House rules for Stealth?, Replacing a Open Test w/ Success Test Options

[The_Dood]

Does anybody know of any house rules that change Stealth to a Success based test rather than an open test?

[James McMurray]

The only thing I could think to use would be an opposed test. But that would require you to write down all of the dice rolls when you went stealthy.

My problem with stealth isn't that its an open test. my problem is that a single skill covers so much. What's funny is that stealth covers disguises, but by the RAW you can't specialize in disguising yourself.

[DrJest]

Whoa, whoa, stealth covers disguise? ((yanks up his current NSRCG character)) I got Disguise listed separately here...

[mfb]

i believe Disguise is a seperate skill, or at least listed as a specialization, as of SOTA:63,

i prefer the idea of a success contest. set a base TN of 4 for both parties; the perciever rolls his standard Perception die against this TN, plus any modifiers from the Perception Test table. the sneaker would roll his stealth against base TN 4, but would take mods from a currently-non-existant Stealth Test table, with mods like Lots of Cover (-4), Noise-Absorbent Surface (-2), Open Area (+2), etcetera.

[DrJest]

[Jebu]

Yes, Disguise is a separate skill introduced in SOTA:63, page 104. And true, the description of Stealth skill in SR3 main book says it covers disguises and camouflage. I've always thought Stealth covers too many things, so I happily adapted the Disguise skill and removed that part from Stealth. I'd also like to see the thieving side of Stealth moved to a separate skill, but no sourcebook this far has done it.

[James McMurray]

Ah. I guess that's what happens when you don't buy all of the supplements. You end up with rules that are correct but odd.

[Zeel De Mort]

Last time this was covered here.

As I outlined in the above thread, our basic house rule is to roll Stealth against tn 4, and add the number of successes to a base tn of 4 for opponents to Perceive you, applying any relevant modifiers for camo, visibility, obviousness, etc.

I find it works pretty well, and gives more reliable and reasonably consistant results than the open test, which I don't like. There's still room for variation though as you can easily come up with a bad roll even if you are throwing 10 dice at tn 4. Plus it makes an aptitude in Stealth much more meaningful!

[RedmondLarry]

Using an open test has a lot more variability in the results than most of the alternate suggestions. Players don't want that variability. They want to know whether they're likely to be successful before they start. They want to design characters that will almost always succeed at something.

The use of Karma Pool for rerolls for Open Tests (1 Karma pool only lets you reroll 1 die) keeps that variability present.

I play it the way the books describe it, because I want to keep that variability of results.

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Zeel De Mort]

Some variability is good, and it's good if people don't know exactly how well they're going to do before they roll, but I think the open test goes far to far in that direction. It's too much down to chance whether you get one really high result or not. Having a much higher skill helps a great deal, but not enough, and it's still too random for my liking.

I prefer the success test total vs regular perception test thing, it's reasonably accurate, easy, and not prone to wild variation like open tests are.

An opposed test would be okay, but it could get to the point where someone with a not-too-ridiculous Stealth skill would be literally impossible to spot under some circumstances. It's much easier to roll a lot of dice on Stealth than it is on Perception.

[Zeel De Mort]

Grinder:

That's a fair point. Our characters never really roll SO badly as to get no successes, but if that was an issue, or if you thought it should be balanced more that way, you could make the base tn 2. That way, even after some small modifiers, an Int 3 character should be able to spot you most times you fail the test completely.

Even against tn 4 they usually will, and if there are a lot of modifiers pushing their Perception tn up, well, then there's a chance they wouldn't see you even if you were just strolling past them (e.g. if you're behind some bushes, in smoke, it's noisy, whatever), so I think that's fair enough.

[Brazila]

Right now my group stilll is using open tests. I came up with an alt. method, but we have not implemented it yet. Just do a stealth(4) test and note successes. Then have the other person roll INT (with the awareness spec of stealth as complem.) Their TN is base of four then take anything that would normally modify perception, lighting, cover, camo etc. total them and add a 1/3 of that to the TN. Then compare the # of successes. We chose to add mods to the oppenents TN instead of lowering sneakers to keep it from being cheesed. We rolled this out under a variety of scenarios and it seemed really good. Just one crazy GMS idea....

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Fortune]

I've always substituted opposed tests for Stealth (and pretty much everything else that uses Open tests). Open Tests suck!

[Zeel De Mort]

Well, someone with a Stealth skill of 4 is "skilled" at it according to SR3. They're not great, but they're likely to do fine with the skill under normal conditions. I'd say it represents someone who's fairly well trained, maybe some kind of military recon guy. Nothing too hardcore, but someone who knows what they're doing.

If you're skilled at Stealth, and have some modifiers (e.g. it's quite dark or you're camouflaged appropriately and taking cover) I'd imagine you are quite likely to succeed, so long as your opponent isn't actively looking in your direction, doesn't have a suspicion you're there, you're not doing anything obvious, etc.

As long as you apply the modifiers sensibly I think it can work quite well. Or, at least, better than the open test. :D

[mfb]

grinder, that'd be sloppy GM'ing if those were the modifiers every time. inside a corporate office building, for instance, the most i'd give for cover is -2 TN; the sneaker would also take mods for Indoors (+2, for the echoing and still air), Quiet Area (if after hours, +2), etcetera.

[Eyeless Blond]

Or here's another. Roll Stealth vs TN 4, with appropriate TN modifiers for open ground (+2), noise-absorbing (-1) or -reflecting surfaces (+1), etc. Basically the opposite of mfb's TN mods, as things that help you be stealthy should reduce the TN and things that hinder you should increase the TN. Each success increases the TN on the Perception Test to spot you by 1. Stealth(Awareness) in this instance would work as a standard Complimentary Skill to your Perception test, giving additional successes but only if you already have at least one success on the Perception roll.

I think that's fair, as even with skill level 3 it increases the TN to spot you by ~+2, which is fairly significant. Stick to the shadows and the TN to spot you will be ~10-12, which is pretty tough, particularly as the Awareness specialization only helps you resolve objects you've already spotted. The problem with an Opposed Test is that it's inconvenient to have to write down every single die roll, particularly if you've got an adept rolling 12 or more dice. It's pretty easy though to just note that the adept has a +4 or +6 to the TN to spot him.

(Edit): And the main problem with having successes on the Stealth test cancel successes on the Perception test is that you're typically going to have adepts throwing 8 or more dice at a stealth test, and security guards throwing only 4-6 at Perception. At that rate it'd be practically impossible for them to hit the necessary 4+ successes to cancel he adept's successes. It's the Force 1 Improved Invisability with 7 successes problem all over again, but even worse because the stealth TN and the perceiver's TN are the same.

[mfb]

personally, i'd just write down the number of successes the sneaker achieves. these successes are subtracted from the perciever's successes on a normal perception test (4 + modifiers). basically, it'd work like a melee roll: if the sneaker wins, he's not detected; if the perciever wins, the degree to which he detects the sneaker is adjudicated according to how many net successes he got (1 succ = ?, 2 succs = !, 3 succs = !!).

[Brazila]

I think someone with a stealth of 8 should get past most security guards, but I guess that is just my opinion on it. I see 8 as a pretty kick ass skill rating myself!

[mfb]

indeed.

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Eyeless Blond]

[Eyeless Blond]

[Edward]

That’s a bitch. I haven’t red SOTA 63 and my GM never told me about the separate disguise skill. Some of my character concepts REQUIER that skill I would have taken it if I had known.

I hate when that happens.

Edward