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How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?

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  • taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
    taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
    taaz@biglemmowski.win
    wrote last edited by taaz@biglemmowski.win
    #1

    Considering the last few posts are about stealth and detection I might as well kick this off:

    I skip and short circuit stealth/detection as much as possible.

    None of my players have built a stealth based characters - probably also because of the complexity with detection and the seemingly bad action econ when dealing with “actually getting Hidden”.

    I have two main problems with it:

    • comparison explosion? Whenever you have to resolve who sees who (esp at init) you have to at worst compare a roll for each character on one side to all the perception DCs of the other side and this gets really slow for me [^1]
    • tracking who currently sees who / at what detection levels they currently are to others

    Any tips and tricks very much welcome:)

    [^1]: Both me and PCs track chars digitally (pathbuilder) and it is definitely slow to gather this information quickly on a laptop. A sheet of paper with highlighted bonuses/DCs for both the party and NPCs would go a long way for this but our play table is rather small and already pretty packed 😕

    ZagorathZ 1 Reply Last reply
    1
    9
    • taaz@biglemmowski.winT taaz@biglemmowski.win

      Considering the last few posts are about stealth and detection I might as well kick this off:

      I skip and short circuit stealth/detection as much as possible.

      None of my players have built a stealth based characters - probably also because of the complexity with detection and the seemingly bad action econ when dealing with “actually getting Hidden”.

      I have two main problems with it:

      • comparison explosion? Whenever you have to resolve who sees who (esp at init) you have to at worst compare a roll for each character on one side to all the perception DCs of the other side and this gets really slow for me [^1]
      • tracking who currently sees who / at what detection levels they currently are to others

      Any tips and tricks very much welcome:)

      [^1]: Both me and PCs track chars digitally (pathbuilder) and it is definitely slow to gather this information quickly on a laptop. A sheet of paper with highlighted bonuses/DCs for both the party and NPCs would go a long way for this but our play table is rather small and already pretty packed 😕

      ZagorathZ This user is from outside of this forum
      ZagorathZ This user is from outside of this forum
      Zagorath
      wrote last edited by
      #2

      It sounds like you might be using the Pathbuilder Encounters tracker? It puts everyone’s perception bonus in a fairly prominent spot without needing to actually click on each creature. You’ll need to mentally add 10 though. In most combats I run, there are usually only 3 or 4 different creatures at most, so even if the total number of enemies is higher, the number of DCs you need to compare to is comparatively low.

      I’m a big proponent of offloading mental effort from the GM to the players whenever possible, so I would rely on players to keep track of their own detection levels for the most part. Unless there’s a big reason you want to keep it secret, just let them know who they successfully hid from and who they didn’t. Or have them keep track of their current stealth score and ask them for that number when it’s the turn of a monster that might want to attack them. They should usually be playing between Observed, Hidden, and Undetected, and they’ll probably know which one of Hidden & Undetected they’re in (presuming they’re in at least one of them) based on when they’ve moved, so usually a player should be able to handle that bookkeeping.

      My experience is that it’s rare that more than one or maybe two characters will want to do stealth during combat. Outside of combat it’s more common, but that’s not so relevant here. This keeps the amount of mental overhead necessary pretty low.

      I tend to be pretty loosey-goosey in combats though. If I’ve got 8 enemies of 3 different types, I’ll usually try and roughly remember which one went first, second, third, etc. and apply the damage based on that. But I don’t actually write down anywhere “Wolf 1” that can actually easily track between Pathbuilder Encounters and my physical battle map, and I don’t doubt that I make errors in whose turn it is or which enemy is receiving damage all the time. I just let it go. The same total number of turns are happening each round and the enemies have the same total HP, so I figure it mostly balances out. My approach above works for running stealth in that context, but if you’re really concerned about it all being precise, it might not work quite as well for you.

      P.S.: Go Enlightened!

      taaz@biglemmowski.winT 1 Reply Last reply
      2
      • KichaeK Online
        KichaeK Online
        Kichae
        Forum Master
        wrote last edited by
        #3

        I have so much to say about stealth in the game, but I won’t bore you with most of it. Stealth, though, is the system that highlights to me most directly just what Pathfinder 2e is as a system, and how it’s not what many of the game’s most vocal online fans seem to think. In short, the Stealth system highlights that PF2e is much more simulationist and fiction-focused than most people are willing to admit (which is not to say that it is a simulationist game, just that it is making some pretty direct but oft-overlooked efforts to be as flexible and multi-purpose as possible).

        Party stealth is a multi-comparison system in no small part because hiding and perceiving things in real life is a multi-comparison system. In real life, it’s just not systematized. But also in real life, you only need one person on your team to be detected by one person on the other team for the other team to mobilize. This hints at multiple ways to track the interactions, or multiple ways to modify Stealth to help create a smoother experience.

        Unfortunately, I don’t think any method really works well, like, in Pathbuilder. But Pathbuilder’s GM mode should make it easier to see what the actual Stealth rolls are.

        The first thing that I do when preparing a pre-made encounter, or crafting an encounter in advance, is create a table and pre-roll initiative for the NPCs. I’ll usually do this on my laptop, in Excel or in my note-taking program. Rolling initiative first isn’t actually important here, especially if you’re using something like Excel which will let you easily re-order the table, but it helps create just one table if you’re doing it on paper. The table includes the initiative roll, some signifier of the skill used for initiative, and the NPCs key stats: Perception, Ref, Fort, Will, AC, and max HP, (plus columns for current HP and status). This helps make stealth roll comparisons much easier.

        You then compare the max Perception DC to the lowest Stealth roll. If Stealth wins, everyone is Undetected (or Unnoticed, if you’re at my table, because screw that discrepancy). If not, I’ll jot down which PCs the NPC notices. After this, I’ll switch to initiative order for comparisons. I’ll make note of the first NPC’s Perception DC and then compare it to all of the Stealth rolls to see who’s noticed, and make note. If it’s everybody, I stop there. The first NPC will spend their turn pointing out the hidden PCs to everybody else. If there’s anybody left after that, I move down to the next NPC and only check the remaining PCs.

        This can be streamlined, but doing so involves allowing for contested skill checks. Instead of comparing the Perception DCs to the Stealth rolls, you can instead choose to compare the NPCs’ Perception-based initiative rolls to the PCs’ Stealth-based initiative rolls. Following the procedure above, this actually cuts out one of the steps.

        Multiple comparisons can also be reduced if you just let the lowest roll stand for the whole party. Then you’re just comparing the lowest stealth roll to the initiative rolls.

        To overcome the writing space issue, pick up a clip board. It’s back-to-school season in the northern hemisphere, you should be able to find something on sale right now without any problems.

        For actually tracking the changing stealth statuses during play, how you play is important information here. You say the table is small – does this mean you’re not using maps/minis? If you are, you should actually be able to tell at a glance for most creatures whether someone his hidden or not at the time the player rolls Stealth to hide. The actual range of Perception DCs should be small, and with them written on a clipboard or spreadsheet, you can hopefully just make a mental note and remember. If you have a lot of NPCs, that might be harder to do, but with 2 - 6, it should hopefully be OK with a little bit of practice.

        Concealed/Undetected is slightly more complicated, but it makes a lot of sense in the context of the fiction of the game, and I’ve found that that makes it a lot easier to track. Standing behind something that crates partial blockages to line-of-sight (such as a bush?) The enemy can’t quite tell where the edges of your body are! Concealed! Hide and successfully snuck away without anyone noticing? Undetected! Wearing camouflage but standing in the open? You have fuzzy visual boundaries! Concealed! Standing in a thick fog cloud? Fuzzy boundaries again! Concealed! Ducked around a corner, out of line-of-site and then moved in a way that no one could reasonably hear you (i.e. used ‘Sneak’)? Undetected! Ducked around a corner, out of line-of-site, but didn’t sneak away? Hidden! Ducked around the corner, but ran away so that the NPC could hear your movements? Hidden!

        If you want, you can assume the state applies to every NPC on the board until you look down and see where that doesn’t make any sense. Or, you can make it apply to every NPC on the board, but extend Seek to allow NPCs ot make an unlimited range, 360 degree Perception check for stealted creatures that they have line-of-site on (this super-charges Seek, and kind of nerfs stealth, but making it cost an action turns it into an active choice with an opportunity cost). You could reduce it to 180 degrees for the sake of better empowering stealth (and also introducing better sense of directionality to sight).

        taaz@biglemmowski.winT 1 Reply Last reply
        3
        • ZagorathZ Zagorath

          It sounds like you might be using the Pathbuilder Encounters tracker? It puts everyone’s perception bonus in a fairly prominent spot without needing to actually click on each creature. You’ll need to mentally add 10 though. In most combats I run, there are usually only 3 or 4 different creatures at most, so even if the total number of enemies is higher, the number of DCs you need to compare to is comparatively low.

          I’m a big proponent of offloading mental effort from the GM to the players whenever possible, so I would rely on players to keep track of their own detection levels for the most part. Unless there’s a big reason you want to keep it secret, just let them know who they successfully hid from and who they didn’t. Or have them keep track of their current stealth score and ask them for that number when it’s the turn of a monster that might want to attack them. They should usually be playing between Observed, Hidden, and Undetected, and they’ll probably know which one of Hidden & Undetected they’re in (presuming they’re in at least one of them) based on when they’ve moved, so usually a player should be able to handle that bookkeeping.

          My experience is that it’s rare that more than one or maybe two characters will want to do stealth during combat. Outside of combat it’s more common, but that’s not so relevant here. This keeps the amount of mental overhead necessary pretty low.

          I tend to be pretty loosey-goosey in combats though. If I’ve got 8 enemies of 3 different types, I’ll usually try and roughly remember which one went first, second, third, etc. and apply the damage based on that. But I don’t actually write down anywhere “Wolf 1” that can actually easily track between Pathbuilder Encounters and my physical battle map, and I don’t doubt that I make errors in whose turn it is or which enemy is receiving damage all the time. I just let it go. The same total number of turns are happening each round and the enemies have the same total HP, so I figure it mostly balances out. My approach above works for running stealth in that context, but if you’re really concerned about it all being precise, it might not work quite as well for you.

          P.S.: Go Enlightened!

          taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
          taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
          taaz@biglemmowski.win
          wrote last edited by taaz@biglemmowski.win
          #4

          Thanks for sharing! yeah I do use the PB Encounter tracker but it does not work well with my setup and workflow - probably boils down to having 14" laptop screen.
          With all the PCs, minions and NPCs in the tracker, I can’t just scan it and see perceptions of all N/PCs, have to filter who is who and also scroll (which somehow sucks because half the time I scroll the whole page instead of the list).

          I should try the offloading that is a good tip, though my players are bit meta/gamey - not to cheese but they are just not used to separating themselves from characters, instead playing their chars like pawns and taking all information given into account - so I tend to keep stuff secret.

          PS: Thanks! ENL Rocks! hah

          KichaeK ZagorathZ 2 Replies Last reply
          1
          • taaz@biglemmowski.winT taaz@biglemmowski.win

            Thanks for sharing! yeah I do use the PB Encounter tracker but it does not work well with my setup and workflow - probably boils down to having 14" laptop screen.
            With all the PCs, minions and NPCs in the tracker, I can’t just scan it and see perceptions of all N/PCs, have to filter who is who and also scroll (which somehow sucks because half the time I scroll the whole page instead of the list).

            I should try the offloading that is a good tip, though my players are bit meta/gamey - not to cheese but they are just not used to separating themselves from characters, instead playing their chars like pawns and taking all information given into account - so I tend to keep stuff secret.

            PS: Thanks! ENL Rocks! hah

            KichaeK Online
            KichaeK Online
            Kichae
            Forum Master
            wrote last edited by
            #5

            taaz@biglemmowski.win said in How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?:

            I should try the offloading though that is good tip, my players are bit meta/gamey

            Be judicious in what you off-load to them, then. Maybe don’t let them track which NPCs can see which PCs, but let them track which NPCs the PCs can see. Make sure they’re all tracking their own HP, and not leaving that to you. Let one of them handle calling out initiative, telling everyone who’s up and who’s “on deck”. These all work towards treating you more as the player of the NPCs and less as the person who’s organizing/running the game.

            One thing you can do with stealth and initiative, when the NPCs are the ones hiding, is just be transparent about how many enemies there are. Say something like “You think you can hear three distinct sets of sounds.” This makes it so that NPCs are never Unnoticed (which is how the designers seemingly wants you to treat it, anyway). This lets you roll initiative for all of the hidden NPCs openly, and incentivises the players to start looking for them. This keeps it so the players can keep track of the initiative order, even when there are hidden enemies.

            taaz@biglemmowski.winT 1 Reply Last reply
            1
            • KichaeK Kichae

              I have so much to say about stealth in the game, but I won’t bore you with most of it. Stealth, though, is the system that highlights to me most directly just what Pathfinder 2e is as a system, and how it’s not what many of the game’s most vocal online fans seem to think. In short, the Stealth system highlights that PF2e is much more simulationist and fiction-focused than most people are willing to admit (which is not to say that it is a simulationist game, just that it is making some pretty direct but oft-overlooked efforts to be as flexible and multi-purpose as possible).

              Party stealth is a multi-comparison system in no small part because hiding and perceiving things in real life is a multi-comparison system. In real life, it’s just not systematized. But also in real life, you only need one person on your team to be detected by one person on the other team for the other team to mobilize. This hints at multiple ways to track the interactions, or multiple ways to modify Stealth to help create a smoother experience.

              Unfortunately, I don’t think any method really works well, like, in Pathbuilder. But Pathbuilder’s GM mode should make it easier to see what the actual Stealth rolls are.

              The first thing that I do when preparing a pre-made encounter, or crafting an encounter in advance, is create a table and pre-roll initiative for the NPCs. I’ll usually do this on my laptop, in Excel or in my note-taking program. Rolling initiative first isn’t actually important here, especially if you’re using something like Excel which will let you easily re-order the table, but it helps create just one table if you’re doing it on paper. The table includes the initiative roll, some signifier of the skill used for initiative, and the NPCs key stats: Perception, Ref, Fort, Will, AC, and max HP, (plus columns for current HP and status). This helps make stealth roll comparisons much easier.

              You then compare the max Perception DC to the lowest Stealth roll. If Stealth wins, everyone is Undetected (or Unnoticed, if you’re at my table, because screw that discrepancy). If not, I’ll jot down which PCs the NPC notices. After this, I’ll switch to initiative order for comparisons. I’ll make note of the first NPC’s Perception DC and then compare it to all of the Stealth rolls to see who’s noticed, and make note. If it’s everybody, I stop there. The first NPC will spend their turn pointing out the hidden PCs to everybody else. If there’s anybody left after that, I move down to the next NPC and only check the remaining PCs.

              This can be streamlined, but doing so involves allowing for contested skill checks. Instead of comparing the Perception DCs to the Stealth rolls, you can instead choose to compare the NPCs’ Perception-based initiative rolls to the PCs’ Stealth-based initiative rolls. Following the procedure above, this actually cuts out one of the steps.

              Multiple comparisons can also be reduced if you just let the lowest roll stand for the whole party. Then you’re just comparing the lowest stealth roll to the initiative rolls.

              To overcome the writing space issue, pick up a clip board. It’s back-to-school season in the northern hemisphere, you should be able to find something on sale right now without any problems.

              For actually tracking the changing stealth statuses during play, how you play is important information here. You say the table is small – does this mean you’re not using maps/minis? If you are, you should actually be able to tell at a glance for most creatures whether someone his hidden or not at the time the player rolls Stealth to hide. The actual range of Perception DCs should be small, and with them written on a clipboard or spreadsheet, you can hopefully just make a mental note and remember. If you have a lot of NPCs, that might be harder to do, but with 2 - 6, it should hopefully be OK with a little bit of practice.

              Concealed/Undetected is slightly more complicated, but it makes a lot of sense in the context of the fiction of the game, and I’ve found that that makes it a lot easier to track. Standing behind something that crates partial blockages to line-of-sight (such as a bush?) The enemy can’t quite tell where the edges of your body are! Concealed! Hide and successfully snuck away without anyone noticing? Undetected! Wearing camouflage but standing in the open? You have fuzzy visual boundaries! Concealed! Standing in a thick fog cloud? Fuzzy boundaries again! Concealed! Ducked around a corner, out of line-of-site and then moved in a way that no one could reasonably hear you (i.e. used ‘Sneak’)? Undetected! Ducked around a corner, out of line-of-site, but didn’t sneak away? Hidden! Ducked around the corner, but ran away so that the NPC could hear your movements? Hidden!

              If you want, you can assume the state applies to every NPC on the board until you look down and see where that doesn’t make any sense. Or, you can make it apply to every NPC on the board, but extend Seek to allow NPCs ot make an unlimited range, 360 degree Perception check for stealted creatures that they have line-of-site on (this super-charges Seek, and kind of nerfs stealth, but making it cost an action turns it into an active choice with an opportunity cost). You could reduce it to 180 degrees for the sake of better empowering stealth (and also introducing better sense of directionality to sight).

              taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
              taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
              taaz@biglemmowski.win
              wrote last edited by
              #6

              Wow you really went ham on this, thanks!

              The table is not small small, more like narrow so there is just enough space for 4 players and their tablets and dice trays. We have erasable(?) grid map book in front of my side of the table (GM screen with laptop and dice tray behind, and that takes the whole width of the table).
              We use miniatures (nothing fancy) to represent both PCs and NPCs but room boundaries are written on the grid with marker and that is about it, I do have some pane minis with stuff like rocks, pillars and trees but… reality is that my combats probably feel pretty barren when it comes to hiding/occlusion spots (now that I am thinking about this, I have probably not bothered because of this whole issue), I usually only sprinkle in stuff when it makes “logistical” sense to have it there.

              Clipboard is actually really good idea for my setup, I can tuck it between the laptop and GM screen when not actively using and it is mostly out of the way for everything else.

              I do like the init steps you take to resolve this, highest Perc DC vs lowest roll, if failed then note who sees who and go from there in the init order - to avoid longer pauses from me as GM.
              I will probably return to your comment after we have to deal with stealth again lol.

              KichaeK 1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • KichaeK Kichae

                taaz@biglemmowski.win said in How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?:

                I should try the offloading though that is good tip, my players are bit meta/gamey

                Be judicious in what you off-load to them, then. Maybe don’t let them track which NPCs can see which PCs, but let them track which NPCs the PCs can see. Make sure they’re all tracking their own HP, and not leaving that to you. Let one of them handle calling out initiative, telling everyone who’s up and who’s “on deck”. These all work towards treating you more as the player of the NPCs and less as the person who’s organizing/running the game.

                One thing you can do with stealth and initiative, when the NPCs are the ones hiding, is just be transparent about how many enemies there are. Say something like “You think you can hear three distinct sets of sounds.” This makes it so that NPCs are never Unnoticed (which is how the designers seemingly wants you to treat it, anyway). This lets you roll initiative for all of the hidden NPCs openly, and incentivises the players to start looking for them. This keeps it so the players can keep track of the initiative order, even when there are hidden enemies.

                taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
                taaz@biglemmowski.winT This user is from outside of this forum
                taaz@biglemmowski.win
                wrote last edited by
                #7

                let them track which NPCs the PCs can see

                yep, already noted, that’s about the best I can do in my case I think

                They do track things for their own characters (HPs, statuses etc) and I obviously track NPCs. I am not sure about the init order, I use Pathbuilders Encounter builder thingy to do that and players do not have access to that, someone could absolutely do this once I build the order but I would have to change my workflow a bit to accommodate it.

                1 Reply Last reply
                1
                • taaz@biglemmowski.winT taaz@biglemmowski.win

                  Wow you really went ham on this, thanks!

                  The table is not small small, more like narrow so there is just enough space for 4 players and their tablets and dice trays. We have erasable(?) grid map book in front of my side of the table (GM screen with laptop and dice tray behind, and that takes the whole width of the table).
                  We use miniatures (nothing fancy) to represent both PCs and NPCs but room boundaries are written on the grid with marker and that is about it, I do have some pane minis with stuff like rocks, pillars and trees but… reality is that my combats probably feel pretty barren when it comes to hiding/occlusion spots (now that I am thinking about this, I have probably not bothered because of this whole issue), I usually only sprinkle in stuff when it makes “logistical” sense to have it there.

                  Clipboard is actually really good idea for my setup, I can tuck it between the laptop and GM screen when not actively using and it is mostly out of the way for everything else.

                  I do like the init steps you take to resolve this, highest Perc DC vs lowest roll, if failed then note who sees who and go from there in the init order - to avoid longer pauses from me as GM.
                  I will probably return to your comment after we have to deal with stealth again lol.

                  KichaeK Online
                  KichaeK Online
                  Kichae
                  Forum Master
                  wrote last edited by
                  #8

                  Yeah. At least for my sessions, the biggest sources of stealth play tend to be things like bushes (which I scribble on my play mat like I’m 4 years old), or things like furniture, so I hear you. It’s easy to say “here are all the ways stealth could happen”, but the reality is that most spaces that people will actually spend time in will not have an abundance of hiding places, and trying to create them can feel very contrived. Feint gets used so much more often than Hide/Sneak.

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  2
                  • taaz@biglemmowski.winT taaz@biglemmowski.win

                    Thanks for sharing! yeah I do use the PB Encounter tracker but it does not work well with my setup and workflow - probably boils down to having 14" laptop screen.
                    With all the PCs, minions and NPCs in the tracker, I can’t just scan it and see perceptions of all N/PCs, have to filter who is who and also scroll (which somehow sucks because half the time I scroll the whole page instead of the list).

                    I should try the offloading that is a good tip, though my players are bit meta/gamey - not to cheese but they are just not used to separating themselves from characters, instead playing their chars like pawns and taking all information given into account - so I tend to keep stuff secret.

                    PS: Thanks! ENL Rocks! hah

                    ZagorathZ This user is from outside of this forum
                    ZagorathZ This user is from outside of this forum
                    Zagorath
                    wrote last edited by
                    #9

                    probably boils down to having 14" laptop screen

                    *looks shiftily at my 12.9 inch iPad*

                    1 Reply Last reply
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