Stealthy players

[SnowleopardVK]

How do you deal with players who are simply TOO good at being stealthy? Our party handled our 1st level dungeon with incredible ease, barely taking any hits the whole time, and we've gone up a member since then. To be honest I'm glad I'm playing in this group and not running it, because I'm not really sure I'd know how to challenge them. But of course since it's good to learn, I'd like to pick up some tricks, for (as a GM) dealing with my own current party's style of play, in case I ever have to challenge it myself.

(The party is a Wizard, Bard, Ninja, and Alchemist)

Examples of our tactics:
- The original three (Wizard, Bard, and Ninja) all have the Stealth Synergy teamwork feat, and the ninja and bard have good stealth. It's VERY unlikely for us to botch a stealth roll, and once the Alchemist picks up Stealth Synergy it'll get even more unlikely.
- Colour Spray. A little obvious, but simply being knocked unconscious and slaughtered has made a lot of enemies look kind of useless.
- Fascinate. I, the bard, fascinate the enemy while the ninja and wizard stealth their way behind him. We took out the only enemy to give us any real trouble in our first dungeon by using this one, and now my bard has a magic harp that adds 1 to the DC to resist her performance.
- Charm Person. The occasional enemy that does notice the PCs before dying can pretty easily end up thinking of them as his best buddies.
- Improved Initiative. The ninja goes first a LOT. He tends to get sneak attack damage in the surprise/first round because of it.
- Message. We can whisper plans to each other from a distance.

(The tactics from here on are ones we've got the ability to use, but haven't actually used yet for various reasons).

- Vanishing Trick. The ninja can, as of our recent level-up grant himself short bursts of invisibility for free sneak attack.
- Lullaby/Sleep. The wizard can now put enemies to sleep, and I (the bard) can make it easier for him.
- Disguise Self. We haven't used it yet, but this one's just another way they could easily take enemies by surprise.
- Alchemist Sneak Attack. The alchemist is using the Vivisectionist archetype, and thus the ninja isn't the only one who can sneak attack.

 

[frankthedm]

Stealth Synergy has a amusing limitation... "Benefit: While you can see one or more allies who also have this feat... "

- Fascinate. Affects few targets and... Any obvious threat, such as someone drawing a weapon, casting a spell, or aiming a weapon at the target, automatically breaks the effect.
- Charm Person. Verbal components have to be spoken in a strong voice. Unless the victim is alone, someone else heard the spell being cast.
- Lullaby/Sleep. Sleep is a One round casting time, that means the enemy has been acting for one whole round before that save gets made.
- Disguise Self. Even with the spell, impersonating specific creatures will be tricky.

 

[afstanton]

A decent DM will work to adapt to these tactics in careful ways, but not make it so that *all* enemies are immune to stealth. You have good players, which is very cool, and that should be rewarded. That said, as a DM I'd consider including more things that stealth doesn't help with, such as traps. While stealth may help you avoid being detected while disabling a trap, it won't help you find it in the in the first place, nor will it help disable it. Some monsters use tremorsense or other means of detecting people that would help reduce stealth's effectiveness (often represented as a high Perception).

Also, intelligent opponents go a long way. Creatures with a lot of teamwork and organization, checking in with each other, make for tougher foes. Some traps don't directly cause damage but may serve as alarms - even remote alarms that your party cannot hear. ("The wizard stumbles for a second, looks down and notices a broken wire, but nothing happens.")

Even moderately unintelligent foes will realize something is up and try to work together to limit stealth's effectiveness eventually.

Sounds like you have good players, presenting a nice challenge to the DM. Congratulations - let's hope the DM rises to the occasion!

 

[Flatus Maximus]

How do you deal with players who are simply TOO good at being stealthy? ... It's VERY unlikely for us to botch a stealth roll, and once the Alchemist picks up Stealth Synergy it'll get even more unlikely.

Answer: Even though each individual might have a very high probability of success, the party will always be less competent when working as a team, in some cases far less competent. (Thanks binomial distribution!) For example, if everyone has a probability p = 0.90 of success, then the party of three adventurers all make their checks with probability p^3 = 0.729. If p = 0.75 (not terrible, right?), then the party succeeds only about 42% of the time.

Amusing note: On the flip side, similar calculations show us how incompetent adventurers can suddenly become awesome when working as a team. For example, if everyone has a probability p = 0.35 of success at Perception (not good, right?), someone will Notice X (usually considered a success for the entire party) about 82% of the time!

All this just to say: How the probabilities actually work out in play can be a bit counterintuitive. Even when the players are awesome at something, they still have a chance to fail (sometime a much greater chance than you might think); and when they do, it usually makes for a very interesting situation!

 

[Morrus]

How do you deal with players who are simply TOO good at being stealthy?

It's difficult running a game for them. You just don't know who's turned up and who hasn't. The other day, one of my players jumped out from behind the couch halfway through the big final battle.

 

[frankthedm]

Answer: Even though each individual might have a very high probability of success, the party will always be less competent when working as a team, in some cases far less competent. (Thanks binomial distribution!) For example, if everyone has a probability p = 0.90 of success, then the party of three adventurers all make their checks with probability p^3 = 0.729. If p = 0.75 (not terrible, right?), then the party succeeds only about 42% of the time.

That is the way the math is supposed to work. Stealth synergy lets the users take the best roll of the group.

Stealth Synergy (Teamwork) - Pathfinder_OGC

Stealth Synergy (Teamwork)
Working closely with an ally, you are able to move like twin shadows.
Benefit: While you can see one or more allies who also have this feat, whenever you and your allies make a Stealth check, you all take the highest roll and add all your modifiers to Stealth.

So a gang of nine goblin warriors with the feat would roll 9 times for stealth and would all use the best roll of the group.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

Answer: Even though each individual might have a very high probability of success, the party will always be less competent when working as a team, in some cases far less competent. (Thanks binomial distribution!) For example, if everyone has a probability p = 0.90 of success, then the party of three adventurers all make their checks with probability p^3 = 0.729. If p = 0.75 (not terrible, right?), then the party succeeds only about 42% of the time.

Stealth Synergy reverses that though. When we stealth together, we all share the result of whoever rolled best, so in fact the party is even more competent when working as a team. (As an example, we've had both the Ninja and Bard botch on the same stealth roll, but we still had a third die to save us, the wizard got lucky with a nat 20, and so we all used his natural 20 for stealth despite the respective 9 and 10 (modifiers included) of the stealthy PCs.

I don't know how to do the math for that, but our chance of stealth faliure is whatever the chance of ALL the stealth-synergized PCs failing their rolls simultaneously is.

 

[Flatus Maximus]

I don't know how to do the math for that, but our chance of stealth faliure is whatever the chance of ALL the stealth-synergized PCs failing their rolls simultaneously is.

Ah, I see. I should have looked up Stealth Synergy. I figured it just gave you some static bonus. Instead, this feat makes Stealth checks much easier.

Here's the math, in case you (or anyone else) wanna know. Let p be the probability of individual success, so 1-p is the probability of individual failure. If you have N rolls, then all will fail with probability (1-p)^N. So, the probability of success for the party is 1-(1-p)^N.

The Perception example I gave above is, essentially, the same situation. All you need is one success (or, equivalently, no failures). In that example, p = 0.35 and N = 4, so 1-(1-p)^N = 0.82, approximately.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

How the probabilities actually work out in play can be a bit counterintuitive. Even when the players are awesome at something, they still have a chance to fail (sometime a much greater chance than you might think); and when they do, it usually makes for a very interesting situation!

Actually just noticed this line from your first post. All I can say is yes, definitely.

Our first attempt at stealth, despite synergy, involved three nat 1s and us tripping over each other onto the bed of a sleeping drow. Certainly an interesting situation.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

...And I've just learned a new way to give a group like mine challenge, courtesy of my own GM.

As it turns out, forcing our group into a big direct combat scenario where we have to take on all our enemies at once makes things very difficult. It's hard to sneak up on a big group of enemies that all have scent.

Of course we're likely going to start looking into ways to make ourselves untraceable by scent now, but that encounter definitely left us hurting.