Yet another stealth thread

[soulfien]

You hit the point exactly. There will always be people to use stealth irresponsibly and who use True Seeing irresponsibly.

Stealth is broken only for those who want it to be, IE those who use it unresponsibly, these people will allways exist, there is no fix that will be able to compensate without hampering all the people who use it well.

Replace Stealth with True Seeing and it still works.

Walking down a road and bumping another adventurer as you walk past in stealth mode is NOT fine. Not even with a stealth bonus of 300 could you do that.

I've said it before and I've hinted at it here.... "When people stop abusing stealth, people will not need True Seeing to counter it"

Also... Old technology is EXACTLY why True Seeing works like it does. It was put in by Bioware as a COUNTER to their broken Stealth.

And Move Silently has nothing to do with walking down a road in broad daylight. That's Hide and it doesn't work. You'd need invisiblity.


Like I said, fix stealth, fix stealth GEAR, and then True Seeing can be nerfed and everything will be balanced.

[ancientempathy]

Feb 6, 2010 17:58:13 GMT -5 Lokarn said:

Walking on a road, in broad daylight in stealth mode is absolutely FINE.

Stealth mode is hide and MOVE SILENTLY! Just remember to click it off when someone should see you. In the occurance where both parties are stealthed, walking on the road, oh well, this game is old and imperfect, it's the price we pay for old technology.

Truesight should be fixed to grant see invis, and +30 to spot/listen.

Stealth is broken only for those who want it to be, IE those who use it unresponsibly, these people will allways exist, there is no fix that will be able to compensate without hampering all the people who use it well.

Why do you have to be stealthed/concealed in order to represent moving silently though? Seems to me that can be resolved by emoting you're moving silently

Justicar's other thread under General Discussion is highlighting some good points incase anyone wants to read it

frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=11409

[Wintermute]

I like what was mentioned in that thread, about asking for a roll.

I think if you're going to emote anything that justifies a skill check, you should make a skill check, and you should do it publicly, even if it invites metagaming. If people meta-game, that's breaking the rules and you can at least report it. In fact, I had a DM send me a private message while I was logged in mentioning that I should be doing that and that I wasn't, and I felt rather embarrassed because he was right and I really should have known better.

It really just comes down to the dicebag. People should use it a lot more often than they do as far as I've seen so far. Some people do though, and that's cool. Kudos to those people. On other RP heavy servers, it's strongly enforced. I'm glad I got a PM about it to remind me, because I like to think that it gets enforced here as well. Without that rule, people will really tend to abuse their creative freedoms and role-play their characters in ways that are completely unrealistic for their level/stats/etc.

[Deleted]

Feb 6, 2010 18:22:20 GMT -5 @ancientempathy said:

Feb 6, 2010 17:58:13 GMT -5 Lokarn said:

Walking on a road, in broad daylight in stealth mode is absolutely FINE.

Stealth mode is hide and MOVE SILENTLY! Just remember to click it off when someone should see you. In the occurance where both parties are stealthed, walking on the road, oh well, this game is old and imperfect, it's the price we pay for old technology

Why do you have to be stealthed/concealed in order to represent moving silently though? Seems to me that can be resolved by emoting you're moving silently

You need to be stealthed in this case, so that players with listen as a detector skill know when they can hear you walking behind them. You -could- ask for rolls each time you do this (or for any game system based on a roll), but it'd be a lot more immersive to use the game system. Not to mention no worries about meta gaming and people watching what they say because they OOCly know you are following them.

[Lokarn]

To Soul, both skills are tied to the same mode. If you want to move silently, you also have to hide.

I would not remain in stealth mode if I saw another person walking towards me, I would though if I saw them going the same direction infront of me.

The reason is simple, players allways play with the screen zoomed way out, if I was not in stealth mode, they would see me on thier screen, and they would turn around and say hi to me.

I am talking about what is or is not acceptable to do with the stealth mode. We don't do hacks here, so stealth will never be fixed in some way, I'm fine with truesight how it is, though I think it would still work well with huge bonus to spot and listen. Due to how spot and listen work, I would say 30 is a good number 1d20 +30 + modifier can get prety high with training and other spells, like amplify as well as other feats. Rangers also get a nice bonus to detect stealthers.

To AE, rjaney answered well already. Instead of leaving the chance for metagaming, I'd rather let the way stealth works determine if they hear me behind them, if they were to turn around, I'd drop stealth mode then and only then, because for all intents and pourposes, I am hidden perfectly to them until they can see me right? It's pretty easy to hide from someone who is facing away from you.

[ancientempathy]

What of the other people who you aren't behind?

You can walk quietly behind someone and then another could say, come out of a barn, and be "behind you" now suddenly. So I assume the character would break stealth? Tell you what, if I did that to a rogue I'd expect them to break stealth, especially if my character is looking right down the road where the moving-silenty rogue would be

Stealth people need to remember that there are other things about other than their one prey

I think open-road stealth = bad. I really don't think I will be convinced agaisnt this But still interesting to hear of others' insights

Edit: Grammar

[ancientempathy]

Of course what I feel to be the better solution is for the stealthy person to veer off the road and just use the tall grass...not much effort into that. But I suppose there are some people who'd not agree with that either (and I also feel it'd depend on the time of day on when you could use such, too)

Edit: Unless you're just really short, like Mouse, and could hide without much fuss. I honor such things cuz it helps the other player out, knowing their characters statures are being recognized

[The Supreme Watcher]

Just for my own curiosity, this discussion pertains to PvP and not PvE, right?

[ancientempathy]

PvE?

[EDM Entori]

Feb 7, 2010 22:45:01 GMT -5 The Supreme Watcher said:

Just for my own curiosity, this discussion pertains to PvP and not PvE, right?

whats the difference?

a dm might be there you don't.. differentiating your RP to spawns of creatures VS a pc, means you seperate NPc's from PC's in terms of RP.

perhaps theres a dm about to join your fun one day but doesn't because he sees that you RP great in town and don't outside of there.

now I am not saying you do or do not do this, however, being cosistent with both NPC's and PC's impresses me. Specifically some of the vets I learned from who did this..

[EDM Entori]

Feb 7, 2010 22:59:30 GMT -5 @ancientempathy said:

PvE?

wow term I think


Player versus enemies, or player Versus encounters..

equivalent to PVM

[The Supreme Watcher]

PvE = Player versus Environment, and I ask because while I downplay the differences between PCs and NPCs, they still exist.

NPCs will never follow sneaking rules, and often they sneak up directly in front of your face. They also walk through obvious areas while stealthed and this isn't taken into account. A player, I would hope, would be more courteous than that.

I don't see any point to unstealthing if you have to move across an open area in PvE, then you're just inviting an unforgiving game system to crush you for being courteous to a soulless machine. I would never treat other players this way, but I don't think other players would treat me like a harsh, uncaring construct. There's a difference!

So... I guess that's my stance on stealth? Be courteous to other players, but eff the machine, it's not going to be upset, but you will be for being courteous to it! If a DM is going to be controlling the encounter, then I would hope I would notice beforehand, but I hope they would understand my reasons for playing stealth in PvE how I do/will.

[soulfien]

Also, you do not have to RP for an hour, toggle hostile, and make absolutely sure you have a valid RP reason for killing an npc bandit.

You do not have to let an NPC mage buff up and cast timestop, wail, finger of death, and summon creature 9 before you've determined it is okay to attack it.

And you will never get locked in jail attacking a human bandit in town with hostile magic

There are differences.