gustavo iglesias wrote: Nicos wrote:
"DM fiat" is another of those blurry therms. Saying that a guard is disctacted is just pefectly reasonable and withing the job of the DM, and certainly not against RAW.
note that (i think) in this thread i have not stated that you can use stealth in the meiddle of a fight to get right behind the BBEG
Never said it's against RAW or it is not the DM. Maybe I'm hitting the language barrier (not english speaker), but for me, "DM fiat" means that it's something the DM has to set, as opposite to player actions. For example, as a PC, I *can* decide if I use Power Attack or not. As a PC, I *Can't* decide the guard is distracted or not. So the *Player* has no choice about trying to stealth past a guard, it's completelly in the DM territory. The player could decide to make a feint, or try a disarm, or try a trip, do a ranged attack, try to jump, or try to stealth behind cover. All those are player empowered actions, it's the player who decide to do it or not.
Sneaking past a guard in a corridor is not a player option. It's enterelly a DM option. The DM can say "the Guards in the corridor seems distracted, arguing each other about the dinner". So you could try a stealth check. If the DM does not say the Guards are distracted, you CAN'T even TRY to stealth, unless you have cover or concealment.
Jeremiziah wrote: I don't think there's anything wrong with that, nor do I think it's GM fiat. I think it's just playing the game, and I'm certain it's well in-line with the developers' intent. Of course it's playing the game. GM fiat ARE part of the game. A great part of it, indeed. It's just not a part of the game the PC can control.
About the developer's intent, they are redoing the stealth rules. So this makes two things clear: the current rules work exactly as they read (ie: wonky), and the developers aren't happy about it, so they're making new rules. I think that nt taking into account the DM ruling about the scene is not the way to go. I do not think stealth is broken, i think that there are DM that break that skill.
If it does not work as is, then it is broken. Remember that is not just the RAW interpretation, but the RAI interpretation, that the devs don't like. That is why I said before, if it was just a misunderstanding we would have just gotten an FAQ and/or errata instead of a potential rules rewrite.
Yeah a GM can fix it, but a GM can fix any rule for his game, but the fact that he has too....
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So in summary:
Stealth does not work (unless you have a GM).
Grimmy wrote: So in summary:
Stealth does not work (unless you have a GM).
[/thread.]
I removed a post. Flag it and move on, please.
Grimmy wrote: So in summary:
Stealth does not work (unless you have a GM).
It works(using the term very loosely), if you don't plan to use it in the middle of combat. It just does not work to allow you to emulate heroes from movies and books that are very good at it*. That is why we(most of the posters and even the devs it seems) don't care for it. Once you start to use the houserule that both of us like you are basically not using the book version though, which is basically saying the book version is not that great. Without a strict rule players will want to argue when the GM rules that they are "distracted." Of course listing every way to distract someone is not feasible, but a ruling that says if you can move from point A to point B before your turn ends......takes care of that, to an extent.
Another idea is to try to think of other ways to determine if someone is distracted that can be applied evenly(to PC's and NPC's), other than by bluff.
*That is what a lot of us want.
The other problem with the distracted idea is that it already exists as a penalty to Perception, but that seems to be in a different context.
Distraction in the stealth case seems to be something specific, not just fighting someone else for example. But the Perception modifier case, I'd certainly apply it for someone in a fight if I was, for example, checking to see if they heard someone coming down the hall.
There are no facing rules because people don't stare in one direction for 6 whole seconds, people look around. The best way to describe one's ability to notice the things around them: perception check. Isn't that the same skill you make your players roll to keep watch when they're guarding camp? Low perception means you weren't looking where you should have been. It falls back in the whole abstraction with characters sitting in their own 5x5 squares because they aren't, they move between the squares to attack and dodge and parry and the 5ft step represents some of that partial movement. This is abstraction 101.
Ragnarok Aeon wrote: There are no facing rules because people don't stare in one direction for 6 whole seconds, people look around. The best way to describe one's ability to notice the things around them: perception check. Isn't that the same skill you make your players roll to keep watch when they're guarding camp? Low perception means you weren't looking where you should have been. It falls back in the whole abstraction with characters sitting in their own 5x5 squares because they aren't, they move between the squares to attack and dodge and parry and the 5ft step represents some of that partial movement. This is abstraction 101. Except that it doesn't apply. Unless you have huge penalties to perception you don't need to roll, because you'll notice people nearby automatically.
Without cover/concealment/bluff/etc stealth can't be used, so perception checks will be trivial.
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