Author Topic: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?  (Read 114705 times)

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Midnight_v

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #40 on: February 04, 2011, 09:15:24 PM »
Quote
Ring of Darkhidden makes Darkvision obsolete.  It's freaking cheap.  That plus Darkstalker is all you need to be virtually impossible to detect by the vast majority of enemies if you bothered to get a hide score worth talking about.
  :o

Wait...  :eh
We just went over all that Jaronk.

But hey I do have a question for you though...
Quote
  But in general, you do need a stealth focused party to really rock the stealth game in the way most players want to play it.  I've done ninja themed campaigns before... they're actually a lot of fun. 
What were the challenges like was it just these dudes playing force recon, wiping out villages etc undetected? What really challeged them?
Also... whats Tp2?
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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #41 on: February 04, 2011, 09:16:12 PM »
Team Fortress 2, an FPS.
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Midnight_v

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #42 on: February 04, 2011, 09:23:47 PM »
Team Fortress 2, an FPS.
Thanks creepy lurker guy!   :thumb
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JaronK

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #43 on: February 04, 2011, 09:25:53 PM »
TF2 is a game where you charge in headlong and shoot everything.  A fun game, but stealth isn't really the main thing.  And I brought up the ring because people were bringing up Darkvision again and Sunic was talking about how it screwed hiding and how it was hard to have a hide score high enough not to be a 50/50 chance of detection.

As for the missions, you do ones where there's a lot of smarter enemies, such that if one gets alerted the go run and get help instead of fighting you one at a time.  As such, you have the players sneaking up and assassinating people while using Silence to keep things quiet.  Another one that was interesting was when the group was in drow territory and trying to start a war between two factions, so they wanted to fake an assassination attempt and pin it on the other guys.  Their goal was to move in, hit fast and hard while planting evidence, kill anyone who might be able to figure anything out, raise the alarm at the right time, and then escape into the shadows without being followed.

For groups like that, a Beguiler with a Mindbender dip for Mindsight and the ability to talk to each other remotely without noise is critical... and it means D&D starts playing a lot more like Shadowrun, which can actually be pretty fun.

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #44 on: February 04, 2011, 09:33:27 PM »

1: Hi Welcome.

2: There are 3 enemies, and each have a 25% chance to spot you every time they attempt. That means every round they get to try (read: every round you are there scouting) there is a 60.625% chance you are spotted. Since detection = death, and one round is the minimum type possible, it's clear to see that even under the best case scenario, in which the stealther has a bit of an advantage there is still a greater than even chance he is not coming back. Treantmonk fails a lot, but when he referred to the scout as "the Corpse" he was absolutely right. Would you prefer 5%? Fine, the detection chance per round is about 1 in 7. Now consider that it likely takes you more than one round to get in, look around, and get out and the only conclusion that can be drawn is that I am exactly right - you either throw the enemy straight off the RNG by having no chance to detect you, or you auto fail. If there's more than three enemies, that's even more chances to fail.

3: I'm sure the enemy won't get suspicious about any fog or smoke coming up out of nowhere. I'm sure they will never mow their lawn. At least pretend you are serious.

Ok, seriously, without CoP (because all I'm ever going to answer to that as a GM is "maybe"), how do you scout ALL THE FUCKING DAY with magic? Because that's just the time when not being able to can really fuck you up. For instance, sometimes even a high-level wizard will have to walk to places. Well... not necessarily walk, but, NOT teleport. And if just for the reason that he doesn't know yet where he's going.

And what is that awesome spell that automatically overcomes a mundane hide check? Or a mundane disguise check, maybe?

It's just like this: Every time when when I've played, and there was no scout, we were ambushed. Every time I've GMed, and the PCs didn't scout (well, they also didn't do other things, but considering there were often days of travelling involved, and the levels weren't that high, there wasn't that much they could do..) they were ambushed, too.

So, short of playing a Binder, how do you ALWAYS know what's on the road ahead of you?

wotmaniac

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #45 on: February 04, 2011, 10:17:54 PM »
just gonna toss this in ....
if you're hidden, the the other guy is unaware of you ... which means he's flat-footed to you until the round after he sees you. ....

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Brainpiercing

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #46 on: February 04, 2011, 10:21:40 PM »
just gonna toss this in ....
if you're hidden, the the other guy is unaware of you ... which means he's flat-footed to you until the round after he sees you. ....
I've been looking for a quote that proves that people are flat-footed with respect to you if they are unaware of you, even after initiative has been rolled and they've acted with respect to others.... do you have anything?

BruceLeeroy

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #47 on: February 04, 2011, 10:22:14 PM »
In my experience at the game table, effective stealth characters generally have a hide modifier high enough that rolling is a waste of time. Factors like darkvision, cover, concealment, etc, rarely become an issue if the player is intelligent.

The whole being spotted = death thing is just fucking nonsense, though. There's always an escape, unless the DM is just plain dicking you, and then why bother?

wotmaniac

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #48 on: February 04, 2011, 10:29:00 PM »
just gonna toss this in ....
if you're hidden, the the other guy is unaware of you ... which means he's flat-footed to you until the round after he sees you. ....
I've been looking for a quote that proves that people are flat-footed with respect to you if they are unaware of you, even after initiative has been rolled and they've acted with respect to others.... do you have anything?
just a quick blurb from RC:
Quote from: Rules Compendium
.
See p.70-71 for the full thing.

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If you stop ignoring 289 pages telling what the intent is to stretch "more power" in your own god complexion of your interpretation trumps all to cover ability adjustments from aging then I will ignore a quarter page of rules that exist within a sidebar.
I think in this case the grammar is less important than whether the Str and Dex bonus provided to your created undead scales.

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #49 on: February 04, 2011, 11:39:32 PM »
The only requirement for not being flat-footed is taking an action in initiative.  If you sneak up on someone and stab them in the middle of a fight, you're not getting SA because they're flat-footed, but because they didn't know you were there.  Once you stab them, they know you're there.

The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #50 on: February 05, 2011, 12:47:09 AM »
The only requirement for not being flat-footed is taking an action in initiative.  If you sneak up on someone and stab them in the middle of a fight, you're not getting SA because they're flat-footed, but because they didn't know you were there.  Once you stab them, they know you're there.

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Midnight_v

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #51 on: February 05, 2011, 01:04:47 AM »

Quote
The only requirement for not being flat-footed is taking an action in initiative.  If you sneak up on someone and stab them in the middle of a fight, you're not getting SA because they're flat-footed, but because they didn't know you were there.  Once you stab them, they know you're there.

Quote
That creature treats you as if you were invisible.
Right and that means that if you hit them you become visible. Further your next hide check SHOULD be at
-20 for hiding in combat, which isn't impossible but I'm thinking its different from what I'm gathering people are selling it as.
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #52 on: February 05, 2011, 01:09:18 AM »

Quote
The only requirement for not being flat-footed is taking an action in initiative.  If you sneak up on someone and stab them in the middle of a fight, you're not getting SA because they're flat-footed, but because they didn't know you were there.  Once you stab them, they know you're there.

Quote
That creature treats you as if you were invisible.
Right and that means that if you hit them you become visible.
I don't see how that's supported by the text, since it just said "invisible" (as in the status condition), not "invisible, as the invisibility spell".
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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #53 on: February 05, 2011, 01:11:26 AM »
So if you hide successfully, you get a +40 to your Hide score if you don't move, and a +20 if you do?
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Midnight_v

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #54 on: February 05, 2011, 01:18:32 AM »
  Seriously the idea that you attack and stay invisible, is pretty much right out. Its like when you try to snipe you can snipe and hide after as a move action, frankly if you'vre standing adjacent to them you recieve a
-20 modifier on your hide check instantly and/or need to make an new roll, determininant on dm interpretation of wheter modifiers require new rolls or not. All in all I don't think you get to snipe in melee at all and the implication that a new hide check is required after a ranged attack kinda supports that shooting them gives up your position. Anyone?
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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #55 on: February 05, 2011, 01:51:35 AM »
Actually, upon further inspection, you can attack while hiding, but the way you guys are saying it works simply isn't.

1) You can make one attack from hiding, since a single attack is a standard action and you need a move action to hide.  Once you decide to make a full attack, you're not hiding anymore.  You absolutely NEED that move action to hide, or else you can't even attempt the Hide check.

2) If you try to remain hidden while attacking, you must have one of concealment, cover, or an appropriate HiPS ability, and you still take a -20 penalty on your attempt.

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #56 on: February 05, 2011, 02:15:30 AM »
Mundane stealth is actually rather easy to pull off.

For example, a Dark Whisper Gnome

Starting with 16 Dex as a base and maxing ranks in the stealth skills, he has +24 Hide, +18 Move Silently at ECL 2.  Your average gaurd has no shot at seeing him and a very small chance of hearing him (and if that might be a porblem, he's got Silence 1/day).

Notice I haven't said what class he is, because it doesn't matter, so long as Hide and Move Silently are class skills.  He will never show up on Detect Magic, Arcane Sight, etc. because there's nothing magical going on (unless he springs Silence, in which case things have probably already gone south).  Alternatively, you can trade +2 Dex and +4 Move Silently for immunity to tracking via Forest Gnome instead of Whisper Gnome.  A little worse off, but patrols with dogs won't catch him.
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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #57 on: February 05, 2011, 05:00:33 AM »
Spot Penalties are relevant here.

Per 10 feet of distance    -1
Spotter distracted    -5

Stealth is likely to have SOME use, in closing engagement distances. Its difficult to actually be completely futile.
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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #58 on: February 05, 2011, 05:25:14 AM »
I can see some use (outside what was already said) if:
- You need to recover something from somewhere but can't do it openly, either because you need deniability or some other reason.
- You need to get hostages out of somewhere
- You need to put something somewhere without anyone realizing (because the king would be so angry if he knew we took his magic sword)
- You have an awesome idea that's gonna make the session memorable, and it involves stealth.
- The hot princess is taking a bath in the room next to wherever you are  :lmao
- You really don't wanna fight the next guys

Hope it helps, if anything

veekie

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Re: Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?
« Reply #59 on: February 05, 2011, 05:35:31 AM »
^^
The problem was with the practicality of solo stealth runs, especially if theres only one DM. Splitting the party never ends well.
Sneaks can act collaboratively by going ahead to scout or mess up an encounter, but if it's a full stealth mission you'd want everyone under magical stealth.

Say, anyone knows what do you do with surprise rounds in the MIDDLE of combat? I.e. after the first round the rogue drops in, and his party knows hes coming, but the enemy is surprised.
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