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How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down? (biglemmowski.win)
submitted 1 year ago* by to c/pathfinder@ttrpg.network
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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 :/

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[–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago

    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.

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