Stealth Mode

firelife11 · Post by **firelife11** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:46 am

I was testing the stealth mode with Luna. She said she could see me the entire time, while her checks were low and mine here high.

Character: Drago
Hide: 16
Move Silently: 18

Character: Luna
Spot: -1
Listen: 1

Anyone know what might be causing this? or maybe im just doing something wrong!!

4x4_Ender · Post by **4x4_Ender** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:48 am

Are you just activating it while still in plain sight from her?? If so, she will always continue to see you. You have to go behind something and activate stealth mode in order for it to work (unless your a shadowdancer

). Otherwise, she would pretty much need to role a 20 on her spot check in order to see you...

Nob · Post by **Nob** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:49 am

Sure when rolling a spot/listen check you add a d20 to the base score to see if you see them. If Luna winds up rolling higher than your hide score, she sees you. Simple as that, I think.

Vergilius · Post by **Vergilius** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 7:14 am

There are a myriad of other factors in the spot/listen vs hide/move silently.

Wass it day or night when you were sneaking?
Did you have an item equiped that was giving off light?
4x4Ender's question above, did you go out of plain sight first?
Was Luna standing still or moving?

And yes, then there is the d20 factor. Their spot +d20 vs your hide+d20, its entirely possible that with the right rolls, she could spot you. Its also entirely possible that if you hide and stay in her sight radius long enough that she will spot you. checks are made periodically and the longer you spend out there the greater your chances of rolling low when she is rolling high.

There is lastly a distance factor. I've got fairly high listen. Often I'll detect someone very close by only to see them vanish when they move further away. This is simulating that I heard them when they were nearly on top of me but any further away and I couldn't make the checks.

Sickocrow · Post by **Sickocrow** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 9:34 am

I get the same stuff happening as Verg does with my halfing Char. Me and my IC brother do hide and seek tests all the time.

Heaps easier to pick them up when your stopped and he's got glow rings on. Very hard when your moving and he's dark (no glow or light).

Sicko-

myzmar · Post by **myzmar** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 10:16 am

always asking myself, how does concealment work? If a char has 100% concealment, do I not see him on my screen like he would sneak, or do I see him just glowing (like he would be invisible?)

Fixing this invisibility thing would be the best thing Biounaware could do, imho.

Spell Singer · Post by **Spell Singer** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 12:42 pm

Concealment is only a factor in combat.

The only other time concelement comes into play is when there is say a table between you and a short character and you may not see them due to the table so they show up as if they were in stealth mode.

Invisibilitly works just fine in NWN, as do the other stealth abilities. You just need to understand what the various diferent views of the character mean (and that is where the bioware people did a poor job).

Getting rid of a lot of visible spell affects simplifes this as in the past it was plain hard to determine if the character was visible or not since the ghosting effect was hard to spot with a large number of other spells active.

But if you see a ghosted character you heard that person. If you see nothing , then obviously you have neither seen nor heard them.

You can improve your chance to hear another character by not moving (that is a +5 to your listen) and you can help by activating detect mode which has you do listen and spot checks far more often (and at that point if you have a chance to spot or hear the other person you are most likely to do so).

If all else fails and you still have questions ask Reinstag who is the stealth question meister.

Jordicus · Post by **Jordicus** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:03 pm

since this really is not a bug, but is a good topic for those who are unaware, I am moving this to the general discussion area.

myzmar · Post by **myzmar** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:09 pm

Spell Singer wrote:Invisibilitly works just fine in NWN, as do the other stealth abilities. You just need to understand what the various diferent views of the character mean (and that is where the bioware people did a poor job).

I would love invisibility to work just as stealth does, so I would not see anything when someone is invis. This is due to a few reasons:

- As you mentioned, it is very hard to tell what spell effects do I see. Frankly I cannot tell the difference between someone invisible and concealed. And I have trouble how to RP a situation when I see someone under the effect of one of those spells.

- It would improve game reality a lot. We all do love to RP (at least I hope so), nevertheless I bet my money that someone seeing his sworn enemy sneaking toward him on the computer screen will prepare for battle, stop whispering secret informations to a friend nearby, wear a better belt and the like. That is human and all players around here are human, to my knowledge. And it sucks RP-wise. It would be far better, imho, if invisibility worked just as stealth does.

Jordicus · Post by **Jordicus** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:28 pm

it does...

just like stealth, the invisible person is completely gone from your sight unless you make a successful check against them. With invisibility, it all comes down to your Listen skill and the Invisible person's Move Silently skill and any modifiers they may have to that.

myzmar · Post by **myzmar** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:32 pm

Jordicus wrote:just like stealth, the invisible person is completely gone from your sight unless you make a successful check against them. With invisibility, it all comes down to your Listen skill and the Invisible person's Move Silently skill and any modifiers they may have to that.

Damn, really? EVERYONE I asked said it's not working that way... Hmm, so if I see someone invis on my screen, I am supposed to roleplay I spoted him? Heard something?

Emprod · Post by **Emprod** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:41 pm

I think this covers everything :

viewtopic.php?t=14361

No, the PC avatar isn't replaced by a billboard saying "you hear someone over here", if you only make a listen check. Your client shows their Avatar when you hear them. That's the limitation that everyone seems to trip over.

If you're unsure, click examine quickly on them, and base how you react off of that. Look for "invisible" on the list.

firelife11 · Post by **firelife11** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 4:42 pm

Vergilius wrote:There are a myriad of other factors in the spot/listen vs hide/move silently.

Wass it day or night when you were sneaking?
Did you have an item equiped that was giving off light?
4x4Ender's question above, did you go out of plain sight first?
Was Luna standing still or moving?

It was dusck

No

Yes and no. First i walked up to her, asked her in a 'tell'... thought itw as strange, walked behind a wall, as did she, and came back and same thing.

Standing still

Vanor · Post by **Vanor** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 4:58 pm

You weren't in a party with her were you?

Party members can normally see invis/hidden PC's who are a member of their party.

WrathOG777 · Post by **WrathOG777** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 5:05 pm

What you are seeing here is that to truely sneak by anyone your hide and move silent must both be 19 greater than the detector.

Luna had two ~15% chances to spot you every round (6 seconds). One for hide vs spot, one for listen vs move silent. Might not be exactly 15%, opposed rolls confuse me a bit in probability.

firelife11 · Post by **firelife11** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:12 pm

Vanor wrote:You weren't in a party with her were you?

Nope

WrathOG777 wrote:What you are seeing here is that to truely sneak by anyone your hide and move silent must both be 19 greater than the detector.

So you're saying that it's gonna take me a long ars time to be able to sneak around?

Bear · Post by **Bear** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 7:30 pm

Jordicus wrote:With invisibility, it all comes down to your Listen skill and the Invisible person's Move Silently skill and any modifiers they may have to that.

No. Characters also receive a spot check against invisibile creatures. In fact, per the PHB it only takes a 20 spot check to notice the "presence" of an invisibile creature. The alone lets you do all the fun stuff like attack and cast spells (albiet with a concealment modifier). Once you get higher levels of spot you can detect the specific location of invisible creatures and can eventually see right through the spell.

Despite its cool name....it's only a 3rd level spell and hence not all that powerful.

Bear

Emprod · Post by **Emprod** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 7:38 pm

I'm not so sure NWN takes that into effect Bear. It may or may not, I thought Reinstag had said no at one point.

A quick way to test would be to have a very HIGH spot (30+) LOW listen (less than 10) character try to detect an (invisible + sneaking) PC who has a 30+ in both HIS/MS. Without benefit of see invis, or TS.

If they detect them, you know for sure it's coming off of spot, not listen.

Bear · Post by **Bear** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 7:54 pm

Good point. The other way to check is to read the spell script. I thought after discussing it with Aloro that the spell essentially granted +20 to hide checks against other PCs. Then again, perhaps we just discussed this as a possibility. Anecdotally, I seem to regularly detect invisible creatures with a spot of 30ish and listen of a bout 2

Bear

Emprod · Post by **Emprod** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 8:13 pm

Heh.

Remember though, a lot of people run around invis without the forethought of going into stealth...or having any stealth points. Or in fullplate. So your 2 listen still gets them, honestly.

I didn't realize the spell script was viewable. That would be the easy way to tell.

Gairus · Post by **Gairus** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 10:01 pm

Invisibility seems so pointless with these rules. Pity, removes all the regret from choosing a specialisation that opposes illusion.

Vergilius · Post by **Vergilius** » Tue Dec 02, 2003 10:08 pm

Gairus wrote:Invisibility seems so pointless with these rules. Pity, removes all the regret from choosing a specialisation that opposes illusion.

There is still plenty use for Illusion and consequently plenty use for divinition. Its just that people wanting to specialize in Illusion don't get such an easy time with it.

Reinstag · Post by **Reinstag** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:01 am

Vanor wrote:You weren't in a party with her were you?

Party members can normally see invis/hidden PC's who are a member of their party.

I think I have to disagree here. While partied, we Ravens have some problems spotting each other while in a group stealthing through an area.

It can lead to some funny/frustrating moments as we wander around trying to spot each other.

marauder · Post by **marauder** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:09 am

Reingstag is right. As part of the bandits I had to summon a bird to follow me so the others could see where I was.

Invisibility is still good. I often cant see a mage in full plate running around with no stealth or move silent if the mage is invisible. I have a decent spot/listen but am still low level. Later as I get better I may be able to detect everything (lvl 15+), but not many are that high.

Morbid Ridicule · Post by **Morbid Ridicule** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 2:39 am

Using the invisibility spell and stealth, My 9th level ranger snuck by a 4th level and 1st level character the other day.

I dressed all in black, put on my stealth accessories, cast cat's grace and camouflage, then used an invisibility spell.

They might have seen me, but they didn't say.

All you mages who are upset about not being able to use invisibility effectly, try casting it on your high level rogue or ranger friends.

edit: no, I'm not trying to insinuate that 9 is a high level.

My 9th level ranger is actually level 12 too. 3 of the levels are just in another class.