The state of stealth

[Invader_Nym]

I made some comments a while back about how easy it was to circumvent stealth. More specifically, I made the observation that people who willingly choose low-skill-point builds shouldn't be lamenting the fact that they don't have any skills (namely spot/listen). My position was that it's unfair to allow people to cheaply and easily avoid paying the cost of spot/listen while still enjoying the benefits of having those abilities.

A little while later true seeing, among a number of other spells, were changed. After having played on my sneaker after the changes for a while now I have to say that the changes seem overwhelmingly and obviously favorable to everyone /but/ stealthers.

Not only can wizards still use true sight to expose stealthed characters, which was my original complaint to begin with, but now they can use it to break disguises and spot people conventionally as well, and the amplify spell can be used to add a permanent 20 points to listen.

Also, now that polymorph works without killing spell slots, wizards now have access to permanent true seeing at 2 spell levels lower than before. It's possible for a wizard to instantaneously switch back to humanoid form and get off a spell when they're hasted, which seems to me unsporting.

Then there's rogue, which for whatever reason, despite already being a skill build, was given an additional 12 points of spot and listen for free.

Then, there's the fact that you can get a wopping +6 to spot right out the gate through gifts. +6 is more than half an epic feat (epic skill focus spot.)

And finally, there's the fact that mass camoflauge no longer stacks. It seems to me inconsistent to give +20 to listen, and +15 to spot, through spells, but to forbid +20 to hide.

All this cheap, easy access to free skill points dilutes the value of actual ranks in skills, which is in my opinion a huge mistake.

If these changes were meant to help stealth/utility classes, they've failed overwhelmingly, and have had a resounding, opposite effect. Where once my character was hard to find without true seeing, now I get spotted by everyone all the time without the need for true seeing at all. This wasn't the remedy I had in mind when I called attention to this issue.

I actually think that all of this is part of a more fundamental issue, which is that there seems to me to be an obvious bias, developmentally, towards the casting classes, which I'll talk about more in another post.

[The Rambling Midget]

Although I feel the pain regularly, I'm not quite as upset about the issue.

However, I do feel that polymorphed forms and familiars should have their True Sight changed to spot/listen bonuses, since they're frequently exploited as a cheap and easy means of detection.

Pseudodragons especially have seen a surge in popularity since the TS duration change.

[Cerk Evermoore]

As someone who can only use true sight to detect stealth I can say it really sucks. It doesn't last long enough and folks with HiPs will just enter stealth and re-enter it. Or just break LoS and restealth. If you can't reasonably find the stealth character that is hiding in your guild house, there's a serious problem.

[Invader_Nym]

As someone who can only use true sight to detect stealth I can say it really sucks. It doesn't last long enough and folks with HiPs will just enter stealth and re-enter it. Or just break LoS and restealth. If you can't reasonably find the stealth character that is hiding in your guild house, there's a serious problem.

There's a way you can find really good sneakers. It's by becoming a really good detector. I'm not trying to be combative here but you sort of underscored the point I made in my first paragraph, which is that people are lamenting the fact that they don't have spot on builds for which they chose not to boost spot.

[MineTurtle]

I welcome any change that means nine out of every ten wizards have a fey familiar.
I mean, it's probably ten out of ten, but I'm allowing for the ones I've never seen.

[flower]

Unless you invest heavily into spot it is a waste of skill point, Nym. Classes who utilize sneaking usually get like 8 skill points per level with basic int 14. Your ranger can easily cover necessary skills unlike other meelers. TS is only way to balance things. Situation would be different without HIPs but nearly any sneak can obtain it now in some form.

Also wizards can spare skills for spot easily with that int score.

Going dedicated spotter focuses you on very narrow specialization. For what, PvP spotting of hidden people?

[Cerk Evermoore]

I feel people shouldn't have to compete with a stealther point for point in skills. If I take 80 points taunt, that doesn't mean I should remove a massive amount of AC from the person I use it on, I get the same mechanical effect. The extra skill points just try to counteract folks concentration skill.

Same way with hide, if you have 0 spot there is no difference between 30 hide / ms and 80 hide / ms. The extra point investment just goes towards improving your ability to resist spotters.

Lots of skills have terrible value either, Hide / MS are in a good spot.

[Mithreas]

The problem with detect skills vs spot skills is that, outside of the stealther vs spotter contest, the utility of the skills is not even.

Stealth skills are useful for travelling the module undetected. They form the core of some character archetypes and get used extensively while soloing.

Detect skills are useful... when NPC stealthers are trying to sneak attack you, and the impact of not noticing them is limited to one additional sneak attack.

That's a lot less utility, so dedicated detection builds are sacrificing more by investing in detection skills than stealth builds are by investing in stealth. This is balanced to some extent by only needing one detection skill vs two spot skills, but the utility gap is so big that I've never felt this is even.

Things like the change to get more loot from having high search are the sort of thing that the other detection skills need so that adventurers get benefit out of having them even when they're not trying to passively detect a sneaker. If detection sills were worth having for their own sake, then investing in detection skills would no longer feel like a waste.

[sad_zav]

i don't think anyone invests in detection skills for pve

[Invader_Nym]

The problem with detect skills vs spot skills is that, outside of the stealther vs spotter contest, the utility of the skills is not even.

Stealth skills are useful for travelling the module undetected. They form the core of some character archetypes and get used extensively while soloing.

Detect skills are useful... when NPC stealthers are trying to sneak attack you, and the impact of not noticing them is limited to one additional sneak attack.

That's a lot less utility, so dedicated detection builds are sacrificing more by investing in detection skills than stealth builds are by investing in stealth. This is balanced to some extent by only needing one detection skill vs two spot skills, but the utility gap is so big that I've never felt this is even.

Things like the change to get more loot from having high search are the sort of thing that the other detection skills need so that adventurers get benefit out of having them even when they're not trying to passively detect a sneaker. If detection sills were worth having for their own sake, then investing in detection skills would no longer feel like a waste.

I see the point you're making but I think it side-steps the issue I'm raising.

There are definitely differences in worth between skills. Tumble and UMD are obviously disproportionately valuable when compared to other skills. One of the reasons that the discrepancy in value between stealth and detection seems so large, however, is because the discrepancy is being considered from the point of view of builds for which skill points are scarce.

Obviously, if you have hardly any skill points, you're going to be more sensitive to changes in worth between two different skills.

This is actually taught in microeconomics. If you're a smoker and the price of cigarettes jumps from 10 dollars to 50 dollars, how significant this change is to you depends on how much money you have. If you're poor the difference is huge. If you're rich you won't even feel it. (supply/demand elasticity). https://www.investopedia.com/university ... omics4.asp

Similarly, if you have an abundance of skill points, you won't fret over detection being slightly less valuable.

By min-maxing and taking low-skill-point classes, people are choosing skill point scarcity, and they're choosing to be put in the position where detection skills don't seem valuable enough to take.

I personally think what really motivates the move to dilute the value of class-based skill points is that people want to min-max and play the most powerful characters and classes, and an unfortunate byproduct of that is typically a scarcity of skill points, so invariably methods sneak in that allow people to make uber-characters without having to deal with the consequences.

[flower]

There is very little way to icnrease sklil points on non human meleer (or any other class with this) who gets 2+ int modifier.

[Miskol]

So basically anyone playing a fighter has to invest at least 2-4 stat points into int, just to counter your base ranks in hide/ms. And then they have to spend enchantment skill slots on spot/listen just to counter the hide/ms that you would put on your gear anyways, and then on top of that, if you're a DEX build, they also need to up their WIS. All this, just so their character could be on equal grounds with yours?

Edit: tl;dr: seems like its a one sided punishment for anyone wanting to play a fighter to me.

[Hunter548]

If these changes were meant to help stealth/utility classes, they've failed overwhelmingly, and have had a resounding, opposite effect. Where once my character was hard to find without true seeing, now I get spotted by everyone all the time without the need for true seeing at all. This wasn't the remedy I had in mind when I called attention to this issue.

I actually think that all of this is part of a more fundamental issue, which is that there seems to me to be an obvious bias, developmentally, towards the casting classes, which I'll talk about more in another post.

Have you considered that you're being detected more now because the of the true seeing nerf? That is to say, more people are taking detect skills now because they have to, and can't rely on True Seeing, thus leading to the "Spotted more often" problem?

[Mithreas]

I see the point you're making but I think it side-steps the issue I'm raising.

Thank you for the lecture in basic economics

I was actually replying to the people further down the thread who were arguing that splashing in spot was pointless & hence you had a choice between maxing stealth and spot, or investing ~30 in stealth and nothing in spot.

I'm in full agreement with you over skill point scarcity (and hence the need to sacrifice to take detection skills) being a feature not a bug. However, I would like to see detection skills do more, so that they can be used actively to help a character's progress rather than just providing a very slight passive boon in some PvE encounters. That would in turn make them a feature that actively supported a character's progression and abilities in the same vein as animal empathy, search, open lock, detect trap, hide, move silently, heal, lore, parry, perform, pick pocket, taunt, appraise, and craft trap.

Alternately, one could attempt to make them as useful as the other passive defensive skills - concentration, discipline, tumble and spellcraft. However, they are all used significantly more often [in builds that need them], and concentration, discipline and spellcraft all protect you against disabling effects which have a much higher impact than a single free sneak attack. To do this would mean introducing frequent disabling effects resisted by spot and listen, however, which as well as having a massive impact on balance would be pretty hard to do.

The result of these skills being more useful would be that workarounds to not having them would not be in such high demand...

[Invader_Nym]

Thank you for the lecture in basic economics

Hehe. It wasn't my intention to be patronizing there. The principle of the price elasticity of demand was in no way obvious to me and economics is an area I find very interesting.

[Hazard]

Edit:
Actually, that's off-topic and I'll save it for the other thread! My apologies.

As for stealth, when I played my stealth characters after the MASSIVE nerf to true seeing, I always felt as if stealth was over powered, so I'm not really seeing what you're seeing. There are changes I'd make like allowing shadow-dancers to move quicker while hidden, to allow for an easier time getting around corners to re-stealth. Rogues can, monks CERTAINLY can, but shadow-dancers feel left out... and I don't even know what to say about poor old assassins.

Umberhulks as an example are incredibly weak. If someone takes that form to see you, you should go on the offensive. Their HP will even be so low, that if you have a gonne you might two-shot them.

Other ways of countering stealth classes involve a heavy investment in a sub-optimal build and using your most powerful ability p/day on it. I feel that's more than fair. It's nice to get 'something' for being a pure casting class, with no multiclassing skill dumps.

Skill scarcity I can agree with. Wizards having a lot of skill points is the point of wizards. High int = Many skills. It's an intentional perk of being very smart... But having said that, playing other characters that don't have high int, kind of sucks! Would at least like to be able to afford some skills outside the 'optimal' selection.

Additionally, and this is my personal and unpopular opinion, even though I was playing a stealth character at the time I still did not like the nerf to true seeing. I knew it would lead to everyone investing heavily in spot because they have to, and I just don't see it as over powered. It's a spell that takes up spell slots and that seems fine to me. I never got upset when someone would cast an extended true seeing. Those are spells they prepared, used with feats they invested in. I'm still hopeful we'll revert the change some day, but don't worry- You don't need to blast me about how that is unlikely. I know how unpopular this opinion is.

[monkeywithstick]

At present the two skillsets are handled differently. Mithreas has covered a fair few solid reasons why that isn't a dreadful idea.

Hide/MS have more craftable gear options and less spell boosts Spot/Listen the other way around.
Also Dex as a stat gives more to almost any build than wisdom (look at the build dump for monks, wisdom is lower than dex in every case)

Practically what this means is that people with skill investments can find you if they have amplify (or the shorter lived clairvoyance/truesight spot bonii up). Also true sight can find you, a level 6/7 spell slot -if- it catches you in the short amount of time it is up. Also pseudodragons -if- the player is possesing the pseudodragon.

What this means is that unless they are looking for you, you are invisible. So if you give "tells" (door or closet openings, etc) or they are exceptionally paranoid, or they have a super sekrit meeting that needs to be secure, then maybe you can't just sneak up with no risk.

Stealth play has in my opiinion at least a fairly high OOC skill ceiling. People who are good at it will be more succesful. I've dodged large PvP blobs out looking for me with spell buffs on more than one occasion, also pseudodragon detection via line of sight.

The server is in a pretty healthy place in this regard. Being able to play an utterly undetectable ninja is fundamentally very uninteractive gameplay (imagine if every single conversation had could be monitored with potentially 0 risk/consequences, scry manages this only with a very limited time window)

The way to avoid being detected is to learn when people generally start casting detection spells and avoid LoS when that occurs, most people do not walk about with amplify on, it's not -quite- long enough lasting for that, certainly not from a wand.

[Hibiscus Leaves]

I think that shapes and familiars with True Seeing should be given bonuses to Listen/Spot instead, but I know nothing about this stuff. I do know I personally had to give up some PVP/PVE mechanical power so that I could have a chance at spotting sneaks/breaking disguises. It doesn't really help me in the long run. Nice to have, though.

[-XXX-]

Everything in this game has hard counters - and for a good reason. Some mechanics offer binary outcomes and the way stealth is implemented in NWN makes it one of them. The same way as protection against instant death and CC effects is necessary for overall mechanical balance and FUN, a counter to stealth is needed as well.

Significant changes to detection means have already been made, but it would appear that they weren't sufficient to appease everyone.
I understand that getting spotted can be frustrating, but so can be being unable to spot someone (binary outcome). On the other hand, expecting to be automatically given an advantage over anyone who desn't play a specific niche character (skilldumping WIS build with maxed spot gear) could hardly be called reasonable.


As for the detection skills economy - what about classes that don't get certain skills as a class skill? Those characters aren't able to get those skills to even remotely useful values - there's no decision making process here, skillpoint starved or not. Furthermore, do we really need another incentive for massive skilldumps? Forcing everyone to top their build with 3 rogue levels to get their obligatory UMD, tumble and now proposed detection skills seems awkward an unintuitive.

[Mithreas]

Significant changes to detection means have already been made, but it would appear that they weren't sufficient to appease everyone.

They never, ever, will be. This is one of those subjects that will generate a few pages of discussion on the forums every 6-12 months regardless of what the game engine is doing at the time! We have around 15 years of history backing this statement up (and not just on Arelith...!).

[Royal Blood]

I think hiding and spotting are all in a good place. I know for a fact my character is tailed often, so if she wants to hide she will do certain things to see if she is being followed short of just using a true sight scroll if she is reeeeeally concerned.

Hiding people have it good though, you just need to be smart with it I think

[The Rambling Midget]

I think hiding and spotting are all in a good place. I know for a fact my character is tailed often, so if she wants to hide she will do certain things to see if she is being followed short of just using a true sight scroll if she is reeeeeally concerned.

Hiding people have it good though, you just need to be smart with it I think

Being smart, unfortunately, is not good enough. Disguises were the buffer that allowed a sneak to be caught and foiled in the moment, but not completely invalidated. In the absence of disguises, True Seeing scrolls both find sneaks and identify them, and that information is nearly always rapidly disseminated so that the character in question can be readily identified and thwarted by allies at every opportunity from that point forward.

Stealthing would be in a good place, if it had that as a backup. Currently, it does not.

If a fighter loses a fight and dies, he can return to life with nothing lost. No drop in combat or defensive power, or special abilities. He can run right into the next fight, no problem. If a spy gets spotted, that's the end. All credibility and anonymity are lost. There's no recovery. The only option from that point on is remaining completely out of sight, because being seen is likely a death sentence. That needs to be taken into consideration when determining whether the current stealth/detect system is in balance.

[Nitro]

On the vast majority of characters truesight scrolls only reveal you for one round. 6 seconds during which time you need to make sure LoS is broken unlike before when they could pop a scroll AND check around corners. So unless you're trying to spy on someone in a featureless area with 0 places to take cover (in which case you kind of deserve to be caught for hanging out in the open) you'll be fine from true sight scrolls.

[Ninjaturtle]

I personally like what the team has done with the hide and ms. Classes that are capable of reaching a decent hide and ms, but are traditionally skill starved, have been circumvented with additional skill points, and with new spot/ listen based classes such as the rogue. Both of these opposing parties are able to reach around 100 in their categories without investing feats and with the right gear.

However, I personally feel like all of this was undermined by keeping the true sight aspect of true seeing. Why should my rogue carry around all of this listen and spot gear when he can just pop a true seeing scroll with the additional benefit of sneak immunity? Why ward and area prior to your top secret meeting if you can just drop a level 6 spell? Admittedly, I do not understand everything though and maybe this easily obtainable item is still needed for balance.

[flower]

Because vast majority of classes would be left on mercy of sneakers.

Nearly all meelers, clerics lack skill points for spot and even if invested into it their 30 would be like having 0 versus someone with 80 ms/hide. It would demand full dedication to the spot.