The Layonara Community > Roleplaying
Food for thought: Stealth
Aphel:
I originally wanted to post an answer to this other topic, but then I figured it would be best to take the opportunity to approach the issue differently. I would like to share my thoughts on the issue of stealth, and if there are any thougths and discussions archived on this topic, a link won't do no harm.
One of things that can be done with most RPG I played is to create and play character using stealth. Some systems implement it better than others, some make things easier for player and GM while others just provide competetive skill checks and a limited ability to back stab. That aside and talked about later, there are some more roleplay-oriented things that I think might be worth talking about.
Stealth and how it can be roleplayed is in my experience only limited by time and patience of those involved as it could drag on for quite a while to play it out. In the past, I used text macros to emote what my character was doing, however it felt too simple and easy most of the time, automated in an way that somehow didn't quite fit to what I wanted to portray. It's a bit more complicated than *uses the terrain, light and his own gear to conceal himself*, so here are a few thoughts. Stealth depends on various different factors:[*]Distance to your enemies
[*]Perception of your enemies
[*]Amount of cover
[*]Personal skill and gear
[*]Alertness of your enemies
[*]Environment
[*]What you want to do
[*]What your enemies can do[/LIST]Stealth is more than being unheard or unseen. You can be seen, but judged as harmless or be forgotten quite easily. Items can be disguised as harmless objects, and mind games shall be played. Creativity is important if you approach stealth in your roleplay.
Think of those that you want to elude, confuse and deceive. What kind of sense to they have? Do they have good smell, heat sensitivity, dark vision? How alert and/or paranoid are they? How far away are they? What are they looking for, and what do they deem as harmless? Most of these questions can be answered by the GM or come from the experiences of the character.
How much concealment does your character have available? No matter the armor penalty, with 100% line of sight cover it is hard to see somebody. Sure, other senses then smell or really bad luck (shadows, parts of gear sticking out of cover etc) it can still be possible to notice somebody. On a very loud place, or a very smelly or hot place, other senses might be likewise limited. Stealth can also mean that distractions and baits are used to remain unnoticed. Hide and move silently can be used without training, and if he stays out of sight, even a warrior in full plate can sneak up on somebody, or remain hidden.
It is quite possible to hide a warrior in full plate with a tower shield in plain sight without the use of magic. It does depend on your opponent and her or his abilities and resources, and maybe a good bluff check or something similar.
Stealth is all about perception and creativity, yours and your opponents. It's more than just a perception check against a skill check, and even Hide in plain sight has its downfalls. If rangers and shadowdancers can aquire at a certain level the ability of doing a hide check despite being observed, does that mean one can't use distractions to achieve the same? Of course one can. Hide in plain sight just implies, in my opinion, that the character is so good at using her or his environment/mystical ability/ to simply "vanish" despit being "watched". It's a perception game, after all.
Stealth is a great tool to solve encounters if the GM so permits. Just like combat, magic and social skills it can be (more or less) cleverly used, and even should be used in my opinion.
What do you think in regards to the use of stealth? When roleplaying stealth, how do you go about it? Or does it hinder the flow of action too much for you? What are your pet peeves in regards to stealth/stealthy characters? Do you use it with the character you play on quests?
Do you think making things complexis better than making it easy and simple, reducing it to competetive skill checkes and +d6 sneak attack, or vice versa?
Stephen_Zuckerman:
My character has a Cloak of Elvenkind (along with a few other items) that make him harder to see by camouflaging him with his surroundings. When he's focused on being stealthy, he blends in as well or better than an invisible character (his +36 beats the heck out of the +20 you get from Invis... In PnP, anyway).
This, of course, is physically being hard to see. For Phinn, that's the pinnacle of stealth - not subterfuge, but almost not even being there at all.
For the rest of your [strike]article[/strike] post... I think you're really just overthinking it a little.
lonnarin:
I think using stealth skills is an excellent application of misdirection to get by obstacles. If you want to avoid or get the drop on something on any of my quests, by all means send me a tell and I'll work with it. Something like throwing a coin down the hallway to make a guard chase it to investigate, disguising yourself like a commoner in a crowd, swaddling a shortsword to make it look like a baby, hiding objects real well on your person to avoid them being confiscated, all applicable. Many skills like tumble, pickpocket/sleight of hand, bluff, diplomacy, use magic device and spellcraft have a multitude of uses outside the Neverwinter code-box with the right imagination. ;)
Stephen_Zuckerman:
And here I thought we were just talking about Hide/Move Silently.
Liches don't know 'bout my Adventuring Kit.
Aphel:
--- Quote from: Stephen_Zuckerman ---My character has a Cloak of Elvenkind (along with a few other items) that make him harder to see by camouflaging him with his surroundings. When he's focused on being stealthy, he blends in as well or better than an invisible character (his +36 beats the heck out of the +20 you get from Invis... In PnP, anyway).
This, of course, is physically being hard to see. For Phinn, that's the pinnacle of stealth - not subterfuge, but almost not even being there at all.
--- End quote ---
So, no real interesting roleplay involved? Slip on gear, done?
--- Quote ---For the rest of your [strike]article[/strike] post... I think you're really just overthinking it a little.
--- End quote ---
Thanks. That means I am doing it right. :D
--- Quote from: lonnarin ---I think using stealth skills is an excellent application of misdirection to get by obstacles. If you want to avoid or get the drop on something on any of my quests, by all means send me a tell and I'll work with it. Something like throwing a coin down the hallway to make a guard chase it to investigate, disguising yourself like a commoner in a crowd, swaddling a shortsword to make it look like a baby, hiding objects real well on your person to avoid them being confiscated, all applicable. Many skills like tumble, pickpocket/sleight of hand, bluff, diplomacy, use magic device and spellcraft have a multitude of uses outside the Neverwinter code-box with the right imagination. ;)
--- End quote ---
In my experience, the usefulness of a more thinking/tactical approach including stealth is limited in quests, usually. There's simply not enough time to roleplay things out, as a GM, you can't devote time to a single character and let the others out on a quest. So at best, a sneak character does a bit of scouting, practically. The rest is just the "bonus damage", which means that in most cases, unless you rp things in a CDQ or over the forums/IRC, you can't do what you should be able to. Maybe that's a problem with the large groups during quests. I am very interested to find a solution which benefits all involved parties. One can reduce a charater to a min/maxed heap of numbers (hm, all the possibilities of game theory, probability theory and other nice things...), then again, so can I in other, more competetive oriented mmorpgs, and what would be the point of calling it a "character", but ymmv.
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