noticeable manner for the detector (IE, your silence field overlaps them personally, or you cause a cave in or summon a wall, you kill someone in the area).

+5 Making an attack action.
+30 Detector is subject of an attack roll, and survives.

In Conflict Uncertainty

Once a creature knows you are around, the nature of identification changes. If you have been detected out of your stealth, then if you do not have total cover or total concealment, the (sighted creature) knows your square. If you do have total cover or total concealment, the sighted creature is aware of your general presence in their zone of control, and you roll a Move Silent check which is opposed by their listen check. Failing by 40 or more gives them no specific information about your location. Failing by 20 gives them a 180 degree field in which you are located (roll 1d2 if you are diagonal on the grid). Failing by 10 gives them a 90 degree arc. Failing by 5 gives them a a 90 degree arc distance within 1d4 squares (roll like splash weapon miss). Hitting exactly the DC gives them the square.

The listen roll receives a -10 penalty if you have total cover relative to the detector.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sun Jul 09, 2017 7:28 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Kaelik wrote:If the Stealthing character was already aware of the detecting creature, either because the detecting creature was not stealthing, or because he had already been detected by the stealthing character, then the Stealther notices the detection, and gains a Surprise Round in response to the detection.
You can declare stealth when expecting a fight to get a free surprise round, even if you are complete shit at it and have no intention of even remotely being able to pass the check.

While I understand the need for scalable bonuses/penalties so that continuing to dick around with people while stealthed will eventually break that stealth, I think the system would be a lot more user-friendly if you grouped the non-scalables together based on size (minor, +- 5; medium, +/- 10; major +/- 20) and only ever applied the largest (one each of positive and negative). It's way easier to keep track of that way, and it also handles random MTP bullshit more fluidly since you just have to slot your special circumstances into the right place on the minor/medium/major table, and the final RNG will be way tighter.

I.e. you'd have a distance bonus, a number of actions penalty, a size bonus/penalty, and then one circumstantial bonus and one circumstantial penalty, each of which is just the largest that applies.
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Post by hogarth »

One roll per action is still way, way more rolling than I would want in an ideal system.

I would rather have something much more abstract, like:
Room description: This room has three guards on duty. Two of them are distracted by drinking and playing cards but one is suspicious and alert.

Skill results: A DC 25 Stealth check allows the PCs to kill or knock out (players' choice) the 2 distracted guards without being noticed. A DC 30 Persuasion check allows the PCs to come up with a story to pass by the guards without raising an alarm.
The problem is that having the GM come up with pre-fabricated DCs like that is pretty arbitrary, which some players don't like.
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Post by virgil »

I used something similar with my Stealth House Rules
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Post by Kaelik »

hogarth wrote:One roll per action is still way, way more rolling than I would want in an ideal system.

I would rather have something much more abstract, like:
Room description: This room has three guards on duty. Two of them are distracted by drinking and playing cards but one is suspicious and alert.

Skill results: A DC 25 Stealth check allows the PCs to kill or knock out (players' choice) the 2 distracted guards without being noticed. A DC 30 Persuasion check allows the PCs to come up with a story to pass by the guards without raising an alarm.
The problem is that having the GM come up with pre-fabricated DCs like that is pretty arbitrary, which some players don't like.
1) You don't roll once per action. You roll once per STEALTH. The entire time. This creates a number, and then you subtract from that number until they detect you.

2) that abstract stealth check system has absolutely no place in a game like D&D or F&F.
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Post by Blicero »

I share DSM's issues with the fiddliness of the numbers, but this is a neat implementation of the "stealth hitpoints" idea a few people have mentioned on this forum. The distance modifier in particular is the sort of thing that would lead to a lot of slow square-counting.

In F&F, would classes have abilities that further interact with this minigame?
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Post by Kaelik »

Blicero wrote:In F&F, would classes have abilities that further interact with this minigame?
So the main difference is that Perception is a saving throw in F&F, and then also, I've rewritten things like cover and concealment into a different system and people have different abilities/will have different abilities that interact with those systems.

In D&D, I think a system that was like +5 for every 30ft or whatever might work better. (Since lots of D&D detection stuff goes in 30/60/90/120 ranges.)
Last edited by Kaelik on Mon Jul 03, 2017 5:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Username17 »

I think this is on the right track, but the specific numbers seem like crap. The basic idea is that Stealth versus Perception should result in a perception threshold where there's a certain amount you can do before you get detected. A good stealth roll gives you a certain buffer of actions you can take before the alarm goes off. Get a good enough stealth buffer and you can move right up behind a dude and then murderstab them. Get a good enough stealth roll and you can steal the scepter and then leave the tower.

I understand wanting to use the D&D numbers as substrate, but the whole idea of setting your stealth roll based on distance is completely fucked. One of the very most important things you're going to want to do while stealthing is to move, which means that those numbers are going to go all over the place, which is pretty much the opposite of what this system is supposed to be doing. Also when you're getting +/- 20 for various shit, it's pretty obvious that the ranks in Stealth and the actual RNG don't mean a whole lot.

More likely what you're going to want to do for the distances thing is to give people a number of hide points that they lose when they do stuff and they get discovered when they run out of hide points. And one of the things you'd lose hide points for is "entering medium range" and another one would be "entering short range" and so on. If their perception is good enough that you don't have a lot of hide points, they spot you as soon as you come into long range. If your stealth is good enough, you can approach to point blank without being detected.

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Post by DSMatticus »

FrankTrollman wrote:More likely what you're going to want to do for the distances thing is to give people a number of hide points that they lose when they do stuff and they get discovered when they run out of hide points. And one of the things you'd lose hide points for is "entering medium range" and another one would be "entering short range" and so on. If their perception is good enough that you don't have a lot of hide points, they spot you as soon as you come into long range. If your stealth is good enough, you can approach to point blank without being detected.
I would instead model performing actions as a tally that counts upwards instead of a currency that gets spent down. It's mathematically identical, but I think it handles mixed perception group edge cases with less hassle for the people at the table.

If it were a currency, you might have a situation where Alice is more perceptive than Bob and as such Clark only has 3 units of bullshit to spend in Alice's presence - but then Alice leaves and now what do we do? Do we let Bob inherit Alice's perception? Do we redo the math because someone walked off stage? Do we let Clark spend himself down to -2 instead of 0?

But if it's just a tally, then Clark can get away with 3 units of bullshit in Alice's presence and 5 units of bullshit in Bob's presence and if Alice leaves before Clark performs 3 units of bullshit then it's not a problem. Nothing actually changed.
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Post by Username17 »

You kinda have to run a different tally for every sentry anyway, because individual actions are going to be in the presence of different sentries and also the distance between you and any particular sentry is rarely going to be the same as the distance to a different sentry. I don't think counting up or counting down particularly matters.

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Post by Kaelik »

FrankTrollman wrote:I think this is on the right track, but the specific numbers seem like crap. The basic idea is that Stealth versus Perception should result in a perception threshold where there's a certain amount you can do before you get detected. A good stealth roll gives you a certain buffer of actions you can take before the alarm goes off. Get a good enough stealth buffer and you can move right up behind a dude and then murderstab them. Get a good enough stealth roll and you can steal the scepter and then leave the tower.

I understand wanting to use the D&D numbers as substrate, but the whole idea of setting your stealth roll based on distance is completely fucked. One of the very most important things you're going to want to do while stealthing is to move, which means that those numbers are going to go all over the place, which is pretty much the opposite of what this system is supposed to be doing. Also when you're getting +/- 20 for various shit, it's pretty obvious that the ranks in Stealth and the actual RNG don't mean a whole lot.

More likely what you're going to want to do for the distances thing is to give people a number of hide points that they lose when they do stuff and they get discovered when they run out of hide points. And one of the things you'd lose hide points for is "entering medium range" and another one would be "entering short range" and so on. If their perception is good enough that you don't have a lot of hide points, they spot you as soon as you come into long range. If your stealth is good enough, you can approach to point blank without being detected.

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I agree, there are a lot of problems with this system, in particular the numbers that it uses to be "backwards compatible" with D&D. There are still some improvements to make (I think it makes no sense for Total Cover and Concealement to stack with each other, so some changes of the kind suggested by DSM makes sense, if not exactly that).

This system as written is supposed to be used in D&D, in place of it's existing system, with minimal changes, so it features a lot of problems.

Fiends and Fortresses functions differently since it's not so handicapped.

That said, I think 30ft distances instead, or even close/medium/range would be better than the distance penalties, backwards compatibility with 3.5 be damned.

I also want spying forever in secret to not work, and changing both this system and F&F to be better, I think, instead of using the -1 penalty per action, it would be a currency cost to move things around, or attack and murder people, but then also "spend" that currency to wait different amounts of times, waiting a couple minutes, or hours, or days with different costs.

I think that will be an improvement over this incremental action by action penalty that is really a lot more fiddlieness to accomplish the goal than is needed.
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Post by MGuy »

Close/medium/long work. I have a makeshift version of this written up and it has worked. Though I'd turned the whole thing into an infiltration minigame so I didn't get rid of the fiddly stuff save for pick pocketing and ambushes which work differently and aren't a real part of the infiltration minigame.
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Post by Koumei »

One basic question: other than through being noticed, how do you determine when Stealth mode has finished and a new Stealth mode is activated? If you're sneaking into a tower, you could argue that you have one Stealth for the entire thing, use it wisely, or you could argue that different floors or general areas are separate things altogether, that you can piss around in the dungeons and not have that affect your exploits in the upper levels (unless the alarm is in fact raised).

It gets a bit trickier if you are in town where you are ostensibly allowed to wander about (being seen in a town isn't a cause for alarm, it's your actions that might be a problem). Say you decide to fuck with the level 1 guards by stealing their stationary or whatever. You start to wear your Stealth rating down. Can you then wander out into the streets, leave Stealth mode as you just resume "walking down the street", then start up a new Stealth mode to resume your dastardly ways, or do you have the one rating for all of your criminal activities there until you are caught?
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Post by tussock »

I'm pretty sure Hiding people should just be Invisible until detected or losing concealment.

Detection breaks invisibility. Become Invisible again as an action, with big penalties while observed. Can automatically check for Invisibility at the start of an encounter if concealed.

Invisible creatures cannot be targeted. Skill bonuses and DCs effectively set at what range opponents will Spot (on your action if alert) or Listen (on their action) and get a detection. Attacking causes detection.

Prevents all the game-killing bullshit with multiple sneaks and multiple listeners and who knows what, lots of sneaks just need a lot of Move Silently checks to be silent, and lots of listeners get a good shot at detecting any that fail. Once alert, they can Spot the rest as time goes on if any are in range of their maximum Spot/Listen result.

Most stuff can just be DC 15 to Hide/MS, DC 15 +1/10' for Listen/Spot detection.

So enough Orcs (+1) will detect something at 60', and one Invisible Stalker (+13) will usually detect things at 80', and possibly at 180'. Opposed checks are ass and you should not use them.

Various spells and modifiers that give massive bonuses to overcome the 2d20 opposed check need nerfed. /shug
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Post by Kaelik »

Koumei wrote:One basic question: other than through being noticed, how do you determine when Stealth mode has finished and a new Stealth mode is activated? If you're sneaking into a tower, you could argue that you have one Stealth for the entire thing, use it wisely, or you could argue that different floors or general areas are separate things altogether, that you can piss around in the dungeons and not have that affect your exploits in the upper levels (unless the alarm is in fact raised).

It gets a bit trickier if you are in town where you are ostensibly allowed to wander about (being seen in a town isn't a cause for alarm, it's your actions that might be a problem). Say you decide to fuck with the level 1 guards by stealing their stationary or whatever. You start to wear your Stealth rating down. Can you then wander out into the streets, leave Stealth mode as you just resume "walking down the street", then start up a new Stealth mode to resume your dastardly ways, or do you have the one rating for all of your criminal activities there until you are caught?
The premise is that you roll once, and then pay your currency per detector, so unless you are super super super keen on rerolling because you rolled a 1, there is no reason to want to create a new stealth section. If all the detectors from before aren't around, then your currency is "at maximum" so it doesn't matter.

EDIT: is there a way to delete Tussocks completely pointless totally ass post that he surely meant to put in another thread because it has absolutely nothing to do with this thread?
Last edited by Kaelik on Tue Jul 04, 2017 11:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Harshax »

Kaelik wrote:The premise is that you roll once, and then pay your currency per detector, so unless you are super super super keen on rerolling because you rolled a 1, there is no reason to want to create a new stealth section. If all the detectors from before aren't around, then your currency is "at maximum" so it doesn't matter.
I would think that there would absolutely have to be a start and end to a stealth zone and likewise the end of the stealth contest, otherwise you can always effectively take 20 by beginning your stealth when there is no chance of detection and when you're not otherwise under threat or duress.

Maybe duration of maintaining stealth plays a factor? Losing conciousness automatically breaks stealth? If I hide in a public park to sneak on to a ship to steal a thing from a guy in the next port, I've effectively established stealth in a zero-threat moment (take 20), but I have to sleep at some point. Maybe I crawl into a storage area. Sleeping breaks stealth, but the only detector is a cat who doesn't give a shit.

At some point I have to restart stealthing when it matters that I could get caught. So, when I want to use the poop deck or eventually sneak off the ship. After i disembark, not only are the detectors all gone and the ramifications for getting caught on deck resolved, but the new area has an entirely different set of environment conditions to avoid. Unless the ship pulls directly into my target's warehouse, why should my take 20 effort to make like a tree in a park still be a factor of navigating streets to my mark?
Last edited by Harshax on Tue Jul 04, 2017 12:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

Harshax wrote:
Kaelik wrote:The premise is that you roll once, and then pay your currency per detector, so unless you are super super super keen on rerolling because you rolled a 1, there is no reason to want to create a new stealth section. If all the detectors from before aren't around, then your currency is "at maximum" so it doesn't matter.
I would think that there would absolutely have to be a start and end to a stealth zone and likewise the end of the stealth contest, otherwise you can always effectively take 20 by beginning your stealth when there is no chance of detection and when you're not otherwise under threat or duress.

Maybe duration of maintaining stealth plays a factor? Losing conciousness automatically breaks stealth? If I hide in a public park to sneak on to a ship to steal a thing from a guy in the next port, I've effectively established stealth in a zero-threat moment (take 20), but I have to sleep at some point. Maybe I crawl into a storage area. Sleeping breaks stealth, but the only detector is a cat who doesn't give a shit.

At some point I have to restart stealthing when it matters that I could get caught. So, when I want to use the poop deck or eventually sneak off the ship. After i disembark, not only are the detectors all gone and the ramifications for getting caught on deck resolved, but the new area has an entirely different set of environment conditions to avoid. Unless the ship pulls directly into my target's warehouse, why should my take 20 effort to make like a tree in a park still be a factor of navigating streets to my mark?
.... You can only take 20 when there is not penalty for rolling low. There is a penalty for rolling low, you get detected sooner.

You just roll stealth once. You roll a die. You aren't allowed to take 20.

I mean, this is like complaining that people will take 20 on their attack rolls by preparing their attacks when no one is around and then using them later.

Obviously there has to be a definition of stealth beginning and if you really think your players as assholes who will stop and reroll when they can't, just roll in secret, but it's a single roll that you make.
Last edited by Kaelik on Tue Jul 04, 2017 1:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Harshax »

I guess I don't remember the rules correctly, but the rest of the example illustrates the need for different stealth zones to be treated as new areas or contests. Unless the stealther has scried or otherwise gathered intelligence about the next area, his attempts to stealth should be a new one. I guess nothing stopped you from stealthing from Whiterun to Solitude in Skyrim, but it was tedious, boring and dumb and exposed the lack of exhaustion mechanics.
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Post by Kaelik »

Harshax wrote:I guess I don't remember the rules correctly, but the rest of the example illustrates the need for different stealth zones to be treated as new areas or contests. Unless the stealther has scried or otherwise gathered intelligence about the next area, his attempts to stealth should be a new one. I guess nothing stopped you from stealthing from Whiterun to Solitude in Skyrim, but it was tedious, boring and dumb and exposed the lack of exhaustion mechanics.
..............


I mean, there is absolutely nothing at all that requires a new stealth zone? In F&F, the stealther literally doesn't even roll, and it's just opposed by the defender's perception save as the only random element. That's still totally fine.

If you want to "act stealthily" 100% of the time, then you can totally just do that and be a character that always does that. It's basically just flavor text if you don't actually do the things that make your stealth check more likely to succeed, and probably all adventuring groups are going to be "moving stealthily" in enemy territory all the time.
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Post by Harshax »

Kaelik wrote:I mean, there is absolutely nothing at all that requires a new stealth zone?
I'm not sure that's accurate. Games are broken down into manageable sequences of melee, encounters or scenes. The MC has to establish what's at stake, the potential reward and the players have to choose if and how to engage the moment and acquire a victory condition. You can't queue fight music and then let it play on loop. That's dramatically pointless and confusing.

You wouldn't let a person stealth all night and day for the same reason you wouldn't let someone who rolled a 20 on initiative claim they were engaged in combat all day. At some point the victory condition is met or failed, dramatic tension ends and the need for time-keeping by round or stealth decision is no longer an object that the player or the MC should reasonably care about.

I'll admit my example was dumb, presented just to riff on Koumei's idea and stretch your idea to its breaking point. I think there has to be some end to stealthing, but only because this is a game that I as MC need to organize by encounter or scene to move the story forward. Rolling the best possible stealth and remaining in stealth-mode to exploit this result means assassin types are going to be making and remaking stealth checks as soon as the session starts because their abilities are keyed to having the advantage of stealth. This exploit gets even worse if one use of Divine Insight (+15) grants a character optimal engagement choices for their shtick indefinitely.
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Post by Kaelik »

I guess what I have to say is. Read the actual system?

Like, literally nothing you are saying is relevant to the system as described?

You don't get to be undetected forever because you rolled high, that's literally the point of the system.
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

One edge-case that I can't seem to place among this is how entering/leaving the Stealth mode works? The zones of detection aspects you've mentioned seem to be the biggest stumbling block in developing stealth mechanics.

Right now the stealth rules look like use of them involves shifting of total modifiers, as the location of the stealthed creature changes with respect to possible sentinels. While also hinging upon the sequence's goal of "eventual discovery."

As such, how does retreating from enemies allow creatures to reroll/reset their modifier if they find total cover, or better?

Should creatures expect to commit guerilla-like actions in an adventure? Approaching enemy positions as deep as they can with stealth; retreating to regain stealth; then re-approaching to maintain their element of surprise.

Kaelik wrote: I mean, this is like complaining that people will take 20 on their attack rolls by preparing their attacks when no one is around and then using them later.
Purely extrapolation to get to "take 20" on attack rolls here, but there are existing rules to "Take 10" on attack rolls that indicate it's mechanically possible, but the time costs also make them nearly mechanically irrelevant. A creature could "tak 20" to hit/break down a target, but I think the creature would have to spend at least 10(?) full round actions to line up the attack that has a +20 d20 roll. Which is pretty slow going, unless it's some arbitrarily high Hardness/AC, and you need those +20's on the dice roll (really, you shouldn't).

Really, a creature is likely better off spending the 10 rounds lining up a +20 to hit on the attack roll on full round actions @ +10 to hit. Only if they can't bypass the hardness/AC of the target with a +10 to hit does it make sense.

Of course; that's also assuming the creature can even "take 20" on attack actions while in combat; and if they think spending 60 seconds lining up each attack is better than attacking as often as possible. The "take 10" action could be use.
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Wed Jul 05, 2017 1:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MGuy »

I do not understand the confusion about this iteration of stealth. I know Kaelik is doing his own thing but I made and am using a similar system in my own games (both Pathfinder and written in my own project and the question of 'when does stealth end?' has never been an issue. It ends when you are caught or not doing it anymore.

I use 'zones' and made an Infiltration mini-game of it and did not see a reason to make it so that entering a new zone would force a new check. If the players roll too low they are caught. The most I've ruled for entering new zones that might be more heavily guarded than starting zones was by creating points at which being better at stealth help. Trained Stealthers get a chance to 'sense' that the new area might be too much for them, expert stealthers can get a reroll, and those who are not trained just get caught. There are a bunch of things that effect both the 'perception' level of different zones, as well as the PC's awareness of these perception levels but that is enough to really handle all the situations I've had come up in actual games.

Even if you were to look for some weird case as posted previously where characters decide to do the stealthing and stop just to resume again later has a clear beginning, end, and new beginning. The point where they start, stop, and start again. Yea they could use that to try for a new roll but that is only a problem if for whatever reason getting caught simply doesn't matter and if the players are in some edge case situation where they can opt to retry over and over again because being discovered doesn't have any consequences whatsoever then I really wouldn't care if the players wasted a bunch of time working to retry.
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Post by Lokey »

virgil's rules all the way. Missing way too many definitions, i.e. cover/conceal from the ranged attack section? Missing call-outs to existing skills/stuff used, i.e. listen is mixed in there somehow but not called out to replace.

Suggest starting with what should sense what and what should be able to sneak around what. How much should size matter, i.e. how stealthy is Tarrasque? Then go point by point through all the perception bits (there's a lot--granted I can respect people that ignore that so that you can have a normal conversation in a battle too, because it gets fiddly and stuff isn't in just a handful of sections).
Last edited by Lokey on Wed Jul 05, 2017 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by virgil »

Eh, my rules only tweaked/clarified the extant system, where penalties are a dynamic value. Kaelik's idea here makes the penalties an accumulation that eventually overrides Stealth.
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