Feat-based Spell Emulating Stealth Minigame

[JonSetanta]

All right. Hang in there. I realize I've been blasting this forum with some unusual concepts in attempting to create "A different warrior" or "A new way to do ability checks" but like 1-out-of-10 times, per thread creation ratio, I come out with something decent.

So, in a recent thread about skill failure and rerolls (it's been discussed by others too) I was considering the Have Skill vs. the Have Nots.
This is a problem in D&D since its creation 40 years ago, when Thief classes had percentile rolls, not even giving non-Thieves the option to do ANYTHING like them, unless you consider the Mage (Wizard) spells that do BETTER than rolling percentile dice and shuffling a foot or reaching in the wrong pocket of a wealthy target.

I figured:
1. What if Stealth (Hide, MS), Perception (Spot, Listen, Search), Athletics (Climb, Swim, Jump, Tumble), and other Rogueish tropes were feats anyone could add to a character, but the Rogue just had more of them?
2. What if the feats were like Tome Scaling Feats, granting Extraordinary effects that were like spells from Tier 1 or 2 classes, but with minor flaws due to the ability to be used at-will?


Stealth
Benefits: This feat allows an individual to avoid being detected by opponents or potential opponents, scaling with both Hide and Move Silently skills.
+4: You may Take 10 on Hide and Move Silently checks at any time. Moving while stealthed does not reduce move speed.
+9: You may, as a Move Action, activate the spell effects of Invisibility and Silence on yourself (with a range of Self and no area of effect beyond the character and anything they wear and carry) as Extraordinary effects as long as you take no actions other than Move actions each round. This ability lasts as long as the character meets this condition. If any other action is taken, or you come within melee reach of a non-ally character, these effects end immediately.
+14: All allies within 30 feet may, if you choose, also be Invisible and Silent under the Skill Rank 9 restrictions.
+19: Your Invisibility and Silence effects can't be detected by spells or abilities that would negate them automatically, such as True
Seeing.

The rest are in development. Not sure how "PC automatically sees/hears things" would go over, but I don't like the trio of Spot/Listen/Search really and unifying them as something like Sense, applied to pretty much all physical senses an individual has, is a better concept.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Well, this seems like a fine enough way to model character progression in the stealth minigame, but it doesn't seem to actually tackle the binary nature of D&D stealth.

[JonSetanta]

I see it as an arms races.
For example, in the StarCraft RTS series, there's Cloaking vs. Detection.
It's mechanically the same as D&D's Invisible vs. See Invisible, but in the games units that are cloaked ripple against the landscape as they move, at least giving players a clue as to where a potential concealed unit is.

[Foxwarrior]

The best part of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was getting to test how effective cloaking that ripples like that would be at preventing me from hitting enemies. The result: in a room with only invisible skeletons, I pretty much never missed a shot; but when there were some visible skeletons in the room as well, sometimes I failed to notice an invisible skeleton until it was too late.

[JonSetanta]

In realism D&D and other magical RPGs I'd expect footprints to appear in mud or dirt, and dry leaves make mundane stealth impossible...


So, today, I thought of some other Rogue things and maybe even semi-superhero aspects of combat that could be applied to scaling feats, but the latter might just be an alternative to a full Paragon class or PrC. I could make a few feats that provide defense, offense, AoE strike, and mobility features for pretty much any full-BAB class rather than 10-20 levels of nonsense that take away from what the character is growing into.

Anyway, Rogue concepts:
Shadowcloak (grants some Shadowdancer abilities, flight at later levels as long as Rogue is in low-light or darkness... like Spawn flying around, the requirement being "must wear cloak")
Sense (provides Scent, limited Psionic Touchsight, long range Listen and Spot emulating Clairaudience with closer range and See Invisibility, maybe a mobile Alarm spell emulation for anything entering close range)

[deaddmwalking]

Dry leaves do not make mundane stealth impossible. They may make it more difficult.

Even in a place with a lot of dry leaves, there is some possibility of a combination of deft movement and avoiding the driest spots where you might avoid noise completely. Even if it is impossible to avoid ANY sound, in any type of natural environment, there is other sounds (like squirrels) that can make a significant amount of noise. Attributing a noise to a harmless cause (like a gust of wind) may allow someone to sneak up.

[JonSetanta]

Hmmm I'm looking at the SRD and it just says "penalty as indicated below".
I'll take your word for it, as it does SAY there's a penalty, but as to what that number is... Well..

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/moveSilently.htm

Also, is there a Distracted condition that might provide a bonus against characters paying attention to one thing at the exclusion of others?
Doing something like tossing a rock in another direction might just be roleplay territory, then when the stealthed character moves the Stealth Minigame begins.

[pragma]

I'm interested in stealth minigames, so thanks for the post.

Brief soapbox re: rock throwing -- one of the issues I have with many stealth minigames is that many drop into pseudo-combat when the alarm level rises to give the players agency and to fall back on the combat engine for resolution. However, the way out of stealth predicaments always seems to boil down to "I cast minor illusion" or "I throw a rock". That's fun the first time, but seems like it could get old. One way to prevent it from getting old may be to abstract rock throwing and minor illusioning into an abstract "distract the guard" maneuver into the stealth minigame.

[JonSetanta]

Well, there's like two dozen different tactics (which I'm only going to list a few) listed in the PHB, throwing a rock is like... the most common movie trope when a guard or BBEG starts shouting "Who's there?" and approaches the hero's direction.

Ghost Sound
Shatter
Shoot an arrow so it makes a ping somewhere far away
Send the full-plated Paladin charging at a 90 degree angle so the rest of the party, or just the stealthy ones, can head the opposite direction

It should all be a no-contest bluff. MAYBE someone smart enough would think "Oh, a misdirection, I'll keep walking forward" but that's rare.

With the scaling Invisible/Silence emulating feat I wrote, the stealth character can just pull a VTM Obfuscate and stroll right past the guards, unless they have choked the entry to a hall or fortress entrance and slipping through melee reach is impossible.

[Foxwarrior]

Yeah the kinds of stealth games that people play for fun tend to have actually very consistent enemy behavior and detection abilities... when I made stealth rules with no rolling at all, then when the players were on the stealth-offensive I found myself wishing that I'd actually planned out enemy patrol routes in advance because getting rid of the dice isn't really going far enough at removing arbitrary elements...
But when the enemies were doing the stealth against the players, the lack of restrictions on defender behavior became their saving grace of course.