Perception and Stealth

[The Shaman]

It is super simple to run a game with both a SNEAK skill (as the average of the two) and both hide and move silent as separate skills to boot.

The more I think about this, the more I like it...a lot.

SNEAK and WATCH (an average Spot/Listen skill check modifier, the counterpart to SNEAK) expand character options: you can roll both skill checks individually, or take the average of both skill modifiers and make a single roll instead.

Excellent.

 

[Cheiromancer]

How does this interact with things like magical silence, darkness, invisibility and so on? What kinds of modifiers apply to be being blinded or deafened?
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[Highlight]Tales of Wyre: Compiled Sepulchrave Story Hour (updated 05-15)[/highlight]
and associated Rogue's Gallery (master list of links)

 

[The Shaman]

How does this interact with things like magical silence, darkness, invisibility and so on? What kinds of modifiers apply to be being blinded or deafened?

If you combine Listen and Spot into a single skill, I think you'd have to come up with some sort of skill check modifier for effects like darkness et al. to reflect the fact that while one sense may be impaired, other senses are unaffected.

That's one of the reasons that I like the idea of the WATCH check - you still have ranks in Spot and Listen defined, so it has no effect on those mechanics which affect the sense skills individually.

 

[Sir Brennen]

What about Sneaky creatures?

What about creatures which have a high racial bonus in Hide or Move Silently, but not the other? For example, a psuedodragon's camouflage ability can give it a +8 to Hide in forested areas. Would you give this full bonus to Sneak? What if it's pitch dark in the forest? The camouflage ability doesn't help it be any more sneaky then - would you still give it its racial bonus?

(I would say "Not"... and therefore not roll the two skills into one, since it doesn't save you anything when you have to start making judgement calls about when to apply a "Sneak" bonus...)

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

I'm going to echo what many of the posters in this thread have said about situations where one skill is more likely to come into play than the other. I like the fact that combining the two simplifies gameplay, but there are situations (which I won't repeat; others have already provided excellent examples) where either hide or move silently is going to be more of a factor than the other.