Topic: stalking&hiding vs perception…

[GMLovlie]

Right… so I have been doing this in a certain way since I got the pdf version of the rulebook a few years back and started my gaming group at college…

But reading up on the skills recently (in both HARP SF and HARP Fantasy) I suddenly realised that I might not have done it the right way, but I wonder how it should be done. I see that stalking and hiding are all-or-nothing manoeuvres, while perception is a percentage manoeuvre…

I should state that I have not searched the books thoroughly (enough) to find an answer, but I was wondering how you guys do it, and if I'm not doing it by-the-book so to speak, how should it be done RAW (which I have not located yet)…

So I have always opposed perception and stalking/hiding through the RR column on the manoeuvre table… I found no other way of doing it "way back when" (as stated above this might be the way it should be done, but I don't know for sure).

So if some of my players are sneaking by some guards, they roll a stalking manoeuvre and generate a RR number for the guards "reactionary perception" roll to beat… and if someone is ambushing my players, same procedure. Arguably if the guard is actively looking for someone sneaking in (because he has a good reason for suspecting it, he might receive a +20 bonus) and might also be the guy to generate the RR the stalker should beat…

So here is my conundrum … who should generate the RR (who should be consider the active and passive actor so to speak)? How is the percentage mechanic of perception working with this? how would the stalking all-or-nothing work in accordance with a RR generated perception roll (which is a percentage based skill)?

I feel I have forgotten or overlooked something … please help … 

[Cory Magel]

Player rolls his Stalk/Hide maneuver, foe rolls his perception, high score wins (depending on your game you might need to tinker with numbers a bit so it's a 'fair' roll-off based on skill and contributing factors).  Vary the reaction by how much the one doing the hiding loses by.  I'm not a huge fan of the all or nothing stalk... but depending on the number of foes who could potentially be perceiving it it can save a lot of time/trouble.  One of those realism vs playability situations.

This is also why I think it's a good idea to randomly have players roll perception for no reason.

[RandalThor]

There is the active approach, mentioned by both you and CM where each side rolls and you either check the RR table or you go with the highest wins approach. I like, for many situations like Guard B standing guard at his post the same as he has done for many, many, many nights now, to have a static modifier for the PCs sneak attempt, using the Percentage column. That makes it faster to deal with. You can interpret the results how you like: under 100 = they fail, or they don't get as far, or they make a sound and now the guard gets to roll their perception (perhaps with a bonus depending upon how poorly the PC did), numerous possibilities. If the get a high number the extra could be added as a bonus for the next thing they try (whatever that happens to be).

I like this because I don't like a lot of extra rolls, and I like to be able to interpret the results sometimes to adjust the results to the situation. (A highly dramatic situation would entail a different  effect than a silly-fun situation would.)