Talk:Stealth (4E)

Hide Grants Combat Advantage Discussion

Words in italics ate by Texas.

• Being Attacked: Being attacked in melee while in stealth means you grant combat advantage. You can break stealth as a free action to avoid this penalty. Being hit in melee combat always breaks stealth. This should not include area attacks! --TexaS 13:00, 8 August 2009 (CEST)

• The idea is that while hiding, you are not moving around and dodging, you remain still an passive - which makes you an easy target. It also ups the ante on stealth.
  • Is this too large a drawback for stealth? My initial reaction was to automatically break hide in these situations; this way you at least get the option to take the punishment and remain hidden.
  • Is it too much of a bother to make a rule for, better judged on the spot? Having a rule makes the situation predictable.
    • Maybe a better rule is that being hit breaks hide? This is the way I'm currently leaning.
  • Enemies sneaking on each other should tend to grant combat advantage to the one spotting the enemy - but this is already so because a hidden character has combat advantage.
• Area/Close - "recon by fire" is cool. The target has the option of breaking stealth to dodge - or remain hidden at additional risk. The main problem I have with this is like when a bad guy choose to place an area attack to include my hidden character for no logical reason. It uses meta information not available in the game. "recon by fire" is illusion breaking.
  • Hiding is actually a pretty good defensive stance against area attacks - remaining still and under cover is how you dodge artillery. Here, getting hit is a better criteria for breaking stealth.
  • Makes less sense for powers that only affects enemies - there are quite a lot of these. But maybe these powers are conceptually affecting everyone but friends. Raises the question about hidden friends, but lets not go there.
  • Also note that many area/close powers specifically affects only targets you see, especially martial powers. These do not affect hidden.
• Ranged - If you spot a sneaker at range, you can use a ranged attack to point him out to your comrades. Can also be used as a single-square area attack for spotting, with the same criteria, only much less effective. Sure it is practical to point out enemies if firing tracers, full auto, at night, but a thrown dagger, a bolt from a crossbow or an arrow shot from a bow isn't visible. If you fire it into a wooded area where somebody is hiding no one would notice. --TexaS 09:21, 11 August 2009 (CEST)
• Melee - this should be fairly rare - its hard to retain cover/concealment in melee, but with invisibility it is certainly possible. Otherwise similar to ranged.

--Starfox 08:58, 11 August 2009 (CEST)

I would say that being hit by a ranged attack should force a new hide roll to not shout out from pain and area attacks should have a penalty for not being sure of where the target is to the "to hit". I think it is utterly silly with all NPCs "hunting the hidden" as these rules support. They should support hidden characters to be hidden not characters chasing the target they, or allies, cannot see. --TexaS 09:21, 11 August 2009 (CEST)

Also they make for arguing if it would be plausible to do moves that players or the game master are encouraged to do to get CA. As last in last gaming session Nell could have tried to move inte the NPCs square and automatically found out where he was and getting CA would encourage that kind of behavior. I have allowed that from the gamemaster as it has no big impact on the game, otherwise. Granting CA or loosing stealth will make me arguing against all that kind of actions, slowing down play and creating a bad mood. --TexaS 09:28, 11 August 2009 (CEST)