Topic: Stalk & Hide vs. Pereption roll & casters using Presence

[Dalewarrior]

Hi everyone,
How do you handle Stalk/Hide vs. Perception in your games. Further how do you solve this problem when the sneaker is facing Presence spells from the target.


The way I solve Stalk (Move Silently) and Hiding, and Ambush is the following,

(i) The character has to Stalk or Hide successfully; a 111+ is a success; below that it is a failure.
(ii) If the Thief was successful, the target is allowed a Perception roll at -75 to avoid surprise. Successful Camouflage actions add more penalties to the target's Perception roll. If the character failed the 
Perception roll, he'll have no QU DB and lose one round of action due to being surprised; and the Thief's Ambush skill ranks shall be added as he likes to the Critical roll.
(iii) If the target's Perception roll was successful, roll on the RR Table (Skill bonus/10 in Stalk/Hide v. Skill bonus/10 in Perception). If  the target's Perception check was not successful, the target is
still allowed a Detect Ambush/Assassin also at -75, but if failed (110 or minus) this ill give him only an uneasy feeling.
(iv) If the sneaker is successful in the Ambush, his skill ranks in Ambush are added to the critical roll; and the target has no QU DB; and the sneaker attacks at +20 OB; plus +50 OB if from the rear of the
target.

If the target had a Presence spell of 10'R active, then, if the caster detected the place (10'R) where the sneaker was, then the target wouldn't be surprised if he rolled a Perception -50; and thus would 
have his DB active, if he made the Perception check. Then, he could parry or attack with a -90 OB Modifier with Initiative at -15.
If the Presence spell had a 50'R, then the target would not be surprised with a success Perception check of +25 if the Thief was walking or -50 if he was running; he could have time to attack with a -75
OB for a broadsword and a -55 for a pole arm, waving his weapons wildly in front of the sneaker.
If the sneaker was under the cover of an Invisible spell, and suffered a detect invisible, the penalty to attack him if not surprised per rules above, would be -50 OB as read in the spell descriptions.

Regards,
António

[Dalewarrior]

(i) Stalk/Hide roll;
(ii) Perception roll to avoid Surprise;
(iii) If not surprised, the target still has to make a RR vs. Stalk/Hide / 10 as the attack level vs. Perception / 10 as the target level.

[Witchking20k]

I use the MM table to set a TN using the terrain as the difficulty.  So, a  result of 121 on Medium Stalk roll sets a TN of 100 for Perception.  You could also round to the nearest increment of 10 on the Stalk roll to set the TN.  So, a Stalk roll of 92 would be a TN 90 for Perception.   For Perception (being a static maneuver) you might want to add a near success TN of -20 which adds +10 to the next roll.  So, a TN 90 Stalk would have a near success of 70-89 or something.  Perception & Stalk/Hide are really important and should eb geared towards your game IMO.

[Dalewarrior]

Thanks, Witch-king!

[Majyk]

Straight skill vs skill roll.

(General)Perception/Awareness vs Stalk/Hide

Or S.A.A.(Sense Ambush/Assassin)/Perception @-30 vs Ambush.

This allows lower level skill development to have a chance at performing on both sides of the fence(for both Perceivers and Stealth-types).

That, and less time looking up table results.

Before this, we used to allow a Perception roll at a negative % chance from the results of the first skill roll.
So a result of 70% MM table for Stealth check meant Perception @+30.  85% = +15, etc.
Either way worked out for our group, allowing low level skill development to at least have a chance at detection or evasion vs outright failure until able to reach 111+.

[Malleable]

Straight skill roll:
Sense Ambush vs Stalk&Hide unless they are detector is on guard duty (so actively trying to sense people) and then its the higher of Observation/Sense Ambush vs Stalk&Hide.

And if someone if someone has a Presence spell up then they can't be surprised.  They do have to concentrate for this.  I guess if you have someone charging in at them with invisibility and silence on them they could get an initiative modifier, but I wouldn't say they are surprised.

Mal

[Dalewarrior]

Thanks, Majyk and Malleable!