Making 1 skill from 2, good or bad?

[Grayhawk]

What are the pros and cons of combining the skills Hide and Move Silently into a single skill called Sneak or Stealth, and likewise with Listen and Spot, making a single skill called Alertness (or some such)?

Obviously, this frees up skillpoints to be spent on something else, but will it unbalance the classes?

How do you figure a Hafling's Sneak bonus, considering his bonus +2 to Move Silently and +4 to Hide?

How about classes like the Bard that has Listen as a class skill, but not Spot?

 

[DreamChaser]

What are the pros and cons of combining the skills Hide and Move Silently into a single skill called Sneak or Stealth, and likewise with Listen and Spot, making a single skill called Alertness (or some such)?

Obviously, this frees up skillpoints to be spent on something else, but will it unbalance the classes?

How do you figure a Hafling's Sneak bonus, considering his bonus +2 to Move Silently and +4 to Hide?

How about classes like the Bard that has Listen as a class skill, but not Spot?

A deaf person
A blind person
A person wearing cammoflage and clogs
A person wearing padded shoes and hot pink.

These are four reasons why Listen, Spot, Hide, and Move Silently should all be sepearate skills. They are not the same activities and do not use the same techniques or part of the body. The only thing that would benefit from this change is the Rogue and Ranger classes would become more powerful.

DC

 

[FrankTrollman]

Hide and Move Silently really work better as a single skill - like in Arcana Unearthed. The practice of actually using them is that either one by itself is virtually meaningless - if they hear or see you the result is virtually the same - you are detected.

Listen and Spot, OTOH, really do different things and should remain different skills. Individual senses are denied often enough that having seperate sensory skills is a requirement.

As to things like clogs and bailing wire - these work best as circumstance bonuses to other peoples' listen checks, rather than penalties to a seperate Move Silently skill.

-Frank

 

[DreamChaser]

I can almost understand the linking of Move Silently and Hide. It is true that the two will most often be used together. I don't think I like the idea of giving both actions as a freebee from a single action, however.

I can imagine situations where a person would be hiding but not moving silently, such as during a game of hide & seek, or moving siently without hiding, such as a burglar working to keep from being heard by the sleeping occupants of a house but not trying to stay hidden as that would prevent her from moving freely around the room to grab the loot.

Hiding, to me, requires more than a little bit of darkness. The person needs to be actively trying to stay hidden, which in many situations, precludes other actions.

I also dislike the idea of the items a character is using granting other people bonus or inflicting penalties that can completely invalidate a multifaced skill.

Player: I roll a 17 plus my +12 to Stealth, that's a 29.
DM: but you're wearing bells on your shoes. that gives the guard a +15 to on his listen check. I roll a 10. + 15 for your bells, +5 for the guards listen skill. he spots you.
Player: spots me? he rolled a listen check.
DM: right but his listen check overcame you're Stealth. its all one skill. he now knows where you are and he's attacking you with is +5 flaming burst unholy vorpal sword of wounding. (yes I know the sword is probably impossible)

I prefer the idea of 1 skill, 1 action (except profession which is a way of allowing people to take a bunch of mundae skills without completely neutering their character's skillwise.

DC

 

[Aaron2]

Hide and Move Silently really work better as a single skill - like in Arcana Unearthed. The practice of actually using them is that either one by itself is virtually meaningless - if they hear or see you the result is virtually the same - you are detected.

Listen and Spot, OTOH, really do different things and should remain different skills. Individual senses are denied often enough that having seperate sensory skills is a requirement.

I don't see how Move Silently and Hide should be one skill but Spot and Listen should not. Is it Spot vs Stealth or is it Listen vs Stealth?

Anyway, since most people max out both Hide and Move Silently, they should be similar anyway. Combining them only results in giving rogues and rangers 1 skill point / level. It's not any simpler, in fact its now more complicated because most magic items / situational modifiers will have to be listed -2 Stealth (when trying to hide) or -2 Stealth (when trying to move silently).


Aaron

 

[ciaran00]

Why don't combine the nonsensical spot and search?

ciaran

 

[Urbannen]

Whoa! That's just what I was going to say!

Ciaran's right. When you look for things nearby it's Search, while if you look for things far away it's Spot. Just get rid of Search, increase the DCs for secret doors by 5, and give a +5 bonus for active Spotting.

 

[bensei]

Hide and Move Silently are clearly separated due to the many ways of invisibility in D&D.
Also, in reality hide and move silently often are opposing thing, i.e. someone trying to be silent normally moves slower and hence is slower at hiding than a person who is just hiding in a noisy area.

 

[FrankTrollman]

Hide and Move Silently are clearly separated due to the many ways of invisibility in D&D.
Also, in reality hide and move silently often are opposing thing, i.e. someone trying to be silent normally moves slower and hence is slower at hiding than a person who is just hiding in a noisy area.

But that's not how it works game mechanically. Both of them are not actions that are combined with move actions. Neither of them suffer penalties provided that you move no more than half your speed.

If you like, you can hide, move silently, and tumble with the same action at no penalties - it's just three dexterity related skill rolls. There's no penalty for using them concurrently.

And since there is no game mechanical reason why you can't be attempting to be "not seen" every time you are attempting to be "not heard" - you make both those rolls simultaneously. The only time it makes a difference is on the sentry's part - because that's the person with whom it matters whether you can be seen or heard.

So the Spot and Listen make sense - the Hide and Move Silently do not. They are the same roll and made at the same time in all cases. All Hide circumstance modifiers would make more sense as Spot circumstance modifiers - being brightly colored makes no difference to a color-blind sentry, and being camoflauged makes no difference to a creature which sees infrared. Thus, all those coloration modifiers would make more sense as circumstance modifiers to the spot rolls of sentries who perceived them - rather than as Hide circumstance modifiers which then had corresponding negation circumstance modifiers applied to the spot checks of sentries who could not.

The Sneak skill streamlines the game massively - and implementing it was one of the best things that has ever happened to my games. Plus, it doesn't leave people who become incorporeal with a bunch of wasted points in Move Silently - and so on. It's just great.

-Frank

 

[Aaron2]

The Sneak skill streamlines the game massively - and implementing it was one of the best things that has ever happened to my games. Plus, it doesn't leave people who become incorporeal with a bunch of wasted points in Move Silently - and so on. It's just great.

I'm sorry. I just can't see how making a Sneak skill simplifies the game at all. I've been running a game for over two years with a party containing two rogues and I can count on one hand the number of times someone tried to Hide and Move Silently at the same time. Hide is mostly a passive skill; you Hide in one spot and wait. Move Silently, OTOH, is the more active skill. You Move Silently around the evil guy's castle until you hear guards approaching, then you Hide until they pass. Totally seperate events.

Besides, the word "sneak" implies movement. Why should your ability to sneak around affect how well you setup an ambush.

Aaron