Who watches the watchmen?

[a shrouded figure]

As the watcher, do I get a message too saying that my bluff failed?


I think this should be expanded upon...

Spot vs Hide - Omg a sneaker!

Bluff vs Spot - Whew he didn’t see that I saw him.

Spot vs Perform - Oh! That’s not a sneaker at all? That’s just an old man walking slowly

Concentration vs Bluff - Wait... what was I doing again?

Spot vs Hide - Omg a sneaker!

... repeat until the machines have won.


Generally letting people who are sneaking know they’re no longer hidden feels cheesy. I know that most games operate that way, but you’re gaining enough advantages from being stealthed that I think the risk was reasonable.

[Valawyn]

All these people claiming Stealth is over powered when everyone and their mother has an Eyes of Savras amulet, True Seeing Scroll, Pseudodragon familiar or thirty seven casts of True Seeing. Which, while "nerfed" still guarantees a successful spot for X number of seconds.

You still instantly nullify my entire build with a single cast, and you claim stealth is OP? Get real. All you have to do to have complete and utter privacy is go into a square room with a closed door and no interior walls, cast a few invisibility charges from a wand, pop a charge from Eyes of Savras and you're set. No Divination focus needed. No lore needed. No skill needed.

Yeah. So over powered.

[Frailman]

I appreciate the effort, but I really have no idea what anyone could have been thinking when they made this change. It's absolutely ludicrous. You just gutted detection, which was already at a disadvantage through the virtue of the fact that gearing equally against stealth requires wisdom to be your primary stat (detracting from your ab and ac except in very niche monk zen archer builds) by requiring a two for one skill investment.

The argument that it makes sense is complete nonsense- it carries as much weight as me saying we should see forges and workstations people carry in their pocket advertised, so rogues can know who to best pick pocket for rare materials, it doesn't make sense that they can hide that from rogues, right?

Doesn't sound too unreasonable.

You have effectively forced every spotter who has a primary wisdom stat to try to squeeze a useable bluff (...charisma, so niche multiclassed clerics only) score into their build to not be instantly ganked.

Numerically, you have required a three to two skill exchange and TWO primary attributes on a spotter, versus a stealther who can stack everything on DeX

Stealther would require a Dex/Hide/Ms and Wisdom/Spot investment to beat your bluff/perform/disc/whateveritturnsouttobe
Seems like 2vs2 to me.

I hope you're prepared for the deluge of reports about spotters getting one lined, because when you make it this easy, it's guaranteed to happen.

Flush out the one-line-gankers, sounds good

[Inf]

Hello, Inf again. Small update for you: this change is no longer live.

It was reverted a few hours after it was deployed because of a bug it introduced to line of sight. I should have noticed it, but I didn't due to the small size of the module I test in. A big thank you to Spyre and everyone else involved in catching that and rolling it back.

Because of said bug, if this change is to ever be applied again it can't work with the Listen skill. This is because I was using NWNX events that happen when a PC rolls Listen or Spot to make it work. Oddly the Listen one had the side effect of greatly expanding the distance at which you can see obscured characters (behind walls, stuff like that). There could be another way to handle it but I'm not aware of it right now.

That said I'm going to try to address a few more concerns.

Why is this being done?
It was an approved suggestion; that's it, really. I wanted to understand stealth more intimately. I do care a great deal about whatever I do being done well though. That's why I'm writing here at all.

PvP/Skill balance
I don't have an opinion on this. Whether or not I implement something is based on if it was approved. My hope is that these considerations were weighed before that happened.

Loss of agency, again
Maybe it would help if I explain some technical details here.

Your character is always listening and watching. What I mean by that is regardless of whether or not you are in detect mode? Your PC is attempting to notice other players. Detect mode just makes this happen more often. So if you feel like that takes agency away from you? Sadly I can't give it back to you. Because you never had it.

As far as the Bluff roll goes? I'm not sure why a player can't just inform those nearby that they noticed them if they want to. To me, the Bluff roll gives you the chance to hide your intentions if you're capable of doing so.

I agree that it allows you to fail at hiding your reaction to seeing someone. I don't think that's godmoding, though. Not anymore than failing a stealth check is godmoding. It would be a new check that didn't exist before though.

Why can't I notice that my noticing was noticed?
That's... A good point, actually. I'm not sure where that ends. The way I imagined it was it's one thing to look in all directions at all times (which you are doing with Spot whether you want to be or not) but it's another thing to do that in a "casual" manner. Without drawing the attention of the person shadowing you.

With the above out of the way? If I do work on this again it would have to only work with Spot. Unless someone more apt takes a stab at it.

[TimeAdept]

Inf, you can already hide your intentions without the Bluff skill. That's the loss of agency being talked about here. We didn't have the choice to not see someone as a player, but we had the choice to not see them as a character. This mechanic informs the hider whether or not the spotter did, and removes that abilty to do so by "canonizing" it into the mechanical record. It doesn't matter if it was a 3 AM meeting and my blurry eyed coffee fueled 8 hour meeting bender meant I didn't actually see someone OOC (or even care), the spotter "knows" that I saw them and can immediately act. This sort of thing isn't good for spies and it's not good for business as usual either. While the *game* may always have our characters on high alert every time we simply want to walk, our characters may very much not be doing so, at our discretion to creative an immersive world and a cooperative narrative beyond what a diceroll does.

The agency used to be in the hands of the detector on whether or not to act on the information - now the agency is in the hands of the hider. This is an important distinction because these two sides have very different goals:

The goal of the hider is to not get caught, at all costs, since being caught ends whatever they are doing, either through PVP (that they start or otherwise), or through escape. It puts an aggressive and tense onus on the hider to react to the information IMMEDIATELY to preserve themselves. They are by default the "Aggressor" in the hide/spot dichotomy and their goals and reactions by necessity are formed off of this base. Reacting to this immediately states into record that yes, he saw me, yes I know, and yes I am reacting, and now we are doing something about it.

The goal of the detector is to do business at usual. They are the "Defender" in the situation, and when the agency is in their hands, they can react, rather than act. They can choose to act as if they had not seen the person, either in truth (the player is choosing to cooperatively further a narrative) or in falsehood. (the character is choosing to not react at that moment... for IC reasons.) The character can also choose to immediately react, which puts the situation at the above, in largely the same situation - a hider is going to immediately know through IC cues if they've been spotted, a PC will move, a spell will get cast, and the situation will be at the same point - only even in these situations, things tend to be a little less aggressive, because we're reacting, not acting. Acting is "aggressive", reacting is "Defensive".

I won't touch on the whole "adding an extra skill to the spot/hide stealth game" since that doesn't seem to be the crux of your argument here (though I really do think it bears worth considering - both for this and for future changes.)

The system is a well crafted system and succeeds at what it is setting out to create - I just disagree that this is a system conducive to effective narratives and the creation of ongoing stories. I respectfully disagree that it requires bluff to obscure the fact that I noticed someone, as someone who IRL has this skill and uses it on a daily basis, and suggests that I am not an expert of... well, anything, in any way shape or form.

(PS: Thanks for being johnny on the spot with pulling the update to fix it.)

[TheRagingGoblin]

All these people claiming Stealth is over powered when everyone and their mother has an Eyes of Savras amulet, True Seeing Scroll, Pseudodragon familiar or thirty seven casts of True Seeing. Which, while "nerfed" still guarantees a successful spot for X number of seconds.

You still instantly nullify my entire build with a single cast, and you claim stealth is OP? Get real. All you have to do to have complete and utter privacy is go into a square room with a closed door and no interior walls, cast a few invisibility charges from a wand, pop a charge from Eyes of Savras and you're set. No Divination focus needed. No lore needed. No skill needed.

Yeah. So over powered.

You forget to mention that unless there's a reason to suspect someone is hiding nearby that those items are not being used, therefore a sneak is undetected when people aren't on the active lookout.

Also, not everyone is a wizard/sorcerer with access to a familiar and the pseudodragon isn't the most common familiar, which is the only item in the list that offers 'passive' detection.

During combat each of the items take a full round to use and have a gold cost of X (not something that is insignificant). With player skill, hips being on a short cooldown and corner sneaking (aided by blinding speed) a sneak is able to maintain the initiative in keeping their opponent flat footed. Unless you see a target standing still spamming true seeing scrolls (and taking no other action) as overpowered.