Combining Listen/Spot and Hide/Move Silently?

[Afrodyte]

This is just an idea that popped into my head while I was flipping through the PHB. I posted it at the WotC message boards, but I want to get as many opinions from as many diverse sources as I can.

It seems that Listen and Spot overlap each other a bit too much, as they are used for the same end (noticing things). The same goes for Hide and Move Silently (avoid being noticed). It seems rather redundant to have four skills do what two skills could accomplish.

I just wanted to ask you all what effect combining the Listen and Spot skills into a single Observe skill would have on the game. What effect would bringing Hide and Move Silently into a single skill called Stealth have on the game? To me, it seems nothing would change much, except for maybe freeing up skill ranks to place somewhere else. Is this a good thing? Why or why not?

 

[mmadsen]

Observe and Stealth are roughly twice as useful as most other skills. Thus, breaking them out into Listen & Spot and Hide & Move Silently prices them more "correctly" for their in-game utility.

 

[The Proconsul]

I think so too. And there are many circumstances where you can or must only use one of them (In magical darkness, for example, or against a blinded or deafened foe).

 

[gpetruc]

In Decipher's LotR RPG (using the CODA system, that is similar to d20 but with some important differences) these skills are grouped ad Observe and Stealth, exactly as you wrote.
But this happens also on many other skills, that have "subskills" (called specialities) and you still can be better at listening than at spotting.
Also, in LotR the skill system is different: all classes get the same number of skill picks, combat is done through skills, and so on.

Anyway, while your idea seems resonable and does make sense, probably it would unbalance the relative power of the skills in D&D.

 

[Dr. Zoom]

Also, only rogues and rangers currently have Spot as a class skill, while Listen is also a class skill for bards, barbarians, and monks. Do you give them Spot as well, or take Listen from them?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think it is a fine principle (I would - I use it in my pre-d20 RPG called Starguild; the skills were called Awareness and Stealth).

Retrofitting it to D&D would be tricky, but I think that it would be worth doing. So many DMs (myself included) get confused when to use Listen and when to use Spot when determining surprise in an encounter (to be honest I think a lot of the time Spot gets used when it should be Listen).

Similarly, people trying to sneak are often struck by double jeopardy... they must try to make a hide roll *and* a move silently roll in order to sneak up on someone - double the chances of getting a failure, success only when both skills succeed.

If I were to do it, I'd restrict Awareness to Rogue and Ranger, while including Bard and Monk for Stealth. I'll not be doing it though.

 

[cptg1481]

Its Been Done

AEG does this in thier Mercenaries Book. They propose that a way to speed up play especially that part that involves stealth and perception as opposed rolls.

What they suggest (on pages 55-56, if you want to skim it at the store) is that you caould combine hide and movesliently into one skill and call it "stealth". The players "stealth" score is the average of the two...i.e. 7 and 9 = 8. Now perception is done the same waycombineing listen and spot.

This takes two rolls out and makes the game faster. I have considered in my game DX'ing hide/move silently and replacing it with stealth all together. Likewise with the listen/spot and making it perception.

They also opine that if one wanted to speed it further you could rule that sentries/guards/mosters always are taking 10 on perception and that the sneakers/party are always taking 10 in stealth and just compare the two sets together for a result. However, this means that the +7 stealth thief will always win over the +2 perception guard. I think this would most likely give a distenct advantage to one side.

Combining them, well to me it just seems right.....

 

[Stalker0]

Re: Its Been Done

The players "stealth" score is the average of the two...i.e. 7 and 9 = 8. Now perception is done the same waycombineing listen and spot.

I like this idea, because I've always considered listen and spot to be the prime skills. In most games they are used far more often than many other skills. With this system, you would need two ranks to gain stealth rank, which puts listen and spot more in its place in my opinion.

 

[Thimble the Squit]

Perception / Stealth

I like the idea of averaging these skills, so you still have to put points in both if you want to be really good whereas, in situations where one subset is more appropriate than its counterpart, a specialist character can shine.

Examples:

Rog (+10 Li, +10 Sp, +10 MS, +10 Hi) = +10 Per / +10 Ste, for 40 sp
Mnk (+10 Li, +0 Sp, +10 MS, +0 Hi) = +5 Per / +5 Ste, for 20 sp
Brd (+0 Sp, +10 Li, +0 MS, +0 Hi) = +5 Per / +0 Ste, for 10 sp

-- or however they'd average out over a few levels (ability scores, etc, notwithstanding).

Using a single score to determine these values would hugely cheapen the most important two skills in the game (Spot and Listen -- and here I agree with Plane Sailing: Spot is the even more over-used of the two).

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Another trick (slightly off-topic) is to have a single roll for the group, applying appropriate bonuses individually, then adding +1 for every other member in the group. This speeds up all those random ambush checks and includes a bit of the Aid Another rule.

In our group, we've got Spot skills from +1 to +14, so if the designated die roller gets a 7, those who are pretty alert get to respond while the others don't -- my wizard would end up with: 7 (roll) +0 (Spot) +4 (there's 5 in our party) = 11. Not too hot. I'm usually the pincushion for ambushing archers...

 

[mikey6990]

I have left spot and listen as is, but I combine move silently and hide in shadows into two stealth skills.

I use stealth(urban) and stealth(wilderness). Rogues get both as class skills, while rangers, barbarians, and druids get stealth(wilderness).

This allows rogues to specialize by concentrating on one and use points for other skills but it still leaves them with two skills to purchase to achieve the full range of abilities like they had before.

The other thing it does is allow other classes to take one form of stealth cheaper than otherwise. We have found in our games that this is beneficial since most everybody wants stealth of some sort but find it difficult to buy cross-class.

Just another idea.

Mike