Arguments IN FAVOR of keeping hide/move silently and spot/listen/search separate?

[Ozreth]

In the spirit of other recent threads I've made concerning more surface level rules and play (some good discussions that I've gotten a lot from), I return to this age old debate. Now, I know that combining these has become the norm, and I have been doing so in my 3.5 games since PF came out, but returning to the game I was looking over skills and, call it nostalgia, but part of me wanted to have these skills separate again. I went online and could find a few key threads on various sites discussing this (here's one (https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8278.0)), and a few decent arguments in favor of separating them, but they are older discussions.

We could all list the benefits of combining them, but does anybody still keep them separate and what is your reasoning? Curious about both thematic and rule affecting reasons.

[RedMage125]

I'm one of those who combined them. The arguments in that link are compelling as far as the math, but ultimately, I combine them, because I favor game rules as abstractions to the narrative -or fiction- layer. For the same reason that I will narratively describe a hit that reduces HP as a blow to the shield that leaves the defender's arm a little sore, but not an actual wound.

To my way of thinking, the only benefit is for those who prefer better simulationism in their rules. It is more precise to have to track both one's ability to remain unseen and the ability to remain unheard as distinct and separate. And of course, there are players and DMs who value that. I do not. I can go on about what I perceive as the benefits of abandoning simulationism, and the drawbacks of adherence to it...but that's still just my opinion. No one preference, not even mine, is objectively better.

[Darg]

I still use the 3.5 structuring simply because that's what the game is based on. The 3.5 skill structure is based on the fact that you have x number of total skills to choose from, y class skills, and z skill points based on class selection. Compression of skill choices is about mechanical convenience which also has the side effect of increasing power. Spreading out the available skill choices increases the variability between characters while simultaneously decreasing character power.

I'm personally a fan of having mechanically diverse characters. For example, a ranger doesn't necessarily need or desire the function of the search skill as they are more thematically going to want the functions of spot and listen. At the same time, an archer ranger isn't going to need as much move silently as they are going to be attacking from larger distances. A longbow can reach ranges of up to 1000 feet. That's a +100 to the DC of any spot or listen check. Even at a range of 100 ft it's still +10 to the DC. If your plan is to create a character that takes pot shots to stay hidden, maybe you don't actually need to improve your move silently as much because it isn't taking a -20 penalty like the hide check is, nor is move silently actually necessary to be hidden from enemies in combat. For sneaking around, listen checks can alert to your presence but do not necessarily betray your actual location if you've successfully hidden and vice versa. For example, if you're invisible it's very unlikely anyone is going to see you but they can still detect your presence. Having spot and listen as separate checks means characters can fail to locate the invisible creature, but still be able to detect its presence and general direction. With them combined as perception, even your ability to notice their presence is diminished as stealth checks get a +20/40 and a successful perception check will always reveal the square of an invisible creature.

Then there is also the fact that some DMs are just really poor at skill challenges. Personally, skills aren't meant to be challenged in the first place, instead they should be used to open doors that would be closed otherwise. But because a lot of times set ups can involve impassable obstacles because the DM wants characters to have a chance of failure at everything they do, players tend to devote skill points into skills that will better protect them from the DM rather than promote what they want their character to do. Thus minimizing the number of skills can be a benefit in that regard as it gives them extra points to invest in what they actually want. Again, this is only because the DM is using a system meant to not be totally random as a source of making the players fail. It's ultimately a deceptively innocent way to be adversarial to the players. Most of the time, players with 0 ranks can make use of taking 10 or 20 on a lot of checks to succeed at a lot of things that don't involve combat or opposed checks.

[Morphic tide]

Hide/Move Silently and Spot/Listen being separate lets you work with the differences between visual and audio cues, allowing for quite a lot of design space that'd be very clunky to handle with in-line text.

The separation is only a problem because the system merged design space from Nonweapon Proficiencies and Thief Skills under a single bucket apportioned based mostly on the latter, instead of as separate buckets with plentiful fixed-cost boolean permissions.

Class skills make it worse by making you pay more for less, adding up to Fighters being laughably incompetent in most everything but Fighting because the skill list leaves far too little narrative-driven blank space and they get close to nothing to invest in it.

[RedMage125]

Class skills make it worse by making you pay more for less, adding up to Fighters being laughably incompetent in most everything but Fighting because the skill list leaves far too little narrative-driven blank space and they get close to nothing to invest in it.

Agree wholeheartedly. I really like how PF1e handled that. Once a Class Skill, always a class skill. And an extra (+3) one time miscellaneous bonus for having ranks is much easier, more elegant, and player-friendly than the "pay more for less" of the 3.5e default.

[Jay R]

Deaf people (including people just hit with a deafness spell) can spot and search.
Blind people (including people just hit with a blindness spell) can listen.
Blindfolded people can listen, but not spot.
kobolds and orcs hear just as well in the sunlight as in their caves, but cannot see as well.
Humans hear just as well at night as in the daytime, but cannot see as well.
Hearing affects all directions. Spotting is only where your eyes are pointing.
Searching is a very different skill set than just having good eyes.
Hiding requires skills that moving silently does not.
Moving silently requires skills that hiding does not.
Wearing armor or other noisemaking clothes does not affect hiding.
Wearing bright colors does not affect moving silently.
You don't need to move silently around deaf people.
You don't need to hide around blind people.
I can cover noise just by being noisy, but I can't keep you from being spotted just by being visible.

The clever, methodical, focused PC should be the best at searching.
The PC who is always looking around should be best at spotting
The quiet, reserved PC should be best at listening.
The deft, subtle PC should be best at moving silently.
The PC with the best body awareness should be best at hiding.

If the goal is to simulate actual behavior, then combining them makes no sense.
If the goal is to tell a story about different kinds of people, then combining them makes no sense.

[Ozreth]

I still use the 3.5 structuring simply because that's what the game is based on. The 3.5 skill structure is based on the fact that you have x number of total skills to choose from, y class skills, and z skill points based on class selection. Compression of skill choices is about mechanical convenience which also has the side effect of increasing power. Spreading out the available skill choices increases the variability between characters while simultaneously decreasing character power.

I'm personally a fan of having mechanically diverse characters. For example, a ranger doesn't necessarily need or desire the function of the search skill as they are more thematically going to want the functions of spot and listen. At the same time, an archer ranger isn't going to need as much move silently as they are going to be attacking from larger distances. A longbow can reach ranges of up to 1000 feet. That's a +100 to the DC of any spot or listen check. Even at a range of 100 ft it's still +10 to the DC. If your plan is to create a character that takes pot shots to stay hidden, maybe you don't actually need to improve your move silently as much because it isn't taking a -20 penalty like the hide check is, nor is move silently actually necessary to be hidden from enemies in combat. For sneaking around, listen checks can alert to your presence but do not necessarily betray your actual location if you've successfully hidden and vice versa. For example, if you're invisible it's very unlikely anyone is going to see you but they can still detect your presence. Having spot and listen as separate checks means characters can fail to locate the invisible creature, but still be able to detect its presence and general direction. With them combined as perception, even your ability to notice their presence is diminished as stealth checks get a +20/40 and a successful perception check will always reveal the square of an invisible creature.



Deaf people (including people just hit with a deafness spell) can spot and search.
Blind people (including people just hit with a blindness spell) can listen.
Blindfolded people can listen, but not spot.
kobolds and orcs hear just as well in the sunlight as in their caves, but cannot see as well.
Humans hear just as well at night as in the daytime, but cannot see as well.
Hearing affects all directions. Spotting is only where your eyes are pointing.
Searching is a very different skill set than just having good eyes.
Hiding requires skills that moving silently does not.
Moving silently requires skills that hiding does not.
Wearing armor or other noisemaking clothes does not affect hiding.
Wearing bright colors does not affect moving silently.
You don't need to move silently around deaf people.
You don't need to hide around blind people.
I can cover noise just by being noisy, but I can't keep you from being spotted just by being visible.

The clever, methodical, focused PC should be the best at searching.
The PC who is always looking around should be best at spotting
The quiet, reserved PC should be best at listening.
The deft, subtle PC should be best at moving silently.
The PC with the best body awareness should be best at hiding.

If the goal is to simulate actual behavior, then combining them makes no sense.
If the goal is to tell a story about different kinds of people, then combining them makes no sense.

Two of my favorite responses I've seen to this so far.

[pabelfly]

Occasionally I want to use enemies that might have an advantage in one of hiding or moving silently, but not both, as was previously pointed out.

I also like the amount of skill points each class gets per level. I've experimented with increasing the amount of skill points 2 + INT classes get (and this change would theoretically have a similar effect) and I don't like it. I prefer keeping skill point acquisition as the level it is in vanilla, and not to modify it.

[Vahnavoi]

Splitting search and spot was always iffy. But for spot versus listen and hide versus move silently, the argument is fairly clear: these skills govern two different senses that can, and in regular game scenarios do, work independently of one another. As the simplest possible example, consider any dark room. Indeed, an argument can be made for five distinct skills or abilities governing the senses (sight, hearing, scent, touch, taste) and the d20 system does appeal to every sense (see, for example, illusions), so there would be useful game design space in that direction.

The problem is that the skill system as a whole is bad about how many skills there are and how points can be distributed among them. In the core rules, virtually everyone get too few skill points to spend given the range of die rolls and the number of things an adventurer reasonably has to do during their career. Additionally, the partitioning of class and non-class skills is haphazard. The system would benefit from "everyman" skills that any class can spend points in at 1-to-1 rate and increased amount of skill points, possibly only usable in these skills.

[Troacctid]

I agree with this argument:

I think it changes it for the worse. The trouble is that skills need to be balanced against each other, at least to a certain degree. 3.5 isn't great for this, of course, but the consolidation doesn't help. Perception and Stealth are just too cheap for what they do.

What do I mean by this? Well, in Pathfinder everyone takes Perception. Furthermore, the Wis-based characters are a lot better at it than the Rogue is. Skill consolidation makes sense where there is a skill that is too weak, like merging Jump/Climb/Swim into Athletics or folding Use Rope's paltry uses into Climb and Escape Artist. Search, Spot, Listen, Hide, and Move Silently are fine as they are.
I think Spot and Listen are two of the strongest skills in the game when they're separate, and they get even stronger when you consolidate them. They just don't need the buff. Same with Hide and Move Silently, although to a lesser extent. The Athletics merge makes much more sense because Climb, Jump, and Swim are low-value skills that players don't normally take as-is.

[AvatarVecna]

I still use the 3.5 structuring simply because that's what the game is based on. The 3.5 skill structure is based on the fact that you have x number of total skills to choose from, y class skills, and z skill points based on class selection. Compression of skill choices is about mechanical convenience which also has the side effect of increasing power. Spreading out the available skill choices increases the variability between characters while simultaneously decreasing character power.

I will say, I kinda like the power increases that skill consolidation caused in the comparison between 3.5 and PF, particularly since a lot of the condensing tended to benefit martial classes more than casters. Mechanically, it's better for the game health if, say, the monk can actually function as a martial arts ninja if that's what they're building for.

But I also don't disagree with any of the points being raised in this thread. It mildly makes sense that Balance and Tumble got combined into Acrobatics, but then Jump got roped in too - making it unrelated to Strength score, which feels far more important than Dexterity, story-wise. It's weird that Invisibility gives a +40 to stealth without specifying it doesn't make you harder to hear. It's kinda dumb that being Deafened affects your ability to spot a hidden target.

I think a generally better solution would be to just offer more skill points, particularly to noncasters. A couple extra for fighter/ranger/rogue, a bunch extra for monk cuz it sucks...barbarian is probably fine?

I particularly like one of the ways PF handled this with Background Skills. There's a lot of skills that are really great to help flesh out a character, but every character I've ever made has been so starved for skill ranks cuz there's skills that are just really likely to help keep my character from getting killed. It's nice having an option on the table where "you can't spend these on adventuring skills, these have to be NPC things that fit the character". I don't have to worry about them getting overshadowed by a more important skill cuz I can't pick one of the big boy skills with them at all. I can just slap Appraise/Profession (Shopkeeper), or Craft (Cartography)/Knowledge (Geography), and it's a little bit more of a character and a little bit less of just a build.

EDIT: I guess if I'm wording this as an argument in favor of keeping skills separate, it would be that there's a better solution to the mechanical problem that skill consolidation is trying to solve. There is a power imbalance baked into the game, and some people being able to cover more skills helps mitigate that power imbalance. Skill consolidation affects everybody and is merely useful for those who happen to already have more skill points, but as mentioned it's easy for a Wis caster to have a higher bonus in the best skill in the game than the classes intended to specialize in such things. Leaving skills unconsolidated and just handing out extra skill points allows for finer control over who's getting buffed and who's not, and to what degree. All without causing the weird story issues that arise from skill consolidation.

[Darg]

I think a generally better solution would be to just offer more skill points, particularly to noncasters. A couple extra for fighter/ranger/rogue, a bunch extra for monk cuz it sucks...barbarian is probably fine?

I have to agree that the way 3e handles skill point distribution between classes is a little iffy. Classes are already limited by their class skills so it makes little sense to limit skill points as well. A homebrew I use is that noncasters get 8 skill points per level, partial casters get 6 skill points per level, skilled casters get 4 skill points per level (druid for example), and normal casters only get 2 per level. A fighter is never going to be great at nonclass skills, but they now have some points to be decent at the kinds of things they want to do. Want to be a smooth talker? You can, just not as good as the bard or rogue. Like to make use of ambushes? You now have enough skill points to grab move silently in addition to hide. I think it works well.

Though I have to disagree monk sucks, but that has more to do with party composition and how the DM runs the game. But that's a different discussion that is wholly subjective.

[Tzardok]

Skill consolidation affects everybody and is merely useful for those who happen to already have more skill points, but as mentioned it's easy for a Wis caster to have a higher bonus in the best skill in the game than the classes intended to specialize in such things. Leaving skills unconsolidated and just handing out extra skill points allows for finer control over who's getting buffed and who's not, and to what degree. All without causing the weird story issues that arise from skill consolidation.

I agree. I haven't played in some time, but I plan to, when I DM the next time, to simply double the base skill points of all classes and see how it goes.

[Ozreth]

Though I have to disagree monk sucks, but that has more to do with party composition and how the DM runs the game. But that's a different discussion that is wholly subjective.

This is a rare take! Would be happy to hear your thoughts on this via DM. I don't typically mind my threads going off the rails (any activity on forums these days is a positive in my opinion), but we are still early in this one :smallbiggrin:

[Morphic tide]

Agree wholeheartedly. I really like how PF1e handled that. Once a Class Skill, always a class skill. And an extra (+3) one time miscellaneous bonus for having ranks is much easier, more elegant, and player-friendly than the "pay more for less" of the 3.5e default.
I'd just return the separation of resource and binary permissions. Everyone using the same formula for the baseline competency pool, separate pool for class fantasy stuff that may overlap, and some of this as flat X points for Y option without a d20+mod roll turning a DC 10 into a mandatory +9 to just work without needing the writers to double-check they pinned Take 10 and Take 20 openings appropriately to everything. Categoric skills like the old NWP groups instead of class-by-class highlights the party roles while making new skills easily assigned to old classes, as well, and the default "off-class" access being a hard "you can't take that skill" means niche-protection like Track and Trapfinding can be axed.

[Rynjin]

Deaf people (including people just hit with a deafness spell) can spot and search.
Blind people (including people just hit with a blindness spell) can listen.
Blindfolded people can listen, but not spot.
kobolds and orcs hear just as well in the sunlight as in their caves, but cannot see as well.
Humans hear just as well at night as in the daytime, but cannot see as well.
Hearing affects all directions. Spotting is only where your eyes are pointing.

This chunk doesn't make much sense. Whether you have Perception or 3 other skills, penalties to one sense only affect that sense for the most part. If you're blind, you auto-fail sight-based Perception checks for example. Kobolds and Orcs likewise take a penalty to...sight-based Perception checks from Light Sensitivity.

Being in the dark penalizes...sight-based Perception checks.

Even the "hearing is all-around, vision is pinpoint" one is not the case as neither 3.5 or Pathfinder have facing rules.

These are all things that are the same across both systems.


Searching is a very different skill set than just having good eyes.
Hiding requires skills that moving silently does not.
Moving silently requires skills that hiding does not.
Wearing armor or other noisemaking clothes does not affect hiding.
Wearing bright colors does not affect moving silently.
You don't need to move silently around deaf people.
You don't need to hide around blind people.
I can cover noise just by being noisy, but I can't keep you from being spotted just by being visible.

The clever, methodical, focused PC should be the best at searching.
The PC who is always looking around should be best at spotting
The quiet, reserved PC should be best at listening.
The deft, subtle PC should be best at moving silently.
The PC with the best body awareness should be best at hiding.

If the goal is to simulate actual behavior, then combining them makes no sense.
If the goal is to tell a story about different kinds of people, then combining them makes no sense.

These make sense for sure, and are pretty much the only valid arguments for keeping the skills separate. But the actual ability to tell extra stories with this system is so insignificant that it's not worth the hassle of dealing with the rest of 3.5's awful skill system.

[Ozreth]

These make sense for sure, and are pretty much the only valid arguments for keeping the skills separate. But the actual ability to tell extra stories with this system is so insignificant that it's not worth the hassle of dealing with the rest of 3.5's awful skill system.

For my group at least, the flavor of the rules, gamey aspects (dice rolling, sub-systems, resource management etc) are still our main attraction and we like varying degrees of simulations. We also don't think of the skill system as awful, it works for what we want to do around the table. None of us dove too deeply into the math, design and optimization of the system over all these years. And as our system of choice ages there is an increasing charm to it as a nostalgia piece, and we interact with it that way as well, which initially sparked my interest in leaving the skills as they are like we did for most of our time playing this edition.

But I get your point, and it is one of the reasons I combined them for some time there. A lot of this is definitely very subjective.

[Fizban]

Because hiding is not the same as moving silently, nor is spotting the same as listening.

It's really that simple. This is a simulationist game with tons of little rules which exist for greater levels of detail, mashing things that are not the same together for convenience goes against the point. Furthermore, this isn't something like the difference between blacksmithing, weaponsmithing, or armorsmithing, all of which are primarily shaping of metal. I can personally move pretty dang silently without even trying, all you have to do is not stomp and flail around- but I have zero experience hiding, which is a completely different skill of guaging cover and lines of sight of predicting enemy movement. And it should not require stating that identifying things at a distance with your eyes is completely and utterly different than picking up and identifying weaker sounds with your ears.

The only reason to do this is convenience. And it's not even convenience of mechanics, because these are incredibly simple numbers you just write on your sheet. Tracking "circumstance" modifiers that deal with the fact that the combined skills are actually multiple different things is far more complicated than just keeping them separate.

No. The reason people want them combined, the reason they'll fight so hard to defend it, is simply because they (consciously or instinctively) know this is, and want, power.*

The Rogue has a ton of skill points, so that they have the opportunity (despite lacking any requirement) to have a whole bunch of skills, including the full set of hide/move/spot/listen. But do the people who mash these skills together then reduce the skill points of those classes to compensate? No, they leave them the same. Condensing these skills is not a convenience, it's a blatant power increase. Even moreso when you get to magic items and oh hey look now it costs half as much to boost what used to be a pair than it used to.

Cramming twice or more use (as the skills synergize) into single skill points makes "necessary" skills even more necessary, as they're so cheap that anyone that doesn't have them becomes underpowered by comparison. But it's not supposed to be cheap and easy to become a master ninja or outstrip Legolas's so-called elf eyes, let alone both at the same time. Contrary to what many video games would have you believe, it is not in fact simple or easy to sneak around in broad daylight, or even "shadows". Normal people, or say previously scholarly folks (the 'ol ascended scientist trope), do not suddenly get the ability to waltz right through people's lines of sight and do insta-kill stealth takedowns on top of all of their other skills. By reducing the cost of the pairs to a single, you intentionally make it far easier for classes that are not supposed to have skill power, to just have the skills with the greatest direct mechanical power (of course this is mitigated by 3.x's half-ranks for cross class skills, but guess what else PF does and popularizes?). Stealth isn't a cool rogue thing when the game is designed so no skills are actually required and there's a minimum of 2+int skills on every class and usually one skill they "need" at best, and then you go and turn four skills into two, so everyone can be full stealth, or even both full stealth and full spot and whatever they're actually supposed to be.

Hide and Move Silently checks make it so that it takes two rolls every round (of movement) to avoid suspicion, which goes for both monsters and PCs. This pair of repeated opposed rolls means than only people with vastly greater skill can do so reliably, which is a good thing, because successful stealth operations should be rare on both sides. Reducing this to a single roll makes the endeavor more swingy instead of curving toward the average- and when combined with other "conveniences" like removing the opposed part of the roll by making one side use a flat DC, or only rolling once for who knows how complicated of an insertion maneuver scenario, makes sneaking far easier.

Skill points are supposed to be granular. Being able to have points in one but not in the other is an incredibly base level form of roleplaying via the mechanics (it's called a roleplaying game), which squishing things into uber "skills" completely removes. Sure it would be easier if we put combined str and con into "body", but would that actually make the game better when it was designed for them to be separate? What if I want tough guy who isn't hercules? Why not just give all the casters all the spells? This may be a smaller thing, but it's the same problem.

What about basic description and scenario design? With the skills as intended, you know whether someone saw something, or heard something, which immediately informs what sort of reaction they will have, the mechanics tell the story. You can have areas that are dark but noisy, or quiet and well lit, where people that have one skill are suddenly more valuable, or where different types of distraction action will matter. Smash them all together and you have, again, the very videogamey "this area allows stealth, which you succeed at because you're the protagonist", rather than a game that reacts with verisimilitude by default. Add this to how it makes things cheaper and easier, and the game can very quickly go from a team of specialists that have different roles where only one might have the ability to reliably sneak around, to everyone is a ninja that always has the surprise round.


You've asked specifically for reasons to not combine the skills, because you're working from the view that it's common and accepted. But I've yet to see anyone put forth a good reason to combine them. The reason not to combine them is because they and the game were designed for them being separate and nothing is gained by combining them except char-op power, while tons of things are lost. I don't need to justify my position, it's PF et-al that have failed to do so.



Now Search I'll give you is a bit weird, but it's very clear what it's actually supposed to be, which is searching for traps, and from there extends into searching for hidden spaces, which poor designers then blow up into a whole extra thing by hiding treasure behind extra search checks. And yes, Spellcraft is (and to a lesser extent Knowledge skills are) ridiculously multipurpose, standing as both the example people will use to justify skill squishing, and also an obviously broken mechanic that should be fixed rather than breaking everything else in order to match it.

*Yes I'm being aggressive here, but people who aren't actually fighting over it are pretty clearly not being bad actors. The choice of maintaining granular verisimilitude vs a more narrative approach is perfectly valid (though I would argue as un-narrative as DnD is it's rather counter productive, at least at anything like this strata of detail), but from an argumentative perspective I really don't see much else. It seems pretty obvious to me that just about every heels-dug-in argument about why X rule that increases power is totally fair and balanced is actually rooted in that person wanting that power. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't be fighting for it.

I will narratively describe a hit that reduces HP as a blow to the shield that leaves the defender's arm a little sore, but not an actual wound.
Which is both correct and incorrect with regards to the rules- a ton, probably even the vast majority of people, describe hits in combat as far more significant than they should be. But the injury poison rules require that every hit must do enough tissue damage that it could have delivered a poison. Still, it's very easy to figure out how to describe hits if you take a moment to do so: every hit draws blood, but no hit could ever be described as potentially lethal or even crippling until the target drops to -1 or below- at which point the hit must have caused continued internal or external bleeding or some sort of shock which results in death in under a minute.


I think a generally better solution would be to just offer more skill points, particularly to noncasters. A couple extra for fighter/ranger/rogue, a bunch extra for monk cuz it sucks...barbarian is probably fine?
Indeed. If the complaint is not enough skill points, then you can just change the skill points. On the individual classes that need them, rather than completely upending entire skills themselves. The only reason I can think of for this not being obvious, is that upending entire skills is somehow perceived as "fair" rather than a direct class buff (as long as you don't follow the ramifications).


Then there is also the fact that some DMs are just really poor at skill challenges.
1000% this as well. I wouldn't claim to be an expert in deploying them, and indeed I think it's quite clear the game was never actually designed to do so other than the occasional TPK room trap, but this is endlessly frustrating watching any sort of DnD content, even moreso with 5e where they don't even have skill DCs anymore, but many people run 3.x the same anyway.

There are standard DCs and ways to calculate DCs for things. Characters can be good enough to do X without reliably doing Y, and in specific fields. You can look at a problem and have a rough idea of whether or not you can do it. If you actually run the skill system as presented.

But most people seem to prefer focusing entirely on their one preferred thing and dismiss everything else as needing to be simplified- combat is the game's central focus, but if you're going to include non-combat things, they should be more interesting than proficient/pass-fail level checks, or even worse proficient/random chance anyway checks. And of course, some people focus so much on "magic" that they quickly decide the tactical intricacy of the combat system should also be simplified away (hello "pounce" on everything!).

[StreamOfTheSky]

Hide/Move Silently and Spot/Listen being separate lets you work with the differences between visual and audio cues, allowing for quite a lot of design space that'd be very clunky to handle with in-line text.

This. I like the distinction between visual/audio senses and detection. Also, Spot and Listen are two of the most useful skills in the game already and Search is very handy as well, so merging them together just means EVERYONE is maxing ranks in "Perception" and now actually using stealth becomes harder b/c you made the opposing skill the God Skill. And it's not just conjecture, I saw it firsthand in a dozen different PF groups. Everyone's maxing Perception.
And where did Search getting mixed in even come from? Doesn't even use the same ability score nor is it reactive/passive.

I do like the idea of combining Search w/ another weaker skill, though. Sleight of Hand always seemed the obvious one to me, and dex-based searching isn't far-fetched (tactile trapsmith feat, for example). Or combine it w/ Decipher Script (finally people will take ranks in it, lol) and combine Sleight of Hand, Open Locks, and Use Rope together (because why not throw that useless skill in?)

That's in general a huge problem I always had w/ PF. I'm not opposed to combining skills, but the ones they did combine were utterly horrible choices.


Class skills make it worse by making you pay more for less, adding up to Fighters being laughably incompetent in most everything but Fighting because the skill list leaves far too little narrative-driven blank space and they get close to nothing to invest in it.

The fix to that is giving Fighters more class skills and maybe skill points (I give them 4+Int). Not destroying the entire skill system like PF did.

[Ozreth]

The reason people want them combined, the reason they'll fight so hard to defend it, is simply because they (consciously or instinctively) know this is, and want, power.*


I can pretty much get behind your entire post. You make an especially good point about making out of combat systems more interesting. Something as simple as having to move silently successfully as well as hide and making the extra roll does help here. I don’t mind extra rolling or calculations etc.

But I wanted to point out the quoted part and say that I think another reason, and perhaps a more common reason is the last 10 years of very heavy focus on words like “simplification”, “streamline” and “rules light” that came out of the popularity of the OSR (with the irony being that AD&D, at least 1e, is none of those things, but that’s another convo). I liked the early days of the OSR and what they were doing, but it was let loose at some point (mostly by 5th edition being so influenced by it at the time) and a lot of newer people getting into the game are convinced that extra rules and crunch get in the way of a story and gameplay. So you look at PF and 5e and see that they condensed the skill lists and it makes you want to do the same. I know I got caught up in this as well.

[Quertus]

It's weird that Invisibility gives a +40 to stealth without specifying it doesn't make you harder to hear. It's kinda dumb that being Deafened affects your ability to spot a hidden target.

This is pretty much what I came to say (although I also really appreciate the lengthy list from Jay R). A huge stomping mech that turns invisible? If Perception and Stealth skills are separated, then people will be properly trained to understand what that means (and what it doesn't), and the system will likewise handle the scenario well enough. OTOH, if they're lumped into 1 skill, and Invisibility reads, "+40 to Stealth", then it's just dumb, and I'll prefer to use the system rulebooks to start fires than to play games.

Now, there's some in between, where games where the Stealth system acknowledges concepts like "awareness of existence", "aware of location", and "able to be targeted", and different abilities give different modifiers to different uses of Perception but, at that point, to do it right, you've got something more complex than just sticking with Spot and Listen (and scent and taste and touch and... and need I mention just how much a giant mech moving around would mess with air currents, or how they might leave footprints, or...?).

All in all, as I always say, People are Idiots. And they really don't need systems helping them to be even dumber. So, unless you want to build an even more complex system, which carefully analyzes all the ways a target can be perceived, and sets the Perception DCs for awareness / identification / location / targeting / etc accordingly, I encourage game designers to keep the skills separate.

[RedMage125]

Because hiding is not the same as moving silently, nor is spotting the same as listening.

It's really that simple. This is a simulationist game with tons of little rules which exist for greater levels of detail, mashing things that are not the same together for convenience goes against the point.
This is right in line with what I said.

I reject the idea that "more simulationist" equals "better". Especially when so many other rules (Armor Class, Hit Points, and so on) are abstractions.


Which is both correct and incorrect with regards to the rules- a ton, probably even the vast majority of people, describe hits in combat as far more significant than they should be. But the injury poison rules require that every hit must do enough tissue damage that it could have delivered a poison. Still, it's very easy to figure out how to describe hits if you take a moment to do so: every hit draws blood, but no hit could ever be described as potentially lethal or even crippling until the target drops to -1 or below- at which point the hit must have caused continued internal or external bleeding or some sort of shock which results in death in under a minute.

I actually agree that the narration of hits depends on a number of factors, and damage type is one of them, to include poison. Lycanthrope bites are another.

Sometimes the narrative DOES have to include some form of (probably minor) skin contact, in order for damage and/or a saving throw to make sense.

[Morphic tide]

The fix to that is giving Fighters more class skills and maybe skill points (I give them 4+Int). Not destroying the entire skill system like PF did.
"Has basic job skills to earn pocket-change in downtime" and "gets an extra one to two rounds of awareness on the rampaging troll" are far too different in value and context to be a sensible opportunity cost. And burning half the points you invest in a cross-class skill if you don't dedicate a level to it that cap at an ever-worsening half the ranks makes using them at all so utterly foolish in the face of the litany of DC 10-20 adventuring-important "trivial" checks you are at times outright risking your life not covering as soon as possible as to be embarrassing incompetence.

[Vahnavoi]

I reject the idea that "more simulationist" equals "better". Especially when so many other rules (Armor Class, Hit Points, and so on) are abstractions.

That's a bad play. To paraphrase something Gry Gygax said of 1st Edition AD&D: "Between reality simulation and a fun past time, [the game] is meant to be firmly in the latter camp. It cannot be said to properly simulate anything beyond itself. This doesn't mean realism isn't attempted where it would improve the game, however."

Sensory perception, protection from injury and physical injury are all separate topics. Hence, they can (and do) benefit from different level of detail. Trying to argue "but some mechanics are already abstract!" equivocates different mechanics and different levels of abstraction without examining why any of those mechanics exist at given level of abstraction.

Like, let's look at your comparison points. Hit points are abstract by necessity because accurately detailing effects of D&D's hundreds of attack modes on different targets would be impossible. Yet, when it comes to human opponents, the system acknowledges there is a difference between severe damage that takes a long time to recover from, and mere exhaustion and bruising that can be recovered quickly - hence split between lethal and non-lethal hitpoint damage. Additionally, the system acknowledges some long term injuries would directly impact a character's abilities, so in addition to hitpoint damage, there exists ability damage - and , as with lethal and non-lethal hitpoint damage, several flavors of ability damage based on the cause. All these damage tracks are abstract, but put together they create a much more complex system of injury, with more design space for various attack modes and their defenses, than is apparent on the surface.

Next, armor class. Yes, the system adds all kinds of factors to a single number to model a character's defensive ability. Yet, even then, it tracks these factors by source and acknowledges common sense reasons why some of them might not apply. Hence, constructions such as flat-footed AC and touch AC; the former eliminates some AC factors based on inability of the character to intelligently defend themselves, the latter eliminates some AC factors based on when merely a touch would be dangerous and armor offers no protection.

Now we get back to sensory perception. The common sense distinction between sight and hearing, is similar to common sense distinction between lethal and non-lethal damage, and common sense distinction between normal, flat-footed and touch AC. So even in a system where sensory perception is just a single skill or ability, it would still make sense to have different modifiers for situations using different senses, and the same goes for opposing stealth skills.

So, for example, following the same level of abstraction as hitpoints or armor class, even a game with a single perception skill would still reasonably have more than one value derived from it, such as Perception (Sight) and Perception (Hearing), with special character traits adding circumstantial bonuses and additional modes of detection. Failure to do this leads to losing detail in a way that's directly relevant in a common sense manner to everyday character activities.

Nevermind that hitpoints and armor class in D&D frequently face criticism for being too abstract, and this has been consistent for nearly 50 years by now. These constructs have two things going for them, simplicity and consequent ease of use, but there's a reason why alternate models, even variants of D&D itself (!) frequently expand these models. Splitting hitpoints into two different resources (see: wounds and vitality) and armor class into two or more (see: armor as damage reduction) are, arguably more common solutions in the wider field of gaming than D&D's classic model.

[RedMage125]

That's a bad play. To paraphrase something Gry Gygax said of 1st Edition AD&D: "Between reality simulation and a fun past time, [the game] is meant to be firmly in the latter camp. It cannot be said to properly simulate anything beyond itself. This doesn't mean realism isn't attempted where it would improve the game, however."

*a bunch of stuff defending simulationism*

I mentioned this in the current thread on House Rules, but I disagree that simulationism improves the game in this regard. And it stemmed from my original decision to merge Hide and Move Silently. I've seen way too many instances of a great Hide check followed by a middling Move Silently one.

Again, I absolutely agree that separate skills are more accurate simulationism. 100%. I disagree that it adds to the fun.

Once I merged the Stealth skills, I felt obliged to merge Spot and Listen, to not give defenders 2 chances to a sneaky character's 1. Unlike Pathfinder, however, my house rule kept Search as a distinct, INT-based skill (as it represents actively looking, vice noticing something).

This is absolutely a matter of opinion, and you're not going to change mine. I came here and gave my input, but I have been very clear that I am expressing my preferences. You have different ones, and that's fine. But before you spend any more time expounding on why separate skills are more accurate simulation, you should know that I agree. I just disagree on the value of that towards the game.

There's a lot of examples of this. But this is the one I chose to actually change when I run 3.5e (the rest I allow to run RAW, because I want my players to mostly be able to expect the game will work like the rules say they will). Namely because my experience showed me that this one actually had a negative impact on player fun.

[Darg]

"Has basic job skills to earn pocket-change in downtime" and "gets an extra one to two rounds of awareness on the rampaging troll" are far too different in value and context to be a sensible opportunity cost. And burning half the points you invest in a cross-class skill if you don't dedicate a level to it that cap at an ever-worsening half the ranks makes using them at all so utterly foolish in the face of the litany of DC 10-20 adventuring-important "trivial" checks you are at times outright risking your life not covering as soon as possible as to be embarrassing incompetence.

Oh? And what would those life risking checks be? Most of your basic checks are easily passed on a take 10 with a +0 modifier. And many others can be tried again with no consequence for taking 20 like open lock.

[Rynjin]

Now we get back to sensory perception. The common sense distinction between sight and hearing, is similar to common sense distinction between lethal and non-lethal damage, and common sense distinction between normal, flat-footed and touch AC. So even in a system where sensory perception is just a single skill or ability, it would still make sense to have different modifiers for situations using different senses, and the same goes for opposing stealth skills.

So, for example, following the same level of abstraction as hitpoints or armor class, even a game with a single perception skill would still reasonably have more than one value derived from it, such as Perception (Sight) and Perception (Hearing), with special character traits adding circumstantial bonuses and additional modes of detection. Failure to do this leads to losing detail in a way that's directly relevant in a common sense manner to everyday character activities.

Good thing Perception has always done this then.

It feels like a lot of people complaining about this don't actually know how the combined skill works.

[lesser_minion]

The game's maths is based on you needing to roll twice to avoid detection. If you're rolling both hide and move silently without any circumstance bonuses or penalties, that means you're active in a small, well-lit room with someone who's completely awake and alert. That's pretty clearly a terrible situation to put yourself in if you want to remain unnoticed.

[Vahnavoi]

Again, I absolutely agree that separate skills are more accurate simulationism. 100%. I disagree that it adds to the fun.

Great! That means you entirely missed the point. The point was that you cannot use abstraction levels of unrelated mechanics to argue whether more or less simulation is better, without analyzing why they are that way. Your actual argument for one perception skill has nothing at all to do with accuracy of simulation or abstraction levels, it's just that you want stealthy characters to have less chance of being found. Sure, you can call that fun. But so can I call the additional design space created by more granular skills, fun. Or, to make the trade-off even clearer, other characters having more chances to find stealthy ones is also fun. The trade-off is between different kinds of fun, where having slightly more detail is beneficial to one side and not the other.

---


Good thing Perception has always done this then.

It feels like a lot of people complaining about this don't actually know how the combined skill works.

Oh, I know games with single Perception skill (or ability) commonly do it. I just explained why they do it. It just so happens the same reasoning can be used for separate sense skills as well. The overarching point is about the level of abstraction, which is about the same for both solutions.

[Chronos]

As soon as you ever have any situation where vision and hearing are treated separately, the system breaks if it's not designed from the bottom up to have them separate. And in a game as open-ended as D&D, those situations will come up. I don't have any experience with Pathfinder, but 5th edition notoriously has some cases where, if the room suddenly goes dark, you can perceive enemies better, because you're now using perception checks based on hearing, instead of on sight. And even when simulationism isn't the primary point, a simulation break that extreme is jarring.

[Rynjin]

My bad then. That was just like the third time I'd seen something mentioned about Perception not modeling differences in "sense strength".

[RedMage125]

Great! That means you entirely missed the point. The point was that you cannot use abstraction levels of unrelated mechanics to argue whether more or less simulation is better, without analyzing why they are that way. Your actual argument for one perception skill has nothing at all to do with accuracy of simulation or abstraction levels, it's just that you want stealthy characters to have less chance of being found. Sure, you can call that fun. But so can I call the additional design space created by more granular skills, fun. Or, to make the trade-off even clearer, other characters having more chances to find stealthy ones is also fun. The trade-off is between different kinds of fun, where having slightly more detail is beneficial to one side and not the other.


It takes a great deal of unfettered arrogance and borderline narcissism to believe that one's opinion is so "universally true" that anyone who disagrees must simply "not understand what your point was".

I never "missed your point". I disagree with your conclusion. I made my decision based on my observations and my values for how I run a game. Which was primarily centered around Hide/Move Silently (Stealth); Spot/Listen (Perception) simply followed that. I made it very clear that I am expressing my opinion of why I feel this is better for me. I was also quite clear that you're not going to change my opinion, least of all by over-explanining your perceived benefits of increased verisimilitude. I reject the value of slavish adherence to simulationism towards playing the game. And I respect that others do value it.

For you to think that anyone having a different opinion than you "could only stem from failing to understand your point" is incredibly rude, and I suggest you reconsider how you come across.

Good day.

[Vahnavoi]

@Rynjin: the observation that games with a single perception skill or ability still regularly make a distinction between senses is still an important one: it shows designers of those games asked themselves "what do we miss for having just one skill/ability cover these many separate things?" and "how else can we add those things?"

From a mathematical perspective, it's possible to make a game with a single perception skill that is equivalent to a game with several - a character has the same odds for the same senses to spot the same objects. They may roll different dice against different target numbers picked from different tables, but the time for the process is also the same. If you can identify this to be the case, then the systems under comparison are just as good. Merits and demerits only exist in comparison to systems that do noticeably more or noticeably less.

---

@Redmage125:

No, it doesn't require any kind of arrocance or narcissism or belief in being "universally true" to notice when another person's reply misses the core idea and goes off a tangent.

Again: the part of your argument that I picked apart is trying to use abstraction level of unrelated mechanics to justify your position. I'm arguing against using a specific rationalization, not for "slavish adherence to simulationism" or whatever hyperbole you imagine this to be about. If you think stealthy characters having better odds at success is more fun, just say that, and don't bring up other mechanics that aren't directly related.

[RedMage125]

@Redmage125:

No, it doesn't require any kind of arrocance or narcissism or belief in being "universally true" to notice when another person's reply misses the core idea and goes off a tangent.

Again: the part of your argument that I picked apart is trying to use abstraction level of unrelated mechanics to justify your position. I'm arguing against using a specific rationalization, not for "slavish adherence to simulationism" or whatever hyperbole you imagine this to be about. If you think stealthy characters having better odds at success is more fun, just say that, and don't bring up other mechanics that aren't directly related.

It was never a tangent, and is absolutely about you believing your view is some kind of "universal truth", because you accused me of "missing your point" AFTER I explicitly told you that you weren't going to change my opinion. So get your ego in check and apologize, don't try and backpedal or gaslight me. You are responsible for the perception you create, and you insisted on expounding on the "benefit" of more simulationist mechanics after I explicitly said my preference is that I don't value it. Which is rude.

I was quite clear from my first post in this thread that I feel like streamlined rules is more fun. I explained my reasoning by drawing a parallel to some of the other mechanics that we accept simplified abstractions for. It's still just how I feel about the issue. I get that other people prefer more simulation, and my first post in the thread is very clear about that. The difference between you and I is that I respect that other people valuing differ things than I do means they play a different way.

[Quertus]

@Rynjin: the observation that games with a single perception skill or ability still regularly make a distinction between senses is still an important one: it shows designers of those games asked themselves "what do we miss for having just one skill/ability cover these many separate things?" and "how else can we add those things?"

From a mathematical perspective, it's possible to make a game with a single perception skill that is equivalent to a game with several - a character has the same odds for the same senses to spot the same objects. They may roll different dice against different target numbers picked from different tables, but the time for the process is also the same. If you can identify this to be the case, then the systems under comparison are just as good. Merits and demerits only exist in comparison to systems that do noticeably more or noticeably less.

In my “invisible giant stompy robot” example, for a naive GM, 3e would encourage… Spot check to see it auto-fails (because Invisibility), but can still be made at a 20 point penalty to know it exists, and what “square (s)” it’s in… Listen to know it exists… and, I suppose, if you guess the right squares, you can spend 10 minutes searching to notice the giant footprints… or use Tracking to try to follow them… at DCs I’d think would be easy to estimate, but my experience with other GM’s says “no”, those DCs may well be nonsense.

IME, the same naïve GM will handle the giant invisible robot worse in a system with just a single Perception stat, especially (but not exclusively) if that system has rules like “Invisibility: +X bonus to Stealth rolls”.

Do you have one or more systems you feel give adequate guidance that even the naïve GM would successfully model an invisible stompy mech with reasonable fidelity, rather than that single binary yes/no Perception roll (with maybe an ad hoc and horrifically incomplete justification for the result) I’ve seen repeatedly from such systems?

[Darg]

In my “invisible giant stompy robot” example, for a naive GM, 3e would encourage… Spot check to see it auto-fails (because Invisibility), but can still be made at a 20 point penalty to know it exists, and what “square (s)” it’s in… Listen to know it exists… and, I suppose, if you guess the right squares, you can spend 10 minutes searching to notice the giant footprints… or use Tracking to try to follow them… at DCs I’d think would be easy to estimate, but my experience with other GM’s says “no”, those DCs may well be nonsense.

Knowing something is there is valuable because you can walk spaces to attempt to run into them and throw out dusts of appearance or alert the spellcaster to cast see invisibility. When they are combined, well, you either know their exact location anyways or you don't even know they are there. There really isn't an in between.

[Quertus]

Knowing something is there is valuable because you can walk spaces to attempt to run into them and throw out dusts of appearance or alert the spellcaster to cast see invisibility.

Fair enough, there is indeed more to the information minigame than I listed. :smallbiggrin:


When they are combined, well, you either know their exact location anyways or you don't even know they are there. There really isn't an in between.

I mean, even combined, the GM could call for separate Perception (Visual) and Perception (Auditory) rolls, every single time, to simulate Listen and Spot, with the “combined” nature of the skill simply being a purchasing / character sheet bookkeeping convenience.

[Darg]

I mean, even combined, the GM could call for separate Perception (Visual) and Perception (Auditory) rolls, every single time, to simulate Listen and Spot, with the “combined” nature of the skill simply being a purchasing / character sheet bookkeeping convenience.

Why bother with separate rolls in that case? The roll is the same regardless of the DC of the check. PF Stealth includes sight, hearing, and scent as things it protects from perception. Likewise perception allows you to locate a creature with any of those senses. There are degrees of "convenience" combining skills together gives, but it always will come at the cost of character flavor and increased power.

[Gnaeus]

I think the RNG makes a strong simulationist argument in favor of combining the roles. Assume if you will a pair of pretty good thieves. 5 ranks in stealth or hide and ms. Skill focus for a +3. 14 dex for their elite array. They are trying to sneak past guy on the street. No perception related skills. No wis bonus. Taking 10. He only sees them if they roll a 1. They have about a 1-in-5 chance of fouling that up as badly as is possible, essentially fumbling one of their combined 4 rolls. That just seems unduely harsh to me.

I also think there is a similar gamist reason in favor of combining the rolls. In a party of 4 (8 rolls) there is a 1-in-3 chance of a 1 being rolled, and better than a 1-in-2 of a 1 or 2. Thats probably just going to tell a mechanically savvy party that sneaking pretty much just won't work unless you have an overwhelming advantage such that the rolls just don't matter. Or similarly, if DM is having enemies sneak up on party, they need an overwhelming advantage over the party's perception. Maybe if you were using 5e group skill checks, so that the only thing that matters is whether the majority of the party succeeds, that might make sense. But if even in a group which has all pretty good checks, you are still probably going to fail against a much less observant enemy, it just seems to be taking workable options away from PCs. ESPECIALLY, as mentioned upthread, from martial PCs, who actually need skills to be useful, because they can't DDoor around the issue or turn into a mouse or meld through the floor or some other superhuman trick.

[Quertus]

Why bother with separate rolls in that case? The roll is the same regardless of the DC of the check. PF Stealth includes sight, hearing, and scent as things it protects from perception. Likewise perception allows you to locate a creature with any of those senses. There are degrees of "convenience" combining skills together gives, but it always will come at the cost of character flavor and increased power.

The DC to perceive an Invisible Ghast sneaking up on you is about (internet numbers) impossible / DC 30 to Perception(Visual) it, DC 10 to Perception(Auditory) it, and DC -30 to Perception(Olfactory) it. And you could implement that with just a single Perception roll, with the result determining what information you get.

Now, if a character has such a bad cold that they're suffering a -40 penalty to Perception(Olfactory) checks, then their DC to Smell or Hear the Sneaky Ghast are effectively the same. Should they always smell it if they hear it, and always hear it if they smell it? Or should there be a chance of doing just one or the other? Could two identical twins, both with the same cold, have one of them hear it, and the other smell it?

One could combine the skills for several reasons (like space on character sheet or cost to purchase) other than a Gamist desire to condense things down to a single roll, and do so while still implementing individual Spot, Listen, and Sniff checks to determine what is perceived, especially if the people involved like such Information Warfare games where random partial information is entirely possible, and then other methods (like running around while waving polearms, dusting areas with flour, Invisibility Purge, Eyes of the One-Eyed King (or whatever spell grants bonuses to Perception checks), etc) can be used to collect more information (or they can just fire blind, that's an option, too).

Which circles back to the original question: one reason to keep them separate is to telegraph, "random partial information sensory information warfare games can definitely be a thing in this game".

EDIT: Sounds like Goblin Slayer must be a Pathfinder character schooling the D&D newbs and their lack of scent awareness. :smalltongue:

[lesser_minion]

(snip)

This is a genuine problem with 3rd edition, but as soon as you get to three people trying to sneak around, the number of people trying to sneak starts contributing far more to the number of rolls needed than needing to test separately for hiding and moving silently.

This means that the fix for this problem is coming up with proper rules for group stealth (and other group activities).

[Darg]

I think the RNG makes a strong simulationist argument in favor of combining the roles. Assume if you will a pair of pretty good thieves. 5 ranks in stealth or hide and ms. Skill focus for a +3. 14 dex for their elite array. They are trying to sneak past guy on the street. No perception related skills. No wis bonus. Taking 10. He only sees them if they roll a 1. They have about a 1-in-5 chance of fouling that up as badly as is possible, essentially fumbling one of their combined 4 rolls. That just seems unduely harsh to me.

I also think there is a similar gamist reason in favor of combining the rolls. In a party of 4 (8 rolls) there is a 1-in-3 chance of a 1 being rolled, and better than a 1-in-2 of a 1 or 2. Thats probably just going to tell a mechanically savvy party that sneaking pretty much just won't work unless you have an overwhelming advantage such that the rolls just don't matter. Or similarly, if DM is having enemies sneak up on party, they need an overwhelming advantage over the party's perception. Maybe if you were using 5e group skill checks, so that the only thing that matters is whether the majority of the party succeeds, that might make sense. But if even in a group which has all pretty good checks, you are still probably going to fail against a much less observant enemy, it just seems to be taking workable options away from PCs. ESPECIALLY, as mentioned upthread, from martial PCs, who actually need skills to be useful, because they can't DDoor around the issue or turn into a mouse or meld through the floor or some other superhuman trick.

Doing 2 things at once is hard. You can hide without moving and you can move silently without needing to hide. Combining the rolls means when you do both it's just as easy as doing one or the other. When you hide in combat, you don't need to move silently to not be seen unless you don't want them searching your direction.

As for making the skill checks, could always distract the guy by throwing a stone in the opposite direction you want to go for a +5 and depending on distance you get a +1 per 10 feet of distance. Yes, it should be hard to sneak past someone right in front of their face.

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: It'd be easier to design you a sample system than go hunt through my books. The basics are simple enough to explain in a paragraph:

There may be just one Perception skills, but a character has multiple senses (sight, hearing, scent, taste, touch, etc.). A hiding creature can hence provide multiple sense objects for the skill to target, each with different target number. An unseen creature may be heard; an unheard creature may be smelled; an unsmelled creature may be bumped into. A failed Perception check can be retried at cost of time as long as valid sense objects remain. A succesful check only provides information relevant to the sense used. A player is allowed to deduce missing information from what they perceive.

Application for an invisible giant robot:

The robot being invisible means it is not a sense object for sight. No perception check can be made to see it.
The robot makes noise when it walks around. This noise is a sense object for hearing. A perception check can be made to hear it.
The robot is heavy and hence leaves footprints. These footprints are sense objects for sight. A perception check can be made to notice them.
The robot still occupies space. This makes it a sense object for touch. A perception check can be made to gauge the robot's direction and dimensions when the robot hits or is hit by someone.

---


Why bother with separate rolls in that case?

The rolls are for different sense objects and create a different result matrix than rolling once. Quertus demonstrates correct understanding of the logic I explained earlier, by showing that a single Perception skill isn't mutually exclusive with acknowledging a character has more than one sense.

---

@Gnaeous: both those arguments are bad. They conflate "someone in a group fails in a particular way" with "everyone fails in every way". That is a poor interpretation of the actual result matrices.

Additionally, whoever came up with the first example needs to reread skill check rules. There are no fumbles or autofails on a 1 and no automatic success on a 20. In case of a tie in an opposed check whoever has higher modifier wins. A character with +9 to a check cannot fail, ever against someone with no modifiers taking 10. But let's, for a moment, entertain a scenario where the thieves only fail on a 1. The possibilities are:

Both are seen.
One is seen, another is heard but not seen.
One is seen, another remains entirely undetected.
Neither is seen, both are heard.
Neither is seen, one is heard.
Neither is seen nor heard.

Only the first one counts as fouling as badly as possible, and it has 1-in-400 chance of happening. That 1-in-400 chance remains the same even if you only roll for Hide or a single combined Stealth skill. Only in this 1-in-400 scenario the guard knows there were two sneaks and what they look like. Every other scenario leaves the guard at least unable to visually identify one of the crooks.

[Gnaeus]

Doing 2 things at once is hard. You can hide without moving and you can move silently without needing to hide. Combining the rolls means when you do both it's just as easy as doing one or the other. When you hide in combat, you don't need to move silently to not be seen unless you don't want them searching your direction.

As for making the skill checks, could always distract the guy by throwing a stone in the opposite direction you want to go for a +5 and depending on distance you get a +1 per 10 feet of distance. Yes, it should be hard to sneak past someone right in front of their face.

It should be easy for trained thieves with good stats to sneak past Bob the farmer. Especially, as I said, in fantasy land, where we are trying to pretend that a level of rogue=a level of wizard. When the rules say, as they do, that sneaking past an enemy is simply unlikely to work, the story suffers, party balance suffers, and the game suffers. If someone suggests a cunning plan to sneak around the enemy, and someone who knows the game says, look, we aren't going to be able to make 8 or 10 checks without someone stepping on a twig or stumbling out of cover, we may as well just use our element of surprise to murder them while we at least get a surprise round, the wizard should smugly reach over, take the skillmonkey's character sheet, and wipe his backside with it, before he hands it back for them to use for the rest of the campaign.



@Gnaeous: both those arguments are bad. They conflate "someone in a group fails in a particular way" with "everyone fails in every way". That is a poor interpretation of the actual result matrices.

Both are seen.
One is seen, another is heard but not seen.
One is seen, another remains entirely undetected.
Neither is seen, both are heard.
Neither is seen, one is heard.
Neither is seen nor heard.

Only the first one counts as fouling as badly as possible, and it has 1-in-400 chance of happening. That 1-in-400 chance remains the same even if you only roll for Hide or a single combined Stealth skill. Only in this 1-in-400 scenario the guard knows there were two sneaks and what they look like. Every other scenario leaves the guard at least unable to visually identify one of the crooks.

The first 5 are indistinguishable. The attempt to sneak past the guard fails and the alarm is sounded. Your stealth mission is a bust. Initiative is rolled, and whoever heard the guard is now on alert. The one bright spot for team rogue is that after a few rounds of combat they will get to make new characters who don't need unreasonable odds on an RNG to sneak past a bumpkin.

[NichG]

In D&D's stealth model, I would just combine them... Stealth jobs are already too much of an 'extended chain of rolls, one failure ruins the whole thing' to double up on the rolls.

But, I have a different stealth model I favor these days, and I wonder if actually within that stealth model maybe having them separate is pretty good. The stealth model I like is more of a hitpoint model, where characters have some number of 'stealth pips' or the place they're infiltrating has an 'alertness level' which would be like a group version of that, and various actions that risk being observed either deplete the individual character's stealth pips, or add to the alertness of the organization being infiltrated. So under that system, lets say you still rolled specific perception modalities against specific stealth methodologies - each pair is now an semi-independent risk of suffering 'damage', perhaps with a per-round, per-observer cap of how much different sources of awareness can stack on the damage. That also operates more gracefully with things like invisibility and silence - those basically prevent round-by-round stealth damage from operating within line of sight of a guard, but you would still suffer stealth damage for say opening a door or moving an object within their field of view.

It does also imply that extra modalities should have their own, equally independent ways of inflicting/avoiding stealth damage. Scent, magical auras, life sense, tremorsense, etc wouldn't just be hard 'you cannot stealth around this creature', they'd be something like 'within the sensory radius take significant stealth damage per round unless you have a specific counter or skill that can beat it'. UMD as the stealth skill vs detect magic and detect alignment? Concentration against telepathy? Survival against scent?

Could be interesting without being punitive if the per-round/per-observer caps were balanced right. Makes stealth more rock/paper/scissors, where it can make sense to send the druid to sneak into the kennels and the bard to sneak onto the dance floor and so on, with the rogue being able to generalize or specialize as they like among the options due to lots of skill points...

[Vahnavoi]

The first 5 are indistinguishable.

Bull crap. If you cannot distinquish them, that is the problem, not the actual odds.


The attempt to sneak past the guard fails and the alarm is sounded. Your stealth mission is a bust. Initiative is rolled, and whoever heard the guard is now on alert. The one bright spot for team rogue is that after a few rounds of combat they will get to make new characters who don't need unreasonable odds on an RNG to sneak past a bumpkin.

An alarm being sounded does not magically lead to the exact same conclusion every time. Let's recap:

Both thieves are seen. This is the only scenario where both thieves have a reason to fight or flee to protect themselves.

One thief is seen, another is heard but not seen. The guard who sounded the alarm only knows the second thief's approximate location, not how they look like. The first thief has option to distract the guard long enough that the second thief can get beyond hearing range. The guarded place is on alert, yes, but looking for someone who they do not know the appearance and exact location of.

One thief is seen, another is neither seen nor heard. Even after sounding an alarm, the guards only truly know to look for one individual. Compared to the previous version, the second thief has easier and longer time to infiltrate as the first one distracts the guards. They can also take surprise rounds against the guards, including against the first one to potentially stop the alarm.

Neither thief is seen, both are heard. The alerted guards only know number and approximate location of them.

Neither thief is seen, one is heard. The alerted guards only know approximate location of one person. The second is free to infiltrate or to take surprise rounds against the guards, including, again, to potentially stop the alarm from being sounded.

By lumping all these scenarios together, you are glossing over several rules AND demonstrating bogus understanding of stealth & team tactics.

[RedMage125]

In D&D's stealth model, I would just combine them... Stealth jobs are already too much of an 'extended chain of rolls, one failure ruins the whole thing' to double up on the rolls.
This is how I feel as well. Not everyone agrees.



Bull crap. If you cannot distinquish them, that is the problem, not the actual odds.
You're talking past him, being so focused on the minutiae of semantic differences of these checks that you have ignored what he said about the results. And once again, you're being condescending with regards to this difference in values and opinions, derisively regarding it as some kind of "failure to distinguish" those minutiae you prefer to focus on.

If the goal is simply to slip past the guards undetected, the various degrees of difference in HOW detection occurs is irrelevant to his point. It's a simple, binary yes/no. That's his point.



By lumping all these scenarios together, you are glossing over several rules AND demonstrating bogus understanding of stealth & team tactics.

Allow me to demonstrate how you've been talking to others by turning your own rhetoric back on you.

By lending increased significance to the distinction between visual and auditory detection, you are blithely ignoring what other posters are actually saying AND demonstrating a bogus understanding of cogent and honest discussion.

To wit: if someone took a test, and an 80% is required to pass, other posters are telling you that there is no difference in getting a 79%, a 50%, or a 15% grade. You, OTOH, are insisting that a 79% is vastly different than a 15%, and that everyone who doesn't agree with your points is deficient in their understanding.

[Rynjin]

Yep. Group checks are pass/fail. It doesn't matter whether you failed with a 70%, an 80%, or a 99%. If the test requires a 100% success rate to pass, you failed.

The ONLY time the exact rate of failure matters is in the rare scenarios you can add retroactive points to the roll. If you failed with an 80% but can retroactively add 20% to the roll, then sure it matters.

But chances are you can't.

[RedMage125]

Yep. Group checks are pass/fail. It doesn't matter whether you failed with a 70%, an 80%, or a 99%. If the test requires a 100% success rate to pass, you failed.

The ONLY time the exact rate of failure matters is in the rare scenarios you can add retroactive points to the roll. If you failed with an 80% but can retroactively add 20% to the roll, then sure it matters.

But chances are you can't.

More to the point....if the GOAL is "sneak past the guards undetected without the alarm being raised", then 5 of his 6 scenarios are just failures. Group check or not.

[Darg]

It should be easy for trained thieves with good stats to sneak past Bob the farmer. Especially, as I said, in fantasy land, where we are trying to pretend that a level of rogue=a level of wizard. When the rules say, as they do, that sneaking past an enemy is simply unlikely to work, the story suffers, party balance suffers, and the game suffers. If someone suggests a cunning plan to sneak around the enemy, and someone who knows the game says, look, we aren't going to be able to make 8 or 10 checks without someone stepping on a twig or stumbling out of cover, we may as well just use our element of surprise to murder them while we at least get a surprise round, the wizard should smugly reach over, take the skillmonkey's character sheet, and wipe his backside with it, before he hands it back for them to use for the rest of the campaign.

You make it seem like NPCs aren't taking 10. If they aren't making active spot/listen checks there's no point to actually role for them. I'd be making myself make hundreds of rolls in short spans of time if I didn't have them take 10. Farmer Joe or random guard number 3 isn't going to have a spot/listen modifier to detect the rogue. And obviously you aren't going to have the fighter without some investment be sneaking up close and personal, that's just stupid.

You also have to remember the modifiers. If you want to sneak past something do it at a distance and when the spotters are distracted. Easy ways to sneak past less dangerous creatures. The fighter can remove their armor to get rid of the ACP and then even if they have an 8 in dexterity they could have a +4 to their check against a distracted character even from 5 ft away which is plenty for level 1 goblin/orc warriors for example. Even if they weren't distracted, it would be enough to just be 30/20 ft away at all times. At higher levels, you can get magical items or special materials to aid your checks or remove them entirely. It's really not a lost cause to use sneaking tactics.

[Troacctid]

It should be easy for trained thieves with good stats to sneak past Bob the farmer. Especially, as I said, in fantasy land, where we are trying to pretend that a level of rogue=a level of wizard. When the rules say, as they do, that sneaking past an enemy is simply unlikely to work, the story suffers, party balance suffers, and the game suffers. If someone suggests a cunning plan to sneak around the enemy, and someone who knows the game says, look, we aren't going to be able to make 8 or 10 checks without someone stepping on a twig or stumbling out of cover, we may as well just use our element of surprise to murder them while we at least get a surprise round, the wizard should smugly reach over, take the skillmonkey's character sheet, and wipe his backside with it, before he hands it back for them to use for the rest of the campaign.
"Let's just all walk right past him, but on our tippy-toes" is not exactly a plan I would describe as especially cunning.

[lesser_minion]

It should be easy for trained thieves with good stats to sneak past Bob the farmer. Especially, as I said, in fantasy land, where we are trying to pretend that a level of rogue=a level of wizard. When the rules say, as they do, that sneaking past an enemy is simply unlikely to work, the story suffers, party balance suffers, and the game suffers. If someone suggests a cunning plan to sneak around the enemy, and someone who knows the game says, look, we aren't going to be able to make 8 or 10 checks without someone stepping on a twig or stumbling out of cover, we may as well just use our element of surprise to murder them while we at least get a surprise round, the wizard should smugly reach over, take the skillmonkey's character sheet, and wipe his backside with it, before he hands it back for them to use for the rest of the campaign.

The most significant contributor to this problem is the number of characters that are rolling. Fixing that alone resolves it.

In fact, because the maths is based on using two dice rolls, merging the skills properly means adding in circumstance penalties to checks where both would have been required. Which can actually leave group stealth even worse off.


The first 5 are indistinguishable. The attempt to sneak past the guard fails and the alarm is sounded. Your stealth mission is a bust. Initiative is rolled, and whoever heard the guard is now on alert. The one bright spot for team rogue is that after a few rounds of combat they will get to make new characters who don't need unreasonable odds on an RNG to sneak past a bumpkin.

Making a single failed check into an irretrievable mission failure is bad scenario design, no matter what skills you're rolling or how many checks are involved.

This goes double when you've repeatedly described the scenario in terms like "sneak past a bumpkin". If the guards are this effective, then they aren't "bumpkins", they're competent and trained professionals, in which case sneaking past them shouldn't be easy.

[Crake]

I think the RNG makes a strong simulationist argument in favor of combining the roles. Assume if you will a pair of pretty good thieves. 5 ranks in stealth or hide and ms. Skill focus for a +3. 14 dex for their elite array. They are trying to sneak past guy on the street. No perception related skills. No wis bonus. Taking 10. He only sees them if they roll a 1. They have about a 1-in-5 chance of fouling that up as badly as is possible, essentially fumbling one of their combined 4 rolls. That just seems unduely harsh to me.

Actually, he doesnt spot them on a 1 unless theyre sneaking within 10 feet of him.

I feel like, if you’re sneaking almost literally right past someone, failing on only a 1 is not actually that big a deal. If they have at least 10 feet between them though, the -1 penalty means they just auto succeed

Personally, I've found that sneaky characters tend to appreciate the increased simulationism, while non sneaky characters, who incidentally need to roll stealth for some reason, would rather just have it be simple and not have to worry about intricacies, which ironically means that sneaky characters need to invest in more skills, but conversely get the added benefit of being able to work to manipulate circumstances such that they can more regularly auto succeed and not even have to roll. Skill mastery comes in very handy in those circumstances.

As such, whether I go simple or complex tends to vary from game to game.


You make it seem like NPCs aren't taking 10. If they aren't making active spot/listen checks there's no point to actually role for them. I'd be making myself make hundreds of rolls in short spans of time if I didn't have them take 10. Farmer Joe or random guard number 3 isn't going to have a spot/listen modifier to detect the rogue. And obviously you aren't going to have the fighter without some investment be sneaking up close and personal, that's just stupid.

Taking 10 is an active choice, not the result of a “passive” check. Youre thinking of 5e passive perceptions, which are effectively the equivalent of taking 10, but passive checks in 3.5 are rolled, with the OPTION of taking 10, assuming the conditions for taking 10 are met (not stressed or threatened)

[Darg]

Taking 10 is an active choice, not the result of a “passive” check. Youre thinking of 5e passive perceptions, which are effectively the equivalent of taking 10, but passive checks in 3.5 are rolled, with the OPTION of taking 10, assuming the conditions for taking 10 are met (not stressed or threatened)

What? Anyone can take 10 when the situation allows it. It's as much an active choice as choosing to forgo taking 10 is. I'm not understanding what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that a guard isn't allowed to take 10 because they aren't actively taking actions to use a skill? What about skills that are part of other actions? Are they disqualified too? Nothing in the rules says anything about passive skill use being unable to take 10.

[Crake]

Nothing in the rules says anything about passive skill use being unable to take 10.

I never said it did, I was merely clarifying the assumption that passive skills would be assumed by default to be taking 10. When I said an active decision, i meant on behalf of the player (or dm), not the character. The default is, however, rolling, and so, you may beat a character's spot bonus by more than 10, and be able to auto win IF THEY CHOOSE to take 10, but if they do NOT choose to take 10, and simply roll, as is the default, and they roll GREATER than 10, you may lose. And in fact, most untrained characters would benefit more from choosing NOT to take 10, for the very fact that 10 will fail against most important DCs.

So yes, farmer joe with his +0 spot check can still beat Cecil the rogue if she has +17, rolls a 1, is within 20ft of farmer joe, and farmer joe rolls a 20. Is that highly unlikely? Yes, but the fault was on her for getting so close to farmer joe, if she'd just stayed out at 30ft, she would have been fine.

[Vahnavoi]

You're talking past him, being so focused on the minutiae of semantic differences of these checks that you have ignored what he said about the results. And once again, you're being condescending with regards to this difference in values and opinions, derisively regarding it as some kind of "failure to distinguish" those minutiae you prefer to focus on.

My counter-argument isn't minutiae. It is a direct derivation of the game's basic rules which, if taken to account, means there are five distinct playable scenarios that can be created. The number of distinct scenarios increases the more of the game's rules are taken to account, since the two thieves don't need to be identical. Calling all the possible scenarios "indistinguishable" is false on the face of it. If you cannot distinguish logical fallacies from "difference in values and opinions", you have nothing useful to say on the topic.


If the goal is simply to slip past the guards undetected, the various degrees of difference in HOW detection occurs is irrelevant to his point. It's a simple, binary yes/no. That's his point.

And it is a BAD point, because it glosses over actual mechanical differences between scenarios. Treating the scenario where one thief remains undetected as identical to the one where both are detected is fallacious, since an undetected thief can take actions to prevent total failure in common real game scenarios.

The pay-off matrix for the situation isn't binary. Acting as if it is binary is bad team tactics.


To wit: if someone took a test, and an 80% is required to pass, other posters are telling you that there is no difference in getting a 79%, a 50%, or a 15% grade. You, OTOH, are insisting that a 79% is vastly different than a 15%, and that everyone who doesn't agree with your points is deficient in their understanding.

You cannot flip my own argument on me via analogy without making the situation actually analogous. An actually analogous situation has two people taking the test, and if one fails but the other passes, the one passing can help the person who failed, or move on without the person who failed.

---


Yep. Group checks are pass/fail. It doesn't matter whether you failed with a 70%, an 80%, or a 99%. If the test requires a 100% success rate to pass, you failed.

The ONLY time the exact rate of failure matters is in the rare scenarios you can add retroactive points to the roll. If you failed with an 80% but can retroactively add 20% to the roll, then sure it matters.

But chances are you can't.

The test analogy is wrong because the pay-off matrix for two people trying to sneak past a guard is not binary pass/fail. It has at least five different possible pay-offs, which in a real game, all lead to different follow-up situations. Furthermore, the number of distinct pay-offs doesn't decrease with more people added, it increases - that holds regardless of how favorable the overall odds end up.

Furthermore "group check" isn't an actual rule in 3.x D&D. Hide and Move Silently versus Spot and Listen are a typical example of individual checks. The closest you get is Aid Another. If you let the rules for Aid Another under combining skill attempts to apply, everyone in a team is piggybacking on, and possibly contributing to, the effort of the most skilled person in the group. This can reduce the pay-off matrix to a binary, but it typically also massively increases overall chances of complete success. It can also, however, increase the chance of total failure. For example, when you turn this:

Both are seen.
One is seen, another is heard but not seen.
One is seen, another remains entirely undetected.
Neither is seen, both are heard.
Neither is seen, one is heard.
Neither is seen nor heard.

Into this:

Both are seen.
Neither is seen nor heard.

If there's any chance of failure at all on a d20 check, the chance for "both are seen" jumps from 1-in-400 to 1-in-20 at minimum. This effect is often less favorable for larger groups, where bulk of of the pay-off matrix and hence the likeliest odds are for some of the intermediate results.

This relates to your argument about the "ONLY time" exact rate of failure matters. Every time when someone in larger group remains wholly or partially undetected, basic game rules of 3.x D&D allow them a number of tactics to improve the situation for their group. By assuming "chances are you can't", you presume the characters who passed their checks are more helpless than they actually are.

---


Making a single failed check into an irretrievable mission failure is bad scenario design, no matter what skills you're rolling or how many checks are involved.

That's a scenario designer's viewpoint. However, there is also a viewpoint of player strategy here. The idea that it's THE GOAL for both thieves to pass is dubious from that viewpoint also. Typically, stealth is an instrumental goal, you are using it to get at something else, it's not the terminal goal, the entirety of the thing you're going to accomplish. For a very simple example, if the goal is to shank the guard, and ONE thief is enough to accomplish this goal, then every result where EVEN ONE thief remains undetected long enough to get in the position to do this counts as a success. By choosing the right strategy, having more people now turns from a disadvantage into an advantage.

[RedMage125]

My counter-argument isn't minutiae. It is a direct derivation of the game's basic rules which, if taken to account, means there are five distinct playable scenarios that can be created. The number of distinct scenarios increases the more of the game's rules are taken to account, since the two thieves don't need to be identical. Calling all the possible scenarios "indistinguishable" is false on the face of it. If you cannot distinguish logical fallacies from "difference in values and opinions", you have nothing useful to say on the topic.


No...you're just talking past me and other posters. The point was that if the goal is "sneak past the guards undetected, without the alarm being raised" then all of the minutiae of HOW the Rogues were detected, to include whether it was one or both of them, are IRRELEVANT. The mission has failed. The alarm has been raised. All of the "mechanical differences" in those varying degrees of failure are not nearly as significant as the failure itself with regard to the point he was making which was vis a vis combining the skills or not, and the odds of success vis failure. Even though doing do is absolutely "gamist" by his own admission.

If you want to talk about logical fallacies, then how about yours? Moving the Goalposts, False Equivalency, and Ad Hominem.

The test analogy is absolutely accurate. You're insisting that other posters have deficient comprehension for not recognizing the "vast degree of separation" between a 79% and 15%. Meanwhile, they're pointing out that the cutoff for success was 80%, and a failure is STILL a failure. Everything you continue to proselytize on about "result matrices" is, by that analogy, pointing how how large the gulf between 15% and 79% is, and how many numbers are in that gulf.

And again...I don't have a dog in the fight of whether or not anyone sees the value that I do in combining them (and will absolutely cop to my own reasoning being in favor of gamist reasoning over simulationist). I can absolutely respect that others prefer more simulationist mechanics. At this point, I'm addressing YOU and your methods of discussion. You're rude, insulting, and you keep talking past them. It's not exactly apples and oranges, more like they're having a discussion about whether something is a citrus fruit or not, and you want to talk about how distinct tangerines and clementines are from white grapefruit, and act as if lumping them together is an intellectual failing. But their whole point was "it's a citrus fruit, period". Not only are you talking past them, you keep dropping in personal insults in your language, because you assume that anyone who doesn't care about the distinction just "fails to understand" your point. And whether or not you're conscious of that, such a thing stems from the internal belief that your own point comes from some kind of "universal and objective fact", rather than a preference (in that others don't care about the distinctions of degrees of results of the failures). And so you're rude to them, behaving as if they just "don't/can't understand" these things you think are so important.

[Darg]

I never said it did, I was merely clarifying the assumption that passive skills would be assumed by default to be taking 10. When I said an active decision, i meant on behalf of the player (or dm), not the character. The default is, however, rolling, and so, you may beat a character's spot bonus by more than 10, and be able to auto win IF THEY CHOOSE to take 10, but if they do NOT choose to take 10, and simply roll, as is the default, and they roll GREATER than 10, you may lose. And in fact, most untrained characters would benefit more from choosing NOT to take 10, for the very fact that 10 will fail against most important DCs.

So yes, farmer joe with his +0 spot check can still beat Cecil the rogue if she has +17, rolls a 1, is within 20ft of farmer joe, and farmer joe rolls a 20. Is that highly unlikely? Yes, but the fault was on her for getting so close to farmer joe, if she'd just stayed out at 30ft, she would have been fine.

Your numbers aren't wrong, but why would you want to roll so many times? Every action is another 2 rolls. For just one creature to move 60 ft that's 8 rolls. For the whole party that turns into 32-48 rolls. Honestly, not a very tenable situation when even failures only on a 20:1 have a high chance of failing when you're rolling so many times per attempt. The spotter only needs to succeed once after all while the sneaker(s) needs to succeed every last one.

[Vahnavoi]

No...you're just talking past me and other posters. The point was that if the goal is "sneak past the guards undetected, without the alarm being raised" then all of the minutiae of HOW the Rogues were detected, to include whether it was one or both of them, are IRRELEVANT.

I've pointed out, repeatedly, that when one of the thieves goes undetected, they can take action to prevent the alarm from being raised. That is obviously relevant. By dismissing that, you double down on a basic error in the example.

The test-taking analogy continues to be false and pointless; it does not even include correct odds for passing. The chance for total failure is not 1-in-5. If you want to talk about game rules, talk about game rules. All of the relevant parts are available, for free, on the internet for quick checking. If you want to argue the thieves have poor odds, calculate the odds properly.

---

EDIT:


The spotter only needs to succeed once after all while the sneaker(s) needs to succeed every last one.

This is not true for the given example and is even less true about common game situations. See my point about player strategy to lesser_minion.

In many actual game scenarios, players have options for strategies where only some or only one person remaining undetected is sufficient to achieve a victory condition. Leaving these outside discussion is a fallacy of omission and gives an imperfect idea of how good stealth tactics actually are. It also commits fallacy of equivocation, since being seen and being heard have different ramifications under 3.x rules.

[GloatingSwine]

I think the RNG makes a strong simulationist argument in favor of combining the roles. Assume if you will a pair of pretty good thieves. 5 ranks in stealth or hide and ms. Skill focus for a +3. 14 dex for their elite array. They are trying to sneak past guy on the street. No perception related skills. No wis bonus. Taking 10. He only sees them if they roll a 1. They have about a 1-in-5 chance of fouling that up as badly as is possible, essentially fumbling one of their combined 4 rolls. That just seems unduely harsh to me.

I also think there is a similar gamist reason in favor of combining the rolls. In a party of 4 (8 rolls) there is a 1-in-3 chance of a 1 being rolled, and better than a 1-in-2 of a 1 or 2. Thats probably just going to tell a mechanically savvy party that sneaking pretty much just won't work unless you have an overwhelming advantage such that the rolls just don't matter. Or similarly, if DM is having enemies sneak up on party, they need an overwhelming advantage over the party's perception.

Another thing is that splitting the rolls only produces a uniquely interesting outcome vs. combining them if the nature of failure meaningfully changes what the players can do as a response. If your options after a failure on Hide are different to your options on a failure on Move Silently then maybe some interesting gameplay comes out of it.

But I that would have limited milage because there won't be infinitely many non-overlapping outcomes between "is seen" and "is heard".

(And any outcomes that would attend either can still be freely chosen by the DM on a fail on a combined roll anyway.)

[Quertus]

More to the point....if the GOAL is "sneak past the guards undetected without the alarm being raised", then 5 of his 6 scenarios are just failures. Group check or not.

It's a simple, binary yes/no. That's his point.

I completely agree with Vahnavoi that it’s a bad point.. “My goal is to Mindrape on a global scale; having to convince individual people is a failure” or “my goal is to kill him in one shot; using HP and damage is a failure” aren’t even proper parallels.

“The goal of having neither person be perceived fails of either person is perceived” is tautologically true, no denying it. But usually, the goal for a pair of thieves is more like “get the goods” (or “kill the target” for a pair of assassins). However, there absolutely are scenarios where “have 2-3 people be undetected” is the name of the game - a noble and their bodyguard, a prisoner and the person breaking them out, a parent and child, in addition to just “2 thieves”.

But “2 thieves” is a bad example, because “both go unnoticed” *sounds* like a really dumb plan. And, in “talking past” people, Vahnavoi has explained exactly *why* that sounds like a dumb goal, because there’s ways to still succeed the actual mission. *However*, if you change the scenario, fill in some details correctly, it *could* be a reasonable goal. Like, in a modern context, if those “thieves” were spies planting bugs or hacking into surveillance systems, especially in preparation for the actual op which isn’t to take place right away? Then it can make perfect sense that “anyone spotting anyone” will result in a fail state. I absolutely see the point… in a different context, in a different scenario. (EDIT: and, even then, if only one spy is detected, they could conceivably make it look like they were doing something else (like robbing the place or assassinating someone), meaning maybe the other spy can still accomplish the goal with the target none the wiser.)

But in D&D? This is a pair of *Rogues*. Even if they’re not willing to kill or even subdue the guard (eminently reasonable suggestions for things Rogues are highly skilled at doing) to keep the alarm from being raised, because they… are just forwards scouts for an invading army someone has somehow failed to notice (?), I guess (?), then they can just hit said guard with spells to remove his memories of having spotted them. Because D&D has *multiple* spells for just that purpose.

You have to work really hard to make a scenario where I won’t just respond, “then those Rogues are idiots and deserve to fail” if either of them being perceived at all represents a “mission failure” Game State in D&D. And that work just hasn’t been done in that Example.

[GloatingSwine]

But in D&D? This is a pair of *Rogues*. Even if they’re not willing to kill or even subdue the guard (eminently reasonable suggestions for things Rogues are highly skilled at doing) to keep the alarm from being raised, because they… are just forwards scouts for an invading army someone has somehow failed to notice (?), I guess (?), then they can just hit said guard with spells to remove his memories of having spotted them. Because D&D has *multiple* spells for just that purpose.

You have to work really hard to make a scenario where I won’t just respond, “then those Rogues are idiots and deserve to fail” if either of them being perceived at all represents a “mission failure” Game State in D&D. And that work just hasn’t been done in that Example.

Are their options constrained by being seen vs being heard though?

[Quertus]

Are their options constrained by being seen vs being heard though?

Options constrained? Absolutely! One fallback plan does not fit all. “Heard but not seen”, I can literally “let the cat out of the bag”, and thereby blame the “intrusion” on a false alarm caused by local wildlife *if* I can otherwise avoid detection. Spotted? Um… “these aren’t the Druids you’re looking for” hand wave?

[Elkad]

ideally it should be not just spot and listen, vs hide and move silent, but all the senses (including some non-standard ones like mindsight), each with their own roll.

Of course you add a bunch of (often-needless) complexity to the game then.

Invisible dude around? Check spot, listen, scent (at a big penalty if you don't have the Scent ability), touch ( Tremorsense could be called hypertouch), mindsight (with telepathy), life detection, etc...

Many of those you wouldn't even be able to roll on, just like a blind guy can't roll Spot.
Conversely, things like Mindsight might not be 100% detection until you get Mind Blank to counter, if you had some counterskill called "calm thoughts" you could put points in.

[NichG]

ideally it should be not just spot and listen, vs hide and move silent, but all the senses (including some non-standard ones like mindsight), each with their own roll.

Of course you add a bunch of (often-needless) complexity to the game then.

Invisible dude around? Check spot, listen, scent (at a big penalty if you don't have the Scent ability), touch ( Tremorsense could be called hypertouch), mindsight (with telepathy), life detection, etc...

Many of those you wouldn't even be able to roll on, just like a blind guy can't roll Spot.
Conversely, things like Mindsight might not be 100% detection until you get Mind Blank to counter, if you had some counterskill called "calm thoughts" you could put points in.

You could just make everything passive vs passive by default, and the difference in modifiers basically says 'how close can you get before you have to roll this modality'. It's still a lot of complexity to look up three or four things per spotter/sneaker. Or you could run things where someone who wants to actively detect has to pick a particular modality to focus on each round.

[AMFV]

One argument in favor is niche protection. If you have to have two skills to be able to perceive enemies then all characters won't be just good at that. In 5e, almost everybody who can takes Perception as a background skill. So most characters are good at noticing enemies. In 3.5, especially with cross class skills a lot of times it's not worth it to do that on a character that doesn't have the skills or the points. So you get a system where a person who is specialized in those things is rarer and more rewarded for that. It's one of the things I disliked about Pathfinder's skill thing, by making all the skills cost the same you basically deal a pretty big blow to the classes who are specialized in those things.

[RedMage125]

I've pointed out, repeatedly, that when one of the thieves goes undetected, they can take action to prevent the alarm from being raised. That is obviously relevant. By dismissing that, you double down on a basic error in the example.
Pursuant to the point, the distinction of "one of them passed, one failed" isn't different if the skills are merged or not. If one thief remained undetected, it doesn't matter if he succeeded on a "Stealth" roll, or both a "Hide" and a "Move Silently". The same options are available.



The test-taking analogy continues to be false and pointless; it does not even include correct odds for passing. The chance for total failure is not 1-in-5. If you want to talk about game rules, talk about game rules. All of the relevant parts are available, for free, on the internet for quick checking. If you want to argue the thieves have poor odds, calculate the odds properly.

If the guards raise an alarm if they detect ANYTHING, then yes, the test analogy is relevant to what the other poster was saying. So if detecting them through hearing or sight results in alarm, and that's the metric for success/failure, then you're arguing that a 79% is better than a 15%, and he was saying they're both failures.

Your continued insistence that these things result in meaningful results isn't always an absolute, and you're (again) moving goalposts by insisting that it's some kind of "universal truth" that it is.

Get your own fallacies corrected before you come at anyone else. I'm expressing an opinion and have a preference for a streamlined, gamist perspective, and I can cop to it. You're insisting that your simulationism preference is somehow based in fact, that these minutiae are absolute for everyone, and that anyone who doesn't care about them is somehow deficient in their understanding of your point.

Get this through your head: I understand your points, but I don't care about the increased simulationist "benefits". Furthermore, the way you bull through a conversation, disregarding what others say to repeat your own proselytizing is dismissive and off-putting. And your insults to others is blatantly rude.

I don't think I can be any more clear.


Another thing is that splitting the rolls only produces a uniquely interesting outcome vs. combining them if the nature of failure meaningfully changes what the players can do as a response. If your options after a failure on Hide are different to your options on a failure on Move Silently then maybe some interesting gameplay comes out of it.

But I that would have limited milage because there won't be infinitely many non-overlapping outcomes between "is seen" and "is heard".

(And any outcomes that would attend either can still be freely chosen by the DM on a fail on a combined roll anyway.)
Right. And I bolded the part that some posters here are bulldozing past. Vahnavoi seems to assume that it's a "given" that since hearing and sight are different IRL, that simulationist mechanics that track them separately are just as valuable to everyone, everywhere.


I completely agree with Vahnavoi that it’s a bad point.. “My goal is to Mindrape on a global scale; having to convince individual people is a failure” or “my goal is to kill him in one shot; using HP and damage is a failure” aren’t even proper parallels.

“The goal of having neither person be perceived fails of either person is perceived” is tautologically true, no denying it. But usually, the goal for a pair of thieves is more like “get the goods” (or “kill the target” for a pair of assassins). However, there absolutely are scenarios where “have 2-3 people be undetected” is the name of the game - a noble and their bodyguard, a prisoner and the person breaking them out, a parent and child, in addition to just “2 thieves”.
You say it's a "bad point", and then acknowledge that it's true. Your mindrape example is reducing the issue to absurd extremes, so I'm not addressing it. And yes, even if there IS a different terminal goal "get by without being detected" is still a goal of a step along the way, right? And that's all the poster who brought it up was focusing on. It's not even my point. I prefer a more gamist methodology, and reducing Stealth to single checks. It gives me, the DM, more narrative leeway to express what succes or failure means in the fiction layer. It is my opinion that a system doesn't "need" perfect simulationist mechanics for every little thing. I neither need, nor is my game improved by, having extra mechanics designed only to simulate specific things.


Mighty Composite longbows are an accurate way to sum up how a bow works IRL. Dex is still used for the attack roll, because it's hand-eye coordination and precision, but the damage an arrow does is based on the tensile strength of the bow itself. An arrow fired by an average Joe and an Iron Man Competition winner, if fired with accuracy at the same point, will penetrate to the same depth. But if the IMC winner uses a bow with a greater pull strength, it will fire with more force. And a minimum of the str rating of the mighty composite bow is required to even PULL the bow.
HOWEVER, later editions (like 5e, for example) streamline this, and allow DEX mod to the damage roll. Justification being increased precision means arrow hit in a better (more damaging) place.
I also believe there's a lot of overlap between Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft and players and gameplay are better served with a simple Arcana skill.
Climb, Jump, and Swim all use different muscle groups, but are not interesting enough to invest in, mechanically, as a player as an Athletics skill. To me, anyway.



But “2 thieves” is a bad example, because “both go unnoticed” *sounds* like a really dumb plan. And, in “talking past” people, Vahnavoi has explained exactly *why* that sounds like a dumb goal, because there’s ways to still succeed the actual mission. *However*, if you change the scenario, fill in some details correctly, it *could* be a reasonable goal.
He hasn't actually. He's blithely insisted that the minutiae of difference in degrees of failure are significant. And his statements are couched as fact and accompanied by insults toward the comprehension of anyone who diagrees...and then he just repeats why he believes the mechanical separation is valuable to him as if it should be to everyone.
Your own bias shows a little bit here (although you are much more polite than he is about it), because you say "fill in some details correctly", as if there were an incorrect way to do so. And the point made by those that favor merging the H/MS into Stealth is that they don't need/want/value those details. At least not on a mechanics level. Those same details can be filled in by player and DM after success/failure is achieved, and we don't need niggling details of every aspect to have mechanical voice when it could be more simple. This is why I am constantly insisting to him that this is a matter pf preference. No one is right or wrong, we just value different aspects in different ways. What IS wrong, objectively, is being rude or insulting towards those with different values. It's like having someone tell you that "1+2+3+4" is a better way to get 10 than "5+5", and insult your understanding if you don't agree with them.




You have to work really hard to make a scenario where I won’t just respond, “then those Rogues are idiots and deserve to fail” if either of them being perceived at all represents a “mission failure” Game State in D&D. And that work just hasn’t been done in that Example.

If the goal of that step of the overall plan is "don't alert the guards because they'll raise the alarm", then that doesn't reflect an "absence" of a larger, or subsequent goal. And it's frankly a mistake to assume that anything outside the microcosm being discussed "doesn't exist". It just wasn't relevant to the example to make the point being discussed, so it was left vague.

[Vahnavoi]

Are their options constrained by being seen vs being heard though?

Being seen means the enemy has both line-of-sight and line-of-effect on the thief. This typically forces open confrontation. A defense against this would be visual misdirection, such Disguise and Forgery: the thief's fallback for being seen is pretending to be someone who has business being there. Note that the efficacy of the disguise may depend on the thief not having made any unfitting noise.

Being heard but not seen means the enemy has line-of-effect but no line-of-sight - they cannot attack the thief directly, only their approximate square, and do not know the thief's visual identity. A defense against this would be aural or verbal misdirection, such as Bluff: the thief's fallback for being heard is pretending to be a harmless small animal. This obviously doesn't work if the guard can see the thief is not, in fact, a small animal.

Terrain also matters, especially quality and placement of cover and concealment. Relying on Hide and Move Silently to go through areas of partial cover or concealment has different pathfinding than relying on only Move Silently to go through areas relying on total cover or concealment. Two thieves can have different optimal paths to a target based on such considerations.

Skillpoint distribution means a guard does not necessarily have equal detection range for sight and hearing. This factors into the earlier paragraph. Total Cover + Move Silently may be able to take a thief closer to their target than Hide + Move Silently. On the other hand, a single Silence spell can flip this on its head, meaning a better Hider can now waltz past a guard while the worse Hider is still limited by cover.

Considering the number of spells that alter conditions for Hide versus Spot and Move Silently versus Listen, I could spend rest of the evening explaining strategies and counter strategies where the distinction between senses matters. The question at this point is mostly whether the given examples suffice.

Despite all of the above, I reiterate that it is possible to make a system with a single perception skill or ability that conserves all of this. Mostly, I just wonder: how exactly do you imagine it working? If a dungeon master is only rolling once for one skill, on what basis do they decide "this failed roll means a character has been unequivocally spotted and has to directly confront the spotter" versus "this failed roll means a character has only been heard and can still obfuscate their true nature"?

[Quertus]

Your own bias shows a little bit here (although you are much more polite than he is about it), because you say "fill in some details correctly", as if there were an incorrect way to do so. And the point made by those that favor merging the H/MS into Stealth is that they don't need/want/value those details. At least not on a mechanics level. Those same details can be filled in by player and DM after success/failure is achieved, and we don't need niggling details of every aspect to have mechanical voice when it could be more simple

I want to start here, because it's very clear to me that we've had a communication breakdown on this point. When I say, "fill in some details correctly", the details I'm talking about are the mission details: the spies trying to plant bugs / tap into surveillance systems in preparation for a future op, as opposed to thieves trying to steal the McGuffin. That's the details that need to be filled in correctly, and they need to be filled in correctly in order for "if either is perceived, the mission is a failure" to make sense.

So, with that said,


You say it's a "bad point", and then acknowledge that it's true.

I acknowledge that "either of 2 agents being perceived with any sense could result in mission failure" is something that can make sense in certain contexts. My concern is "2 D&D thieves" is a very bad context to try to use to make that true - to the point that I honestly almost missed the possibility for it to make sense, and initially was *only* going to post my agreement with every way that example didn't make sense. When I first read the example, my initial response was scarily close to what Vahnavoi said, as I initially viewed "2 thieves trying to steal something" to produce exactly the minigame Vahnavoi described. That those 2 thieves might, instead, be attempting to plant bugs or tap into a security system, or might otherwise actually fail if either is perceived, took thinking outside the D&D box.


And yes, even if there IS a different terminal goal "get by without being detected" is still a goal of a step along the way, right?

It can be a desire, but it isn't a necessity. It isn't "one of the two thieves was heard, therefore mission failure".

Also note that, in the case of 2 spies, if both are run by me, if you only catch one, the other that one will play information warfare and have a perfectly reasonable cover story (here to assassinate the leader, here to deflower her right-hand woman, whatever), along with the tools and clues to back up this "secret mission" (poison & syringe, flowers and date-rape drungs, whatever), and will have pre-planned ditching or obfuscating the tools for the actual mission. So "2 thieves", with me running them, means you likely have to catch both to stop the mission... and might not even realize what the mission is, even then.

And, as I pointed out in another post, "spotting" is different from "hearing", if I can "let the cat out of the bag" to make it seem like the sounds you heard were just some local wildlife that got in. Which, appropriate to this thread, is a reason not to just consolidate things into a single Perception roll, to allow for that nuance of preparing various recovery strategies for the op. Or, to parallel how people put it when MAGIC is involved, "5d Wizard Thief Chess". :smallamused:


And that's all the poster who brought it up was focusing on. It's not even my point. I prefer a more gamist methodology, and reducing Stealth to single checks. It gives me, the DM, more narrative leeway to express what succes or failure means in the fiction layer. It is my opinion that a system doesn't "need" perfect simulationist mechanics for every little thing. I neither need, nor is my game improved by, having extra mechanics designed only to simulate specific things.

"Not wanting to leave 'were we heard or spotted' to GM whim" sounds like another reason not to consolidate things into a single Perception roll, if anybody still cares about the thread's original premise.


He hasn't actually. He's blithely insisted that the minutiae of difference in degrees of failure are significant. And his statements are couched as fact and accompanied by insults toward the comprehension of anyone who diagrees...and then he just repeats why he believes the mechanical separation is valuable to him as if it should be to everyone.

For 2 Thieves whose true goal is "get the McGuffin", and who are smart enough to actually deal with situations as they come up as opposed to just folding like wet cardboard the first time they encounter a setback, I fully agree that the type of failure is significant, and impacts what measures can be taken to remedy the situation (see also "roll init to gank the guard", "let the cat out of the bag", "Book? What Book? I'm here to murder you.", and "Scroll Eternal Wand of Forget").

That's not saying one couldn't, in theory, create a scenario in which either of the thieves being perceived is actually game over, it was just... well... I'm sure you've said a good word for it... to assume that one of 2 thieves being perceived in any way is always automatically game over for the mission, without any further context.


Those same details can be filled in by player and DM after success/failure is achieved, and we don't need niggling details of every aspect to have mechanical voice when it could be more simple. This is why I am constantly insisting to him that this is a matter pf preference.

So, back to my biases. I enjoy good implementations of "information warfare" games. I word that oddly, because, for any given GM, I may well hate such games. Point is, were I playing a game where V was the GM, I could believe that they understand information warfare well enough to, y'know, say some reasonable stuff. But someone who doesn't grok that there is a potential - and a potentially huge - difference between "one of 2 infiltrators is perceived with a non-discriminating sense" and "both thieves are spotted"? I don't think I'd want to put that into their hands as a default stance.

But that's me.

But here's the thing: what's also me is having fallback plans, of "letting the cat out of the bag", of making the mission succeed even if one spy is captured through misdirection, etc.

What I can't imagine (anywhere except at Talakeal's table, actually...) is one of a pair of thieves being heard, and one or both players doing a table-flip that now the mission is a complete failure, and proceeding to complain about the system rather than the problem being with their plans (or lack thereof).

Does that make my level of lack of understanding of the "preference" you are attempting to describe more visceral, more obvious? Because, I'll freely admit, I just don't get why anyone would want the system to treat either of the thieves being perceived by any sense by any guard as resulting in automatic mission failure, unless they were just addicted to Drama and looking for an excuse to flip the table.


No one is right or wrong, we just value different aspects in different ways. What IS wrong, objectively, is being rude or insulting towards those with different values. It's like having someone tell you that "1+2+3+4" is a better way to get 10 than "5+5", and insult your understanding if you don't agree with them.

Although I agree at some level, I have to circle back to, "2 thieves, if either is perceived in any way it's automatic mission failure" is a bad example. One can have preferences for how they want to play the game, but... I'd say everyone needs to grok how that's a bad example for communication on this issue to be productive, and... until someone can to explain to me why anyone would want that to be true, I'll keep scratching my head at the notion of calling that a "preference".


If the goal of that step of the overall plan is "don't alert the guards because they'll raise the alarm", then that doesn't reflect an "absence" of a larger, or subsequent goal. And it's frankly a mistake to assume that anything outside the microcosm being discussed "doesn't exist". It just wasn't relevant to the example to make the point being discussed, so it was left vague.

As was pointed out, killing the guard who perceived the thief before they can raise the alarm also prevents the "because they'll raise the alarm" clause. The scenario would have to be very carefully constructed in a way it currently isn't in order for these objections not to make sense.

[Darg]

This is not true for the given example and is even less true about common game situations. See my point about player strategy to lesser_minion.

In many actual game scenarios, players have options for strategies where only some or only one person remaining undetected is sufficient to achieve a victory condition. Leaving these outside discussion is a fallacy of omission and gives an imperfect idea of how good stealth tactics actually are. It also commits fallacy of equivocation, since being seen and being heard have different ramifications under 3.x rules.

It isn't how I run my games nor is the whole party usually running in close to sneak around, but the thought experiment remains especially for low level sneaking. It's just untenable to roll for every action taken. One PC would be making me do as many or more rolls sneaking around just one NPC as a group combat would require. Hence taking 10 makes the most sense in nearly every situation characters aren't actively taking actions. It gives the sneaky rogue the sneakiness they crave, doesn't hamstring the party for not investing in the skill, and saves my wrists.

[Vahnavoi]

@Redmage125:

No, the payoff matrix changes, both in terms of odds and possible results, if you drop Move Silently versus Listen. Neither you nor the original argument get the odds right, so let me calculate them for you:

Individual checks, only Perception, 95% success rate per check:

Both are perceived: 0.25% chance.
One is perceived, another is not: 9.5% chance
Neither is perceived: 90.25% chance

Individual checks, Hide and Move Silently, 95% success rate per check:

Both are seen: 0.25% chance.
One is seen, another is heard but not seen: 0.475%
One is seen, another is neither seen nor heard: 9.025%
Neither is seen, both are heard: 0.225625%
Neither is seen, one is heard: 8.5735%
Neither is seen nor heard: 81.450625%

In the first model, total chance of success varies between 90.25% and 99.75% depending on how good the two thieves are at stopping the alarm when one of them is not perceived.

In the second model, total chance of success varies between 81.450625% and 99.299375%, depending on how good the two thieves are at stopping the alarm when one of them is neither seen nor heard.

Why such a small difference at the high end? Because in the second model only "one is seen, another is heard but not seen" and "neither is seen, both are heard" are less recoverable than "one is perceived, another is not". In neither model, can the exact chance of success be calculated without knowing more of the thieves' capabilities. You can claim all those other details are irrelevant, that doesn't make the argument better: in any actual game, those details are present, so dismissing them gives an imperfect picture of how good the thieves really are. As for the low end, the undetected character in the first model has the same capacity to take action to stop the alarm as an unseen and unheard character in the second.

In conclusion: if thieves in both models are utterly inept at preventing disaster when one of them is noticed, the model with one Perception skill improves their odds by 8.799375% points. If undetected thieves in both models have capacity to stop a guard from triggering an alarm, the model with one Perception skill improves their odds by 0.450625% points.

Neither of these improvements is better than just giving additional +1 modifier to Hide and Move Silently. That would increase the chance of success for the thieves to 100%. You know what is enough to grant that? Staying 10 feet further away from the guard. Any kind of diversion to distract the guard can give them effective +5. In practice, a character this close to always beating an enemy's Take 10, can probably get pretty close to always beating them even if they roll. Don't believe me? Dex 14 + 5 ranks in Hide and Move Silently + Skill focus in both + distract the guard + stay at least 40 feet away from the guard. Effective skill check modifier: +19 for both skills. Minimum roll result 1+19=20. Ties are broken in favor of higher modifier. A guard with +0 modifiers will neither see nor hear this thief unless the thief deliberately comes closer. Find any combination of sources to give the thief +4 worth of modifiers more, and the thief can nearly go and hug the guard's leg without being noticed.

---

@Darg:

Not wanting to roll for every action taken is fine. But combining skills is utterly unnecessary for purposes of avoiding rolls. If you are using Take 10 rules liberally, you will not be rolling for Hide and Move Silently versus Spot and Listen any more than you would roll for Stealth versus Perception.

[Crake]

Your numbers aren't wrong, but why would you want to roll so many times? Every action is another 2 rolls. For just one creature to move 60 ft that's 8 rolls. For the whole party that turns into 32-48 rolls. Honestly, not a very tenable situation when even failures only on a 20:1 have a high chance of failing when you're rolling so many times per attempt. The spotter only needs to succeed once after all while the sneaker(s) needs to succeed every last one.

Passive spot/listen are made once per round, so if the party has 3 people trying to sneak, they roll for their respective actions vs one roll of each observer’s spot/listen. They dont roll against each individual player, the players are rolling against the spot/listen that they scored

[vasilidor]

I don't like keeping them as separate skills, don't care for it in the slightest.
But I shall attempt to steel man an argument for it.
with them as different skills, you can raise tension in the game when a guard hears or notices something and goes to investigate, potentially not sure of what they noticed. having the guard go from alert to actively checking the area and then having the sneaking person describe how they try to evade detection then. The guard has caught a glimpse or heard a thing that they are unsure of what they are seeing. if unable to locate the source of the sound they may just go back to their post thinking that what ever it was is long gone or that it was a figment of their imagination. This is probably easier to do with the skills being separate things.

[lesser_minion]

To go back to the original thread premise:

When it comes to stealth skills, a merge isn't needed to alleviate skill bloat, doesn't address some sort of flaw with the game's maths, and doesn't fix group stealth. The fact that trying to hide isn't the same thing as trying to be quiet (and that trying to do both at once is clearly harder than trying to do just one) is more than enough reason to keep the skills separate.

As for spot, listen, and search, it's true that combining them doesn't prevent you from handling different senses, but the resulting skill is boring and too obvious a choice.

[Ozreth]

To go back to the original thread premise:

When it comes to stealth skills, a merge isn't needed to alleviate skill bloat, doesn't address some sort of flaw with the game's maths, and doesn't fix group stealth. The fact that trying to hide isn't the same thing as trying to be quiet (and that trying to do both at once is clearly harder than trying to do just one) is more than enough reason to keep the skills separate.

As for spot, listen, and search, it's true that combining them doesn't prevent you from handling different senses, but the resulting skill is boring and too obvious a choice.

At this point in the thread this is basically where I'm at and sticking with it. Nice summary haha.

[Darg]

Passive spot/listen are made once per round, so if the party has 3 people trying to sneak, they roll for their respective actions vs one roll of each observer’s spot/listen. They dont roll against each individual player, the players are rolling against the spot/listen that they scored

There is no rule that you make reactive checks only once per round. You roll spot and listen every time you have a chance to spot or hear something. Which can and does happen multiple times a round.

[rel]

Benefits of keeping hide and move silently separate:
- stops a casting of invisibility trivalising stealth rolls
- lets you effectively model sneaking up behind someone
- makes the silence spell an effective buff to stealth
- keeps stealth, already quite strong, somewhat in check

Benefits of keeping spot, listen and search different
- let's you key spot and search off different stats
- breaks up 3 already very valuable skills to improve differentiation between PC's
- makes monsters with a particularly good sense more mechanically distinct
- allows the PC's an un-penalised check to avoid an ambush in the dark
- makes the blind / deafen conditions more distinct

[Mordaedil]

Spot and Listen make sense, Hide and Move Silently make sense, but the problem really does just lie in that classes aren't given enough skill points for them to make sense as separate skills. It's not just in terms of being competent across these specific skills in itself, but also how it cuts into learning other skills. Imagine if Spellcraft was divided in schools of magic or knowledge local was split into specific cities, nobody would ever legitimately invest in these skills because their use-case becomes so extremely specific.

I am therefore onboard with consolidating the skills into stealth and perception, keeping search on itself.

[Darg]

Spot and Listen make sense, Hide and Move Silently make sense, but the problem really does just lie in that classes aren't given enough skill points for them to make sense as separate skills. It's not just in terms of being competent across these specific skills in itself, but also how it cuts into learning other skills. Imagine if Spellcraft was divided in schools of magic or knowledge local was split into specific cities, nobody would ever legitimately invest in these skills because their use-case becomes so extremely specific.

I am therefore onboard with consolidating the skills into stealth and perception, keeping search on itself.

The game wasn't designed where characters would max out every skill. When you aren't in combat every character can do enough to get by as long as you aren't taking penalties. Those who do specialize get a benefit from it and that's ok. Though I do agree that martials get shafted twice.

[Ozreth]

The game wasn't designed where characters would max out every skill. When you aren't in combat every character can do enough to get by as long as you aren't taking penalties. Those who do specialize get a benefit from it and that's ok. Though I do agree that martials get shafted twice.

For sure, I agree with this. And in the context of the year 2000, this was still blowing the gates wide open compared to AD&D 2e and how characters could listen, hide etc. Tight archetypes are fine with me.