Arguments IN FAVOR of keeping hide/move silently and spot/listen/search separate?

[Quertus]

More to the point....if the GOAL is "sneak past the guards undetected without the alarm being raised", then 5 of his 6 scenarios are just failures. Group check or not.

It's a simple, binary yes/no. That's his point.

I completely agree with Vahnavoi that it’s a bad point.. “My goal is to Mindrape on a global scale; having to convince individual people is a failure” or “my goal is to kill him in one shot; using HP and damage is a failure” aren’t even proper parallels.

“The goal of having neither person be perceived fails of either person is perceived” is tautologically true, no denying it. But usually, the goal for a pair of thieves is more like “get the goods” (or “kill the target” for a pair of assassins). However, there absolutely are scenarios where “have 2-3 people be undetected” is the name of the game - a noble and their bodyguard, a prisoner and the person breaking them out, a parent and child, in addition to just “2 thieves”.

But “2 thieves” is a bad example, because “both go unnoticed” *sounds* like a really dumb plan. And, in “talking past” people, Vahnavoi has explained exactly *why* that sounds like a dumb goal, because there’s ways to still succeed the actual mission. *However*, if you change the scenario, fill in some details correctly, it *could* be a reasonable goal. Like, in a modern context, if those “thieves” were spies planting bugs or hacking into surveillance systems, especially in preparation for the actual op which isn’t to take place right away? Then it can make perfect sense that “anyone spotting anyone” will result in a fail state. I absolutely see the point… in a different context, in a different scenario. (EDIT: and, even then, if only one spy is detected, they could conceivably make it look like they were doing something else (like robbing the place or assassinating someone), meaning maybe the other spy can still accomplish the goal with the target none the wiser.)

But in D&D? This is a pair of *Rogues*. Even if they’re not willing to kill or even subdue the guard (eminently reasonable suggestions for things Rogues are highly skilled at doing) to keep the alarm from being raised, because they… are just forwards scouts for an invading army someone has somehow failed to notice (?), I guess (?), then they can just hit said guard with spells to remove his memories of having spotted them. Because D&D has *multiple* spells for just that purpose.

You have to work really hard to make a scenario where I won’t just respond, “then those Rogues are idiots and deserve to fail” if either of them being perceived at all represents a “mission failure” Game State in D&D. And that work just hasn’t been done in that Example.

[GloatingSwine]

But in D&D? This is a pair of *Rogues*. Even if they’re not willing to kill or even subdue the guard (eminently reasonable suggestions for things Rogues are highly skilled at doing) to keep the alarm from being raised, because they… are just forwards scouts for an invading army someone has somehow failed to notice (?), I guess (?), then they can just hit said guard with spells to remove his memories of having spotted them. Because D&D has *multiple* spells for just that purpose.

You have to work really hard to make a scenario where I won’t just respond, “then those Rogues are idiots and deserve to fail” if either of them being perceived at all represents a “mission failure” Game State in D&D. And that work just hasn’t been done in that Example.

Are their options constrained by being seen vs being heard though?

[Quertus]

Are their options constrained by being seen vs being heard though?

Options constrained? Absolutely! One fallback plan does not fit all. “Heard but not seen”, I can literally “let the cat out of the bag”, and thereby blame the “intrusion” on a false alarm caused by local wildlife *if* I can otherwise avoid detection. Spotted? Um… “these aren’t the Druids you’re looking for” hand wave?

[Elkad]

ideally it should be not just spot and listen, vs hide and move silent, but all the senses (including some non-standard ones like mindsight), each with their own roll.

Of course you add a bunch of (often-needless) complexity to the game then.

Invisible dude around? Check spot, listen, scent (at a big penalty if you don't have the Scent ability), touch ( Tremorsense could be called hypertouch), mindsight (with telepathy), life detection, etc...

Many of those you wouldn't even be able to roll on, just like a blind guy can't roll Spot.
Conversely, things like Mindsight might not be 100% detection until you get Mind Blank to counter, if you had some counterskill called "calm thoughts" you could put points in.

[NichG]

ideally it should be not just spot and listen, vs hide and move silent, but all the senses (including some non-standard ones like mindsight), each with their own roll.

Of course you add a bunch of (often-needless) complexity to the game then.

Invisible dude around? Check spot, listen, scent (at a big penalty if you don't have the Scent ability), touch ( Tremorsense could be called hypertouch), mindsight (with telepathy), life detection, etc...

Many of those you wouldn't even be able to roll on, just like a blind guy can't roll Spot.
Conversely, things like Mindsight might not be 100% detection until you get Mind Blank to counter, if you had some counterskill called "calm thoughts" you could put points in.

You could just make everything passive vs passive by default, and the difference in modifiers basically says 'how close can you get before you have to roll this modality'. It's still a lot of complexity to look up three or four things per spotter/sneaker. Or you could run things where someone who wants to actively detect has to pick a particular modality to focus on each round.

[AMFV]

One argument in favor is niche protection. If you have to have two skills to be able to perceive enemies then all characters won't be just good at that. In 5e, almost everybody who can takes Perception as a background skill. So most characters are good at noticing enemies. In 3.5, especially with cross class skills a lot of times it's not worth it to do that on a character that doesn't have the skills or the points. So you get a system where a person who is specialized in those things is rarer and more rewarded for that. It's one of the things I disliked about Pathfinder's skill thing, by making all the skills cost the same you basically deal a pretty big blow to the classes who are specialized in those things.

[RedMage125]

I've pointed out, repeatedly, that when one of the thieves goes undetected, they can take action to prevent the alarm from being raised. That is obviously relevant. By dismissing that, you double down on a basic error in the example.

Pursuant to the point, the distinction of "one of them passed, one failed" isn't different if the skills are merged or not. If one thief remained undetected, it doesn't matter if he succeeded on a "Stealth" roll, or both a "Hide" and a "Move Silently". The same options are available.

The test-taking analogy continues to be false and pointless; it does not even include correct odds for passing. The chance for total failure is not 1-in-5. If you want to talk about game rules, talk about game rules. All of the relevant parts are available, for free, on the internet for quick checking. If you want to argue the thieves have poor odds, calculate the odds properly.

If the guards raise an alarm if they detect ANYTHING, then yes, the test analogy is relevant to what the other poster was saying. So if detecting them through hearing or sight results in alarm, and that's the metric for success/failure, then you're arguing that a 79% is better than a 15%, and he was saying they're both failures.

Your continued insistence that these things result in meaningful results isn't always an absolute, and you're (again) moving goalposts by insisting that it's some kind of "universal truth" that it is.

Get your own fallacies corrected before you come at anyone else. I'm expressing an opinion and have a preference for a streamlined, gamist perspective, and I can cop to it. You're insisting that your simulationism preference is somehow based in fact, that these minutiae are absolute for everyone, and that anyone who doesn't care about them is somehow deficient in their understanding of your point.

Get this through your head: I understand your points, but I don't care about the increased simulationist "benefits". Furthermore, the way you bull through a conversation, disregarding what others say to repeat your own proselytizing is dismissive and off-putting. And your insults to others is blatantly rude.

I don't think I can be any more clear.

Another thing is that splitting the rolls only produces a uniquely interesting outcome vs. combining them if the nature of failure meaningfully changes what the players can do as a response. If your options after a failure on Hide are different to your options on a failure on Move Silently then maybe some interesting gameplay comes out of it.

But I that would have limited milage because there won't be infinitely many non-overlapping outcomes between "is seen" and "is heard".

(And any outcomes that would attend either can still be freely chosen by the DM on a fail on a combined roll anyway.)

Right. And I bolded the part that some posters here are bulldozing past. Vahnavoi seems to assume that it's a "given" that since hearing and sight are different IRL, that simulationist mechanics that track them separately are just as valuable to everyone, everywhere.

I completely agree with Vahnavoi that it’s a bad point.. “My goal is to Mindrape on a global scale; having to convince individual people is a failure” or “my goal is to kill him in one shot; using HP and damage is a failure” aren’t even proper parallels.

“The goal of having neither person be perceived fails of either person is perceived” is tautologically true, no denying it. But usually, the goal for a pair of thieves is more like “get the goods” (or “kill the target” for a pair of assassins). However, there absolutely are scenarios where “have 2-3 people be undetected” is the name of the game - a noble and their bodyguard, a prisoner and the person breaking them out, a parent and child, in addition to just “2 thieves”.

You say it's a "bad point", and then acknowledge that it's true. Your mindrape example is reducing the issue to absurd extremes, so I'm not addressing it. And yes, even if there IS a different terminal goal "get by without being detected" is still a goal of a step along the way, right? And that's all the poster who brought it up was focusing on. It's not even my point. I prefer a more gamist methodology, and reducing Stealth to single checks. It gives me, the DM, more narrative leeway to express what succes or failure means in the fiction layer. It is my opinion that a system doesn't "need" perfect simulationist mechanics for every little thing. I neither need, nor is my game improved by, having extra mechanics designed only to simulate specific things.

Spoiler: example, but off topic

Show

Mighty Composite longbows are an accurate way to sum up how a bow works IRL. Dex is still used for the attack roll, because it's hand-eye coordination and precision, but the damage an arrow does is based on the tensile strength of the bow itself. An arrow fired by an average Joe and an Iron Man Competition winner, if fired with accuracy at the same point, will penetrate to the same depth. But if the IMC winner uses a bow with a greater pull strength, it will fire with more force. And a minimum of the str rating of the mighty composite bow is required to even PULL the bow.
HOWEVER, later editions (like 5e, for example) streamline this, and allow DEX mod to the damage roll. Justification being increased precision means arrow hit in a better (more damaging) place.
I also believe there's a lot of overlap between Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft and players and gameplay are better served with a simple Arcana skill.
Climb, Jump, and Swim all use different muscle groups, but are not interesting enough to invest in, mechanically, as a player as an Athletics skill. To me, anyway.

But “2 thieves” is a bad example, because “both go unnoticed” *sounds* like a really dumb plan. And, in “talking past” people, Vahnavoi has explained exactly *why* that sounds like a dumb goal, because there’s ways to still succeed the actual mission. *However*, if you change the scenario, fill in some details correctly, it *could* be a reasonable goal.

He hasn't actually. He's blithely insisted that the minutiae of difference in degrees of failure are significant. And his statements are couched as fact and accompanied by insults toward the comprehension of anyone who diagrees...and then he just repeats why he believes the mechanical separation is valuable to him as if it should be to everyone.
Your own bias shows a little bit here (although you are much more polite than he is about it), because you say "fill in some details correctly", as if there were an incorrect way to do so. And the point made by those that favor merging the H/MS into Stealth is that they don't need/want/value those details. At least not on a mechanics level. Those same details can be filled in by player and DM after success/failure is achieved, and we don't need niggling details of every aspect to have mechanical voice when it could be more simple. This is why I am constantly insisting to him that this is a matter pf preference. No one is right or wrong, we just value different aspects in different ways. What IS wrong, objectively, is being rude or insulting towards those with different values. It's like having someone tell you that "1+2+3+4" is a better way to get 10 than "5+5", and insult your understanding if you don't agree with them.

You have to work really hard to make a scenario where I won’t just respond, “then those Rogues are idiots and deserve to fail” if either of them being perceived at all represents a “mission failure” Game State in D&D. And that work just hasn’t been done in that Example.

If the goal of that step of the overall plan is "don't alert the guards because they'll raise the alarm", then that doesn't reflect an "absence" of a larger, or subsequent goal. And it's frankly a mistake to assume that anything outside the microcosm being discussed "doesn't exist". It just wasn't relevant to the example to make the point being discussed, so it was left vague.

[Vahnavoi]

Are their options constrained by being seen vs being heard though?

Being seen means the enemy has both line-of-sight and line-of-effect on the thief. This typically forces open confrontation. A defense against this would be visual misdirection, such Disguise and Forgery: the thief's fallback for being seen is pretending to be someone who has business being there. Note that the efficacy of the disguise may depend on the thief not having made any unfitting noise.

Being heard but not seen means the enemy has line-of-effect but no line-of-sight - they cannot attack the thief directly, only their approximate square, and do not know the thief's visual identity. A defense against this would be aural or verbal misdirection, such as Bluff: the thief's fallback for being heard is pretending to be a harmless small animal. This obviously doesn't work if the guard can see the thief is not, in fact, a small animal.

Terrain also matters, especially quality and placement of cover and concealment. Relying on Hide and Move Silently to go through areas of partial cover or concealment has different pathfinding than relying on only Move Silently to go through areas relying on total cover or concealment. Two thieves can have different optimal paths to a target based on such considerations.

Skillpoint distribution means a guard does not necessarily have equal detection range for sight and hearing. This factors into the earlier paragraph. Total Cover + Move Silently may be able to take a thief closer to their target than Hide + Move Silently. On the other hand, a single Silence spell can flip this on its head, meaning a better Hider can now waltz past a guard while the worse Hider is still limited by cover.

Considering the number of spells that alter conditions for Hide versus Spot and Move Silently versus Listen, I could spend rest of the evening explaining strategies and counter strategies where the distinction between senses matters. The question at this point is mostly whether the given examples suffice.

Despite all of the above, I reiterate that it is possible to make a system with a single perception skill or ability that conserves all of this. Mostly, I just wonder: how exactly do you imagine it working? If a dungeon master is only rolling once for one skill, on what basis do they decide "this failed roll means a character has been unequivocally spotted and has to directly confront the spotter" versus "this failed roll means a character has only been heard and can still obfuscate their true nature"?

[Quertus]

Your own bias shows a little bit here (although you are much more polite than he is about it), because you say "fill in some details correctly", as if there were an incorrect way to do so. And the point made by those that favor merging the H/MS into Stealth is that they don't need/want/value those details. At least not on a mechanics level. Those same details can be filled in by player and DM after success/failure is achieved, and we don't need niggling details of every aspect to have mechanical voice when it could be more simple

I want to start here, because it's very clear to me that we've had a communication breakdown on this point. When I say, "fill in some details correctly", the details I'm talking about are the mission details: the spies trying to plant bugs / tap into surveillance systems in preparation for a future op, as opposed to thieves trying to steal the McGuffin. That's the details that need to be filled in correctly, and they need to be filled in correctly in order for "if either is perceived, the mission is a failure" to make sense.

So, with that said,

You say it's a "bad point", and then acknowledge that it's true.

I acknowledge that "either of 2 agents being perceived with any sense could result in mission failure" is something that can make sense in certain contexts. My concern is "2 D&D thieves" is a very bad context to try to use to make that true - to the point that I honestly almost missed the possibility for it to make sense, and initially was *only* going to post my agreement with every way that example didn't make sense. When I first read the example, my initial response was scarily close to what Vahnavoi said, as I initially viewed "2 thieves trying to steal something" to produce exactly the minigame Vahnavoi described. That those 2 thieves might, instead, be attempting to plant bugs or tap into a security system, or might otherwise actually fail if either is perceived, took thinking outside the D&D box.

And yes, even if there IS a different terminal goal "get by without being detected" is still a goal of a step along the way, right?

It can be a desire, but it isn't a necessity. It isn't "one of the two thieves was heard, therefore mission failure".

Also note that, in the case of 2 spies, if both are run by me, if you only catch one, the other that one will play information warfare and have a perfectly reasonable cover story (here to assassinate the leader, here to deflower her right-hand woman, whatever), along with the tools and clues to back up this "secret mission" (poison & syringe, flowers and date-rape drungs, whatever), and will have pre-planned ditching or obfuscating the tools for the actual mission. So "2 thieves", with me running them, means you likely have to catch both to stop the mission... and might not even realize what the mission is, even then.

And, as I pointed out in another post, "spotting" is different from "hearing", if I can "let the cat out of the bag" to make it seem like the sounds you heard were just some local wildlife that got in. Which, appropriate to this thread, is a reason not to just consolidate things into a single Perception roll, to allow for that nuance of preparing various recovery strategies for the op. Or, to parallel how people put it when MAGIC is involved, "5d Wizard Thief Chess".

And that's all the poster who brought it up was focusing on. It's not even my point. I prefer a more gamist methodology, and reducing Stealth to single checks. It gives me, the DM, more narrative leeway to express what succes or failure means in the fiction layer. It is my opinion that a system doesn't "need" perfect simulationist mechanics for every little thing. I neither need, nor is my game improved by, having extra mechanics designed only to simulate specific things.

"Not wanting to leave 'were we heard or spotted' to GM whim" sounds like another reason not to consolidate things into a single Perception roll, if anybody still cares about the thread's original premise.

He hasn't actually. He's blithely insisted that the minutiae of difference in degrees of failure are significant. And his statements are couched as fact and accompanied by insults toward the comprehension of anyone who diagrees...and then he just repeats why he believes the mechanical separation is valuable to him as if it should be to everyone.

For 2 Thieves whose true goal is "get the McGuffin", and who are smart enough to actually deal with situations as they come up as opposed to just folding like wet cardboard the first time they encounter a setback, I fully agree that the type of failure is significant, and impacts what measures can be taken to remedy the situation (see also "roll init to gank the guard", "let the cat out of the bag", "Book? What Book? I'm here to murder you.", and "Scroll Eternal Wand of Forget").

That's not saying one couldn't, in theory, create a scenario in which either of the thieves being perceived is actually game over, it was just... well... I'm sure you've said a good word for it... to assume that one of 2 thieves being perceived in any way is always automatically game over for the mission, without any further context.

Those same details can be filled in by player and DM after success/failure is achieved, and we don't need niggling details of every aspect to have mechanical voice when it could be more simple. This is why I am constantly insisting to him that this is a matter pf preference.

So, back to my biases. I enjoy good implementations of "information warfare" games. I word that oddly, because, for any given GM, I may well hate such games. Point is, were I playing a game where V was the GM, I could believe that they understand information warfare well enough to, y'know, say some reasonable stuff. But someone who doesn't grok that there is a potential - and a potentially huge - difference between "one of 2 infiltrators is perceived with a non-discriminating sense" and "both thieves are spotted"? I don't think I'd want to put that into their hands as a default stance.

But that's me.

But here's the thing: what's also me is having fallback plans, of "letting the cat out of the bag", of making the mission succeed even if one spy is captured through misdirection, etc.

What I can't imagine (anywhere except at Talakeal's table, actually...) is one of a pair of thieves being heard, and one or both players doing a table-flip that now the mission is a complete failure, and proceeding to complain about the system rather than the problem being with their plans (or lack thereof).

Does that make my level of lack of understanding of the "preference" you are attempting to describe more visceral, more obvious? Because, I'll freely admit, I just don't get why anyone would want the system to treat either of the thieves being perceived by any sense by any guard as resulting in automatic mission failure, unless they were just addicted to Drama and looking for an excuse to flip the table.

No one is right or wrong, we just value different aspects in different ways. What IS wrong, objectively, is being rude or insulting towards those with different values. It's like having someone tell you that "1+2+3+4" is a better way to get 10 than "5+5", and insult your understanding if you don't agree with them.

Although I agree at some level, I have to circle back to, "2 thieves, if either is perceived in any way it's automatic mission failure" is a bad example. One can have preferences for how they want to play the game, but... I'd say everyone needs to grok how that's a bad example for communication on this issue to be productive, and... until someone can to explain to me why anyone would want that to be true, I'll keep scratching my head at the notion of calling that a "preference".

If the goal of that step of the overall plan is "don't alert the guards because they'll raise the alarm", then that doesn't reflect an "absence" of a larger, or subsequent goal. And it's frankly a mistake to assume that anything outside the microcosm being discussed "doesn't exist". It just wasn't relevant to the example to make the point being discussed, so it was left vague.

As was pointed out, killing the guard who perceived the thief before they can raise the alarm also prevents the "because they'll raise the alarm" clause. The scenario would have to be very carefully constructed in a way it currently isn't in order for these objections not to make sense.

[Darg]

This is not true for the given example and is even less true about common game situations. See my point about player strategy to lesser_minion.

In many actual game scenarios, players have options for strategies where only some or only one person remaining undetected is sufficient to achieve a victory condition. Leaving these outside discussion is a fallacy of omission and gives an imperfect idea of how good stealth tactics actually are. It also commits fallacy of equivocation, since being seen and being heard have different ramifications under 3.x rules.

It isn't how I run my games nor is the whole party usually running in close to sneak around, but the thought experiment remains especially for low level sneaking. It's just untenable to roll for every action taken. One PC would be making me do as many or more rolls sneaking around just one NPC as a group combat would require. Hence taking 10 makes the most sense in nearly every situation characters aren't actively taking actions. It gives the sneaky rogue the sneakiness they crave, doesn't hamstring the party for not investing in the skill, and saves my wrists.

[Vahnavoi]

@Redmage125:

No, the payoff matrix changes, both in terms of odds and possible results, if you drop Move Silently versus Listen. Neither you nor the original argument get the odds right, so let me calculate them for you:

Individual checks, only Perception, 95% success rate per check:

Both are perceived: 0.25% chance.
One is perceived, another is not: 9.5% chance
Neither is perceived: 90.25% chance

Individual checks, Hide and Move Silently, 95% success rate per check:

Both are seen: 0.25% chance.
One is seen, another is heard but not seen: 0.475%
One is seen, another is neither seen nor heard: 9.025%
Neither is seen, both are heard: 0.225625%
Neither is seen, one is heard: 8.5735%
Neither is seen nor heard: 81.450625%

In the first model, total chance of success varies between 90.25% and 99.75% depending on how good the two thieves are at stopping the alarm when one of them is not perceived.

In the second model, total chance of success varies between 81.450625% and 99.299375%, depending on how good the two thieves are at stopping the alarm when one of them is neither seen nor heard.

Why such a small difference at the high end? Because in the second model only "one is seen, another is heard but not seen" and "neither is seen, both are heard" are less recoverable than "one is perceived, another is not". In neither model, can the exact chance of success be calculated without knowing more of the thieves' capabilities. You can claim all those other details are irrelevant, that doesn't make the argument better: in any actual game, those details are present, so dismissing them gives an imperfect picture of how good the thieves really are. As for the low end, the undetected character in the first model has the same capacity to take action to stop the alarm as an unseen and unheard character in the second.

In conclusion: if thieves in both models are utterly inept at preventing disaster when one of them is noticed, the model with one Perception skill improves their odds by 8.799375% points. If undetected thieves in both models have capacity to stop a guard from triggering an alarm, the model with one Perception skill improves their odds by 0.450625% points.

Neither of these improvements is better than just giving additional +1 modifier to Hide and Move Silently. That would increase the chance of success for the thieves to 100%. You know what is enough to grant that? Staying 10 feet further away from the guard. Any kind of diversion to distract the guard can give them effective +5. In practice, a character this close to always beating an enemy's Take 10, can probably get pretty close to always beating them even if they roll. Don't believe me? Dex 14 + 5 ranks in Hide and Move Silently + Skill focus in both + distract the guard + stay at least 40 feet away from the guard. Effective skill check modifier: +19 for both skills. Minimum roll result 1+19=20. Ties are broken in favor of higher modifier. A guard with +0 modifiers will neither see nor hear this thief unless the thief deliberately comes closer. Find any combination of sources to give the thief +4 worth of modifiers more, and the thief can nearly go and hug the guard's leg without being noticed.

---

@Darg:

Not wanting to roll for every action taken is fine. But combining skills is utterly unnecessary for purposes of avoiding rolls. If you are using Take 10 rules liberally, you will not be rolling for Hide and Move Silently versus Spot and Listen any more than you would roll for Stealth versus Perception.

[Crake]

Your numbers aren't wrong, but why would you want to roll so many times? Every action is another 2 rolls. For just one creature to move 60 ft that's 8 rolls. For the whole party that turns into 32-48 rolls. Honestly, not a very tenable situation when even failures only on a 20:1 have a high chance of failing when you're rolling so many times per attempt. The spotter only needs to succeed once after all while the sneaker(s) needs to succeed every last one.

Passive spot/listen are made once per round, so if the party has 3 people trying to sneak, they roll for their respective actions vs one roll of each observer’s spot/listen. They dont roll against each individual player, the players are rolling against the spot/listen that they scored

[vasilidor]

I don't like keeping them as separate skills, don't care for it in the slightest.
But I shall attempt to steel man an argument for it.
with them as different skills, you can raise tension in the game when a guard hears or notices something and goes to investigate, potentially not sure of what they noticed. having the guard go from alert to actively checking the area and then having the sneaking person describe how they try to evade detection then. The guard has caught a glimpse or heard a thing that they are unsure of what they are seeing. if unable to locate the source of the sound they may just go back to their post thinking that what ever it was is long gone or that it was a figment of their imagination. This is probably easier to do with the skills being separate things.

[lesser_minion]

To go back to the original thread premise:

When it comes to stealth skills, a merge isn't needed to alleviate skill bloat, doesn't address some sort of flaw with the game's maths, and doesn't fix group stealth. The fact that trying to hide isn't the same thing as trying to be quiet (and that trying to do both at once is clearly harder than trying to do just one) is more than enough reason to keep the skills separate.

As for spot, listen, and search, it's true that combining them doesn't prevent you from handling different senses, but the resulting skill is boring and too obvious a choice.

[Ozreth]

To go back to the original thread premise:

When it comes to stealth skills, a merge isn't needed to alleviate skill bloat, doesn't address some sort of flaw with the game's maths, and doesn't fix group stealth. The fact that trying to hide isn't the same thing as trying to be quiet (and that trying to do both at once is clearly harder than trying to do just one) is more than enough reason to keep the skills separate.

As for spot, listen, and search, it's true that combining them doesn't prevent you from handling different senses, but the resulting skill is boring and too obvious a choice.

At this point in the thread this is basically where I'm at and sticking with it. Nice summary haha.

[Darg]

Passive spot/listen are made once per round, so if the party has 3 people trying to sneak, they roll for their respective actions vs one roll of each observer’s spot/listen. They dont roll against each individual player, the players are rolling against the spot/listen that they scored

There is no rule that you make reactive checks only once per round. You roll spot and listen every time you have a chance to spot or hear something. Which can and does happen multiple times a round.

[rel]

Benefits of keeping hide and move silently separate:
- stops a casting of invisibility trivalising stealth rolls
- lets you effectively model sneaking up behind someone
- makes the silence spell an effective buff to stealth
- keeps stealth, already quite strong, somewhat in check

Benefits of keeping spot, listen and search different
- let's you key spot and search off different stats
- breaks up 3 already very valuable skills to improve differentiation between PC's
- makes monsters with a particularly good sense more mechanically distinct
- allows the PC's an un-penalised check to avoid an ambush in the dark
- makes the blind / deafen conditions more distinct

[Mordaedil]

Spot and Listen make sense, Hide and Move Silently make sense, but the problem really does just lie in that classes aren't given enough skill points for them to make sense as separate skills. It's not just in terms of being competent across these specific skills in itself, but also how it cuts into learning other skills. Imagine if Spellcraft was divided in schools of magic or knowledge local was split into specific cities, nobody would ever legitimately invest in these skills because their use-case becomes so extremely specific.

I am therefore onboard with consolidating the skills into stealth and perception, keeping search on itself.

[Darg]

Spot and Listen make sense, Hide and Move Silently make sense, but the problem really does just lie in that classes aren't given enough skill points for them to make sense as separate skills. It's not just in terms of being competent across these specific skills in itself, but also how it cuts into learning other skills. Imagine if Spellcraft was divided in schools of magic or knowledge local was split into specific cities, nobody would ever legitimately invest in these skills because their use-case becomes so extremely specific.

I am therefore onboard with consolidating the skills into stealth and perception, keeping search on itself.

The game wasn't designed where characters would max out every skill. When you aren't in combat every character can do enough to get by as long as you aren't taking penalties. Those who do specialize get a benefit from it and that's ok. Though I do agree that martials get shafted twice.

[Ozreth]

The game wasn't designed where characters would max out every skill. When you aren't in combat every character can do enough to get by as long as you aren't taking penalties. Those who do specialize get a benefit from it and that's ok. Though I do agree that martials get shafted twice.

For sure, I agree with this. And in the context of the year 2000, this was still blowing the gates wide open compared to AD&D 2e and how characters could listen, hide etc. Tight archetypes are fine with me.