Being an attempt to clarify and fix the current rules for the Stealth skill
Sneaking
Any character with the Stealth skill may declare, before entering an encouter that they are Sneaking. A sneaking character may not be seen or heard by monsters or players, until they come within a certain range (see "being spotted" below). A character may begin sneaking in the middle of an encounter only with a direct call from a GM. If the GM is too busy monstering or dealing with other things, your character cannot begin sneaking (the vague IC rationale for this is that hiding in the middle of a hectic encounter is actually rather difficult, the OOC rationale is the it is not practical to force monsters to make calls about whether or not your character has slipped away or not).
A character who is sneaking must roleplay their movements, depending on the amount of cover available. GMs who expect PCs to be sneaking should define the levels of cover in their encounters beforehand, GMs who don't should probably make it up as they go along. Levels of cover and effects are as follows:
- None City squares and open plains, in broad daylight. Nobody can sneak at all.
- Minimal Scrub, brush, longish grass. Twilight. Here characters can sneak so long as they stay low to the ground (crawling on your bellies encouraged but not mandatory) and move only by inches.
- Moderate The way most of Shotover looks OOC. Firelight. Characters may sneak so long as they move slowly and cautiously, keeping their heads down.
- Dense. Thick forest. Night Time darkness. Characters may sneak so long as they move at walking pace.
- Total. Incredibly dense forest. Absolute Darkness. Characters may sneak even at brisk walking place, although they may have trouble finding their way around.
Beng Spotted
A sneaking character is spotted in one of two circumstances. Either they stop roleplaying their sneaking adequately, as adjudged by the GM, or else a monster calls Spot against them.
A monster may Spot a player only if that player comes within a range determined by the Stealth skill of the target. The ranges are as follows:
- Stealth 1 15 Foot
- Stealth 2 12 Foot
- Stealth 3 9 foot
- Stealth 4 6 foot
- Stealth 5 3 foot
Once spotted, a character loses all benefits of sneaking.
Automatic Spots
A character is automatically Spotted in the following circumstances.
- Characters are automatically spotted by any character who sees them make a backtab attempt, regardless of range.
- Characters are automatically Spotted by other characters who have more ranks in Survival:Terrain than they do (for, of course, the appropriate terrain.