Untrained/trained Skills....Noooo!

[Stalker0]

For the purposes of the example, it doesn't really matter. All the numbers are just there to illustrate the point. The point is that the other people don't make him more stealthy, and so don't encourage the solving of a stealth challenge by non-stealthy characters even if the gap between stealthy and non-stealthy is smaller.

It does....to a point. Whenever a rogue goes off by himself, he's paying a cost. He's paying the risk that if he is discovered, he will be forced to fight alone without the benefit of the party. This cost is balanced by the increased risk of being discovered in the first place.

In current dnd, there is no balance. The fighter is so horrifically unstealthy, that bringing him along assures you will be discovered, its just a question of when.

If the gap is smaller, the rogue may be willing to accept the protection of his party in exchange for a slight increase in failure. But not always, and that's the beauty of it.

For example, the party may sneak into the castle, past the mook guards. However, only the rogue can get past the elite bedroom guards. So the party splits up before, but instead of at the front of the castle, they split at the bedroom. Instead of the rogue having an hour miniadventure through the whole of the castle, he has a 10 minute one. He still gets to shine, but everyone is still included.



All of that said, I don't know if the 4e mechanics will make this happen. The gap may still be too wide. However, the theory is there. If the gap is small enough, you will likely start seeing more of this behavior.

 

[Zurai]

Plate and Tower Shield, a fairly common combination.

Notice that it's a range.

-6 (+2 Dex, -8 Full Plate) is certainly within the range and, again, largely makes it impossible to sneak past anything.

1. Shield ACP doesn't count when you've got the shield stowed (ie, don't have it strapped on ready for combat).

2. Full plate is -6, not -8.

3. Who in their right mind uses a tower shield? +2 AC is NOT worth -2 to hit. And, in actuality, it's only +1 AC since you can take Shield Specialization for heavy shields but not tower shields.

That said, I was just curious where you'd gotten such an absurd ACP as -16 for anything but swimming. Carry on.

 

[Celebrim]

Agreed, needs something more. Alright, let's throw the concealment rules back in. So now you can only hide if you have some cover and concealment. So now your numbers are limited by how much cover and concealment you have. That fixes the problem you mention of the 50 people moving across the yard.

Ok, this has been boiling in the back of my mind for a while now, and I'm generally secretive about both my house rules and my ideas for future house rules, but since 3.5 looks like its going to die, this is what I've been thinking.

The current hide rules are broken. I could probably brainstorm up a dozen or more situations where they produce very unintuitive and/or abusable results.

First of all, you don't need a hide skill to hide well. Kids can hide great, even without lots of ranks in it. What you need is cover or concealment. In an absolutely black cave, everyone hides perfectly well for everyone else.

So the first thing you need to do is come up with some rules for what the base difficulty of spotting someone is depending on the available cover or concealment. If you hide in something that provides 100% cover, your hide skill doesn't have a large effect on the chance of going unseen. On the opposite end up the spectrum, if you hide in a bare room the sneaky guy is almost as likely to be seen as the non-sneaky guy.

So what is hide really? Hide is the ability to go unnoticed, and the ability to go unnoticed is primarily the skill at appearing smaller than you are. AHA! Knowing this tells us what a hide check does. It reduces our effective size.

The difficulty in spotting someone is therefore not linearly opposed to thier hide skill but rather equal to:

base difficulty based on terrain + number of range increments + modifiers for effective size of the hidden object + circumstance modifiers (like being prone).

A hide skill might look something like this:

Hide
DC 10: Your effective size is one size class smaller
DC 15: Your effective size is two size classes smaller
DC 25: Your effective size is three size classes smaller. Fine creatures become invisible.
DC 40: Your effective size is four size classes smaller. Diminutive creatures become invisible.
....

Note that being small doesn't make hiding easier directly (no bonuses to hide), but it does make you harder to spot (as described below).

Now, how do we know the number of range increments. Ideally, we don't use a linear system. When something is twice as far away, it's 1/4 its effective visual profile. So ideally, we'd have some non-linear system for figuring out range increments. But that might be hard to calculate (neat optional rule though) to the point of being impractical. The important thing to note is that in most cases, a range increment is quite large and depends on the assumptions of available concealment. On a completely empty wide stone floor, you really aren't any harder to see 100' way than you are 50' away. On the other hand, if you are in a terrain that provides concealment being farther away is more important.

Now, here's the elegant part. Being small is essentially the same as being farther away. So we don't need separate modifiers for range increments and size. All we need is to cross reference size by terrain to get range are assumed range increments, and use size + terrain to figure out our base available concealment. That is a fine creature might have 75% concealment in short grass, and corresponding base difficulty to spot, whereas a medium creature effectively has none. But, if you can hide really well you can get your effective size down to fine and do those supernatural stealthy things that we want our high level sneaks to do.

There are all sorts of great things about this approach. First, it isn't abusable. High level hide does not trump low levels of spot except when we would want it to, because its not a linear test. You automatically can't hide well in the open at close distance, because no matter how small you make yourself you have no cover or concealment to take advantage of. We don't need special rules or exceptions. In fact, we now have good rules for what 'Hide in Plain Site' actually means - its the ability to manufacture concealment when by the rules otherwise there would be none. This is powerful, but is easy to resolve and not nearly as prone to abuse or misunderstanding as it currently is.

And we solve the problem of the 10' range increment to spot checks.

But even better, we know no longer have to have everyone in the party have high levels of stealth in order to engage in a stealthy mission. All we have to do is give the party good oppurtunities to make use of cover and concealment and they will naturally beat low level spot skills. I mean, the reason that in real life small groups can go sneak around successfully is that high levels of sneakiness isn't necessary to hide. All you really need is someplace to hide.

Now, can people stop assuming that I haven't thought about this to some degree and that giving people more free skills is the only way to solve the problems that they are experiencing? Maybe the suggested system isn't perfect, but its a heck of a lot better than what we have and as best as I can tell what is being suggested in 4e.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Perhaps. But I have a fairly good idea how novels, movies, and games work and feel confident in saying that they work differently and not everything that works in one can be ported to another

Again, you're missing the point.

Conan, both the books and the movie [singular], is basically one of the top dozen things people look at when they come up with "Things I Should Be Able to Do in a Game of D&D."

Having a ruleset that makes it possible for players to do these sorts of things is, therefore, a good thing.

Having a ruleset that makes it impossible for players to do these sorts of things (as D&D currently does, and has for much of its lifespan), is that not, therefore, a bad thing?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

2. Full plate is -6, not -8.

Sorry for the small math error. A -4 modifier, however, doesn't change the situation much.

3. Who in their right mind uses a tower shield?

Full Cover is, occasionally, extremely useful.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

So the first thing you need to do is come up with some rules for what the base difficulty of spotting someone is depending on the available cover or concealment. If you hide in something that provides 100% cover, your hide skill doesn't have a large effect on the chance of going unseen. On the opposite end up the spectrum, if you hide in a bare room the sneaky guy is almost as likely to be seen as the non-sneaky guy.

You mean something like Kerrick's alt Spot rules ?

Stop being so secretive! Gotta share these cool ideas for HRs with the rest of us tweak-a-holics! We didn't add in how the Hide skill works, but I really like your idea

 

[Celebrim]

Again, you're missing the point.

Conan, both the books and the movie [singular], is basically one of the top dozen things people look at when they come up with "Things I Should Be Able to Do in a Game of D&D."

No, I understand you perfectly.

Having a ruleset that makes it possible for players to do these sorts of things is, therefore, a good thing.

Having a ruleset that makes it impossible for players to do these sorts of things (as D&D currently does, and has for much of its lifespan), is that not, therefore, a bad thing?

It's this part that you state so axiomaticly that I disagree with it. Yes, it is usually a good thing to be able to say, "Yes." to a player. But players (and people in general) often don't know what they want or how to obtain it. They often want contridictory things, for example, they want to game to be challenging but they don't want to lose (so they don't want it to be too challenging). When one or more players want contridictory things, you have to juggle thier different desires and come up with some sort of comprimise that is still gameable.

In your particular case of Conan sneaking about the place, you want sneaking to work in a way that sneakiness doesn't work. And, intuitively you think, "Well, everyone should be sneakier. That'll solve the problem. Then we can all be heroes." But it doesn't, because even if you are all sneakier, sneaking doesn't work like that. You played with some numbers, robbed the truly sneaky player of his cool, and you are still largely in the same boat. The better solution is to try to make game rules that make sneaking work more like it does, massage it a little so that situations which feel like you should intuitively be able to sneak you can, and hope you can do so and still make the rules simple and intuitive enough to game. And that's an even better solution for what the player really wants (to vicarously feel like a hero), because more of his player input goes into achieving the success and validation he craves.

Now alternatively, you could come up with rules for making sneakiness not work like it does (as some other people have suggested), but then you get cheese and that is ultimately disatisfying to the player to because it stops feeling real and beats him over the head that this is just a game.

 

[Celebrim]

You mean something like Kerrick's alt Spot rules ?

Stop being so secretive! Gotta share these cool ideas for HRs with the rest of us tweak-a-holics! We didn't add in how the Hide skill works, but I really like your idea

Indeed. Kerrick's spot rules were the missing peice of the puzzle I'd been looking for. He had alot of good ideas, but there were still some spots that weren't quite right. It was too complex. It left too many abusable actions in it. I've been meaning to get back to him about how to fix his system ever since I spotted the change to how hide works, which is one of the reasons I didn't want to blurt out my idea.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

No, I understand you perfectly.

I'm pretty sure you don't.

It's this part that you state so axiomaticly that I disagree with it. Yes, it is usually a good thing to be able to say, "Yes." to a player.

No, it's not. It's the difference between saying "It's possible that you can try this and succeed" (Saga) vs. "You cannot do this at all" (D&D).

In your particular case of Conan sneaking about the place, you want sneaking to work in a way that sneakiness doesn't work. And, intuitively you think, "Well, everyone should be sneakier. That'll solve the problem. Then we can all be heroes." But it doesn't, because even if you are all sneakier, sneaking doesn't work like that. You played with some numbers, robbed the truly sneaky player of his cool, and you are still largely in the same boat.

Actually, you've changed the numbers such that Conan, Valeria, and Subotai will all be [pretty certain about their ability] to sneak past the mook guards, but that only Subotai (for example) would be able to sneak up onto the dais itself and snatch the Princess from under Thulsa Doom's scaly snout.

Or, as was put very eloquently in this thread by Stalker0:

For example, the party may sneak into the castle, past the mook guards. However, only the rogue can get past the elite bedroom guards. So the party splits up before, but instead of at the front of the castle, they split at the bedroom. Instead of the rogue having an hour miniadventure through the whole of the castle, he has a 10 minute one. He still gets to shine, but everyone is still included.

Currently, the only thing everyone in D&D has mechanical support to do and is guaranteed to get better in as they advance in level is combat.

Therefore, combat is always a "safe" bet.

 

[Remathilis]

Currently, the only thing everyone in D&D has mechanical support to do and is guaranteed to get better in as they advance in level is combat.

Therefore, combat is always a "safe" bet.

And thus, we have a situation where were D&D becomes two games: Combat and "notcombat". Since 3.X, there has been a shift (and it was vocally criticized as well) that "every class should be able to do something in combat". Its the reason many 3.X classes got combat-based abilities added to their classes (rage, smite evil, bardic buff songs) so that a character always had something "cool" to do in combat. Fourth Edition is continuing that legacy and expanding it.

However, "notcombat" still lags in the days of NWP. While the rogue was given sneak attack to take his otherwise combat-pathetic backstab and make it worthwhile, nothing was given in return to the fighter in "notcombat" abilities other than 2 skill points and the worst selection of class skills. So the rogue is now useful in combat and out of it, but the fighter remains only useful in combat.

So you end up with situations where the best (and by default) only option becomes combat. No one has ranks in diplomacy? Roll initiative. Fighter's sneak scores too low? Initiative. SAGA, by giving characters a slow, steadily raising skill "rank" (raising like bab, saves, or hp) allows them to try other methods first (try to sneak past the guards, try to bluff the ogre) rather than look at their minuscule non-rank skill modifiers and saying "screw it, roll for initiative"

In short, it brings "notcombat" up to the realm of "combat" and makes it a viable (and even attractive) option.