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 :/
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!
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
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.
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.