Stuart Lean |
Depending on your DM, there are also rule changes/modules for stealth missions and quietly taking out people unnoticed in Cityscape and a few other publications (think Complete Scoundrel also touches on it as a theme). Basically it makes everything die/disabled if successfully sneak attacked or attacked from stealth completely unnoticed.
It was designed to streamline the game and allow for a movie-style silent infiltration of a fort or enemy base by turning it into a workable, yet still challenging long encounter full of tension, rather than simple staffing your fortress with the equivalent of lvl 1 warriors so they all die from one hit and have no hope in hell of spotting you anyway.
Ran a adventure a few years back where half the party had to sneak on board a warship in port and plant barrels of gunpowder in strategic places to blow it up. Went off without a hitch... till that 1 got rolled on the Stealth roll to silently lower a guard who spotted them trying to escape and got slotted by the bow Ranger in the rigging to the water and ended up with him tumbling over the rail and making a huge splash which alerted the Bosun who rang the ships bell and then all hell broke loose... fun!
Its that, or work a house rule with your DM (gonna get bitten for that one...) that allows you to do so. It should be open to anyone, and is a perfect example of using Stealth repeatedly.