Stealth Part 2: The Rules

The Rules

In this ruleset, stealth is simplifies to the Stealth roll. Generally, the players only have to make one roll for their characters that will last until they are spotted, or until they enter a new area in the lair they are sneaking into. Players can move normally when sneaking, but going slower than their base speed and making themselves harder to find (crouching, crawling, camouflage) can give them up to a +4 bonus to the roll. Doing anything that would jeopardize the stealth (running full speed, stomping, etc.) gives you up to a -4 to Stealth. Anyone in any armor (or no armor) can sneak without penalty if they go slow.

There are ascending modes of espionage. These help to denote what kinds of actions the enemy would take. The GM can control and guide their behavior accordingly. Different actions can lead to different modes of stealth. When it mentions passive Perception, that's a 10 + Perception Skill and other modifiers, while the active Perception is an actual 1d20 roll + Perception Skill and other modifiers.

• Infiltration: This is where a lot of stealth begins. The enemy is unaware of your presence and your Stealth roll is rolled once against the enemies' Passive Perception. The stealth roll is successful until they run into a guard with a higher Perception Skill or they attempt to do some action that could alert them to their presence. You can perform stealth kills without an attack roll, but it does require another Stealth roll. If you are caught and your presence has been relayed to the rest of enemy hideout, you can no longer enter this mode until you leave for an extended amount of time (days at minimum).
• Suspicion: When an enemy has noticed your presence, but is unaware of your position. Suspicion Mode activates whenever you fail a Stealth roll by 4 or less. Perhaps they heard you kick a brick, or they smelled your stench as you passed by. Or maybe you threw a rock to distract them. You can hide, sneak by them, or kill them. You can still perform a stealth kill, but it requires both an attack roll and a Stealth roll so others nearby don't hear you. 
• Discovered: You've been spotted! This happens if you fail your Stealth roll by 5 or more, or otherwise do something to get spotted. The game enters combat time at this point, so roll initiative. The players can engage in fighting, or flee and drop to Pursuit Mode. If word of your presence doesn't make it out during combat and you kill/disable all witnesses, you can drop back down to Infiltration Mode. Otherwise, go straight to the Pursuit.
• Pursuit: You've been discovered and are being chased by the enemy. You and your allies must lose your would-be captors and find a better way to hide or disguise yourself. You must break line of sight for a minute or two before dropping to Search Mode. And using Stealth goes against everyone's active Perception roll. Your pursuers will scour the area quickly, closing off exists, tracking you, setting a perimeter, and otherwise try and stop you from escaping.
• Search: The enemy has lost sight of you, but is actively searching for you. The enemy will be very active and search all of the rooms in many hiding places (under the bed, in a locker, behind curtains). So be careful when hiding against their active Perception roll. The enemy will be searching for you for a while, at least an hour or two. After some time of not finding you, it'll drop to Caution Mode.
• Caution: The enemy and their allies know of your presence and your existence, but have lost your position for a while and are now back on their patrols. Guards are alert and smarter, travelling in pairs to patrol the area tighter. Whenever a player sneaks by a patrol, they must use Stealth against the patrol's active Perception roll. This becomes the new default after you are discovered by the enemies in the hideout. You can stealth kill as if you were in Infiltration Mode.

Stealth Kills

Stealth kills are brutal strikes that may immediately kill a creature. You can only do this in Infiltration, Suspicion, and Caution Mode. When you make one, you do double the damage to the enemy. You can also apply your sneak attack after you multiply the damage. If you are using a called shot system, then use those multipliers instead.

Whenever you make a stealth kill in Infiltration or Caution mode, you must make a Stealth check to make sure you don't get discovered. If you fail by 4 or less, you damage your target but surrounding enemies are now suspicious and will investigate the noise. If you fail by 5 or more, then the stealth kill fails and your target has now discovered you. Prepare for a fight!

In Suspicion Mode, if you miss your attack but pass your Stealth roll, you remain unseen. If you hit the attack and fail the Stealth roll, then you do the damage but surrounding enemies are now suspicious and will investigate the noise. If you fail both rolls, then you miss and are now discovered by your target.

If your stealth kill doesn't do enough damage to kill your target, then you are discovered and combat begins. You may choose to instead incapacitate the target, taking whatever penalties you would depending on your system of choice.

Killing people leaves bodies, which have a chance to be discovered by the enemy's allies. The GM rolls a d100 every twenty minutes to see if someone finds the body. If you simply leave the body out in the open, then there is a cumulative 15% chance that someone discovers it. If you hide it in a good, out of the way spot, then the chance is dropped to 10% or even 5% for a really good spot. Every additional kill adds another 15, 10 or 5% to the roll. Disposing a body in a way where it can never be found is still a 5% chance, since eventually someone will notice that the guard is missing. So be careful on how many people you decide to kill.

Example: Randy the Rogue is sneaking into Rogar the Orc's war camp. He has just killed an orc and has stashed the body in a covered cart. Since this is a good spot that not many will look at, the GM just rolls for a 10% on the d100. After twenty minutes, it becomes 20% chance of finding the body. At this point, Randy kills another orc and hides the body really well under some crates and supplies that won't be used for awhile. This adds 5% to the percentile roll. After twenty minutes, the GM rolls 35%, 30% for the first body and 5% for the second one. If Randy continues sneaking for another twenty minutes, this will increase to 50%, 40% for the first body and 10% for the second. Randy had better be careful!

Stealth and Combat

Stealth in combat is tricky, as everyone is alert to your presence and actively guarding. Hiding behind something while the target watches then attacking from there won't work. You have to move silently from there to a new angle of attack with a Stealth roll. If you hide from an enemy for a turn and then attack from a completely different position, or while they are distracted, you can get advantage against the victim and sneak attack damage, An enemy being attacked by two or more creatures is distracted enough for you to make a Stealth roll against their Perception roll.

Example: Randy the Rogue is in combat with a terrible orc. Randy hides behind a crate as the orc watches. If Randy just stays there and tries to attack, he won't get any sneaking advantage (sneak attack). Randy needs to distract the orc or otherwise make it difficult for the orc to sense him. This could be removing the light in the area, poking the orc's eyes, a smoke bomb, or any good idea that your player can come up with. After that, Randy can roll Stealth against the orc's Perception to move to another hiding place and hide, ready to strike.

Final Thoughts

These are the basic rules I use for stealth in my games. While the modes may seem overly complicated, I find they act as good references for actions that NPCs will take against the PCs when caught. Most of the modes have the same rules, just different NPC behavior. You'll find that they naturally lead into each other. And things don't have to end with these above behaviors. You can and should have the enemy speed up whatever they were doing, or even begin moving to a different lair if it's possible. These rules leave the NPC actions firmly in your control. And from my experience, this escalation/deescalation helps to give the players a bit more actions to take when things go belly up to remain quiet. So far, things have been pretty fun with using this. I even use these for things like Disguise, or tailing someone.

So let me know what you all think about it. Give it a try and see if it works in your game. And if all attempts at stealth fail, just remember...

Stealth

Stealth is weird. Sneaking around has always been an odd point of contention at the tables I've played at. Perhaps it's my experience, but many of the GMs I've played with seem to not enjoy the idea of players sneaking through their entire enemy base and stealth killing the prepared final boss. Now, I do love me the epic final boss fight as much as the next guy. But, it is pretty lame when you and your fellow players go through all the planning, actually execute the stealth procedure, and as you get to the final boss, the GM simply squashes the stealth in a metagamey way. It removes the idea of choice and consequences if all of options have the same outcome.

Once thing about stealth that I don't like is the binary nature of success and failure people seem to have with it. If you (or chances are, your heavy armored fighter) fail your stealth, then that's it. Suddenly, everyone in the area is alerted to your presence and it's time to draw swords. When failure is that binary, there is a tendency to simply skip it and just go in swords blazing. Especially when the players probably have the damage and spells to just bust in and slaughter everyone.

Finally, even if players properly execute the stealth mission, if it's not run the right way, stealth can be super boring with an unsatisfying end to it. Stealth kills are great and all, but admittedly, it can be a bit anticlimactic to slit the level 10 Warlord's throat in one go without the fanfare and hooplah of a final fight. And stealth kills are also a bit hard to wrap one's head around, especially with the game concept of hit points. Should a level 1 fighter be able to one hit kill a level 10 fighter if the latter is completely unaware? Is that a problem, or is that fine?

How I Approach This

So, before I get into the rules, I want to get into the mindset of stealth and espionage. I feel that with sneaking, the journey is more important than the destination. So if you have a precious boss fight you want to throw at your players, just get rid of any attachment to it, because they will die. Really, it's a good idea not to be so attached to your NPCs in the first place, stealth or not. So let them slit the wizard's throat if they succeed and never get caught. And if they fuck up hard, then you have a great climactic battle ahead of you. 

Instead, focus a bit more on the stealth aspect. Have a lot of close calls and snags that the players run into. That makes the sneaking action much more interesting than just dodging guards effortlessly. Have them balance over some bandits eating their meal, or their disguise being put to the test by a crowd of soldiers. The tension and near misses are the most interesting parts. You wouldn't have a dungeon with nothing in the rooms. That'd be boring. Get creative.

Also, we should take a page out of different movies and video games and not have stealth be so binary. If a person fails their sneaking roll by a slim margin, I say have the guard hear something suspicious and walk towards the source of the nose. It opens up some more options that the player can try and attempt to use to diffuse the situation. Does the player kill the guard, or move to a different spot, or stand perfectly still? Makes things a bit more interesting and it helps to extend out the stealth sequence and make it a worthwhile method to the players. I also find that in more lethal and visceral games like LotFP and ACKS, players are more incentived to go quiet for fear of dying.

Speaking of lethal, how do we handle stealth kills in a game with ever increasing HP? For me, I think I'm okay with the players being able to do take downs, but there are things to consider when killing a guard. First is the sound a dead person makes, whether it's the scream or the body hitting the floor. Someone may hear that if the killer doesn't act quietly while he murders someone. Second is what to do with the dead body? If you don't dispose of it, then you run the risk of someone discovering the dead body and alerting their friends. So as a player, you have to decide if killing the guard is worth the trouble.

Of course, if the players get discovered, then the stealth plan may go out the window. Realistically, it doesn't have to. Consider the Metal Gear Solid games. It starts with Infiltration Mode, where you are sneaking around and not getting caught. When you are caught by a guard, you get into Alert Mode. As long as they can see you, they will attack you. Once you stay out of line of sight for a time, they get into Evasive Mode. They still know you are around and are actively search for you in the more obvious spots. After some time, the game will go into Caution Mode. They have lost sight of you and everything is like Infiltration Mode, except now they are much more active and aware. They will act smarter, keep a keen eye out, and travel in pairs or groups. So, when I was making these rules, I decided to use that for my game. I believe that it can be used to great effect to give stealth different layers of failure and success, and it helps the players find an alternate way of sneaking to continue or escape.

I do have a set of rules I've used a couple of times to good effect for sneaking around. It seemed to make things better while still remaining simple. Once I'm able to post them up, I'll get them in. I can probably do it tomorrow, or even tonight. How have you all run stealth situations and what has helped you in running them?

A Weird Idea

Back in May (on Friday the 13th no less), I was finishing up side work and knocking out trash at my job. Doing tedious tasks makes my mind wander and I began contemplating a what if scenario for the development of Dungeons and Dragons.

Somerset House Conference (Wikipedia)

D&D comes from wargaming origins and that shows in some of the design. You'll find the rules for combat to be more comprehensive than other aspects of the game, XP for killing and getting gold, combat uses for skills and feats. This isn't a negative mind you, nor is it me saying 'you can't roleplay in D&D'. Some of my best roleplaying stories have come from D&D 4e, the edition which has been often derided for being non-conducive for RPing. But in every edition of Dungeons and Dragons, you can see the wargaming aspects in its ruleset, passing down like a gene.

So I was thinking... what if D&D descended from a different hobby? Like say, a debate team, or a story telling game.

What if we flipped some of the assumptions and even mechanics on its head?

In general, you have combat scenarios and roleplaying scenarios. A bit of an oversimplification, but bear with me. While combat rules are more complete and exhaustive, roleplaying is generally left up to the players with minimal conflict resolution mechanics (generally a simple Charisma roll). So what if we switch the assumptions around? Have combat with a simple conflict resolution mechanic adjusted for the difficulty of a battle, and make the social aspect of the game more comprehensive.

Right off the bat, the focus of the game would be very different. I feel you would have a more political game where things like diplomacy, intrigue, and investigation take the forefront. Exploration probably wouldn't change. Combat would still be important, but it would certain be different. Much like social stuff is, combat would be a lot of flavor and description with the occasional die roll to resolve conflict. Perhaps a Strength or Dexterity roll, or a Fighting skill roll, all modified by difficulty penalties and bonuses. It'd probably me more kin to combat in Dungeon World.

Social conflict and discourse being more comprehensive would be an interesting aspect, but one that would have to be handled differently than combat is in D&D. It should be flexible in allowing the players to do clever things when trying to roleplay out social situations while still being robust enough for those of us that don't have the natural charisma or mental energy to play a social engineering con man. In addition, and this is my opinion anyways, it should be applicable to the PCs. Just like the PCs take damage and injuries when treading into combat, they too can make social faux pas or fail in diplomatic scenarios. And most importantly, when making rules for debating, bluffing, and diplomacy, it is important to make sure it isn't mind control. With social combat, it is very easy to cross the line and take control away from the player. While I feel the term "player agency" gets thrown around too much, if the rules ultimately force the player to act against their will, then it's just not fun.

Burning Wheel and the Song of Ice and Fire both have cool discourse rules that look interesting and I would love to try them out in an actual game one day. Burning Wheel in particular has an interesting concept where social conflict only happens if both sides agree to it. So there is still a player opt-in before social combat even happens. But, once you are in it, you are committed and have to accept the results (at least for the interim). It's a cool concept and on paper at least, it seems to have the flexibility I'm looking for in a diplomatic ruleset.

I'm also interested in seeing how classes would fit in something like this. In general, the base 4 classes have assumptions that you'll be adventuring in the wilderness, fighting orcs and taking their stuff. It shows in things like extra attacks, extra damage, backstab/sneak attack, weapon and armor proficiencies, AC/THAC0, etc. I wonder how we would format classes that focused on diplomacy, intrigue, and investigation? For class names, I'd like to change them, at least to something more evocative of the courtly nature. Taking the Fighter, Mage, Cleric, and Thief/Expert, I'd probably call them the Warrior, the Magician, the Priest, and the Spy (although Expert is still very fitting). I'd also fit them out with diplomatic abilities that would fit with their archetype. The Warrior, being the knight or samurai equivalent, could have a bonus to seeing through lies, or being stubborn against people that try to extract information. The Priest could trade Turn Undead for bonuses to appealing to emotion, or using their position of holy reverence to extract favors and demands much easier. And so on. It's an interesting idea.

I think the most important thing to do for these types of rules is to calibrate the expectations and desires of your players. Players come into role playing games with certain expectations and non-negotiables out of their D&D game. It's critical to be upfront and let them know about the change to this style of campaign to prevent miscommunication and PC-GM dissonance.

So what would this type of game look like? Would it even work, or more importantly, would it even be fun? I would like to try and build a game like this with OSR materials and see how it'd work.

Survivor Series I: Weather Forecasting

Fun fact, before I decided to be a chef and go to culinary school, I went to college to be a meteorologist. I have always been enamored by the weather and decided I wanted to do that for a living. Sadly, I wasn't the best at it, mostly the math sections. You'd be surprised how much math we had to take. I think only the mathematicians beat us. But enough about that.

I've always loved tornadoes and got to chase them! (Source: Wikipedia)

When I started DMing 3.5 and later Pathfinder, I would incorporate a lot of OSR survival stuff into my games. I always focused a lot more on the Man vs. Nature battles as players would deal with wildlife, natural disasters, disease, and weather. Weather is awesome and a game changer, and most players don't expect to deal with the blistering heat or cold, let alone storms and tornadoes. One of the most memorable moments in a game was when a PC tied himself to a pole and survived a tornado going over them, all while screaming and shouting obscenities. This earned him a place of honor among the tribes of kobolds that saw what he accomplished and he became a hero to them.

Of course, when adding more survival stuff into your game, it helps to know a little bit about the rules as well as how it works in real life, especially in a world very different from our modern world. For today. it's weather forecasting. In Pathfinder, one can forecast the weather using the Survival skill. And I use this in my ACKS game too, with a 16+ roll to do it, but those with Survival gain a +4 to it. However, many of my players have wondered how, without modern equipment, did our ancestors divine the weather?

We have to remember that people didn't use the scientific methods that we use today. A lot of weather forecasting was pattern recognition, based on astronomy, observing animal behavior, and simply looking at patterns in the sky. This would be compiled into almanacs as weather lore. You can see a pretty good list of them on the Wikipedia article about it. You can use these or have them as inspiration to make up your own weather lore for your game. Remember, it's all based on observations, not rigorous testing. If a bunch of crows gather the night before a rainstorm, you can bet that people will assume that a murder of crows brings the rain. And with running a magical fantasy setting, maybe that is actually the case! There are more magic methods of forecasting the weather, Dowsing and haruspicy are some real world examples. The classical definitions of pyromancy and aeromancy are also good to use for divining the weather (among other things).

Forecasting the weather is an important tool if you make weather a decent obstacle. Players dealing with torrential rainstorms and the flash floods that come with them will value a survivalist's prediction in the future. Or, the players trap an enemy army in a terrible thunderstorm to weaken and gain an advantage on them. Anything is possible! The more you use weather, the more of an impact it will have. I generally use the Pathfinder rules for weather, since they are pretty robust, but use or make up whatever you like! For a generator, I like to use the Dodeca Generator here. I find it is a good weather generator that takes into account the previous day's weather as well as the climate.

Knacks! There's Always a Chance!

I know I promised some tables for my Amnesia rules in the last post, but unfortunately, it takes me a bit longer to get some good inspiration for long tables. Instead, here's something else I've been thinking about.

Skill lists are a touchy subject in the OSR community I've found. Many people would rather player skill and ingenuity be used in games, and that skill lists discourage this. While I don't completely believe this, I have seen people excited to try to roll a skill, only to look at the modifier and sigh that it's not high enough. Not really intentional discouragement due to skill lists, but rather skill lists encouraging specialization rather than a jack-of-all-trades style to skills. I like skill lists and have always allowed player ingenuity to take the forefront. I would like to encourage anyone to try skills they may or may not have.

I feel Savage Worlds has figured a way around this with their skill system. Everyone rolls what is called the Wild Dice, a d6 that can give you a chance of success, even if you are terrible at a skill. It allows for you to be completely lucky at something, but still doesn't override skill specialization. Now, the Wild Dice is rolled for almost all rolls, and I am unsure if I want a full on luck system for all rolls, or just something for skills. Also it works better in Savage Worlds because they have the exploding dice concept. I've always liked my games to be a bit more survival and gritty, so I want just enough of a system to give a better chance of success without making the game too easy and making skill specialization worthless.

So I think I have something I like conceptually, but I'd have to playtest it with some people. I call them knacks. These would work well in any D&D game that has a skill list, like 3.5/Pathfinder, 5e, etc. If using this for 3.5/Pathfinder, just a note that I've removed the concept of Trained Only skills. Any skill can be used if you aren't trained. This may seem weird for Knowledge skills, but think of it as the PC hearing a random tip or trivia about that piece of information.

Knack

Adventures have inborn talents to do certain things they might not be trained in. At character creation, pick a category, Physical or Mental. This represents your knack. Physical skills are those tied to Strength and Dexterity, while Mental skills are tied to Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Whenever you roll a skill that falls under your knack, but you have no skill points in (or aren't proficient as is the case with 5e), then you can add your Knack Die. This is a d4 that you roll with the d20 and adds a bonus to your skill roll equal to the result on the d4.

If you ever put a skill point in a skill you have a knack in (3.5) or become proficient in a skill you have a knack in (5e), then you lose the d4.

Edition Differences

3.5/Pathfinder

If the skill is a class skill, then you don't get the +3 knack bonus when you put a skill point in there. No double dipping here.

Optional Rule: At level 4,8,12, and 16, your Knack die steps up by one (d6, d8, d10, d12).

5e

Instead of getting a knack die for all Mental skills, you have to pick four you aren't proficient in. This is because the Mental skills severely outnumber the Physical skills in 5e.

Edit: For 5e, instead of choosing between Physical and Mental Knacks, simply choose four skills you aren't proficient in as your knacks

If you are rolling an advantage or disadvantage, just roll the Knack die once and apply it to the relevant dice roll.

This system does make characters a little more competent at skills, which I don't mind personally. I think this helps to encourage players to try new skills while still rewarding skill specialization. I'd want to play test this some more, but my big worry is that it may encroach too much on the rogue. But if I made this more of a default house rule, I'd give the rogue the ability to have better knacks. I also wonder how useful this will be in higher levels of Pathfinder, with DCs in the 30s. Though at that point, you've got skill points and feats to spare for your character. That's why I made the optional rule above, but I'd love for more play testing opportunities.