I had a thought today while deliriously bicycling in the heat. There are a number of times when, in my experience, groups avoid tropes because the skill system doesn't encourage avenues of play that are..less direct.
Concrete example, a party with a fighter or cleric or other armored character will often (IME) avoid stealth-based resolutions to problems because there's realistically no chance that all of the characters can pull it off and common logic is that splitting a 4-man party is tantamount to suicide.
But what if your skilled character could make a single check for the entire group? What would be the ramifications in play of something like (and this is probably the simplest workable version) a rogue making a stealth check at -2 for each additional untrained person and letting that count as the group's roll?
That's basically what happens now when the bard steps up and charms the pants off the princess, or the wizard teleports the party across the world. Heck, it's basically what happens when the rogue climbs a wall and drops a knotted rope down so that Anemic Wizard can climb or be pulled up safely.
You could do the same thing for perception rolls too, to cut down on the 'Jack, roll perception'...and then having every pounce over to where Jack was standing so they get a chance to roll too. One check for the group. Less metagaming maybe :)
Does it sound workable?
Zilvar2k11 wrote: I had a thought today while deliriously bicycling in the heat. There are a number of times when, in my experience, groups avoid tropes because the skill system doesn't encourage avenues of play that are..less direct.
Concrete example, a party with a fighter or cleric or other armored character will often (IME) avoid stealth-based resolutions to problems because there's realistically no chance that all of the characters can pull it off and common logic is that splitting a 4-man party is tantamount to suicide.
But what if your skilled character could make a single check for the entire group? What would be the ramifications in play of something like (and this is probably the simplest workable version) a rogue making a stealth check at -2 for each additional untrained person and letting that count as the group's roll?
That's basically what happens now when the bard steps up and charms the pants off the princess, or the wizard teleports the party across the world. Heck, it's basically what happens when the rogue climbs a wall and drops a knotted rope down so that Anemic Wizard can climb or be pulled up safely.
You could do the same thing for perception rolls too, to cut down on the 'Jack, roll perception'...and then having every pounce over to where Jack was standing so they get a chance to roll too. One check for the group. Less metagaming maybe :)
Does it sound workable?
Some ideas:
You may could do something with Aid Another. Possibly, assume within a certain radius that AA is automatic because your group is assumed to cooperate. Clumping risks traps, etc. so they'll want to spread out some--but it definitely helps encourage working together and may prevent the "everyone pounce" metagame. If they pounce, the AA goes away and they're suddenly making their own rolls.
The "automatic AA" could help your less skilled PCs as well--a +4 is a nice bonus to any roll.
Another could be "the expert lead." Have an "expert" in an area grant less skillful PCs a bonus to their rolls due to their presence.
Also, Stealth Synergy.
Stompy Rex wrote:
Some ideas:
You may could do something with Aid Another. Possibly, assume within a certain radius that AA is automatic because your group is assumed to cooperate. Clumping risks traps, etc. so they'll want to spread out some--but it definitely helps encourage working together and may prevent the "everyone pounce" metagame. If they pounce, the AA goes away and they're suddenly making their own rolls.
The "automatic AA" could help your less skilled PCs as well--a +4 is a nice bonus to any roll.
Another could be "the expert lead." Have an "expert" in an area grant less skillful PCs a...
Depending on the target numbers and situations, everyone making separate rolls is better for the metagame, especially with a commonly trained skill like perception (2 rolls with similar modifiers have twice the chance of reaching the target, for example) I think that would just change the metagame, and I'm thinking that assuming AA within a set radius is similar to the group roll idea I was suggesting, except that it requires people roll (or be good enough to make the 10 target). I was trying to streamline a little bit.
Dunno what Stealth Synergy is. That's not ringing a bell.
I think this is close to the expert leads idea, but just consolidates down to the expert rolls instead.
Part of the thought process is to increase options by allowing a single, skilled, roll to stand for the party, but also to reduce metagame thinking by forcing a single, skilled, roll to stand for the party in the cases where that would be appropriate.
I do think that my simple version is probably too simple, but I was more interested in conveying the idea for input without proposing a lot of excessive calculation to bog the idea down. :)
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I just looked up Stealth Synergy. Honestly, I'm dumbfounded. Your answer to 'groups avoid tropes because the skill system doesn't encourage avenues of play that are..less direct.' is a lame teamwork feat?
I'm sorry, but in my experience teamwork feats are a waste of ink. They've never seen the light of play because the cost doesn't justify the benefits.
Has your experience been sufficiently different that you could imagine players abandoning personal advancement feats so that they could pick up Stealth Synergy and any other hypothetical similar feats for other skills that could benefit (climb, acrobatics, survival, swim come to mind).
Zilvar2k11 wrote: I just looked up Stealth Synergy. Honestly, I'm dumbfounded. Your answer to 'groups avoid tropes because the skill system doesn't encourage avenues of play that are..less direct.' is a lame teamwork feat?
I'm sorry, but in my experience teamwork feats are a waste of ink. They've never seen the light of play because the cost doesn't justify the benefits.
Has your experience been sufficiently different that you could imagine players abandoning personal advancement feats so that they could pick up Stealth Synergy and any other hypothetical similar feats for other skills that could benefit (climb, acrobatics, survival, swim come to mind).
Stealth synergy is actually pretty good all things considering. In a four person party where everyone has stealth synergy you're essentially getting to roll your stealth four times and take the highest result. That's quite powerful for a feat. You might be falling into the unfortunately common misconception that teamwork feats are not worth bothering with just because they are teamwork feats. There are actually quite a few gems there if you take a good look.
If in the unlikely scenario that absolutely no one can afford to spare one feat, have someone in the party with the Tactician ability take it and grant it to their allies.
As for the other skills, climb, acrobatics and swim are incredibly easy to bypass with magic while survival usually only requires one person to have. Tracking and food providing (assuming you even have to keep track of food) can often be taken care of with just one person. Use Aid Another if you have to, you don't even need to be trained so you might as well.
Jack of Dust wrote: Stealth synergy is actually pretty good all things considering. In a four person party where everyone has stealth synergy you're essentially getting to roll your stealth four times and take the highest result. That's quite powerful for a feat. You might be falling into the unfortunately common misconception that teamwork feats are not worth bothering with just because they are teamwork feats. There are actually quite a few gems there if you take a good look. From the first post, having 4 people roll and take the highest result is one of the things I'd actually like to avoid.
I'd also scoff at your notion of 'quite powerful', but that would be the power gamer in me holding it up against feats that are actually consistent game changers (some metamagic, power attack, etc). Extremely situational feats are always going to weigh poorly against that.
Jack of Dust wrote: If in the unlikely scenario that absolutely no one can afford to spare one feat, have someone in the party with the Tactician ability take it and grant it to their allies. How many classes grant that ability at a level that's low enough for skills to be an important focus of the game (given your point below)?
Jack of Dust wrote: As for the other skills, climb, acrobatics and swim are incredibly easy to bypass with magic while survival usually only requires one person to have. Tracking and food providing (assuming you even have to keep track of food) can often be taken care of with just one person. Use Aid Another if you have to, you don't even need to be trained so you might as well. With the general disdain expressed for skills on these boards, I do admit to being a little bit dismayed at how quickly a harebrained proposal to extend the useful timeline and application of skills (and limit me-too-metagaming) is dismissed as useless-because-of-magic.
As for survival, my experience has been that through level 3 or so, a single person with survival is insufficient to provide for the party plus mounts + companions. Also, survival is already written to support or encourage group-focused usage, with set DC's and effects that expand based on how much you exceed the DC by. In that sense, it's already an excellent prototype for the sort of game mechanic I proposed.
Zilvar2k11 wrote: I'd also scoff at your notion of 'quite powerful', but that would be the power gamer in me holding it up against feats that are actually consistent game changers (some metamagic, power attack, etc). Extremely situational feats are always going to weigh poorly against that. Unless you often find yourself being unable to see your allies while stealthing (which you shouldn't unless your allies are trying to hide from you for some odd reason), "extremely situational" is using quite a bit of hyperbole. In any case this option requires too many rolls for your needs so I suppose the point is likely moot.
Zilvar2k11 wrote: How many classes grant that ability at a level that's low enough for skills to be an important focus of the game (given your point below)? Quite a few if you count archetypes actually. Warpriest (Divine Commander), Slayer (Vanguard), Fighter (Drill Sergeant) and Paladin (Holy Tactician) all grant Tactician at no later than 3rd Level.
Zilvar2k11 wrote: With the general disdain expressed for skills on these boards, I do admit to being a little bit dismayed at how quickly a harebrained proposal to extend the useful timeline and application of skills (and limit me-too-metagaming) is dismissed as useless-because-of-magic.
As for survival, my experience has been that through level 3 or so, a single person with survival is insufficient to provide for the party...
To be clear, I have no disdain for the skill system. The sad fact is that unless you make your setting Low Magic, magic can and will trump skills. My only suggestion to help amend that is to possibly make skill unlocks more powerful and accessible at lower levels, let them be gained at certain intervals for free and either make the setting low magic, or use an alternate third party magic system (I hear Spheres of Power is pretty good.)
Edit: I also remembered something from 5th Edition D&D that may be helpful. Every character has a "Passive Perception" value. Basically from my understanding of it is this value is used instead of rolling perception whenever a character is not actively looking for something, eg, when you walk into a room and have no reason to believe the room is trapped. The value in Pathfinder terms would probably be 10 + your perception modifiers + situational modifiers (eg, Trapfinding)
In my opinion Stealth Synergy isn't very good. You're probably better off with Skill Focus (Stealth) in most cases, and expecting everybody to make a feat commitment to Stealth when the problem is that they won't even invest skill ranks in it seems like an odd assumption.
Anyhow, while helping your friends move more quietly sounds nice it could be tough to explain how you made the guy in full plate or the woolly mammoth really sneaky. There's also a bit of "something for nothing" which some DMs might not appreciate (players either if stealthy bad guys start sneaking Fire Giants into your camp)
A mundane option which often gets overlooked is simply having the noisy folks follow the stealthy ones from a good distance back. Being 60 or 100 feet back is around the same as having a +6 or +10 on Stealth. The problem is that when this method is suggested the less stealthy party members tend to become offended and insist on being right up front (basically acting like you said they're not good enough at Stealth, which technically they're not...)
Devilkiller wrote: In my opinion Stealth Synergy isn't very good. You're probably better off with Skill Focus (Stealth) in most cases, and expecting everybody to make a feat commitment to Stealth when the problem is that they won't even invest skill ranks in it seems like an odd assumption. How many skill points do you expect a level 3 armored cleric to be able to devote to stealth? Or fighter? Or any other low skill class for whom stealth isn't a class skill?
I agree with you. Asking players to take a mediocre (IMO) feat at the levels when they're grabbing the 'essential' and 'easily reached' feats for whatever build or vision they hope to play is a hard sell.
Devilkiller wrote: Anyhow, while helping your friends move more quietly sounds nice it could be tough to explain how you made the guy in full plate or the woolly mammoth really sneaky. There's also a bit of "something for nothing" which some DMs might not appreciate (players either if stealthy bad guys start sneaking Fire Giants into your camp) Sooo...because skills are mundane, they shouldn't be allowed to do cool things? Nobody bats an eyelash at a group of ogre magi ambushing a sleeping party, but the sneaky guide showing his (less skillful) group the hidden path around the sentries so they can launch a surprise attack just really isn't doable without, apparently, quite a bit of investment all around.
Devilkiller wrote: A mundane option which often gets overlooked is simply having the noisy folks follow the stealthy ones from a good distance back. Typically only works outside or in wide open areas. Effective, until you flub the stealth roll and are dead before the party gets to respond, because splitting the party sucks. :) (Seriously, you've never had this happen? Some variation of it happens Every Single Time to groups I'm in.)
We use a couple of different options:
The Hush feat (stolen from another system altogether) allows the Rogue to cover a group of up to 5 other NPCs (the usual party size), taking the worst possible Armor Check and other penalties to his rolls. So for the investment of a feat, the Rogue rolls Stealth for the whole group, taking the -6 penalty for the Fighter's heavy armour and negative Dex mod.
Group checks - the entire group rolls Stealth. If the majority of them beat the monster's Perception, it's surprised. It encourages some PCs to invest in Stealth.
Aid another checks - everybody rolls Stealth to support the main Rogue. Those who succeed add nothing to the check, but gain the ability to use one main Stealth roll instead of their own Stealth. Those who fail actively hamper the Rogue, providing a -2 for each failed Aid.
Reverse wrote:
Aid another checks - everybody rolls Stealth to support the main Rogue. Those who succeed add nothing to the check, but gain the ability to use one main Stealth roll instead of their own Stealth. Those who fail actively hamper the Rogue, providing a -2 for each failed Aid.
I was thinking something similar, but wanted to reduce rolling overall. I figured to take the worst penalty and apply it, then add +2 for everyone else who was trained in stealth. Simple and hopefully quick.
Then I got to looking at the survival skill and though, oh, yeah...assess a penalty of -1 for each additional person because it makes sense.
It wouldn't, necessarily, be easy for a stealth focused character to get a bunch of people past a guard station (like you've probably seen in any number of action and fantasy movies/books), but it would be doable unlike now.
Are you thinking that the stealthy character puts the others in a crate and smuggles them in or just whispers "caster martial disparity" over and over as they clank by and amazingly nobody hears them? I mean, does this represent somehow using your Stealth skill to help other PCs be stealthy too, or is it purely a game balance concept to make the Stealth skill more rewarding and easier to use?
If it were going to be the former I'd expect that giving your party members a bonus (possibly even a big one) on their Stealth checks might feel more reasonable than just making the Stealth check for them using your modifier. That way if you're trying to sneak in an unskilled woolly mammoth in full plate barding it would still be harder than if you're trying to sneak around with a couple of average humans in studded leather.
Devilkiller wrote: Are you thinking that the stealthy character puts the others in a crate and smuggles them in or just whispers "caster martial disparity" over and over as they clank by and amazingly nobody hears them? I mean, does this represent somehow using your Stealth skill to help other PCs be stealthy too, or is it purely a game balance concept to make the Stealth skill more rewarding and easier to use?
If it were going to be the former I'd expect that giving your party members a bonus (possibly even a big one) on their Stealth checks might feel more reasonable than just making the Stealth check for them using your modifier. That way if you're trying to sneak in an unskilled woolly mammoth in full plate barding it would still be harder than if you're trying to sneak around with a couple of average humans in studded leather.
Honestly I don't care how he does it. Rolling carts, whispered advice, or brilliant deduction on guard lines of sight, or any other theatrical trope you can dream up. What matters is that you can't ever have a scene where the skilled rogue gets everyone through a tight spot. The scale of whatever bonus he could provide is unlikely to make a lick of difference to anything more capable than a blind, sleeping octogenarian.
That's a system failing that I think à rule like this one could address
There was a great scene in the 13th Warrior movie. They had to sneak through the cave lair of the Wendol, to kill their leader and their "mother" (spiritual leader), to break them.
The one sneaky guy takes the point, while the rest start dropping off all their extra armor. One guy sees "mister armor" not taking off his breastplate, and he says "you'll have to kiss me first! haha".
They move along, the sneaky guy showing the path, and giving hand signals on when to stop and stay down to keep hidden from enemies moving around (using his Stealth check over the whole group).
However, at one point, the guy with the breastplate scraps against some rocks with it, and they all stop when one enemy looks up for a moment. Mister Armor gives a bit of an ashamed look, but the enemy wasn't really on guard for anything and goes back.
This sounds like, to me, like the Sneaky Guy rolls a stealth check (maybe at a -4 "non proficiency penalty for directing others) minus any armor check penalties. The rest of the group uses that roll and applies their amor check penalty.
Slap on a feat that lets the sneaky guy do this without a penalty, and maybe even add a reroll or something (so the feat isn't piddly).
Good idea!
Kaisoku wrote: There was a great scene in the 13th Warrior movie. They had to sneak through the cave lair of the Wendol, to kill their leader and their "mother" (spiritual leader), to break them.
The one sneaky guy takes the point, while the rest start dropping off all their extra armor. One guy sees "mister armor" not taking off his breastplate, and he says "you'll have to kiss me first! haha".
They move along, the sneaky guy showing the path, and giving hand signals on when to stop and stay down to keep hidden from enemies moving around (using his Stealth check over the whole group).
However, at one point, the guy with the breastplate scraps against some rocks with it, and they all stop when one enemy looks up for a moment. Mister Armor gives a bit of an ashamed look, but the enemy wasn't really on guard for anything and goes back.
This sounds like, to me, like the Sneaky Guy rolls a stealth check (maybe at a -4 "non proficiency penalty for directing others) minus any armor check penalties. The rest of the group uses that roll and applies their amor check penalty.
Slap on a feat that lets the sneaky guy do this without a penalty, and maybe even add a reroll or something (so the feat isn't piddly).
Good idea!
Yeah..exactly. This is exactly the sort of thing you see in media (that may or may not be inspiring for you and your players) that I want a rule like this to emulate.
I didn't have a specific movie scene in mind, but that's exactly what I want people to visualize.
Stopping the 'me-too' gaming is just a happy side effect.
If you were interested, it's the first minute of this clip from the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkdbxIBtYI
Well, this is one of the place where 4e is much better. There's rarely more than a ten point spread between the highest and lowest skills. In Pathfinder it's very easy to get more than 20 points spread, so any DC you choose is either an auto-fail or auto-success.
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The idea of one person rolling at a penalty means that nobody else needs to give much of a damn. That's pretty excluding in my view.
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When it's something where a group is working together I often use something I call the group check. I also use it for things like climbing with everybody roped together, or social situations that the group has planned for.
For this I compare the average of the PC's rolls to the DC. That way it involves more than just the highest or lowest person. If a roll fails the DC by 10, then they are in jeopardy. Somebody else has to make a roll with a penalty equal to how much they missed by to cover them.
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Having played with it, stealth synergy is overkill in a party built around stealth. But it is a feat tax if you expect non-stealth people to use it.
Philo Pharynx wrote: The idea of one person rolling at a penalty means that nobody else needs to give much of a damn. That's pretty excluding in my view.
That's an interesting outlook. In my experience, people feel excluded when there's nothing that they can do to contribute, and/or when the decisions that they have made are marginalized or of limited value.
With the simple rule I proposed, everyone would get to contribute by simply spending a single skill point (a much less expensive investment than a feat and teamwork++). The primary actor gets to do fantastic things for the group he's acting for, and if the tools exist, and are effective, the automatic reliance on 'let the wizard do it' or 'I have a scroll for that' might wane as well (again, teamwork++).
Philo Pharynx wrote: When it's something where a group is working together I often use something I call the group check. I also use it for things like climbing with everybody roped together, or social situations that the group has planned for.
For this I compare the average of the PC's rolls to the DC. That way it involves more than just the highest or lowest person. If a roll fails the DC by 10, then they are in jeopardy. Somebody else has to make a roll with a penalty equal to how much they missed by to cover them.
Average? That's sounds harsh. On the surface, it seems like it would encourage classes with a shortage of skill points to spend them in ways that they might otherwise not to keep the averages from plummeting. The system doesn't reward diluting your resources in any other fashion, so it feels kinda counter intuitive to me.
At level 6, the difference might not be that big, but at level 12 or 15, I'd be looking for ways to not have to ever take part in your group check if I hadn't invested in the skill at all (something a low-skill-point class is likely to face). Ultimately that's contrary to what I'd want to achieve.
Since you continue to use it, I'm going to assume you haven't actually seen that in play. Can you provide a few anecdotes (level, class, situation) where it's come into play at the table, and how have your players responded in regards to spending skill points?
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