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Author Topic: Sneaks and sneak gear.  (Read 9288 times)

Emomina

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Re: Sneaks and sneak gear.
« Reply #50 on: June 20, 2009, 11:57:52 AM »
Alright, so I have been playing a sneak now for nearly a month and I now have more of an opinion to share.  I have a 5th level rogue that is as good at sneaking as I could make her up to now. She +19 Hide/+19 Move Silently.  PvP sneaking looks balanced to me, a lot of times I get used to using stealth mode as my "walk", and find myself having to deactivate it so that people can see her. Sure, she gets seen by some, but I assume these are the characters with more than a minimal listen or spot check.  To be honest, she sneaks past more than I thought she would be able to by now based on this thread, which I had based my expectations on.

What I want is more of an understanding of is how the PvM sneaking is set up mechanically. The lesser undeads can never see her, and at this point I beginning to think that zombies might even have a negative modifier.  I have started a chart to keep up with my success rate sneaking by keeping a notepad with success and failure rate.  I looked up the spot and listen modifiers for many of the monsters in the module and wrote them on my chart. After seeing terribly skewed results, I asked someone else that I knew had a sneaky character and that is when I found out that PvM is set up to pass an opposed "Take 20" roll.  I have to say that monsters getting auto 20 is really really unbalanced from my view.  For example, my character has yet to sneak past rats/wererats/dire rats without them detecting her presence. Even though the dire rats represent the biggest modifier with a +5 listen/spot, and my character has a +19/+19, she never gets past them.  I have issue with this mainly because it is against the percentages. My character has +15 advantage on the rats, that is set up in DnD to translate to a 75% success rate.  The rats/wererats/dire rats are a big deal because I can not stalk any PC though the streets of Vallaki at night or the sewers because the rats give my position away. Even if my mark will never see me. Hopefully someone will post in this thread explaining why the decision was made to give the monsters a "take 20". I will be able to grin and bear it with a better understanding of the rationale.
I survived the Blue Water Inn Massacre and all I got was this t-shirt.

Minstrel

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Re: Sneaks and sneak gear.
« Reply #51 on: June 20, 2009, 12:39:10 PM »
I sure as helll find the take 20 odd, since take 20 is repeated tries of doing something over a long period of time, not a quick action.

Unless your character is literally sitting in the corner of a room in a shadow during a lengthy meeting, a take 20 shouldn't happen.

Also has the ridiculous effect of enemies either noticing you, or not, as oppose to getting half way past them then being spotted.

NWN stealth sucks...

failed.bard

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Re: Sneaks and sneak gear.
« Reply #52 on: June 20, 2009, 11:11:30 PM »
  It's not a take 20, and mechanics wise, you actually don't have a +15 sneaking past the rats in you example, you have a +5 only.  You get a -5 to your MS for moving, and they get a +5 to their listen if they aren't moving.  Then modifiers to both hide and move silent for the area you're in are added.
  I would imagine the sewers have a bonus to hide based on the general darkness in it, and a penalty to MS.  Enclosed stone areas echo, it would make sense.
  You also have to beat the spot/listen check of every creature that's in detection range.

kenpen

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Re: Sneaks and sneak gear.
« Reply #53 on: June 20, 2009, 11:36:34 PM »
I'd think echoing would actually make determining where someone is much harder. And, in Dvergeheim and below where everything is falling and shaking all the time, creatures based solely on hearing should be at a disadvatage.

But, yeah, back to sneak gear...

I have determined that it's just not bloody dropping. Anywhere. Ever. Shadowed hoods, soft leather boots, lesser and normal mantles of the forest walker... they're all you can expect from any loot drops, anywhere.

Spot gear is also pretty low. I found a Hector's Bangle today, after not seeing one in many months, and didn't even recognize it. Thought it was a sparkling band for a moment.

In demonologists, the monks there have a higher percentage of having some monk gear on them (almost all of them have something... most is vendor trash, white gis, holy virgin robes, garbs of mankind... but at least once on every max spawn run we get a pair of "better" gloves like iron hands, or green dragons, and once in a blue moon we even rolled a red gi off one of the monks). Maybe the same should be true for some of the heavy hitting sneaks in various places. Assassins and such in the Forest Fane are pretty tough. Maybe some random chances for loot drops for them w/ some sneak gear. Maybe chances of sneak and spot/search gears for the lookouts. You'd need to scale it to make sure they weren't always dropping something, but once in a while would make sense. There are also some sneak and weaponmaster types in the bandit house in Demeuntlieu, so that would make sense there too.

Emomina

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Re: Sneaks and sneak gear.
« Reply #54 on: June 21, 2009, 12:49:49 AM »
Thanks failed bard, that really helps understanding the mechanics. I have, since posting the post above, successfully sneaked past a greater and a couple of strong wererats so, I think its working fine. I have found distance to be a determining factor big time, as would make sense, if i keep some distance, like walk across the street from them, then I have found success more often than not. I was aware of having to pass 6 opposed rolls if there was 6 monsters and that is vanilla and totally realistic and balanced :sugoi:  Live and learn, I am gonna be an expert on it eventually, I never gave a rogue a chance and I am so happy i finally did. :)
About sneak gear, I have exactly what you listed so I won't hold my breath of finding better gear  :o As long as both detect and sneak gear are equally scarce then that is fine.  But if you ever find anything, I will give anything for it :twisted:
I survived the Blue Water Inn Massacre and all I got was this t-shirt.