I think in the end it boils down just like beatsticks. At a certain level they become so outclassed they are irrelevant. And this happens to stealth BEFORE it happens to beatsticks.
Sunic, how do you feel about stealthing around at level 1,2 or 3?
At levels 1-3...
You must use one of your 1-3 feats on Darkstalker, or you are automatically owned by guard dogs. I hope no one here is honestly going to pull a Paizil and claim guard dogs are not a reasonable encounter for such parties. Can you even take Darkstalker at these levels? I forget what prereqs it has.
You cannot throw enemies off the RNG, which means you have a damn good chance to just be seen.
You are low level, and therefore go splat easily. As a rather entertaining post on the Paizil boards went, "...And then the dog barks, and the gimp dies." The idea being he tries to scout, just gets spotted normally by some guy and his guard dog, and the dog tears him apart. Meanwhile the guy hits an alarm gong.
Now remember my post here from the beginning is that you have to throw enemies straight off the RNG, and hope they have no I win abilities, or you auto lose. That's because they're getting chances to spot you every single round, as long as you're there (and since you have to move at half speed, or else take penalties that means an even longer time) and only need to succeed once. So either 0%, or Iterative Probability makes it damn near 100%. Stealth is binary like that. If they do have an I win button you auto lose regardless. And Darkstalker only blocks some of the auto win abilities.
As for things like Death Ward, those are better handled by zerging the dungeon, aka you respect the time limit.
I think all Sunic has proven is that in Tier 2 to Tier 1 game environments stealth characters, such as The Scout, er Corpse, are utterly pointless. In Tier 3 games, which it seems like most people here prefer, I would argue that Scout characters are much more viable.
Except that Tier 1s and 2s can also be scouts. In fact a Druid is far superior to any of Jaron's gimps. However even the mighty Druid scout fails, because the problem is with scouting, and with having to solo encounters meant for groups. I mean fuck, I wouldn't even consider soloing an Ice Devil with a level 10 Attec, and at least one person here knows how crazy he was (let's pretend Ciao and Kendang also were good at sneaking, here).
I love how people are lowballing the enemy stats by the way. With 0 modification, it has AC 36, touch AC 18. Saves are all 18 or 19. Not to mention, it has around 17k in loot, and armor is cheap as free. The terribly gimpy Warblade (and yes, any beatstick with only +20 to hit at level 10 is a gimp) rolls a 20 or misses.
So the Dorje thingy hits 70% of the time, assuming it's a stock mob. I'll give you a hint: to hit touch AC 18
missed. 25 and 27 hit. So that's a number between 19 and 25, inclusive. No, I'm not telling you the exact number. That's information my players would not know.
And ok, the Factorum finds and identifies it. He is promptly ROFLstomped. Regardless of whether the party then ROFLstomps the devil, he still suffers from scouting fail.
Meanwhile, what actually happened in the actual game is that the party proceeded together, the undead Cleric auto spotted the Ice Devil, and is also you know, a Cleric and not a gimp. Right now, it's about even, but I'm quite certain the party will win this one.