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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 4045881" data-attributes="member: 1165">I think the lack of silent instantaneous communication* dooms scouting. Also, sometimes your opponent has great senses. I saw a rogue get killed and eaten by a dire tiger that way. (Yeah, the party did catch and kill it, but too late for the rogue. I swear 3.x rogues die like flies in my campaigns, even though it's rarely due to scouting or traps.)Shapeshifting is great, as opponents rarely notice an oddly-behaving squirrel, unless it does something obvious like not get scared if someone rushes at it.I don't think a whole lot of thought went into scouting in the rules. There's no recommendations for scouting distance, for instance, suggesting no standard distance was playtested in the rules.Animal scouts never work. Even if you can Speak with Animals, how valuable is a scout with Int 2 going to be?*There are ways around that, of course.IIRC only large forces have independent scouts (and these scouts might move in small groups). A fire team of four soldiers won't have a scout. They might put the youngest (and hopefully clear-eyed) soldier in front without heavy equipment and call him a "scout". Since the other guys have roles (commander, grenadier, machine gunner, radio packer...) none of them can handle the job.I think in the Middle Ages scouts were often just guys on horseback. They didn't care too much about stealth, figuring they could use speed to avoid the enemy. (Of course, their very presence was something of a warning.) It's also so easy it put my "assassin" character in an Exalted campaign to hard work. He swore he would kill anyone who could be a scout in an enemy city, which meant he had to kill anyone who could use a telescope and ride a horse. That was ... a lot of people.*Modern day Special Forces wouldn't talk on a radio when plotting an ambush. Instead, the scout(s) would just tap their radio a pre-determined number of times when they see baddies. (Okay, I got this from fiction. But I think this makes sense.) Incidentally, a typical Special Forces "A-Team" consists of 10-12 troops (depending on which sources you believe).</blockquote>

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