Stealth In Game vs. RL

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This is an issue that always bugs me. I haven't read the 3rd edition or 3.5 rulebook, but it would seem to me that any character capable of hiding/moving silently should THINK he/she was successful in the attempt until later actions proved otherwise.

What I mean is, if Joe Thief decided to sneak past a group of orcs, Joe wouldn't know whether or not he was un-noticed until he managed to get past the orcs. In the game though, they immediately tell you if your hiding/moving silently is successful (at least for the duration of the round), which just doesn't seem right. Is there anyway for Joe to intuitively know whether or not he is being successful prior to getting past the orcs or having Joe Orc see him and shout a warning? There's know way for Joe to know whether or not he succeeded in his stat check, which is why I'm assuming that upon attempting to hide/move silently any ranger/thief would think he was being successful until something occurred that would indicate to him that his subterfuge had been discovered.

As far as to how this could be implemented in the game, I think it could be done quite easily. Instead of the stealth button becoming greyed out when you fail a stealth check, it should stay active, and the only way you'd know for sure is if someone started attacking you.

 

In fairness, stealth in the game is pretty unbelievable anyway. How can you sneak up on people in broad daylight and then stand in front of them unnoticed? It's just plain daft. Although you're probably right, there are even dafter things about the way stealth works in IE games. I know there's a penalty, but it's not the same as outright impossibility, like some situations. A number of times I've bumped against someone while stealthed, and they've not noticed. NWN handles sneaking much better, IMHO.

 

I find that when addressing RL concerns for stealth...systems followed in games like Commandos and Splinter Cell are a lot more effective.

Of course, it is cumbersome to implement in a DnD game, but still...as far as practicality in an RPG game goes, I think the style of stealth they have right now if fine.

 

yes...... stealth skill is very useful but also very unrelistic.
and other:how can someone talk to you if you are
invisible? that doesn't sound right

 

Aldeth, you discover your stealth has failed because the Orc shouts "RAAARRRRRGH" and runs at you with his two handed axe. Anyone who naively thought they were still hidden in that situation ("he must be after the guy behind me, hee hee!") deserves to get whacked.

 

@HB

Agreed. My point is that the game tells you whether your hiding is successful or not as soon as you hit the stealth button. My point is your thief would always think he was successful until he found he wasn't. If you fail your stat check the Theif wouldn't know the stat check was failed until something like what you described happened.

 

Well, stealth is but one of many departures from RL in IE games. I think "fog of war" is even stranger; I'm in the middle of a battle on one side of a big room, and the guys on the other side don't even see me? And then there's the D&D ruleset; what's up with hit points anyway? So I guess I find it easier to imagine that something else entirely is happening relative to stealth, etc, and that what you see on the screen and in the game mechanics is only an approximate representation. It reminds of when I used to play PnP DnD (long ago), and we started describing hits and misses less as actual injuries, and more as wearing down an opponents defenses to that a final decisive blow could be struck...

 

My idea is that your thief is actually the one who was telling you that he/she has made a successful hide. Joe would say something like: "None can see me now", and the game would only relay to you that he has successfully hidden himself via some tactic. If this tactic works, then Joe would be able to sneak past the orcs. If not, the game would display "Hide Failed", and Joe would be running away from a group of orcs shortly.
A failed hide doesn't mean that Joe has been immediately spotted, however - it means that the orcs have not been completely fooled or have somehow sensed his presence. If the Hide in the Shadows effect disappears completely after the "Failed Hide" is displayed, though, it means Joe had screwed up or had been using the wrong tactics (and was never successful with his hiding in the first place) and had been identified on sight.

BTW, I've also given up thinking that receiving damage to your hitpoints means direct damage to your character. If it came to that, I'd have a Cleric with 1 HP casting Heal without hands, if what they say is true and that 1 HP is terminal - 10 or seconds away from a sure death.

[ May 06, 2005, 08:43: Message edited by: Scythesong Immortal ]

 

Yeah...I have to agree with Scythesong about the hitpoints issue.

After what I figured out from reading all those Drizzt books by Salvatore, hitpoints is something like your endurance in RL. So the more your hitpoints get reduced, the more exhausted and injured your character gets, by way of bleeding or bruises or nick and cuts etc...anything just to get him worn out. Then, when he dies, its the actual killer blow which takes out his throat/heart/other vital organs, and causes him to die.

 

I think I'm failing to make my point here. Yes, Joe does say, "None can see me now". But how does he know this? How does he know that he is completely hidden and how does he know Joe Orc won't hear a small sound, or won't turn around at the wrong time and see a glint of steel. In an actual PnP D&D, wouldn't the thief always think his attempt was successful?

For example, say a party has information of a group of orcs in the next room. Joe Thief wants to sneak into the room to get exact numbers and location of the orcs. Joe would then attempt a hide in shadows/move silently stat check upon entering the room. In PnP D&D, Joe would enter the room, and the dungeon master would do a stat roll to see if he was successful or not. If successful, he wouldn't be detected, if failed he would be seen and/or heard.

However, in SoA/ToB, Joe would click on the stealth button just prior to entering the room, and would therefore "know" whether or not he was going to be successful without ever entering the room. In this scenario, failure means having to wait a few seconds before re-attempting the stat check, so there's no real way for Joe to ever get caught.

 

Yeah, it is made even worse because when BG Joe does eventually fail his hide roll he still has a good ten seconds of invisibility before he can be noticed - during which time he can normally run out of sight and then hide again. Cheese city.

Everytime I have one of my characters hide in shadows in the BG games the first thing that always comes to mind is Miss. H. Quinn trying to sneak around in her bright red outfit muttering "Sneak Sneak Sneak".

 

I see what everyone is saying, and yet, I can live with what the game has. Once again, what we're really dealing with is level of abstraction issues. In games where stealth and detection are central to the gameplay, deciding who can see who and when consumes a very large part of the program's code and resources. Ironicly, the game of "Hide and Seek" is actually really hard to model, as it's very hard to come up with a good, consistant, way to represent someone's situational awareness and attention to detail. Now imagine having to track such things for each Orc in the room, as well as any number of stealth variables on the "hide-ee" (Does their leather armor blend or clash with the wall/floor they're hiding near? how soft are their boots?) and it gets complex fast.

One simple solution that might add a little realism to the abstraction would be to give the "Detect Illusion" thief ability to most monsters at some low percentage, giving them a bit of a chance to see through your stealth.

 

I think I also missed my point. Upon saying "None will see me now", Joe assumes he is hidden. Whether or not he actually is will be known the moment he steps into the room full of orcs.

@JSBB
There are times, though, that upon a failed Hide in the Shadows your character comes out of Hide mode immediately. This could translate to a thief having tripped or coughed or something - or a rather pathetic attempt at hiding (if his happens upon entering enemy sight).

[ May 08, 2005, 07:37: Message edited by: Scythesong Immortal ]

 

@SI - In that case I agree - that was the point I was making - that Joe assumes he is hidden, even though he cannot know this for certain. However, in the game, Joe is always correct in this assumption.

 

Aldeth, I agree that it's unrealistic to know so easily that someone has discovered you. Again, this might involve some kind of a bluff or even a stealth check on the part of the one who spots the rogue. Anyway, it shouldn't be like fog-of-war suddenly falls off and you become visible.

 

Maybe he knows whether or not he's hidden by looking at his hands, and if he can see them, then he knows he's not hidden.

 

There's this old joke about two Red agents running from the Whites in Russia...

- Chapaev, let's hide in the tavern, they won't be able to recognize us there!
- Okay, but since we're here, we should have a drink to mix with the civilians
1 bottle of vodka later...
- Have the whites come already?
- Nah...
- So let's have another one!
Another bottle of vodka later...
- Are the whites coming?
- Uh, maybe... should we hide?
- Chapaev, can you see me?
- Uh, no... Hey, that means we are hidden well!

Therefore, I propose that new potions of invisibility (combining it with drunkenness and a breath attack causing drunkenness) be included in future mods

 

And even stranger:
How do you know which place is which without going into it? What I mean is that in the map there is a path which moves you into another area,and in the map there is a name of exit?
and about "None can see me now":
If that make you noticed, why does bard song dosen't attract enemies?

 

One way to view it: a thief's stealth ability becomes super-human as they rise in levels, just like a fighter's melee ability, etc; I mean, how else would these people be anywhere near as powerful as an archmage? So disappearing in plain sight as per DnD rules is nothing like anything that could happen in RL.

I agree it would be better to have this as a percentage, without the stealthy character knowing exactly how successful they are. But this would make the game very complex: how would you model, say, enemies sensing something is wrong without the thief appearing suddenly in the room? If stealth is too black and white (you see me completely or you don't), so are alot of other abilities (i.e., a berserk character is completely immune to a number of spells, not just, say, less likely to be affected)...

 

Other games have modelled stealth almost exhaustively (i.e. MGS3, Splinter Cell, Tenchu etc.) so I fail to see why BG2 can't incorporate some kind of stealth system