How does your heartbreaker deal with noncombat challenges?

[ETortoise]

I'm curious both how you've attacked potential minigames like stealth and diplomacy, and how you've dealt with the problem of skills.

Skills are something I've been grappling with in particular. I feel like the 3e system of taking 10 +20 and the exhaustive list of DCs worked, but only if people are familiar enough with those DCs to use them. I distinctly remember DC inflation as characters got bigger and bigger bonuses. Conversely, when I was running ACKS (before we knew Alex Macris was a fascist) I dispensed with characters rolling knowledge checks to learn stuff about their environment. The particular knowledges a character had acted as lenses for the information. FOr example, the Assassin with the artist proficiency knew that the bas reliefs in the dungeons were examples of Zaharan Triumphalism, which let them know there were likely going to be undead running around. In that vein, should skills just give you a bunch of stuff you can always do? Like, a character with Wood Lore can automatically build a shelter, start a fire, etc. Or, an alchemist can brew X potions with Y amount of downtime. (Although alchemy is it's own big kettle of fish.)

I've only really begun to grapple with stealth. So far, I've just got rules for moving stealthy when traveling to decrease your chance of being detected by potential encounters and written some very basic rules for setting an ambush. Infiltration seems like it's going to be a big challenge.

Here are the rules-in-progress for moving stealthily.

Stealthy Movement
Characters may attempt to move stealthily to reduce their chance of being detected by foes. They may walk softly, stick to cover and shadows, or have powers like invisibility that help them move undetected.
If a party is generally trying to be stealthy (they are not hiding from any known enemies,) they must make a HIDE/MOVE SILENTLY/WOOD LORE check at the start of each travelling day. Their result gives other parties a penalty on their Encounter Distance check.

Result	Alertness Penalty
11 or less	No penalty.
12-13	-2
14-15	-4
16+	-6

Characters can assist their compatriots in moving stealthily. They may not have any other job while travelling (they can’t be foraging or on lookout,) and take a -1 penalty on their roll for every person they are assisting after the first. The character assisting makes one stealth roll for their whole group.
For example, Jacinda, Kelvin and Turgon are traveling through the Bane Mires and don’t want to be spotted by any of the undead wildlife. Jacinda advises the group on what path to take, where to step, and when to break cover. She adds her Agility of +2 to her +3 Move Silently and subtracts 1 for assisting two people; rolling 2d10 +4 she gets a 15 and gives creatures roaming the area a -4 penalty on their Encounter Distance Rolls.
Stealthy Movement dramatically slows a group’s travel.

And here are the ambush rules.

Ambush
Characters may choose a spot to lay in wait and hopefully catch their foes in an ambush. Characters acting alone can quickly dart behind cover; they make a stealth check (2d10 + Hide bonus) that sets the TN for their adversaries to spot them. A character skilled in stealth may improvise cover and/or help their compatriots hide. It takes 1 minute to hide up to four medium-sized characters. Small characters count as ½ a character while large characters count double. Once that time has passed the character with the highest stealth bonus makes their Hide check with a -1 penalty for each group of two creatures they are hiding (not including themselves.) Thus if Jacinda is hoping to hide her two human compatriots, she rolls with a -1 penalty, but if she’s trying to hide four party members and their horses the penalty would be -6.
When a group of creatures walk into an ambush, all characters must make an Alertness check against a TN set by the ambushers’ Hide roll. Characters that are aware there are hostile creatures nearby (perhaps by hearing them as described in the Encounter Distance section) get a +2 bonus on this roll. Those that fail the check are surprised and will be unable to act in the first round of combat. The ambushers and victims that beat the lurking party’s Hide TN roll initiative and fight one round of combat. This surprise round happens before Diplomacy. After the surprise round a reaction roll is made and characters can attempt to negotiate as detailed below. If combat breaks out all characters roll a new initiative check as if it were the start of a new bout. If the party walking into the ambush has a person On Lookout, and the lookout successfully beats the Hide TN, the party has spotted the ambush before walking into it. They can attempt to initiate diplomacy for the encounter as normal.
When the PCs are the ones walking into an ambush, it can be helpful to make a reaction roll for the monsters to determine whether they attack the PCs, let them go by unawares, or initiate a conversation. Make a reaction roll as described below, using the Allegiance and Past Experience modifiers, as well as the level and numbers modifiers from Intimidation.

All these rules are presuming a skill system with specific skills and ranks, but is there a better way?

(Observant readers might also notice that I grabbed Virgil's reaction and diplomacy system. Thanks Virgil.)

[deaddmwalking]

First off, it appears that you're rolling a group check. As a result, we'd expect the group to be spotted, or not. There isn't an output where Kevln is seen but nobody else is...

In a big picture way, it doesn't really matter if only one person gets spotted - unless the party is abandoning their friend the combat music starts and everyone gets seen EVENTUALLY. But if there are combat modifiers that rely on being unseen (like Sneak Attack) it really does matter if all, some, one, or none of the party is spotted.

If the person 'assisting' with stealth can't do other things, what about the people who are being assisted? Clearly, you'd want the 'best stealth person' to roll stealth, but if you're also trying to avoid falling into an ambush, maybe the best perception person wouldn't want to roll the check...

The example seems to presume moving. What about the classic scenario of a bandit gang waiting along a road?

[K]

I really feel like most skills systems just create Failure Theater. Everything gets turned into a roll, and the only way to make rolls exciting is to include a chance of failure, and those two facts means PCs fail at basic tasks all the time like a slapstick comedy.

I can't tell you how many PCs have fallen out of trees because no DM wants to just say "yeh, climbing trees is something a child can do, so you can do that in a non-combat situation without a roll and a massive skill point investment."

DnD 3.x's rule on Taking 10 and Taking 20 was a revelation in speeding gameplay.

One of the things I didn't like about Pathfinder and 3.5 was that it took a bunch of spells that just worked and turned them into bonuses to skill checks, introducing failure.

[ETortoise]

First off, it appears that you're rolling a group check. As a result, we'd expect the group to be spotted, or not. There isn't an output where Kevln is seen but nobody else is...

Absolutely. I think that individual checks just ratchet up the chance that someone will be spotted and the stealth attempt will be ruined. If it were necessary characters who care about being stealthy in combat could use their stealth to combat-hide or whatever.

If the person 'assisting' with stealth can't do other things, what about the people who are being assisted? Clearly, you'd want the 'best stealth person' to roll stealth, but if you're also trying to avoid falling into an ambush, maybe the best perception person wouldn't want to roll the check...

Yeah, the one's being assisted can have other jobs. Basically, you can do one thing at a time while traveling, being on lookout or helping everyone sneak both count as a thing. Sneaking on your own doesn't count as a thing, so a stealthy predator can both move quietly and be on the lookout for prey/threats.

The example seems to presume moving. What about the classic scenario of a bandit gang waiting along a road?

The bandits would use the ambush rules.

Incidentally, here are the encounter and surprise rules that the stealth rules are interacting with: (I omitted some of the tables, since they're a pain to bbcode.)

Encounter Distance and Surprise
When two groups are about to come into contact with each other, Characters On Lookout for each group make an Alertness check. This check determines how far away the parties are when they are noticed by the other.
When dealing with preplaced encounters, the MC should definitely make this check when there are no potential enemies or major set pieces between the party and the encounter. They can also make this check at their discretion when they feel there is a chance that the PCs would be able to detect (or be detected by) another group even if there are intervening creatures or features. The MC should make this roll immediately after generating a random encounter.
Encounter Distance

Roll	Result	In the Dungeon	Dense forest	Light woods
8 or less	They’re right on top of you!	10-20 feet away	12-30 feet	30-60 feet
9-11	Gird yourself!	30-60 feet away. They can be heard through a door.	30-60 feet.	60-80 feet
12-14	Advanced warning.	60+ feet, through two doors or a thin wall.	60-80 feet	120-180 feet
16+	Plenty of time.	You can detect them several rooms away.	120-180 feet	200-300 feet

Dungeon Modifiers

Vision* extends further than 60’	+2
Vision is less than 30’	-2
You cannot see at all	-4
Other group is noisy	+2
Other group has a light source.	+1
...and you don’t.**	+3
Tight and twisty passages	-2
Large caverns	+2

*Vision means the distance of illumination cast by light sources, Nightvision, or Darkvision.
**Cumulative with the modifier above

If the Alertness check results in one group noticing the other when they are outside visual range or concealed by weather or terrain, they will instead hear the other creatures or otherwise detect signs of their presence.
If one group becomes aware of the other at a further distance, they may choose to avoid them, initiate conversation, charge in, or lay an ambush. The MC should make a reaction roll for NPC groups as described in the Diplomacy section below, using the Allegiance and Past Experience modifiers, as well as the level and numbers modifiers from Intimidation.
If both groups get the result of “They’re right on top of you!” they have blundered into one another. Everyone involved must make a TN 12 Alertness check. Characters that fail are surprised and will miss the first round of conversation or combat. Characters who succeed should roll initiative. When the first NPC’s initiative comes up, the MC should make a reaction roll as described in the Diplomacy section below.
If both groups become aware of each other at a further distance, the MC should proceed to the Diplomacy section below.

I really feel like most skills systems just create Failure Theater.

Yeah, that's definitely a worry. As I said, taking 10 and 20 weren't always solutions when I was playing 3.5 because the table's consensus would begin to naturally inflate the needed roll to accomplish certain things. Going by the stealth rules I posted above, Stealth could be switched to a ranks system that just tells you the penalty you give opponents on their alertness checks and the number of people you can assist. But, that change still presumes someone is rolling the alertness skill. I know that you've been talking about making skills you roll into abilities that always work for a while now. Can you give any examples that you've been thinking about?

[Username17]

I really feel like most skills systems just create Failure Theater.

The fail parade is very real. And I think that's why these days I'm in favor of metagame or semi-metagame currencies. Things like Clues or Fate Points or Stress Points or Clock Advancements or fucking whatever.

So that an event or action can have the potential of drawback (and thus meaningful outputs from die rolls) without any of the outputs being that you literally fail.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

One thing I implemented for Space Madness! was a cash-in system, where you can cash in X number of dice for an automatic hit. Which means for higher dice pools, you don't have to roll for piddly shit, you're assumed to succeed.

[deaddmwalking]

So let's talk about stealth for a minute...

You're Jack and you've climbed the Bean Stalk. You enter the giant's castle, and your goal is to get to the singing harp undetected, grab it, and go. Like, clearly that's what the CHARACTER wants, but the story DEMANDS that Jack gets spotted and the chase scene follows.

But what about the PLAYERS?

Getting away with the prize without encountering the giant is supposed to be the goal, but getting seen and then having an encounter is dramatically and narratively more interesting. In that case, it's not really about AVOIDING being seen, it's about making sure that you're eventually detected in a way that is interesting and moves the plot forward.

For most players, combat is pretty engaging, so bypassing it isn't as fun... Your stealth rules have to confront that.

[Foxwarrior]

I think your idea of what makes a good narrative is painfully narrow, DDMW. Maybe the party manages to steal the singing harp undetected... that just means you get to move quickly on to the part of the story where they exploit the singing harp for fun and profit, and then the giant manages to get down to the earth safely while the harpist is away and starts attacking random towns looking for the singing harp.

But then, I'm pretty ready to flippantly tell people who don't want to bypass combat in their TTRPGs that they could go play 5e or something, so there's that.

[DrPraetor]

There's a lot of implementation work still to do, but this something that I think about a lot.

As a broad framework for a range of challenges - trek across the desert, play cat and mouse with the hobgoblin patrol in the woods, etc. - I have a success meter system and an advantages/disadvantages system.

The success meter has ten boxes, and you'll be filling the success meter by responding to challenges. For some tasks, challenges can involve different skills - so for the trek minigame, you need a survival check to find water, a logistics check to have brought the day camping gear, another survival check for navigation, etc.. If you fail, disadvantages accumulate (you get fatigued, whatever) that hit you the next time the combat music starts playing (for a game that wasn't essentially D&D, that is an adventure to string along combats, this wouldn't work). If you succeed, you fill boxes:
1 box if you succeed by 0-2 pts
3 boxes if you succeed by 3-5 pts
6 boxes if you succeeed by 6-8 pts
all 10 boxes at once if you succeed by 9 pts or more.
Which is handled on 3D6+modifiers but otherwise mathematically similar to D20 (which makes this a hybrid hack of D20 and GURPS, although I make no claim that this is any kind of universal system.)

That is, abstract challenges have Shadowrun condition monitors and they take LMSD wounds depending. Thus, "killing a foo" is just a special case of the abstract challenge system that everything uses.
Some challenges get gradually less dangerous as you wound them, some don't.

Sometimes, you just make a single stealth roll (or whatever) to see what kind of advantages you get when the combat music starts. In that case, every +3 you beat the enemy roll (or target) by is an advantage, and every -3 you lose by is a disadvantage, but generally only the best roll on team PC for a single "when and how do we fight the hobgoblin patrol" test counts.

Thus if you at least one PC that is stealthy, then you get to control the positioning at the start of combat and you get a surprise round. That sort of thing.

Crucial design goal, with which I am struggling: participation should be all carrot. So if you have a low-charisma character, they may not contribute much to the "rally the peasants to fight the ogres" challenge, but they should be encouraged to try their level best. This is the major failure point of many skill challenge systems, in which characters will take turns sitting on their hands (boo) instead of taking turns shining relative to the other characters who are still participating at the same time.

Also, there need to be tasks (sneak into the castle) where the failure condition is just advantages you don't-get in the final set piece fight, rather than cancelling the adventure.

Final problem: sometimes you will want to do stuff like this in combat time. So suppose you want to sneak past exactly one guard and steal the key. It breaks immersion and suspension of disbelief if you either-do-or-don't want to start combat time in order to use your sneaking skills. So the abstract resolution mechanics and the combat music mechanics need to be either the same, or math-hammered very well so that you get the same results when you zoom in or out.

If it were an easy design challenge I would've posted my full write up, but this is where I'm cogitating.

[deaddmwalking]

and then the giant manages to get down to the earth safely while the harpist is away and starts attacking random towns looking for the singing harp.

Foxwarrior, that's precisely the issue. If you kill the giant in the castle you get all the loot, and there is zero risk that innocent towns suffer the giant's wrath. If you're going to have to fight the giant eventually, you want it to be at a time/place of your choosing. That indicates using Stealth to delay the encounter, but not necessarily to avoid the encounter.

Like so many other things, this is pointing us to a real difference to stealth used within an encounter versus outside of an encounter.

Within an encounter, stealth ought to let you potentially avoid attacks from an enemy (they lose sight of you and have to focus on another enemy), allow you to get advantageous attacks against an enemy, etc. Outside of combat, it should probably let you avoid the combat at least temporarily, and provide bonuses to how combat starts (giving one side a full round of actions and/or a major benefit regarding initiative).

[Iduno]

So let's talk about stealth for a minute...

You're Jack and you've climbed the Bean Stalk. You enter the giant's castle, and your goal is to get to the singing harp undetected, grab it, and go. Like, clearly that's what the CHARACTER wants, but the story DEMANDS that Jack gets spotted and the chase scene follows.

But what about the PLAYERS?

Getting away with the prize without encountering the giant is supposed to be the goal, but getting seen and then having an encounter is dramatically and narratively more interesting. In that case, it's not really about AVOIDING being seen, it's about making sure that you're eventually detected in a way that is interesting and moves the plot forward.

For most players, combat is pretty engaging, so bypassing it isn't as fun... Your stealth rules have to confront that.

For that specific example, a push your luck approach would be interesting. Everyone agrees the PCs will be caught stealing the harp, but how much other stuff can they steal before they finally fail a check? Extra loot rewards doing well, you still get the confrontation, and we get the imagery of PCs silently prying down priceless art and carrying around half a dozen giant paintings to pawn back in town.

Obviously it's not a good general solution, but some form of mildly-interesting and ultimately entertaining reward for being stealthy when the stealth minigame comes up makes sense.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Foxwarrior, that's precisely the issue. If you kill the giant in the castle you get all the loot, and there is zero risk that innocent towns suffer the giant's wrath.

I'm confused, that sounds ideal. What's the problem here? That players can be too successful? Bypassing combats and other scenarios the DM makes up is half of the fun of tabletop games, so why would you want to emulate some of the worst stealth video games ever released? There are other ways you can fuck with the players in this situation besides saying "no we need a combat now because it's narratively appropriate".

[deaddmwalking]

Foxwarrior, that's precisely the issue. If you kill the giant in the castle you get all the loot, and there is zero risk that innocent towns suffer the giant's wrath.

I'm confused, that sounds ideal. What's the problem here? That players can be too successful? Bypassing combats and other scenarios the DM makes up is half of the fun of tabletop games, so why would you want to emulate some of the worst stealth video games ever released? There are other ways you can fuck with the players in this situation besides saying "no we need a combat now because it's narratively appropriate".

In the example I provided (steal the McGuffin, get out unnoticed), I assumed the PCs were successful. If it goes off perfectly, there isn't a lot of drama or tension. And the end result as suggested by FoxWarrior? They're 'rewarded' with a whole lot of additional collateral damage.

In 3.x terms, you 'overcome' the challenge by using stealth to get the mcguffin, but then you don't get XP again for killing that monster. For that reason, most GMs consider 'killing' to be synonymous with 'overcoming' and avoiding it is not. If all the rewards (XP, GP, renown) come from fighting and killing your enemies, you have to address why people would even WANT to stealth.

Let me give you a concrete example - I was a player in a game set in the Forgotten Realms and I was playing a low-level wizard. We were going down a passageway and there was a side passage, which we explored. At the end of the side-passage was a refuse pit filled with nasty crap. Everyone knew it was a trap... I cast detect magic and found out that there was a magical item in the refuse pit. I then cast mage hand and successfully recovered the item. I suggested we head back and continue with the REAL objective (which I don't even remember at the time). The rest of the party decided that even though they knew it was a trap, and even though we already had the treasure, that they wanted to kill the monster... They approached closer, the Otyugh assaulted them, and many hit points were lost while I shook my head.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Personally, I'd go back to fight the Otyugh just for the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. It's like getting 100% of the items and secrets in Doom vs getting 100% of the monsters, too. If it bleeds, people want to kill it. Especially if they've pulled off the rest of the dungeon without a hitch. We're at full health, baby! Why wouldn't we go and smash some skulls?

Now, having your rewards come solely from fighting and killing is a bad thing, no doubt about that. But your story seems like a perfectly amusing tabletop anecdote and I don't know why you'd want to not be able to tell stories of overconfident buffoons covered in magic bling getting their asses kicked for needless stupidity.

For some players, "drama and tension" don't compare to feeling smug about doing cool shit (or holding it over the other PC's heads when they do stupid shit). If we successfully sneak past the guards to a dungeon and get the loot inside undetected, while it's the DM's job to keep things interesting, it's still the player's jobs to decide how they're going to leave. Do we sneak back out? Kill everything that moves? Teleport away? Maybe I'm missing something here.

[ETortoise]

In D&D clones, skills have taken the place of ability checks. That is, things you roll to see if you succeed or fail at tasks you don't have explicit class abilities for. They are also often the framework that you build class abilities off of. A simple ability can give you a bonus on a skill check, obviate the need for a check, or allow you to do something new with a skill.

The problem is that a random fantasy dude probably has a lot of crap they can reasonably do. A farmer, aside from knowing how to plow, sow and reap, also might be able to predict the weather, diagnose animal diseases, mend and build simple things, and more. Those things could all come up in a fantasy adventure. How do you emulate this in the game? The obvious idea would be allowing you to do certain things with your background, or use an freeform skill list; but that opens the door for the "Is Batman" problem.

The fail parade is very real. And I think that's why these days I'm in favor of metagame or semi-metagame currencies. Things like Clues or Fate Points or Stress Points or Clock Advancements or fucking whatever.

Does this fail-negating currency change the need for exhaustive skill DCs, or is the fail train such a likely feature that this change simply mitigates it?

[Blade]

For my Shadowrun rules, skill checks are exactly that: you check if your skill is higher than the difficulty of the task. If it is, you succeed.

If it's not, you have a few options:
- Do not attempt it
- Take your time (+1 to your skill)
- Go for a less-optimal outcome (-1 to the difficulty): you can pick the lock, but it's noisy)
- Take the risk (toss a coin, half chance of success, half chance of real failure)
- Spend up to two points from your related pool (a depleting pool that represents how well-prepared you are)
- Take stress damage

In any case, you can't go higher than two points above your skill level, unless you spend an Edge point.

The idea is to get away from randomness and more into resource (and risk) management, which suits a game like Shadowrun pretty well.

[OgreBattle]

I like the idea of downtime mechanics, Shinobigami and Hunter's Moon have some interesting ones.

Everyone has a downtime action to do that can enhance them for a combat encounter, uncover information like enemy weakness, remove a debuff like "overcoming fear of the monster that murdered your family", changing a relationship for a benefit "fear of the monster becomes rage", buying a consumable item "dog goes shopping for rope"

https://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=468337

Pursuit ("Legwork"): The phase starts off with the GM determining what the monster is up to, and then the PC's react to that.
-Monster roll: The GM rolls for what the monster is up to such as targeting specific people or going on a rampage, if the monster succeeds they get a benefit like a new ability to use, more morale (ablative hitpoints). and PC’s have to roll against that skill to stop it
-Location roll: Determines where the upcoming battle takes place, locations have unique effects like “Warehouse: players receive a free item”, “subway: anyone who rolls a fumble takes damage from being hit by a train”.

PC’s get 1 action to spend on things like researching the monster's weakness, stopping the monster from eating people, and so on:
-Weakness investigation: Finding out the monster’s weakness, making it easier to kill the monster or figuring out what body part you have to damage to disable its powers ("By piercing its chest it can't breath fire anymore!")
-Behavior Investigation: Finding out what the monster’s capabilities are, what triggers its super powers. ("The monster feeds off of anger and gets stronger when it senses it")
-Location Change: Change location of battle ("This monster flies, lets not fight it on the cliffside")
-Practice: Training, prepping weapons and so on, gives a bonus to the next battle.
-Support: Lower emotion, change status condition of allies (healing them), change emotion from fear/hate

After that's done you move on to...

Structuring a tRPG this way made me think... well why bother with fiddly combat nowadays when we've got video games.

[Username17]

Does this fail-negating currency change the need for exhaustive skill DCs, or is the fail train such a likely feature that this change solely mitigates it?

Well, you still need an action resolution system if that's what you mean.

The idea is that your Stealth system would give you a penumbra of actions you can take before being discovered. You take actions, and your skill result determines how many points you spend and when you run out you're not hidden anymore.

So if you're breaking into a vault to steal the harp, you can make rolls to move quietly and make rolls to pick the lock, and so on and so forth, and you don't ride a continuous fail train to fail town, and you aren't fucking doomed by iterative probability - because a bad roll just means you spend more points not that you actually fail to open the fucking door or trip over your dick or whatever.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

My friend told me about a neat mechanic where the metagame currency passes from the player to the GM when they use it, and the GM uses it to give it back to the players. I'm probably enamored with it because it's a shiny new feature to me, but what are the drawbacks of such a system?
The most immediate thing I can think of is that you kind of have to use it since holding onto it makes you look like an asshole to the rest of the group, especially if you're the GM, but I can't say I wouldn't like to be able to spend points to reroll shit, too. I can do that anyway, but that's bullshit.

[Trill]

The big thing I see is that it requires a LOT of trust.
You need to trust your GM that whatever they may pull out is not going to disable whatever you spent it for. (You spend the point to not be detected, they spend it to make you be detected later anyway)
And the GM needs to trust you to not use it too hard. (Using it only in situations in which the GM can't ruin it anyway)
Missing either will stop the points from moving. Either you hoard it because you don't trust your GM with them. Or they hoard it because they don't trust you with them.
And at that point you can just remove that system outright

[ETortoise]

Does this fail-negating currency change the need for exhaustive skill DCs, or is the fail train such a likely feature that this change solely mitigates it?

Well, you still need an action resolution system if that's what you mean.

I guess I was thinking about the awesomeness scale from After Sundown compared with the 3.5 skill chapter. In my heartbreaker for example, I used anydice.com to make a chart listing the %chance of success of different dice mods against different DCs. I haven’t yet gone into a nitty gritty look at individual skills. I don’t even have a skills list yet, that’s partly the genesis for this thread. I mean, do I even need a skill list?!

The idea is that your Stealth system would give you a penumbra of actions you can take before being discovered. You take actions, and your skill result determines how many points you spend and when you run out you're not hidden anymore.

So if you're breaking into a vault to steal the harp, you can make rolls to move quietly and make rolls to pick the lock, and so on and so forth, and you don't ride a continuous fail train to fail town, and you aren't fucking doomed by iterative probability - because a bad roll just means you spend more points not that you actually fail to open the fucking door or trip over your dick or whatever.

This is cool. You could either do it as having sneaky points you spend to get through things, or have noise points that count up to a threshold. Do you think there’s any reason to do it one way instead of the other?

(Edit, it looked fine in preview!)

[Foxwarrior]

My friend told me about a neat mechanic where the metagame currency passes from the player to the GM when they use it, and the GM uses it to give it back to the players. I'm probably enamored with it because it's a shiny new feature to me, but what are the drawbacks of such a system?

It doesn't really make any sense at all in most RPGs. If the DM is making the whole game world, why would they spend points to do things when any elements of the world not covered by the point system they can just decide unilaterally? Why spend points to make a player trip on a loose stone when you can just add as many guards as you want?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I was just thinking of rerolls and shit, he didn't actually tell me what the fucking game was.

[Foxwarrior]

and then the giant manages to get down to the earth safely while the harpist is away and starts attacking random towns looking for the singing harp.

Foxwarrior, that's precisely the issue. If you kill the giant in the castle you get all the loot, and there is zero risk that innocent towns suffer the giant's wrath. If you're going to have to fight the giant eventually, you want it to be at a time/place of your choosing. That indicates using Stealth to delay the encounter, but not necessarily to avoid the encounter.

Like so many other things, this is pointing us to a real difference to stealth used within an encounter versus outside of an encounter.

Within an encounter, stealth ought to let you potentially avoid attacks from an enemy (they lose sight of you and have to focus on another enemy), allow you to get advantageous attacks against an enemy, etc. Outside of combat, it should probably let you avoid the combat at least temporarily, and provide bonuses to how combat starts (giving one side a full round of actions and/or a major benefit regarding initiative).

Hey, hey now, I never said the party would have to fight the giant eventually . Maybe the overarching theme of the campaign turns out to be that the party sneaking away from their problems causes lots of problems... for other people.

[Thaluikhain]

Can you run at least some of your noncombat like combat? You've got Lockpicking instead of Attack, it has Lock Points instead of Hit Points and so on. Just have to work out some way that it fights back (is noisy, or maybe you've only got 3 turns for some reason) and run it like that.

Not sure how well that'd work, and it probably wouldn't work at all for some problems, but might for others.