Ubertron_X wrote: Ok guys, having talked theory for quite some time now I simply want to do a sanity check by using a concrete example and asking for your opinions how the following scenario unfolds.
A) Party is out in the wilds (woods, so plenty of cover).
B) Party has noticed an enemy camp.
C) Enemy camp has look-outs of some sorts.
D) Party wants to determine the size and contents of the enemy camp by sneaking their way around in a respectable distance.
E) Party has access to the Quiet Allies feat.
** spoiler omitted **
If handling it as an attempt at a Stealth encounter, by-the-book would have been your Warpriest's roll being their initiative and determining everyone's Stealth status, and everyone else would roll their Stealth (modified as called for in Follow the Leader) to determine their initiative (and that's it).
However, the reconnaissance style of encounter could also have been handled with the Infiltration/Victory Point system in the GMG instead of as a Stealth encounter if the GM/author had those rules available when setting up the scenario since those are more suitable to many of the situations that people are avoiding combat while gathering information in.
thenobledrake wrote: Guntermench wrote: Huh. It's almost like it needs a skill check. No one said it didn't. The argument is whether it takes 2 skill checks or 1, with a sub-case of some disagreement about when the 1 check takes place.
But when someone says "I'm Avoiding Notice" and someone else says "I'm going to Follow the Expert on that" that does require a skill check - when the party encounters some other creatures, not right when they say what they are doing. Just like how you don't roll Perception the moment you say "I'll be keeping an eye out for hazards" but rather when a hazard is actually encountered.
Guntermench wrote: Except it doesn't apply to initiative rolls, and you use the initiative roll for determining awareness levels. Generally, Avoid Notice produces a single Stealth check that determines both your initiative and detection level. That isn't contradicted at all by Follow the Expert.
Specifically when using Quiet Allies, detection level for the entire party is determined by the roll of whoever has the lowest modifier on the check, but their initiative - since the feat makes exception to the above general rules - is determined by their Follow the Expert roll as it would have been without Quiet Allies involved.
Guntermench wrote: Why is it a bad thing if you can use it to potentially bypass encounters entirely? Two reasons: the first, and most important, is that mechanics which skip game-play are the opposite of game-play and thus don't fit into a game that is trying to have fun game-play. It creates a choice between A) attempt to not play the game, but still get the XP as if you had played the game, by solving an encounter with a single die roll, and B) actually play the game to get the XP, which is longer and has more opportunities to "fail.", but there are no consequences to choosing A because if you fail that approach you just get B rather than the defeat that failing B will get.
So it's made a single choice of approach inherently superior to other choices of
... It's still playing the game... The GMG encourages you to get players to describe what they're doing when avoiding notice and how they're leading their party. Besides, not everything can be skipped. But I don't think it breaks anything to have it as an option. Using the lowest bonus it's also unlikely to be consistently effective to have the whole group go around unless everyone is already stealthy.
As for the rest, the stealth roll is your initiative roll and it applies to both. But Quiet Allies doesn't apply to initiative rolls. So I don't see how it would apply to one part but not another, still resulting in multiple rolls by the way, and we're obviously going to continue to disagree so I'll just leave.
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Aw3som3-117 wrote: Quiet Allies wrote: You’re skilled at moving with a group. When you are Avoiding Notice and your allies Follow the Expert, you and those allies can roll a single Stealth check, using the lowest modifier, instead of rolling separately. This doesn’t apply for initiative rolls. @Ravingdork:
I agree with the standard avoid notice activity. It's said pretty clearly. But Quiet Allies goes out of its way to say otherwise. Unless there's some kind of alternative interpretation of what that last sentence means that I'm missing. I'm open to be proven wrong. Nope, you're quite right on that point. Seems I overlooked that last sentence prior to posting.
Guntermench wrote: Using the lowest bonus it's also unlikely to be consistently effective to have the whole group go around unless everyone is already stealthy. The math disagrees with you. Earlier in the thread I showed a party that is only 1 character expert in Stealth and the rest untrained so they were only adding +2 on their own relative to the +10 of their expert ally (boosted to +6 by Follow the Expert). The odds went from around 13% to 55%. 55% is pretty likely to be consistently effective.
Guntermench wrote: As for the rest, the stealth roll is your initiative roll and it applies to both. But Quiet Allies doesn't apply to initiative rolls. So I don't see how it would apply to one part but not another... It applies to one part but not the other because that is what is says it does. Explicitly. That's how rules elements work in this game; they do what they say they do, and nothing else.
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thenobledrake wrote: Guntermench wrote: Why is it a bad thing if you can use it to potentially bypass encounters entirely? Two reasons: the first, and most important, is that mechanics which skip game-play are the opposite of game-play and thus don't fit into a game that is trying to have fun game-play. It creates a choice between A) attempt to not play the game, but still get the XP as if you had played the game, by solving an encounter with a single die roll, and B) actually play the game to get the XP, which is longer and has more opportunities to "fail.", but there are no consequences to choosing A because if you fail that approach you just get B rather than the defeat that failing B will get.
So it's made a single choice of approach inherently superior to other choices of approach.
Going by your first reason, how could there possibly be heist movies where the heroes try to steal something undetected, when instead they could be action movie fighting their way through every possible guard?
And in fact, there is a consequence for failure at stealth that can be worse that just fighting all the way. If you fight all the way you'll have most enemies coming from the front. If you've sneaked past some enemies and then trigger an alert farther into enemy territory, you'll be surrounded.
thenobledrake wrote:
And the second: game balance. If Stealth can one-roll an encounter, but not everything else can, you've basically got the exact situation as the old "win button" spells that no non-caster can hope to match which the hobby in general has spent years deliberately moving away from - it's just "pick stealth, or you suck" instead of "pick a caster, or you suck."
You just make it sound so adversarial, as if the players were trying to pull one over the adventure or the GM. And with regards to game balance - the odds of stealth really aren't that good. Even with quiet allies the odds of a group of mixed nuts go from hopeless to maybe just about even. That's not a win button.
Ascalaphus wrote: thenobledrake wrote: Guntermench wrote: Why is it a bad thing if you can use it to potentially bypass encounters entirely? Two reasons: the first, and most important, is that mechanics which skip game-play are the opposite of game-play and thus don't fit into a game that is trying to have fun game-play. It creates a choice between A) attempt to not play the game, but still get the XP as if you had played the game, by solving an encounter with a single die roll, and B) actually play the game to get the XP, which is longer and has more opportunities to "fail.", but there are no consequences to choosing A because if you fail that approach you just get B rather than the defeat that failing B will get.
So it's made a single choice of approach inherently superior to other choices of approach.
Going by your first reason, how could there possibly be heist movies where the heroes try to steal something undetected, when instead they could be action movie fighting their way through every possible guard?
And in fact, there is a consequence for failure at stealth that can be worse that just fighting all the way. If you fight all the way you'll have most enemies coming from the front. If you've sneaked past some enemies and then trigger an alert farther into enemy territory, you'll be surrounded.
thenobledrake wrote:
And the second: game balance. If Stealth can one-roll an encounter, but not everything else can, you've basically got the exact situation as the old "win button" spells that no non-caster can hope to match which the hobby in general has spent years deliberately moving away from - it's just "pick stealth, or you suck" instead of "pick a caster, or you suck."
You just make it sound so adversarial, as if the players were trying to pull one over the adventure or the GM. And with regards to game balance - the odds of stealth really aren't that good. Even with quiet allies the odds of a group of mixed nuts go from hopeless to maybe just about even. That's... It is also something that just isn't always an option. Like, Age of Ashes has very few encounters you can bypass with stealth rolls. It does have bunch of encounters that be much easier with successful stealth rolls-- especially if you use that success as an opportunity to scout and plan rather than immediately roll initiative-- but usually you wind up needing to actually fight the boss even if you sneak past the minions.
Ascalaphus wrote: Going by your first reason, how could there possibly be heist movies where the heroes try to steal something undetected, when instead they could be action movie fighting their way through every possible guard? You're clearly not understanding what I mean when I say "Stealth encounter" and "skip the encounter."
Allow me to use your movie analog to illustrate:
A heist movie is stealth as an encounter; the characters probably do an infiltration/victory point style encounter first to case the joint and make their plan, then they get to the actual heist, roll Stealth for initiative (or Deception if they're using disguise rather than just not being seen, and take actions like Sneak, Hide, Step, Pick a Lock, and so forth... all while their opposition are also taking actions like Seek while on guard, or Stride because they are patroling or whatever. And then if it's like a lot heist movies I've seen, the next thing up is a Chase encounter as the thieves make their attempt at a speedy getaway.
But what a heist movie isn't is one singular Stealth check, and if it is successful the heist is completed successfully.
Ascalaphus wrote: And in fact, there is a consequence for failure at stealth that can be worse that just fighting all the way. Except that it can't because the worst consequence of a fight is defeat (which could mean death, capture, or so on). The fight being slightly harder as a result of failing the roll that would potentially have solved the entire encounter isn't a worse outcome.
Ascalaphus wrote: You just make it sound so adversarial, as if the players were trying to pull one over the adventure or the GM. That's very odd, because what I am talking about is the GM pulling a bad ruling out of their repertoire that takes what could be an entertaining encounter that differs from a standard combat encounter and turns it into "heads we skip it entirely; tails it's actually combat instead."
I'm sure there are some players that'd say they'd love it if they could just roll a thing they are good at, once, and if it is a high roll they defeat the challenge and get full XP... right up until you make the actually how the game works (i.e. you wanna fight? Roll an attack, if it's high you win, if it's low you die. You wanna talk the NPC into something? Roll Diplomacy, if it's high you win, if it's low they'll never speak to you again.) at which point they'll likely say "wow, that's a bit bland" and want to spice it up with a little more granularity, variance, and points upon which to engage... which PF2 presents in the rule book already in the form of all those wonderful Actions that would basically barely ever see use if encounters were being one-roll skipped instead of played out turn by turn.
Ascalaphus wrote: And with regards to game balance - the odds of stealth really aren't that good. Even with quiet allies the odds of a group of mixed nuts go from hopeless to maybe just about even. That's not a win button. The exact odds depend upon a variety of factors. I picked an easy to consider common example that fit at the earliest level of play possible. I would not at all be surprised if looking at higher-level examples, or opposition with a lower Perception rating for their level, or both, produced much higher than the 55% chance of my example.
And beyond that, yes, I think it is absolutely fair to call coin-toss or better odds of singular-choice equalling full success against an encounter a "win button" since that's better odds than any other option in the game seems to get.
An infiltration is a good kind of Stealth encounter. The kind of “encounter” where you just roll Stealth multiple times to get past a single enemy or small group is not a fun playing experience. Avoid Notice lets the party sneak past the minions with a single check. There is no need for the monotony and terrible odds of Sneaking in encounter mode. That is why we have an exploration mode in the first place.
GM OfAnything wrote: An infiltration is a good kind of Stealth encounter. The kind of “encounter” where you just roll Stealth multiple times to get past a single enemy or small group is not a fun playing experience. Avoid Notice lets the party sneak past the minions with a single check. There is no need for the monotony and terrible odds of Sneaking in encounter mode. That is why we have an exploration mode in the first place. That's like saying 'The kind of "encounter" where you just roll attacks multiple times to get past a single enemy or small group is not a fun playing experience."
It's not wrong. It's just also not actually relevant because nothing except the GM making the encounter boring on purpose is guaranteed to make an encounter boring; whether it's spicing up a combat encounter with the various actions baked into the game, using the environment to create advantages/disadvantages, adding a variety of creatures or hazards so there's more than just "it does the same thing again" on the table... or spicing up a stealth encounter with the same things.
And the odds of successfully sneaking past a group of enemies while playing out Stealth as an encounter are higher than the odds of the entire party sneaking past on a single roll, because a stealth encounter doesn't fail as a result of any 1 roll made not being high enough, thus the effect of multiple rolls is to push the result more toward the average which will be successful unless you're outmatched by the opponents - plus the various actions you can take during an encounter that don't get to apply if you use a one-roll resolution can mitigate even rolling dice in the first place.
Last, but not least, maybe it's because I just don't put any "filler" encounters into my play time in the first place, but I don't see a situation where "sneak past the minions" doesn't mean in the middle of the same encounter with the not-minion(s). If you're GMing and you've got encounters set up like "here's some minions there's no point in fighting" and then a separate "and here's their boss" I don't understand why you don't just not have that first encounter there at all; even if you're doing it to pad XP totals you could just say "you get XP for getting into the boss's chamber" and have it be the same amount of XP you were going to give if the players chose to waste time fighting those minions you don't think are worth fighting, or snuck past those minions you don't think are worth actually playing out sneaking past.
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