How to handle the rogue during encounters?

[Mojake]

So I'm starting a new campaign and building a few encounters right now as plans. I've ran campaigns before but stupidly never really tailored them to my party. Giving it a try now.
The controller wizard in the party just needs weak enemies to mess with, no terrain changes really; the shaman just likes healing. The fighter likes killing big stuff and terrain and hazards are fine for him.
Then there's the rogue. This flashy mofo wants to be a stealthy Cpt Jack Sparrow, with all of the chandelier swinging and table vaulting madness you can imagine. How do I build encounters for him?
What kind of features do I add, and how do I make some of the encounter work from a stealth point of view? Just adding shadowy corners here and there isn't much fun...

[georgie_leech]

Stealth on its own is difficult to work with unless the entire party is stealthy. Aside from that, it sounds like he's got a bit of a contradiction there. Generally, the stealthy archetype and the "Sparrow" archetype (i.e. creative, flashy, and outrageous) don't have much overlap and in fact tend to conflict; it's hard to make improvised sail-gliders subtle, and tense quiet stalking is ruined by witty quips. So really, it comes down to which one he wants the focus on, because it's a lot easier to focus on one and dabble in the other than try to combine the two.

For instance, does he actually want the stealthy part of stealth, where no one knows he was there until it's too late? Or does he want the advantages of being Hidden in combat without having to worry about whether the rest of the party gets noticed?

[Kimera757]

The rules for Stealth clarified: http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/2739081


So I'm starting a new campaign and building a few encounters right now as plans. I've ran campaigns before but stupidly never really tailored them to my party. Giving it a try now.
The controller wizard in the party just needs weak enemies to mess with, no terrain changes really; the shaman just likes healing. The fighter likes killing big stuff and terrain and hazards are fine for him.
Then there's the rogue. This flashy mofo wants to be a stealthy Cpt Jack Sparrow, with all of the chandelier swinging and table vaulting madness you can imagine. How do I build encounters for him?
What kind of features do I add, and how do I make some of the encounter work from a stealth point of view? Just adding shadowy corners here and there isn't much fun...

It's easy to run out of ideas. Crowdsource with your players. Let each of them propose a terrain feature for an encounter.

[Calen]

Purely mechanically put terrain in that grants concealment. Pillars, tall bookcases, walls etc. That will cover the stealth aspect. If you also give thought to height differences in the terrain then the player should be able to figure out some uses for their acrobatics/Capt. Jack Sparrowiness.

For the wizard and fighter it is very much on you to give the types of enemies that they want to fight. For the rogue it is more on them to utilize the terrain as long as it is not all unbroken rooms and featureless plains.

[BritishBill]

I have always liked to play a rogue myself and make sure you give him a setting rich in possibilities for him to use his/her creativity. Give him places to hide and such and when he uses skills like pick pocketing and stuff make sure to reward him with some extra info or loot that makes using his stealth and cunning worth while. The way I look at is the more engaged they are in the game the more you can reward them.

[MeeposFire]

Stealth is harder because being hidden actually has a mechanical bonus to it but one interesting thing you can do with the acrobatics is to allow the player to make up what he is doing with his acrobatic tricks.

For example the party is in a room and the rogue wants to charge an enemy a the bottom of the stairs. Normally the rogue could just charge the enemy but your player wants to make it sound more exciting so instead the player says he wants to leap into the air, hang on the chandelier, and then drops down to do his charge on the enemy. In this case you did not mention that there was a chandelier (because you did not think of it) but if the player wants to use that and the chandelier makes sense (and if it doesn't if you are clever replace the chandelier with something that does make sense such as a pipe or vine) So long as the player does not get some special advantage (or at least an advantage that you don't mind him having) then you can sometimes let them dictate these sort of details.

It takes some collaboration and it may take some getting used to but if your players are mature enough to handle it then it can be really fun.

[unwise]

What I have done is introduce a 1 per PC per encounter "Terrain Power". I describe the environment and the players can describe anything that they want to do and if they make it make sense they can make an attack using their normal abilities. Most single target attacks do MBA damage and have an effect, like knock prone, or restrain.

For instance, the party are fighting on the deck of a ship during a storm.
- One player, the tank, grabs a grapnel hook and hurls it at the pirate captain to try and drag him away from the healer. He rolls a MBA, does only Str damage (its not a very damaging attack) then pulls the guy his Str in squares.
- The rogue is below decks looking for treasure when he finds himself facing 5 enemies in the galley. He cuts open a large sack of hot ground spices and throws it over them. It acts as Blinding Barrage, blinding them in blast 3, but does no damage.
- The Archer wants to get away from the fight and to an elevated position. He uses his Terrain Power to activate a fly 6, doing an Erol Flynn cutting a rope and zipping up to the main mast.
- After finishing off the guy in the crows nest, the Avenger is climbing back down, he notices that he can cut a sail and have it fall onto the deck. He rolls an attack using his normal abilities, he successfully drops a Burst 2 area on the ground, blinding and restraining everybody there.

The powers don't need to be super balanced. The effect of them is much higher if it would logically make sense for it to do more damage, or if the terrain would be useful even outside of these powers.

The big mistake I find DMs making is making people use ability scores that make sense for the terrain features they want to use. This is not fun. In 4e there is just no way that a theif will ever bother to attempt to kick a barrel down a hill at an enemy if you make it a Str attack. Nor will they attempt to pull the rug out from under somebody if the stat is not compatible.

The second big mistake is making effects always happen at the expense of damage. Be generous, unless the effect is really good, let them stab the guy then pull the rug out from under them. If you don't they won't use the terrain.

The third mistake is, as the previous poster talked about, making cool things harder for the PCs than normal things. If the PC could achieve the same result by just walking from A to B without anything flashy, then be generous 90% of the time. 10% of the time, screw them for comedic effect :)