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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7824177" data-attributes="member: 4937">An infinite distance away.  After all, you can see mountains and the sun from quite a ways away.The question really is, "When is it practical to start making checks?" or perhaps, "What sort of difficulty increase is involved with increasing distance?"So lets start with the idea that seeing something human sized at close range that is making no effort to hide is like DC -5 or something. Under normal conditions, even the half-blind see that, although a confluence of factors might cause something like that to escape notice (poor perception, distraction, smaller size, poor lighting conditions, partial concealment, etc.)So how far away would that orc have to be before making checks to notice it wasn't pointless?In my own 3e game, I use the following table:<table style='width: 100%'><tr><td>Spot DC Modifier*</td><td>Condition</td></tr><tr><td>+0</td><td>Up to 10’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+1</td><td>Up to 20’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+2</td><td>Up to 40’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+3</td><td>Up to 60’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+4</td><td>Up to 90’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+5</td><td>Up to 140’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+6</td><td>Up to 200’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+7</td><td>Up to 300’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+8</td><td>Up to 450’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+9</td><td>Up to 700’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+10</td><td>Up to 1000’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+11</td><td>Up to 1500’ away</td></tr><tr><td>+12**</td><td>Up to 2200’ away</td></tr></table>Beyond 2200' has never come up in a situation where I would rather roll than use fiat, but it's +1 for each 2200' beyond that as a rough guideline.Turns out that if there is nothing intervening our moving man sized figure can be seen about 4 miles away by just someone of average perceptiveness. This is so far out that as a practical matter it doesn't come up much, and so far away that it doesn't really matter much whether you see the person or see them a minute later. There is a potential for surprise to matter as in who sees who first, but as I've never run a game on the steppes or other area where encounter distances average in miles, I just haven't felt a need to roll for anything at those sort of distances. If I did, I might actually write a tiny computer application that figured out who had surprise and by how many rounds, to determine which side had a chance to hide or otherwise react first.That is probably overkill for most purposes.  Just use fiat at encounter ranges over a few hundred feet.  Your instincts will be good enough.</blockquote>

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