#the stealth mechanics

[galasgamingcorner]

What is this? Where am I?

[stayatsam]

Walk the Divide

(7/14/23)

[terkmc]

SSC - Apollo, formerly the SSC SKELETONIZER

Metalmark alt

[dailyadventureprompts]

DM Tip: Getting Stealth Right

After I posted my recent breakdown of how Baldur's Gate 3 adapted and in many ways improved the 5e ruleset I got a lot of people in the comments specifically talking about the modification to stealth:

If you hide while not in a creature’s sight cone, you automatically succeed. If you try to hide while in a creature’s sight cone, you automatically fail. If you are hidden and enter a creature’s sight cone, you must roll stealth against the creature’s passive perception. This may be a straight roll, advantage, or disadvantage, based on the creature’s senses and the level of lighting. Some creatures with different senses such as blindsight may follow different rules

Now there was a lot of tumblr standard bad reading comprehension going on, but what stuck out to me was that most of these people didn't appreciate the changes/improvements because they wern't aware of how badly stealth is worded in base 5e, and that just about every good dm just adlibs it to avoid the pitfalls of playing RAW

Look how often in the official hide rules it says something along the sides of "The DM decides", rather than giving guidelines or reasonable expectations about when a player should be able to hide. DMs should of course be empowered to make rulings, but players should always have a baseline that they can use to make reasonable decisions and calculated risks.

Because BG3's rules are run by a computer they can't be arbitrary: Players KNOW they have to get out of vision/sense range so that's the action they take if they want to hide. Likewise, making the stealth check when they enter an enemy's vision rather than when they start hiding feels better at the table because it doesn't tell the hiding character that they've been spotted or not until the moment it happens.

Forgive me if it seems like I'm being pedantic but we need clear and elegant design when it comes to the rules of our game, especially when we're dealing with something as fundamental as who can see who when.

Art

[hobie-doh]

What an enigma! (pun may or may not have been intentional :))

Its Her!!!! I love how you captured her gremlin energy, and all the details, augh its so good!

I always try my hardest not to just keyboard smash and scream at you as I'm trying very hard to be articulate and cool, but words do not do justice to the emotions I feel, it's always a pleasure to go "who in the world sent me an ask? ANON!!!"

Sidenote, you are improving like crazy, the detailing on the hair is subtle but very nice and your hands are looking better every time I see them!

Little secret, Enigma is my third favorite design out of all my thieves! Seeing my darlings drawn by someone else just has this incredible magic to it.

Anyways YIPPEE!!! More art for my hoard!

[twod6]

random underrated blorbos of mine. garrett and lea. theyre exactly the opposite and i think more people should play their respective games

[reel-fear]

Honestly, every single time the whole 'poppy playtime is a bendy rip-off' stuff ever shows up I find it all extremely unconvincing and silly.

For one thing, rip-off usually is meant to imply that it's a cheap lazy copy of a better more polished thing, and uh. Sorry but even from chapter 1? Poppy Playtime is a better game than Bendy, it has a simple but understandable story, the game manages to be thrilling, creepy, and very intense at times... I mean that Huggy chase in the vents ALONE puts it way above Batim for me.

I mean BATDR had the most slow stupid chase I've ever seen [and every other encounter with the ink demon is text telling u he's there and then a timer goes down and u get jumpscared] and batim's chases were either silly or just not nearly as theatric or terrifying as that.

When making the vent sequence I mean not only is it absolutely horrifying to realize how fast Huggy is in there but also it's so theatric and cool? The fact that you round a corner after thinking you escaped only to see a terrifying animation of that thing crawling toward you is awesome! I wish Bendy had stuff like that!

And all the stuff it shares with Bendy are generic things Bendy ripped from other horror games/media anyways. I'm not saying Poppy Playtime isn't inspired by Bendy I for sure think it is but Bendy is such a generic story that somehow fails to do tropes 100 other horror games have done any comparison only makes Poppy Playtime look better.

"It has employees being sacrificed for their company" That is not a concept Bendy invented, literally look at any of the sci-fi horror series Bendy is very inspired by. This is literally a twist in the original Alien.

"It has a scary woman forcing you to do tasks for her" Once again, not a concept Bendy invented, a scary mysterious person forcing you to do fetch-quests is a concept found in tons of horror media. And at least Poppy Playtime gave you a chase with her and let you defeat her, look at poor malice. She's barely on screen for more than 10 minutes before she gets stabbed.

"It has a cult worshipping the monster" This is something tons of horror games and media have done too. I mean In The Tall Grass has a guy who worships a giant magical rock in the middle of a grass maze, Bioshock [which Bendy has only been taking more and more direct inspiration from while failing to grab any of the compelling parts] also had a lot of themes of religion and cult-ish behavior, almost every horror media franchise has at one point done a cult thing.

Bendy couldn't even come up with a reason Sammy worships the ink demon, the best motivation we've ever gotten is just that 'he's crazzyyyy the ink made him insaneeee'. Who is the cheap rip-off here?

At least Poppy Playtime gave their cultist a motive for worshipping the monster + a proper boss fight that feels intense and looks awesome! Bendy didn't even let you kill Malice [she got stabbed in front of you and then just collapsed on the floor how thrilling] meanwhile you get to kill three of the villains in Poppy Playtime and the gameplay and action in those scenes have only gotten better as the game went on.

I mean Sammy walks into a room and goes "AAA SCARY I'M BEING MURDERED" then later shows up and for NO REASON sees a normal human man and assumes it's the ink demon before once again someone else kills him for you. In Poppy Playtime you defeat Catnap as he floods the world with this horrible nightmare-inducing gas that intensifies the color palette and his design. Fight off versions of him that are illusions that you need your flare gun for, then watch in a wonderful animation as he mistakes the monster for his savior before getting killed by it, in a brutal way I might add, which game are we accusing of being cheap, lazy garbage again?

I just find this argument to be people who Really Really need to find a reason to hate Poppy Playtime which I think is silly. The devs being weird, shady people is already enough reason to dislike the game, you don't need to invent reasons why secretly every part of the game is malicious or bad. But esp when I see Bendy fans saying they don't support Poppy Playtime or dislike it bc of its devs or even saying its cringe ummmm.

I have bad news about the fact Bendy's devs are worse and it took not one, but TWO over an hour long videos to cover it all. Plus the Bendy games are just the worse games in every aspect, if I could sell my batim copy for a copy of Poppy Playtime I wouldn't hesitate at all.

Saying this as a bendy fan, we have no right to be super judgy towards Poppy Playtime. If Poppy Playtime is embarrassing cringe, Bendy is too and is way more embarrassing of an interest. We shouldn't spread misinformation just because we all want to hate Poppy Playtime, you can dislike Poppy Playtime without making up a bunch of nonsense to justify it.

Honestly seeing people just blatantly be unfairly mean to Poppy Playtime only makes its critics look worse and makes it hard to take any backlash to the games seriously. Because surprise surprise if you spread misinformation to make a point people will quickly stop listening to Anything you have to say bc they won't trust you're telling the truth anymore.

[gear-project]

Annon-Guy: Remember the Batman Arkham Games?

Think any of the playable Guilty Gear StrIVe characters could perform well in the Combat (Fighting) and Predator (Stealth) Challenges?

I think most would do well at both while some would be good at one or the other depending on the fighter. I know Bedman? isn't exactly... stealthy.

This is actually somewhat of a tricky question to answer.

The easiest answer would be Raven, because he's the closest to Batman in the Guilty Gear Universe.

And, funnily enough, he's just as stealthy as Batman is. He evaded Sentinel Drones that monitored a Megadeth Class Gear in the Lightning the Argent Novel. Sentinel Drones are said to have cameras that read multiple spectrums of light and sound vibrations among other detection capabilities... so the fact Raven evaded their security system speaks volumes of what he can do in terms of Stealth.

Raven is also one of the oldest characters (aside Slayer and Izuna) in the Guilty Gear Series, so his fighting prowess is probably even higher than Batman's would be... because of how many years he's had to learn how to fight.

The Batman Arkham games took combat in a 1 versus mob setup, and while that works well in most situations for Batman, it doesn't necessarily illustrate the true techniques and capabilities a character can perform.

Ky Kiske is said to be able to fight legions of enemies at once with extreme proficiency, even compared to Sol Badguy who uses brute force... even Sol would get overwhelmed by a large enough enemy force over time... he's had to use his Gear Cell Body to get through scrapes compared to Ky's specialized training under Kliff Undersn.

This isn't exactly Dynasty Warriors (Musou), but Guilty Gear 2 Overture has illustrated a few situations that are similar to this kind of situational mob combat.

Speaking of Legions though, Dr. Paradigm's Gear Tribe might as well be a Legion Force on its own.

(Side Note: one of my favorite action games is a game by the name of Chaos Legion, for the PlayStation 2, you should look it up sometime).

[king-dra]

whoever decided AC6 needed a forced stealth mission should be slapped silly

[redhead-reporter]

HAHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD I AM UNWELL

[bumblewarden]

kinda wanna fuck around and rewrite one of my fics into rpgmaker

or like. i could, once i have a larger library complete, put them all in there as one larger episodic retelling of novhen's whole deal 👀

in a default asset sort of mood

[oswednesday]

its insane how much outlast changed like, horror games forever, like would there even be hiding in locker mechanics without it and that section is mostly cinematography but its impact,,,

[terkmc]

ASV "Tyto"

Comm for a supplement in the work focused on flight mechs

[audipiu]

I have died. four times already. in the abbatoir.

[queen-scribbles]

Man, it is such a good thing Disavowed comes right after Anarchy in Paradise or I would get stuck every dang time.

[geminison]

DEATH STRANDING IS A STEALTH GAME?? *surprised Pikachu face of a guy who forgot for a minute who's the man behind the wheel*