Hide Errata-ed again....

[RandomCasualty]

1107395723[/unixtime]]RC, what it seems you are missing from Ess's example is this:

There are things to hide behind in the middle of combat in an open field in the daytime. Your opponent, for example. If you want to give people who are farther away from the action ginormous bonuses because they have a good angle on the action, that's fine, but out-and-out claiming that it is impossible(or even stretching the bounds of probable) is clearly false.

But that's not how hide works. Hide works such that the closer you are, the better chance you have to see something. If you're talking about something done in a melee which relies on misdirection, you're talking about a feint. Whether its simply quick swordwork or a tumbling misdirection to cause you to lose track of your opponent is mostly irrelevant. The point is that it's something you do in melee to remove your opponent's dex bonus. And that actually perfectly describes Ess' example.

Seriously, RC, even if you're right, and it's absostinkinglutely impossible to just stand 5' away from someone, in an empty room, and hide from that person just b/c you're really, really good at hiding, why can't you do it in D&D?

Mostly because flavor wise, it's directly contrary to what you want the fantasy rogue to be doing. As a rogue, darkness should be your friend. You should be the guy lurking in a dark alleyway pilfering stuff at night. However, under the 3.0 hide rules this wasn't so, you were in fact best during the day, because concealment spoiled your sneak attack. And that's exactly what allowing rogues to do that in the day does. Basically if you're invisihiding, you've got 50% concealment, because you're effectively invisible. If you can do that anywhere under any conditions, you don't want your enemies getting concealment, because you've already got it, so all rogues are going to be doing their work in broad daylight and that's incredibly dumb.

If people just want a way to take cheap sneak attacks at people in combat, I say we just improve the feinting rules (feinting sucks bad in 3.5 anyway right now). Because that's really what the misdirection styles you're talking about are all about doing. It's not about sitting in a corner hoping the guards pass by. It's about killing them while you're standing right next to them. So why not just use the feint rules? They fit much better than hiding given that you want to represent misdirection tactics in melee combat.

[PhoneLobster]

Now I since RC keeps saying all the good counter examples given here aren't really actual "hiding" I was going to bring up my extensive experience playing Hide'n'go Seek when I was a kid (well, actually its more popular hybrid Hidie Go Tips) and challenge him to call it not hiding.

But actually as someone else said this discussion seems mostly to be consisting of the whole "but damnit you really can angle" and there is another angle that has really really been bugging me since RC casually mentioned it early on.

Really there is a balance complaint that comes with hide, but this can probably best be solved by nerfing invisibility a bit.

Now that its utterly clear how incredibly limited RC sees Hide as being this statement just bugs me more and more.

Does RC really want it to be so not only is Hide completely useless in its Nerfified form and no way equal to current invisibility spells but you also want to make it so true, even magically, INVISIBLE characters are also nerfed down to the same utterly retarded restrictions that apply to the nerfed hide skill?

Because as much as I look at RCs arguments for what he wants Hide to be like and think "Thats really insane" I keep remembering that he wants to bring Invisibility down to the same level and think "Actually thats double the insane".

(Note: I hope RC doesn't mind that I repeatedly reduced his name to RC, I just said it so often...)

[RandomCasualty]

1107402154[/unixtime]]
Does RC really want it to be so not only is Hide completely useless in its Nerfified form and no way equal to current invisibility spells but you also want to make it so true, even magically, INVISIBLE characters are also nerfed down to the same utterly retarded restrictions that apply to the nerfed hide skill?

No, not the same restrictions, invisibility is still invisbiility, but it can still be made weaker. My whole goal has never been to make skills and spells act the same. Because in the long run I think that cheats the noncasters and overall kills the diversity of the game. Really how its nerfed has a few variations.

- A really simple means of doing this is to allow everyone who gains line of effect to the invisibile creature a will save to see the invisible creature normally. In 2nd edition high level creatures actually got a save to detect an invisible creature, so this really isn't a new idea.

- Another way is to have any interaction with the environment cancel an invisibility, which can include touching (or being touched by) another creature, opening doors or basically doing anything else besides moving or personal interaction with your own gear.

- Another option is to have some kind of invisibility proofed substance that creates a barrier that reveals invisible characters. So for instance, if you hang wolfsbane on your door, invisible characters can't touch or cross that doorway wtihout becoming visible.

But in any case, hiding and being invisible will have two distinctly different feels to them. And in any given situation one may be favorable to the other, but neither will clearly be "better" in all cases.

Generally I think a good balance paradigm is that invisibility is easier to detect and counter, but you can do more when you're not detected. Hide on the other hand is much harder to see through and detect, though it is somewhat limited in what you can do.

And as for the hide skill being too weak possibly (whcih it probably is under my system), I was thinking of allowing the hide skill to also allow rogues to counter magical stuff, such as detect evil, scrying and so forth. Thus if you've got a high hide skill, casters find it very difficult to use divinations of any kind on you. I'm not sure how you'd implement this exactly, whether it'd be a fixed DC skill check fro outright immunity or an opposed caster level check versus skill check or concentration versus skill check or what. But in any case this helps to make hide more generally useful and provides a counter to caster stuff in the process so is all around good.

(Note: I hope RC doesn't mind that I repeatedly reduced his name to RC, I just said it so often...)

Nope not at all.

[Joy_Division]

Honestly I have trouble seeing why a good enough hider can't just be fucking invisible. The example that keeps coming up with striking someone in broad daylight without cover of darkness and having them not see you should pretty much be the pinnacle of what the hide skill can accomplish. If inproved invisibility is to be believed a rogue should be able to strike down mooks unseen any time of day by about 7th level.

You can play with exactly what you want a rogue to be able to do when but it doesn't change the fact that eventually hide HAS to grant invisibility. Tough beans.

Honestly I'd be really cool with having situational bonuses to hide based on class flavour. Like for rangers:

Camoflage: You gain a +10 bonus to hide in one type of terrain.

or rogues:

Skulk: You gain a +10 bonus to hide in partial or complete darkness.

etc. Then if you figure by level 7 a rogue has about +15 to hide then for example a hide check of 25 should allow you to pull off invisibility. So when mages are casting this spell you can get a similar effect when you're in your element. You could even add any sort of bizarre restrictions you want on the spell if you like that.

[PhoneLobster]

So then you have a possible three restrictions on invisibility.

1) It doesn't work on wise willful stuff.
2) It doesn't allow you to do anything but travel from point A to point B, maybe, as long as 1 and 3 aren't involved.
3) It doesn't work when the DM says so.

You aren't touching on the point I'm interested in in your potential nerfing of Invisibility, and which I still somewhat suspect of you since any or all of the nerfs you mention could be stretched to do it.

And thats combat invisibility. You've already made it clear that no way on earth will you allow combat invisibility via hide. These nerfs (and others I still suspect you of coveting) could be used to seriously crimp or even prevent the existence of even magical combat invisibility.

So what in a fantasy game will you just refuse to allow the existence of combat invisibility?

I wouldn't mind a definitive answer, are you suggesting it won't be possible at all or not?

And as for the hide skill being too weak possibly (whcih it probably is under my system), I was thinking of allowing the hide skill to also allow rogues to counter magical stuff, such as detect evil, scrying and so forth.

Wait, so you can't and WON'T bend your head around mundane explanations for useful hiding, and you can't and won't bend your head around magical or fantasy explanations for the use of the skill because of their "indescribability".

Yet just like that you drop a suggestion of hide actually functioning in some OTHER way that is magical, and is so hard to describe you haven't got a clear idea of how it will even mechanically funtion let alone what its fluff text will be?

Or more simply you can't handle "high Hide bonuses mean you can be effectively invisible because you are just so cool" but then you suddenly propose "high Hide bonuses mean people can't detect the dark side of the forece in your soul because you are just so cool".

I call a crazy double standard on that one.

[Josh_Kablack]

I'm with Frank here.

If you want Hide to be "There's no clear line of sight between you and the spotter", then remove the Hide skill entirely and handle Hide as cover and concealment penalties to Spot.

Honestly, you seem more inclined to want to handle sneaking up behind someone as Move Silently. And I don't really have a problem with that, as I've never really seen why D&D split stealth into two skills two begin with.

[Username17]

The current thinking is that skills simply shouldn't do anything unless backed up by a spell or class feature that allow them to do something. So Disable Device doesn't actually do anything unless you have the Traps ability. Craft doesn't do anything unless you have Major Creation or Fabricate (really, it doesn't). Perform doesn't do anything unless you have Bardic Music. And so on.

And now Hide isn't supposed to do anything unless you have Hide in Plain Sight or Invisibility.

OK fine. Skills are stupid anyway. You get them each level, but they aren't meaningfully tied to your power level. You can distribute those points between multiple skills and end up not having a level appropriate bonus to anything - or you can end up getting whacky crack-ass bonuses to your skills that add up to effects triggering at way off the spectrum of your level.

Fvck it. If you want skills to work that way, just get rid of them. Have a check box, where you either have an ability or you don't. This half-assed "you have ranks in skills but we won't let you roll them to accomplish things" subsystem has to go.

Let's bring back the non-weapon proficiencies. At least they did what they said they did.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1107408000[/unixtime]]
And thats combat invisibility. You've already made it clear that no way on earth will you allow combat invisibility via hide. These nerfs (and others I still suspect you of coveting) could be used to seriously crimp or even prevent the existence of even magical combat invisibility.

Combat invisibility IMO is best handled through a magical item and a magical item only. That way you get everyone paying the same amount for it. Combat invisibility is so powerful that everyone should have equal access to it.

Yet just like that you drop a suggestion of hide actually functioning in some OTHER way that is magical, and is so hard to describe you haven't got a clear idea of how it will even mechanically funtion let alone what its fluff text will be?

I really don't care if hide works against magic. Magic itself isn't logical so what counters magic doesn't have to be logical or explained either. If a series of verbal chants and hand wavings can let you detect evil in an area, just being a sneaky person could let you resist detection. There's really no basis for what does or doesn't work against magic.

If you want a game explanation it could just be that the aura of stealth that radiates from many skilled sneaks makes them difficult to detect magically too.

And yes, it is a double standard, but the double standard is natural to magic and nonmagic. If we think its ok for wizards to wave their hands and make shit appear out of thin air, then I don't find a problem with establishing counters against things like that. And those counters don't need to make logical sense because magic isn't logical. Magic obeys its own rules, and because magic doesn't really exist in the real world the game designer can create any kind of rules for magic that he wants.

So what if we did this to hide.

-Combine its functioning wtih move silenty, renaming the skill Stealth
-Use the 3.5 hide rules, possibly adding camouflage for long range detection
-Allow this new stealth skill to work against non-sight based magical divinations like detect evil, locate creature, and so on.

How would that be, balance wise?

EIther that or maybe we could go with Frank's way, and simply get rid of hide and spot. Instead we just have a class ability that lets you automatically hide behind cover or concealment, and we could allow only people with the alertness feat to detect you. Assuming we wanted a non-skill version of hide.

[rapanui]

Frank, sorry you almost got knifed by some punks. Living in South America, I'm aquainted quite well with crime, but I can't say I've (knowingly) been near death.

Essence, your sensei sounds awesome.

Now that the niceties are dispensed with...

I agree with RC's arguments.

What the rest of you are describing is not active hiding by the opponent. It is more like flanking, taking an opportunity to confuse your opponent about where you are. If someone had been 15 feet from any of the previously mentioned fights and given the defender hints about the whereabout of the attacker(s), all advanatge would have been negated. This does imply that hiding was not the intent.

Another way to handle this is to actually simply remove all combat rules relating to flaking and making flanking a function of 'Localized Hiding'. In Localized Hiding, you make checks against any number of opponents adjacent to you, and if you succeed against their Spot checks, they totally and completely don't know where you are. But anyone outside that radius sees what you are doing quite clearly.

Seems like you bastards are just debating semantics really.

[User3]

1107485491[/unixtime]]
I agree with RC's arguments.

What the rest of you are describing is not active hiding by the opponent. It is more like flanking, taking an opportunity to confuse your opponent about where you are. If someone had been 15 feet from any of the previously mentioned fights and given the defender hints about the whereabout of the attacker(s), all advanatge would have been negated. This does imply that hiding was not the intent.

Another way to handle this is to actually simply remove all combat rules relating to flaking and making flanking a function of 'Localized Hiding'. In Localized Hiding, you make checks against any number of opponents adjacent to you, and if you succeed against their Spot checks, they totally and completely don't know where you are. But anyone outside that radius sees what you are doing quite clearly.

Seems like you bastards are just debating semantics really.

Flanking...Show me a way to flank with yourself as your flanking partner in D&D and I'll give you a cookie.

While bluffing or feinting or tumbling all make sense, they don't support the effect. RC especially should realize this, as one of his main arguments seems to be the rules for spotting based on distance.

Bluffing/feinting doesn't work, because it takes an action. Obviously, that doesn't work at all with the constant attack scenario. I shoulden't have to pull all kinds of crazy feats out of my ass to use that way. Plus bluff doesn't work in combat anymore. It got smacked by the nerf bat too.

Tumbling lets a character move around and defend, but it in no way helps them attack. Sure, if you changed the skill it might work, but why not just use an existing skill the way it is?

Now, about the special "someone had been 15 feet from any of the previously mentioned fights and given the defender hints about the whereabout of the attacker(s), all advanatge would have been negated. This does imply that hiding was not the intent."

Um, NO.

Have you seen Angoleiros in a Roda? Especially a newb trying to take on his Mestre or something? One of their friends can be yelling out advice, but if the Angoleiro tries to follow his friend's advice, he will get more confused.

It is a fact that there are a very limited number of things you can actually focus on while fighting, and this is why a large number of martial arts try to train alertness and a sense of the environment above all else. This is why Aikidoists practice meditation and Rondori.

You can tell a guy has incredible skill by the fact that he seems to know were everyone is. And you'll figure out just how hard that is to do when you have 2 or more attackers coming at you. Even if the situation is not threatening. Even with one attacker, it can be easy to loose track of things one you start getting hit or thrown around.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting. This whole thread seems to be endless repetition of two points of view.

[PhoneLobster]

Personally I think the whole its not hiding its flanking routine is some exceedingly desperate grasping for any explanation at all that will assist in justifying the sad nerfing of hiding.

Because being in someones blind spot is what hiding IS regardless of the whether the blind spot exists because the observed is on the other side of a wall, looking the other way or busy paying attention to something else.

The various methods for hiding that people use while fighting, playing sports or otherwise interacting are the same as those used in god damn hide and seek games. I remember my childhood doesn't anyone else?

Many of the best hiding spots, especially in the more active tips based games where you often had less than a few seconds to lose your pursuer and instantly vanish weren't behind a building or under a bush. They were pressed up against a wall staying still where the guy chasing you could see you if he just glanced around or noticed the flicker of of someone at the edge of his vision. It was things like suddenly stopping and standing casually beside a group of kids not playing the game and pretending to be one of them as the guy after you ran right past you within a few feet, hell even looked right at you. And it was god damn looping around the building and quietly running along BEHIND the guy who was "it".

Look go ahead, call it "flanking" but when I played it as a child we didn't call it "flanking go seek" and anyone who did would sound awful stupid.

If people aren't finding you when you don't want them to then you are hiding, thats what its called when you do that.

[Oberoni]

As long as we specifically prohibit defining Hide as "staying out of the visual range of others," RC makes an excellent case.

[Username17]

There are only two options:

Option 1: Every part of your body is obscured by another object.

Option 2: Your enemy can see you.

That's it. If we refuse to allow "Hide" to hide you in option 2, because your enemy in fact can see you, then there's no point in Hide being a skill. Option 1 involves a zero chance of your opponent seeing you whether you have hide or not.

This is a simple catch 22: if Hide can only hide you when your opponent can't see you, it can't do anything.

Unless you accept that Hide can make your opponent not see you when they can see you, Hide has no purpose. Therefore, if we make the assumption that Hide does anything, we likewise make the conclusion that the argument "but your opponent can see you!" has no bearing at all on the operation of the skill.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1107514613[/unixtime]]
Option 1: Every part of your body is obscured by another object.

Option 2: Your enemy can see you.

Aren't we leaving out "part of your body is obscured"?

We can easily define hide as the ability to "maximize use of cover and concealment to avoid detection."

That's precisely what it's supposed to be in 3.5 and I really don't see a problem with that.

If you have concelament or cover, then you are effectively invisible to people. You just can't do it out in the open. Even ninjas throw smoke bombs.

[Oberoni]

No, I don't think anything was left out.

Reread this part from Frank:

Unless you accept that Hide can make your opponent not see you when they can see you, Hide has no purpose.

It's pretty simple--if we're going by your logic, RC, a visible opponent is a visible opponent. If there's a leg sticking out or something, bam! You're not Hiding anymore.

[RandomCasualty]

I think the problem very well may be distinguishing the various types of staying unseen, and we should really probably have alternate mechanics for all of them (some of which may use the hide skill and some whcih may not)

Using cover: This involves moving when your opponent isn't watching you or has his attention directed elsewhere. Then when he's not looking you either run out to more cover or you rush out and attack him. In this case, your'e not seen at all assuming you do it right. Generally this is all a matter of timing. If you move when the other guy isn't looking, you'll get by fine enough, if not then you don't. This one is entirely physical.

Camouflage: through use of color and positioning, you become indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape. IN this case, you're seen, you're just not recognized. Distance and speed are main factors here, the farther you are away, the more difficult it is to see you. This one is entirely physical.

Identity concealing: This is the sort of "hiding in a crowd" kind of thing that people do. You'll clearly be recognized as a human, people just don't know that it's you. You're essentially disguising yourself as an average person. So observers see a person standing in the crowd, they just doesn't recognize you as the guy they're looking for. Identity concealment can occur by accident too, as is often the case with a collection of similar objects. This effect can be mind-affecting or a result of physical matters, such as keeping your distinguishing marks out of sight, or it may be a result of the observer's ineptness. This won't hold up against a full examination of a person, not without the disguise skill, though works at reasonable distances.

Concealment: You use fog, darkness or whatever to conceal your presence. This is actually a combination of camouflage and cover usage. The opponent is likely to see bits of haze in the mist which he mistook for fog, or simply a slightly discolored shadow that he mistook for part of the surroundings. This is generally a physical effect, while it does rely partially on your opponent's misinterpreation of the surroundings, it's physical positioning that allows you to do this, not tampering with your opponent's mind.

Hiding in plain sight: In this case you're not really hiding, but the opponent just doesn't see you. This is either a mind affecting trick, or merely a flaw in your opponent's observation skills, possibly due to distraction like combat. In either case, the opponent simply overlooks you because he didn't take time to get a complete view of his surroundings. There isn't any skill to physically causing this effect to happen. This pretty much only occurs for quick glances and doesn't hold up against a full search.

Invisibility: You actually bend light to make yourself truly unable to be detected. In this case, the opponent's eyes simply fail him. He can't see you, because there's nothing there to actually see. Spot here really just represents disturbances to the environment. This one is entirely physical. There isn't much skill here, beyond not disturbing the environment.

Cloaking field: This is like the predator. You're basically almost invisible, only you give off slight visual anomalies that make it somewhat possible to see you. Generally a fast moving cloaking field is much easier to see than a stationary one. This one is entirely physical, though some degree of skill may be required to stay out of areas or situations that would make your cloaking field more visible.

Combat Hiding: This is generally a targetted use, where by you stay out of one persons visual ability at close range by circling them, tumbling under them, and so forth. This generally works only on the person you're trying to hide from an nobody else. This is more the talent of a skilled combatant than a thief, and is mostly physical, though may involve some mind games.

Mind Cloud: Like invisibility, only mental. You mentally block out your image from the opponent's perceptions. While his eyes can see your form, his mind just blocks out that image. Clearly mind affecting.

Those are all the different forms of "hiding" and really we should distinguish between them in terms of mechanics. I'd really prefer if we gave different classes different forms of stealth. Because really, all of these should have potentially different mechanics.

[PhoneLobster]

So what? The solution to the nerfed hide is like 15 new house ruled forms of hide mechanic?

I'd rather just have the existing hide work, it may have mechanical difficulties (mostly just the whole stupid skill point inflation thingy) but 1 inbuilt disfunctional mechanic is better than a huge pile of new tacked on and highly contrived disfunctional mechanics.

Why is it every solution RandomCasualty seems to advocate involves tacking on additional counter intuitive and very complex mechanics?

(Edit) Actually read that bit about 1 bad mechanic being better than many new ones as "when its more than enough to cover most peoples needs anyway". Then add tangential complaints about there being both a hide and a move silent already which is just annoying because it would be better for several reasons if they were combined.

[RandomCasualty]

More mechanics are good becuase it adds more class diversity. And we already have a bunch of hiding mechanics currently. There's 3.5 hide, Invisibility, Greater invisibility, Feinting (the equivalent of combat invisibility), and Cloud Mind (a save based invis for psionics)

So really, we already have most of the mechanics I mentioned and there isn't a heck of a lot of work associated with fleshing out those mechanics that still need to be fleshed out, mainly identity concealment and camouflage.

I'm not proposing that we have all those mechanics for rogues, certainly not. I'm just proposing that we split them up into logical groups so as to best determine how to handle hiding situations. That way we can have stealthy thieves and we can have the predator, and they don't have to necessarily be one and the same.

[The_Hanged_Man]

Well, we could go the other way and say all of those things that aren't based on magic are essentially the same - somebody doesn't know you're there. So lets take all bazillion hide mechanisms you've proposed, and rename them "Being Sneaky." We can throw in Move Silently, too. We'll do this:

Sneakiness
Dex-based skill; can be used untrained

By defeating either a Spot check or a Listen check, at the choice of the user, you are undetected by your target. Your target is anyone who could possibly, under any construction of the rules of time, space, and biology, have detected you. If you are undectected, your target lacks a dex bonus to armor class, cannot make attacks of opportunity against you, and cannot take defense actions in response to you. You are detected as soon as you take an offensive action against your target, or do something that draws attention to you (like talking, or casting a spell w/ verbal components, or lighting off a fireworks display.) You don't need to hide behind anything, you don't need concealment, or any of that crap, although you will get bonuses to your Sneakiness roll.

[Username17]

More mechanics are good becuase it adds more class diversity.

Go play Advanced Dungeons and dragons. Really play it. Then come back and tell me that while looking me in the eyes without shame. Good luck on that.

The fact of the matter is, that every mechanic you write is one more fvcking thing to remember. Or not remember. And have to look up.

World of Darkness doesn't add any "diversity" over the fact that a hand grenade has its own unique and nonsensical damage system all its own. It's just a pain in the ass. You throw a hand grenade and then it does "damage", but unlike a weapon like a pistol or an axe that does "damage" (represented by adding extra dice to your attack roll) - this "damage" is automatic wound levels on everyone within a certain number of yards. This doesn't add "diversity", it adds "migraines".

AD&D didn't add "diversity" by having Psionics run on a crank-assed power point system in which your available powers were randomly generated off a table and all individually said how one protected against them (the favorite being the original write-up of the Psionic Disintegrate, which did not allow resistance at all).

New mechanics is bad. It means that you have to look everything up instead of being able to wing it. Every time anything has its own mechanic it slows the game down and reduces immersiveness.

One doesn't have to go as far as Munchausen, but that is the correct direction. Not Rollmaster, which is shit.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1107555782[/unixtime]]
The fact of the matter is, that every mechanic you write is one more fvcking thing to remember. Or not remember. And have to look up.

True, but it's ok to have a lot of mechanics for complex stuff, like we have a huge section dedicated to combat, and it could be really simple.

We have huge mechanics for spells, where we could just use the Shadowrun style combat spell mechanics where everything deals damage and all the ranges are line of sight and things work out more or less the same for every spell. But we don't. We've got incendiary clouds, acid arrows, scorching rays, fireballs, magic missiles, disintigrates, fingers of death and all sorts of other weird ass mechanics for combat spells.


Too few mechanics mean things get boring. All you do is full attack, and full attack and full attack until you get bored and leave the game. You need some mechanics for diversity. Having three or four mechanics to handle that isn't going to hurt anyone. Now, I might be going on a limb here, but I think being sneaky and remaining in the shadows is one of the most important elements of being a thief. It may actually enhance play to offer more sneaky mechanics.

And hide could use a revamping anyway. Rigth now it's almost entirely a solo skill. I'd like uses where you can help your friends sneak into a place, seeing that the game itself is a group game, not a solo game. So if you were crossing open spaces between cover, the rogue could use his skill to tell another companion when to start moving to avoid detection and other stuff like that. It'd be nice if hide could help the party in some meaningful fashion so you could use it to sneak the hostages to safety and such.

Hide could really use some reworking anyway so I don't see the problem. It'd be nice if it was more of a sneaky skill than a "I can walk around carrying a torch and be invisible at the same time" skill. After all, if all you want is simply a skill to get more sneak attacks, lets just improve the mecahnics for feinting (they suck anyway)

I mean nobody complains when somebody wants to write 100+ pages of spells all with different mechanics, but god forbid we write 3-4 new mechanics for a rogue skill. Then everyone is up in arms about how complex the game is. Seriously, get the fuck over it. If you want to streamline the game, how about starting at the spell section which takes up the largest section of the PHB. Rogues have a heck of a lot of catch up before they'll ever have as many crazy mechanics as spellcasters do.

[Sma]

I mean nobody complains when somebody wants to write 100+ pages of spells all with different mechanics, but god forbid we write 3-4 new mechanics for a rogue skill.

I complain.

The D&D system of spells having no standard at all is stupid.

The Shadowrun way of having an actual system to spells is brilliant.

Sma

[grey_muse]

All of the counterexamples to RC's argument involve combat, and the D&D combat system is already abstracted way the fvck beyond recognition.

Frank, I don't question that you know the rules well, but did you ever play with 3.0 Hide? It was stupid.

Let's say you have a party of adventurers (fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard) walking down a uniform stone corridor in a dungeon. You have the rogue carrying the torch, who is also 10' ahead of the party, searching for traps.

The rogue decides to hide. Since none of the other characters have spot as a class skill, they can't see him. Mind you, he's the only source of light in the dungeon, and he's standing direct ahead of him with nowhere to hide, but by the general consensus around here, there's no problem with that, right?

The wizard, confused, casts See Invis. Nothing. The cleric, equally perplexed, casts True Seeing. Also nothing, since neither of those helps you make Spot checks. Short of shapechanging into something with blindsense or using spells like Commune, there's absolutely no way the party can detect their rogue standing 10' ahead of them.

In 3.5 you can't do that, at least not without the quasi-magical Hide In Plain Sight ability. Which, really, makes more sense from a *believability* point of view, though I'd argue Hide in Plain Sight should be (Su) and not (Ex).

From a *balance* standpoint, I don't know that there's anything wrong with a rogue having this ability. But for me, it strains believability more than Polymorph cheese.

[Murtak]

In that case it seems to me like you should just slap the (Su) tag onto any skill use with a DC above, say 35 and be done with it.

[Username17]

Why would the Wizard or Cleric do anything special just because they can't see the Rogue? The light hasn't gone away, he doesn't vanish in a puff of smoke and a giant claxon doesn't go off. Why would they notice anything amiss? They simply passively stopped noticing the Rogue a long time ago.

If the rogue actually did vanish, they still wouldn't notice anything amiss until their torch stopped moving - at which point they'd stop and scratch their heads.

Yeah, using 3.0 Hide, you don't spend most of the time actually knowing where the Rogue is. You spend almost all of your time not knowing where the Rogue is. And I totally don't have a problem with that. It's just like when you are wandering around in the woods with a dog - you spend most of your time not seeing the dog even when she's right behind you or damn near under your feet. You just become used to not being able to see her to the point that all you do is check in from time to time - and sometimes she's close and sometimes she's far away when that happens.

Whupdedo. Don't ask "how is she hiding when she's only 10 feet in front of me?" Ask "Where the hell is she that I don't already know the answer to this question?"

Yeah I've used 3e Hide. I've used it at high level. It works fine, stop being such a baby.

-Username17