The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote:
Or you know... throw rocks and other small objects. That might work too.



-Username17

Rock throwing provides a momentary distraction, causing your enemies to face away from you for a short amount of time. Explain to me what rock throwing has to do with not having rules for targets facing away from you, or allowing stealthers to just stand out in the open indefinitely like fucking WoW rogues.

virgil wrote:

Chamomile wrote:

ModelCitizen wrote: About your toad that looks like a dead leaf, humans can't do that, and that toad can't do it anywhere but its natural environment.

Paint should not be an epic-level item.

Nor should military camouflage.

I believe you guys mean "shouldn't be a 13th level ranger class feature." And no, it shouldn't. If Chamomile had quoted the next two sentences of that post, you'd see I mentioned that.

While pretty much anybody should be able to wear a ghillie suit, in a game as specific about items as D&D you can't wear items you don't have. You don't get to walk into the mushroom forest and hide in plain sight unless you actually own and have time to put on something like this:

Presuming you don't own that ridiculous thing, the stealth rules should encourage you to act like you're actually hiding instead of standing out in the open with a transparent character model. Which in that case is no problem because there are probably giant concealment-providing mushroom stalks everywhere and (if the rules are any good) you can move through open ground by moving quickly from one to the next.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Kaelik wrote: Now, if we just let rogues cast ghost sound at will then we never have to have the facing conversation.

Or you know... throw rocks and other small objects. That might work too.



-Username17

Right, because you can totally throw rocks through the wall, then open the door and enter the building before he turns back and sees the door open.

Oh wait. Nevermind.

Kaelik wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:

Kaelik wrote: Now, if we just let rogues cast ghost sound at will then we never have to have the facing conversation.

Or you know... throw rocks and other small objects. That might work too.



-Username17

Right, because you can totally throw rocks through the wall, then open the door and enter the building before he turns back and sees the door open.

Oh wait. Nevermind.

And you can totally cast ghost sound through walls?

Kaelik wrote: I can move my right hand so you miss my left hand because you are paying attention to my right hand.

I cannot move my body in such a way that you miss it because you are paying attention to my body. That's stupid.

[*] Observation doesn't work that way. Your right hand and left hand are part of your body. If I decide that I am paying attention to someone's upper torso, do I auto-observe any stage magic tricks if their act doesn't involve any distraction from their lower torso? What if a stage magician decides to involve their feet and knees in the distraction? Do they get a chance then?

If you say 'no' then Sleight of Hand can't work at all. If you say 'yes' then you're back to the problem of demarcation. If I had a beautiful stage assistant doing a pretty dance, could I do things unseen with my whole body? What if I had the sun to my back? Or the sign behind me was going 'Applause Please'?

[*] Your analogy also rests upon the assumption that you can declare that you are paying attention in the first place. This isn't what we do for games like these; you try to pay attention/observe someone and you may or may not be able to do it.

[*] Even taking your statement as liberally as possible your claim still isn't necessarily true. Not in a game with teleportation and/or superspeed and/or illusory magic or whatever. In fact, super speed is a good example why it's bullshit to declare that you're observing something therefore you can 'see' everything that someone is trying to do.

ModelCitizen wrote:Presuming you don't own that ridiculous thing, the stealth rules should encourage you to act like you're actually hiding instead of standing out in the open with a transparent character model.

fectin wrote:That's MTP bullshit, apparently.

You know, I don't have to say how I swung my sword and what foot I led with to hit with an attack roll. Nor do I have to come up with a list of witty bon mots and flirtations that I'm using for my diplomacy check. I am forced to wonder why, in a game where it's not particularly important, stealth is the drawing line of 'this is too important for you to handwave or come up with post hoc justifications'.

I am not saying, and have not said, that you need to narrate or explain how you sneak. I am saying that setting up a situation where it's easier for you to sneak or harder for the spotter to spot you should give you mechanical benefits. Examples include, but are not limited to:
- distracting the guard with a rock
- waiting for the guard to take a piss
- distracting the guard with cake
- taking a circuitous route, so you stay in cover
- distracting the guard with pretty girls
- staying further away from the guard
- distracting the guard with pretty boys
- prank calling the guard
- creating and wearing a gillie suit
- distracting the guard with air horns
- MacGuyver-style barrel-rolling shenanigans
- distracting the guard with blood loss
- etc.

@Lago, that post hurt my fucking head. I don't even really want to try and decipher what you thought Kaelik was saying or why you thought anything you said was a response, because it's not worth it.

You said this:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

ModelCitizen wrote:That's Sleight of Hand, not stealth. Of course you should be able to use Sleight of Hand while directly observed, that's the whole point, but you can't conceal yourself with a left hand distraction.

That's an artificial distinction. There's no abstract principle that states that 'moving your appendages in a cloying and fast way so people can't spot what you're doing' is a completely separate sphere from 'moving your entire body in a cloying and fast way so that people can't spot what you're doing'

This is retarded. It is not an artificial distinction. It is a real distinction. Because sleight of hand is not 'moving your appendages in a cloying and fast way so people can't spot what you're doing.' It is doing something flashy with your right hand so people aren't looking at your left hand. There exists some X which is being shown as a distraction, and there exists some Y which you are trying to make people not look at. The instant X and Y are the same thing, sleight of hand has failed because you are making people look at the thing you are trying to hide.

Which is why sleight of hand has fuck-all to do with hiding yourself; you cannot do something flashy with your body such that people will not look at your body.

This has nothing to do with declarations of what you are specifically looking at.

This has nothing to do with superspeed or illusory magic that makes you functionally invisible.

It's really simple. Sleight of hand is a different task than hiding yourself. The concept that sleight of hand can happen in plain sight is a fundamentally different concept than the idea that you can stand in place, move really funny, and not be seen. Now, as a game, characters definitely need the ability to basically stand in plain sight and not be seen. Or, at the least, to have an abstracted stealth system that doesn't try and fuck around with specific positioning. But that has nothing to do with your very stupid assertion that "sleight of hand" and "hiding yourself in plain sight" are the same thing. Because they aren't.

DSM wrote:Because sleight of hand is not 'moving your appendages in a cloying and fast way so people can't spot what you're doing.' It is doing something flashy with your right hand so people aren't looking at your left hand. There exists some X which is being shown as a distraction, and there exists some Y which you are trying to make people not look at.

You are objectively wrong there. Sleight of Hand is both moving so fast people don't see what you're doing and it is distracting people from seeing what you are doing. Sleight of Hand lets you quickdraw blades and stuff. It's also moving so slowly or subtly that people don't notice your actions (as in pickpocketing) and performing actions outside people's field of view. Sleight of Hand lets you do a lot of things, with the only constant being that if you make your check, other people don't see (or at least do not notice) you doing it. Speed, sloth, distraction, and concealment are all perfectly valid strategies for Sleight of Hand.

Everything else you said was stupid, because it was predicated on the idea that Sleight of Hand never involved pulling a blade out of a hiding place so quickly that people don't see where the knife came from. Which is bullshit, because that isn't even a terribly difficult check.

-Username17

DSMatticus wrote:I don't even really want to try and decipher what you thought Kaelik was saying or why you thought anything you said was a response, because it's not worth it.

I mean, I appreciate you being upfront about you not reading my posts but feeling the need to post. But really, I think you should either try harder or STFU.

DSMatticus wrote:It is a real distinction. Because sleight of hand is not 'moving your appendages in a cloying and fast way so people can't spot what you're doing.'

It is doing something flashy with your right hand so people aren't looking at your left hand.

No, seriously, what the fuck? Wrap your head around that one, folks. Oh, I think I see the problem here.

DSMatticus wrote:It is doing something flashy with your right hand so people aren't looking at your left hand. There exists some X which is being shown as a distraction, and there exists some Y which you are trying to make people not look at. The instant X and Y are the same thing, sleight of hand has failed because you are making people look at the thing you are trying to hide.

me wrote:Observation doesn't work that way. Your right hand and left hand are part of your body. If I decide that I am paying attention to someone's upper torso, do I auto-observe any stage magic tricks if their act doesn't involve any distraction from their lower torso? What if a stage magician decides to involve their feet and knees in the distraction? Do they get a chance then?

If you say 'no' then Sleight of Hand can't work at all. If you say 'yes' then you're back to the problem of demarcation. If I had a beautiful stage assistant doing a pretty dance, could I do things unseen with my whole body? What if I had the sun to my back? Or the sign behind me was going 'Applause Please'?

You want me to post that again?

DSMatticus wrote:This has nothing to do with declarations of what you are specifically looking at.

YOU CANNOT DO THAT. You can't declare that you're looking at anything! Yes, trying to observe something and actually observing something is usually the same thing. In the context of a TTRPG, declaring that you are looking at something is like declaring that you are hitting something. You can't do that, even if you have a floor of +20 bonus to attack rolls against an AC 0 target and any form of auto-misses are locked out.

virgil wrote:

Kaelik wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Or you know... throw rocks and other small objects. That might work too.



-Username17

Right, because you can totally throw rocks through the wall, then open the door and enter the building before he turns back and sees the door open.

Oh wait. Nevermind.

And you can totally cast ghost sound through walls?

Yes, you can. Because it's fucking magic. So both: 1) the wall could naturally have, or you could drill the smallest hole, literally a millimeter diameter, and use ghost sound. 2) You could just give Rogues a special ghost sound that works without line of effect, and no one will complain, because it's just Ghost sound.

So yes, when you are giving the Rogue spells to solve a dumb problem, the fact that you slightly change the spell from the Wizard version is not a worthwhile complaint. When you are advocating throwing rocks through walls to distract people, that is.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: In the context of a TTRPG, declaring that you are looking at something is like declaring that you are hitting something.

You mean a Coup de Grace?

Coup de Grace is a great example. No matter how much the odds are on your side nor how strongly you meet the generic prerequisites, you can't just say you're Coup de Gracing someone in the literal sense.

Kaelik wrote:

virgil wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Right, because you can totally throw rocks through the wall, then open the door and enter the building before he turns back and sees the door open.

Oh wait. Nevermind.

And you can totally cast ghost sound through walls?

Yes, you can. Because it's fucking magic. So both: 1) the wall could naturally have, or you could drill the smallest hole, literally a millimeter diameter, and use ghost sound.

No, you can't. Because it's the fvcking rules:

The Fvcking Rules wrote:An otherwise solid barrier with a hole of at least 1 square foot through it does not block a spell’s line of effect.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Coup de Grace is a great example. No matter how much the odds are on your side nor how strongly you meet the generic prerequisites, you can't just say you're Coup de Gracing someone in the literal sense.

d20srd wrote: Coup de Grace

As a full-round action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are adjacent to the target.

You automatically hit and score a critical hit. If the defender survives the damage, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or die. A rogue also gets her extra sneak attack damage against a helpless opponent when delivering a coup de grace.

virgil wrote:No, you can't. Because it's the fvcking rules:

Really!

Shit, it's too bad we can't change the rules when we are changing the rules.

I guess we just have to give the Rogue Ghost Sound subject to all the limitations of Ghost Sound in 3e in our hypothetical game.

fectin wrote:I am not saying, and have not said, that you need to narrate or explain how you sneak. I am saying that setting up a situation where it's easier for you to sneak or harder for the spotter to spot you should give you mechanical benefits. Examples include, but are not limited to:
- distracting the guard with a rock
- waiting for the guard to take a piss
- distracting the guard with cake
- taking a circuitous route, so you stay in cover
- distracting the guard with pretty girls
- staying further away from the guard
- distracting the guard with pretty boys
- prank calling the guard
- creating and wearing a gillie suit
- distracting the guard with air horns
- MacGuyver-style barrel-rolling shenanigans
- distracting the guard with blood loss
- etc.

I'm not clear why you want to hand out bonuses for this stuff. That pretty much just reads like flavor text for _how_ you are sneaking, ie making the roll. Or why his perception check is so bad. (ie, DM rolls a 5 on the perception check, and says 'ok, you easily sneak by the guard as he's busy focusing on his Troll-porn')

Because, really, if you want to throw around bonuses for a bunch of trivial stuff just for sneaking, you're going to have to hand it out for whatever other bullshit people spew forth about their other skills and actions. 'Well, I found really pure iron, so I should get +x to my smithing checks, and obviously +x to any attacks I make with the resulting weapon.'

It is the shortbus to bullshit madness land.

Yes, fectin, and therein lies the problem! Someone's contigency spell could go off just as you struck them, teleporting them to safety. Someone could have an ability that makes them immune to the auto-hit/critical hit of Coup De Graces as long as their hitpoints were above a certain threshold. Someone could declare their 'Interpose for Ally' ability and take the hit (therefore negating the Coup de Grace). So on and so forth. You as the player don't declare that you're going to Coup de Grace someone. Or any action for that matter. You meet the requirements and attempt the action. And you may or may not actually complete it as intended.

Now, for actions that have little or no non-exceptional margin of error (like casting a spell) it's customary for people to say things like 'I cast Magic Missile at the orc!' rather than saying 'I attempt to cast Magic Missile at the orc!' because colloquial English is rather funny that way. But make no mistake, you're actually doing the latter.

Applications to 'I'm observing someone, therefore they can't hide' should be obvious. In this case the English language fails us utterly and leads to bad mechanics, especially since for 99.9% of human daily experience attempting to observe something usually means actually observing it -- making balancing stealth even more counter-intuitive. If you really and truly want to fix the perception/stealth problem, you first need to realize that short of assisted DM fiat PCs can't make their character observe (or hit or cast or craft or whatever) something. They can only attempt to.

Kaelik wrote:

virgil wrote:No, you can't. Because it's the fvcking rules:

Really!

Shit, it's too bad we can't change the rules when we are changing the rules.

I guess we just have to give the Rogue Ghost Sound subject to all the limitations of Ghost Sound in 3e in our hypothetical game.

You're the one bringing up a D&D specific spell and assuming there's all sorts of assumed changes in response to a nonmechanical note that the facing conversation is already invalidated thanks to being able to throw rocks.

Now I remember why I put you on ignore.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Yes, fectin, and therein lies the problem! Someone's contigency spell could go off just as you struck them, teleporting them to safety. Someone could have an ability that makes them immune to the auto-hit/critical hit of Coup De Graces as long as their hitpoints were above a certain threshold. Someone could declare their 'Interpose for Ally' ability and take the hit (therefore negating the Coup de Grace). So on and so forth.

You as the player don't declare that you're going to Coup de Grace someone. Or any action for that matter. You meet the requirements and attempt the action. And you may or may actually go through with it.

Now, for actions that have little or no non-exceptional margin of error (like casting a spell) it's customary for people to say 'I cast Magic Missile at the orc!' rather than saying 'I attempt to cast Magic Missile at the orc!' because colloquial English is rather funny that way. But make no mistake, you're actually doing the latter.

Applications to 'I'm observing someone, therefore they can't hide' should be obvious. In this case the English language fails us utterly and leads to bad mechanics, especially since for 99.9% of human daily experience attempting to observe something usually means actually observing it -- making balancing stealth even more counter-intuitive.

Oh, it really was a pointless semantics fight? Fine; you're still wrong.
Coup de Grace is an action you take, which may or may not be successful. Similarly, you do, in fact, cast magic missile at the orc. It may fail for any number of reasons, but "Coup de Grace him" or "cast a spell at him" is still the action you take.

If this was a roundabout way of getting at "sometimes actions in RPGs fail," then you went pretty far around for it. Worse, if you actually had a point and are seriously arguing the need for rolling for success on tasks like "I look across the room" then heaven protect your players if try anything actually dangerous like "I eat the lukewarm porridge" or even (wait for it) "I walk across the level floor."

Lago is pretty much right - sometimes you attempt an action and you fail. Sometimes your action is interrupted to the point that you don't actually even perform your action.

For example, if a player says 'I cast magic missile', and he happens to be in a threatened square, the attack of opportunity (which, but the rules, occurs BEFORE the act of casting the spell) is successful and drops the player unconscious, he did not, in fact, cast magic missile. He attempted it and failed.

If a player says, 'I stare at the door', they're attempting to do that, but they may still get distracted.

For example, the next time your players say, 'I stare at the door', you should ask them how intently. Ask them, if you hear a noise behind you, will you turn to look? The probe further - considering how common it is for enemies to teleport or 'phase through solid walls', do you want to stare at the door 100% of the time allowing someone to approach from behind you and stab you in the kidney?

Players can't simultaneously claim to stare at the door 100% of the time and still be aware of other attacks. Turning to check behind them, even only quickly and occasionally, means, by definition, that they do not have their observation on the door 100% of the time.

If someone DOES teleport into the room, the players should be entitled to a Spot check, even if they were INTENDING to watch the door. As a result, someone trying to sneak through a watched door should be entitled to a stealth check.

Once that's accepted, we can look at how to fix Sneaking a little more to represent that it's harder to sneak up on someone than it is to spot someone.

If Invisibility is 'full concealment' and a +20 on hide checks, the simple fix is to allow 'sneaking' in all situations, but if there is no cover or concealment, they should be at -20. Invisibility, then, negates that penalty.

virgil wrote:You're the one bringing up a D&D specific spell and assuming there's all sorts of assumed changes in response to a nonmechanical note that the facing conversation is already invalidated thanks to being able to throw rocks.

No, I'm the one referencing a 3e spell as a short hand for a general type of thing to signifying Obi-Wanning your way past situations, which is of course the point because throwing rocks doesn't invalidate the facing conversation in it's most commonly raised instance, and in fact, the one it was first used in this thread, which is some asshole declaring he is staring at a door.

FrankTrollman wrote:

DSM wrote:Because sleight of hand is not 'moving your appendages in a cloying and fast way so people can't spot what you're doing.' It is doing something flashy with your right hand so people aren't looking at your left hand. There exists some X which is being shown as a distraction, and there exists some Y which you are trying to make people not look at.

You are objectively wrong there. Sleight of Hand is both moving so fast people don't see what you're doing and it is distracting people from seeing what you are doing. Sleight of Hand lets you quickdraw blades and stuff. It's also moving so slowly or subtly that people don't notice your actions (as in pickpocketing) and performing actions outside people's field of view. Sleight of Hand lets you do a lot of things, with the only constant being that if you make your check, other people don't see (or at least do not notice) you doing it. Speed, sloth, distraction, and concealment are all perfectly valid strategies for Sleight of Hand.

Everything else you said was stupid, because it was predicated on the idea that Sleight of Hand never involved pulling a blade out of a hiding place so quickly that people don't see where the knife came from. Which is bullshit, because that isn't even a terribly difficult check.

-Username17

Nothing you said is relevant at all, except to bring up definitions and examples of sleight of hand that, while totally valid in the broad context of the word, don't actually have any bearing on the narrow context of how it was being used in Lago's post, and are therefore useless to our discussion. I'll just remind you what Lago said:

Lago wrote: That's an artificial distinction. There's no abstract principle that states that 'moving your appendages in a cloying and fast way so people can't spot what you're doing' is a completely separate sphere from 'moving your entire body in a cloying and fast way so that people can't spot what you're doing'

Okay, see that? That's a very specific type of sleight of hand he is referring to. And it is obvious why that type of sleight of hand does not work for hiding unless you are Flash. Because while I can move my right hand quickly enough that you cannot actually see the details of what my hand is doing, that is distinct from moving my body quickly enough that you stop seeing that my body is there at all.

I can't make you not realize my right hand exists by shaking it really fast, but I can confuse you about what I am holding in my right hand. And I can't make you not realize my body is there by shaking it really fast, but I can confuse you as to whether or I'm going to swing with my left fist or kick you in the nuts or am just having a seizure.

The actions being described are principally different. And every other type of sleight of hand you described is also principally different, except for "doing things outside of people's field of view," which Lago specifically did not mention.

Lago wrote: You want me to post that again?

No, I don't, because it is stupid everytime you post it. When you have agency over some other thing, you can totally use it as a distraction. Has that ever been a contest? Getting people to look at a pretty girl while you sneak around them is totally separate from being invisible in plain sight because "you move in a cloying and fast way," which is what you originally said. Are you backpedalling on that? If so, then we agree and cool.

Lago wrote:YOU CANNOT DO THAT. You can't declare that you're looking at anything! Yes, trying to observe something and actually observing something is usually the same thing. In the context of a TTRPG, declaring that you are looking at something is like declaring that you are hitting something. You can't do that, even if you have a floor of +20 bonus to attack rolls against an AC 0 target and any form of auto-misses are locked out.

Why did you bother posting this? Did you see me specifically exclude declarations of observation from the discussion after you brought it up, and decide that you would yell at me until I specifically excluded them even harder?

deaddmwalking wrote: the attack of opportunity (which, but the rules, occurs BEFORE the act of casting the spell)

No, that is not what the rules say.

Right, it resolves before the act of casting the spell.

Difference. Casting the spell goes on the stack before the attack of opportunity.

So to speak.

NineInchNall wrote:Right, it resolves before the act of casting the spell.

Difference. Casting the spell goes on the stack before the attack of opportunity.

So to speak.

Am I misunderstaning your argument?

You're saying that if a player announces that he is casting a spell, an opponent hits the player's character, killing him, that the player cast the spell?

Clearly they did not cast a spell. They clearly ATTEMPTED to cast a spell.

Which is the point. Players can 'declare' actions, but the DM resolves those actions. If a player says 'I hit the stone giant with my sword' that should be understood as an INTENT, with the die roll determining the success or failure of the action. If the player says 'I stare at the door and I don't take my eyes off of it for any reason', that should likewise be registered as an INTENT - the Spot check determines how well the character did as they intended.

Unearthed Arcana introduced Flaws to the game. They were essentially 'negative feats' that allow you to take more feats than normal. An example of such a Flaw is 'Inattentive', wich gives a -6 to Spot checks. If a player has a -1 Wis Mod, a -6 for Inattentive and 0 skill ranks in Spot (net -7) it seems unreasonable to assume that they're EQUALLY GOOD at staring at a door as someone with a +6 Wis Mod, +15 ranks, +3 Skill Focus, +2 for race (Net +26). While both players may DECLARE the same action, the character that actually invested RESOURCES in being good at that task should be better. Thus, a skill check is most appropriate, opposed by the stealth check of the opponent (with appropriate penalty if necessary). The Inattentive Unwise Untrained character is more likely to be 'distracted' and fail to notice the 'mundane' character slipping through the door.

DSMatticus wrote: Okay, see that? That's a very specific type of sleight of hand he is referring to. And it is obvious why that type of sleight of hand does not work for hiding unless you are Flash. Because while I can move my right hand quickly enough that you cannot actually see the details of what my hand is doing, that is distinct from moving my body quickly enough that you stop seeing that my body is there at all.

According to 3rd edition, that type of distraction is supposed to be handled with a Bluff check.

Although, as I mentioned earlier, the huge problem with this is that now a stealthy guy needs to beat the guard three times at an opposed roll to actually succeed at stealth, which is really shitty. Congrats, Stealth Guy: you can get past the guard and though the door 12.5% of the time.