Brainstorming Ideas for a Darkstalker Alternative

[frogglesmash]

It's a well known fact that Darkstalker is a necessary feat tax for any stealthy character worth their salt, and this is clearly bad game design (and if you disagree, just pretend you don't for the sake of this thread).

My question for the playground is this: What would be a good way to grant sneaky characters the ability to evade detection via abilities like blindsight, tremorsense, scent, without
a) Making the aforementioned abilities completely irrelevant
b) Forcing covert characters to either pay arbitrary build taxes, or be useless at their main shtick, and
c) Forcing sneaky beaky types to rely almost entirely on magical items to to do their thing.

Alternatively, y'all can tell me why my parameters are bad, and instead provide a solution that conforms to your own, superior standards.

TL;DR: How would you make a better designed alternative to Darkstalker.

[Telonius]

You could do quite a bit by just combining Hide/Move Silently into Stealth, and Spot/Listen into Perception. Perception would then be the skill used to detect a character using whatever sense applies; and Stealth would be the skill used to avoid it (again, using whatever sense applies). Hide does no good against something with Tremorsense, but Stealth would have a chance (chance, not certainty) to avoid detection. Creatures wouldn't have the "I know where you are unless you have Darkstalker" button they currently have. It would then just be an opposed check, which, at least to me, seems preferable. If you want to be a Stealthy rogue, you can put ranks into it; but it's not something you're forced to do. (Not much sympathy if you're a stealthy character that doesn't want to put ranks into Stealth).

If you want to preserve Darkstalker as something Rogue-specific, make Tremorsense etc. as exceptions to the regular Stealth/Perception skill and add Darkstalker as an additional Rogue ability or class feature. It kind of is already, since it's a feat, but it might be something a high-level Rogue (and not many other characters) ought to have access to.

[liquidformat]

You could do quite a bit by just combining Hide/Move Silently into Stealth, and Spot/Listen into Perception. Perception would then be the skill used to detect a character using whatever sense applies; and Stealth would be the skill used to avoid it (again, using whatever sense applies). Hide does no good against something with Tremorsense, but Stealth would have a chance (chance, not certainty) to avoid detection. Creatures wouldn't have the "I know where you are unless you have Darkstalker" button they currently have. It would then just be an opposed check, which, at least to me, seems preferable. If you want to be a Stealthy rogue, you can put ranks into it; but it's not something you're forced to do. (Not much sympathy if you're a stealthy character that doesn't want to put ranks into Stealth).

If you want to preserve Darkstalker as something Rogue-specific, make Tremorsense etc. as exceptions to the regular Stealth/Perception skill and add Darkstalker as an additional Rogue ability or class feature. It kind of is already, since it's a feat, but it might be something a high-level Rogue (and not many other characters) ought to have access to.

Making darkstalker a rogue specific ability doesn't do much to fix the problem as a whole it just gives rogues a bandaid to the 'your skill you built your character around is useless in front of me' button of tremorsense, blindsight, and to an extent scent are.

I think it is relatively easy to fix these abilities without drastically changing or combining skills though that helps to open up skill points. First instead of blindsight and tremorsense being blanket I can see you abilities changing them to give bonuses to the listen skill, this can be done with a flat bonus of say +20 to listen, or by a scaling bonus. Second, I think it is fair for hide to not just work visually but also against scent, that is something hunters do today. So in this case the scent already has a bonus to survival checks so we can just use that to appose an enemies hide check.

[frogglesmash]

I think it is relatively easy to fix these abilities without drastically changing or combining skills though that helps to open up skill points. First instead of blindsight and tremorsense being blanket I can see you abilities changing them to give bonuses to the listen skill, this can be done with a flat bonus of say +20 to listen, or by a scaling bonus. Second, I think it is fair for hide to not just work visually but also against scent, that is something hunters do today. So in this case the scent already has a bonus to survival checks so we can just use that to appose an enemies hide check.

I do like the idea of blindsight being a bonus to listen checks instead being a guaranteed success, treating them similarly to movement modes could be a good idea i.e. +8 to checks, and you can always take 10. As for scent, maybe opposed survival checks could counter it the same way hide counters spot? It would probably be best to implement the scent thing in PF since it has fewer unique skills

[liquidformat]

Ya I was thinking using survival the same way as spot vs hide. Tracking dogs can often lead you right up to a person who is hiding not just within 20' or whatever that it is currently set at in 3.5. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to leave the +10 bonus to survival and just use it apposed to the hide check to find said hiding person.

I think Tremor sense would be best used with listen, though it is a bit goofy to do. First it should still work inside a silent spell (blind sight shouldn't though I don't recall any RAW rules saying so but I haven't looked either). Second it should have changing bonus depending on environment, you would expect to have different levels of resonance on wood flooring compared to stone, dirt, vegetation, and so forth, also though it might still work in water and air it would probably be with large penalties.

[frogglesmash]

Ya I was thinking using survival the same way as spot vs hide. Tracking dogs can often lead you right up to a person who is hiding not just within 20' or whatever that it is currently set at in 3.5. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to leave the +10 bonus to survival and just use it apposed to the hide check to find said hiding person.

I think Tremor sense would be best used with listen, though it is a bit goofy to do. First it should still work inside a silent spell (blind sight shouldn't though I don't recall any RAW rules saying so but I haven't looked either). Second it should have changing bonus depending on environment, you would expect to have different levels of resonance on wood flooring compared to stone, dirt, vegetation, and so forth, also though it might still work in water and air it would probably be with large penalties.

Listen for tremorsense makes sense considering that most of the things you'd do to move silently would also minimize vibrations. Blind sight/sense is a little odd because it doesn't always rely on sound, the stee; predator from Fiend Folio for example, relies on scent. I think a flat bonus is best to keep things simple, and instead you could account for different surfaces with circumstance bonuses/penalties, as you would for any other hide/move silently check.

[liquidformat]

Listen for tremorsense makes sense considering that most of the things you'd do to move silently would also minimize vibrations. Blind sight/sense is a little odd because it doesn't always rely on sound, the stee; predator from Fiend Folio for example, relies on scent. I think a flat bonus is best to keep things simple, and instead you could account for different surfaces with circumstance bonuses/penalties, as you would for any other hide/move silently check.

Very true, either way it seems like it wouldn't take much effort to make these abilities functional without inherently negating hide/move silently. I would actually go with +10 on blind/tremor sense rather than +8 to put them in line with scent rather than the bonus from movement modes.