D&D 3E/3.5 Using the 3.5 Stealth Rules

[Water Bob]

I've been struggling with how to play the 3.5 Stealth rules. There are four skills to consider (Hide, Spot, Move Silently, and Listen), the mechanic is sometimes the opposed roll and sometimes not, and there are a lot of rolls that could be made when multiple characters are involved.

In speaking with other gamers on other threads, I've found that many house rule the 3.5 Stealth rules or play them in a seat-o-the-pants, almost ad-lib, fashion.

I tried to get down to the bottom of how these rules were meant to be played, RAW. Here's what I've come up with. You tell me whether you think I nailed it or have gone completely off the deep end.

 

[Celebrim]

I've been struggling with how to play the 3.5 Stealth rules.

Good stealth rules are very hard to come by because really you are dealing with something intensely complex. Some amount of abstraction is probably required lest it get too tedious. To this day, stealth is a less refined concept in virtually all RPGs than combat, with stealth tending to vary from useless to broken without a lot of in between.

There are four skills to consider (Hide, Spot, Move Silently, and Listen), the mechanic is sometimes the opposed roll and sometimes not, and there are a lot of rolls that could be made when multiple characters are involved.

IMO, the mechanic is always 'opposed roll'. However, in my situations its more practical to assume the DC than to make 4-20 rolls for the NPC's. So for example, if there are 4 NPC's talking with each other that might hear the PC I might make the assumption that the best rolled a 16 and set the DC to 16 + listen skill - 5 for distraction - X for distance. This is just to save having to make lots and lots of DC rolls. Alternately, I'll assume that all the NPC's took 10 which is a reasonable assumption if the NPC's are relaxed. This are all off the cuff short cuts that have more to do with speeding the game along than the system, and are akin to just deciding that a statistical average of 4 of the 40 low CR archers hit rather than rolling 40 d20's.

The four mechanics don't really introduce a difficulty. Hide/Spot is for line of sight with less than 100% concealment/cover. Move silently/listen is for non-line of sight or greater than 100% concealment/cover. Note that unlike combat, you'll probably want to track the facing of sentries if you want to do a complex stealth challenge.

There are several really important issues that the rules either get wrong or else fail to adequately address:

a) How much cover and concealment is available and needed to hide? By this I mean that there aren't good guidelines for figuring out how much cover is available in typical terrains. The D&D guideline of treating shadows as concealment is particularly vague and perhaps not well thought out, because it doesn't seem to correspond to practical experience except in cases of nearly total darkness since the outline of someone in the open is almost always clearly visible even when the features of their body is not.
b) If you have better than normal cover or concealment, do you get a bonus to hide, and if so of what sort?
c) And perhaps most importantly of all, though the rules suggest that the difficulty of hearing/seeing a target increases linearly with distance this is WRONG. The most badly crafted least well thought out rule in all of 3.X is the linear -1 penalty to spot/listen per 10' of distance. It essentially grants perfect invisibility to just about anything attacking from cover/concealment beyond 400' or so and will give reasonably stealthy PC's effective invisibility at much closer ranges than that. It's a rule that kinda sorta does ok and is easy to calculate if you are in 30'x40' rooms in a dungeon, but otherwise is useless.
d) There is a degree of ambuigity between spot and search in my opinion. I typically notice spot used for creatures and search used for objects, but there are times when it seems more sensible to think of the object as hiding and make the initial detection dependent on spot. In most cases I think the real division is "You generally must be within 10 feet of the object or surface to be searched." In point of fact, I tend to require you to be able to touch something to 'search' it, and apply a -5 penalty to the check if you can't or won't touch the thing being searched.

 

[PureGoldx58]

To this day, stealth is a less refined concept in virtually all RPGs than combat, with stealth tending to vary from useless to broken without a lot of in between.

That stands true not just in Pen and Paper RPGs but even in video games also.

Now for a reply, To make stealth work at all and not just get arbitrary you have to house rule a few things...because as RAW it is insanely tedious. Like the pointless -1 to perceptive skills based on distance isn't too logical when most of the time you will be taking a -1 on that opposed roll anyway.

There are many gripes I have with the system especially when you add "Hide in Plain Sight" into the mix, making an invisible character that can't be seen with typical invisible breaking mechanics. Give me specifics and I'll go into better detail.

 

[Li Shenron]

The RAW itself isn't particularly difficult, but putting everything together in a scenario usually is.

Just a couple of general suggestions:

- ask your players to take it easy and accept that the RAW is a simplified system, because if they start reasoning too much you can get into endless (and mostly useless) debates, which anyway are most commonly fueled simply by their desire for their PCs to succeed

- forget about the idea of pretending that the whole party of PCs can be sneaky... a group of rogues can be sneaky, but unless the whole party has invested in stealth skills, they just won't be; consider this "a feature, not a bug" of the RAW because in fact it is. And it is not true that this makes it useless for a Rogue to be sneaky "because everyone else spoils it": it just means that the Rogue will do the sneaky tasks while the others wait or do something else. The "sneaky task" doesn't always have to be "walk past the guards" -> if you're the DM, avoid at any cost to put this kind of situations in a place where the PCs have no other route to go or tactic to employ!

Off to the RAW...

Move Silently VS Listen

- The normal Move Silently check is very simple, just remember to add armor check penalty for both armor and shield. Personally I always ask for a roll (taking 10 is a bit debatable here, so avoid arguments and go for the roll which is more fun). Speed of movement is technically half, but typically in 99% of the cases it's irrelevant, so you don't need to normally apply penalties for speeding it up.

- The Listen check suffers distance penalties (-1 every 10ft) plus additional penalties if there's a closed door (-5) or a wall (-15) between. I suggest you default to Take 10 instead of rolling! Use the minimum distance during the whole movement to determine the penalty.

- IMHO you can handle the whole "sneak past the guards" with one only check, but it's better instead to require additional checks if the PC is attempting something more complicated, for instance sneaking into the guards room + grabbing a key hanging from the wall + sneaking out: this could be more exciting if you divide it in 3 checks.

- Remember that circumstance bonuses/penalties are your DM's best friends to adjust the difficulty depending on the situation and on what exactly the PC is trying to do without being heard (e.g. grabbing the key may be more difficult than moving -> give a -2 penalty to the Move Silently roll).


Hide VS Spot

This skill is more controversial. It was mentioned by some of the designers (Monte Cook?) that it was originally intended more for "moving out of sight" rather than "staying out of sight". This is why the skill description focuses on movement.

However IMXP the players (and NPC too) are much, much more likely to try and use this skill to find concealment and remain hidden or to try and walk within the shadows to get somewhere unseen. Unfortunately the RAW does not support this enough! There are no rules e.g. telling you how hard it is to spot someone hiding in foliage vs someone hiding behind a curtain etc.

To stay hidden behind total cover or total concealment normally doesn't even require a roll (if no one has seen you when you moved into hiding). But unfortunately for everything else you have to make up House Rules.

 

[Water Bob]

REACTIVE DETECTION RANGE


If you look at the Spot and Listen skill descriptions you will see a statement to this effect, "Every time you have a chance to spot something in a reactive manner you can make a Spot or Listen check without using an action." That is basically saying what we all know to be logical and true--that a character should have a chance to see or hear an enemy as long as he's conscious.

But, how far can he see? How far can he hear?

The answer to those two questions comes in a number that I am calling the character's Reactive Detection Range. If an enemy moves or makes noise within the character's RDR, then the character has a chance to detect his enemy.





CALCULATING THE RDR

The character's Spot RDR is equal to the total of Taking 10 on his Spot check in tens of feet. For example, Silaigne has +4 on his Spot checks with an additonal +2 bonus when in his native evnironment. Thus, Silaigne is Spot +4 in dungeons and under ground and Spot +6 in his native wilderness.

This means Silaigne's RDR is 140' underground and 160' above ground in the wilderness.

The RDR is something that a GM or player can figure in a millisecond, on the fly. If you know a creature has Spot +8, then you know his RDR is 180'. If you know a character has Spot +2, then you know his RDR is 120'.





MODIFYING THE RDR

If the character is distracted, then his RDR suffers as his focus is shifted. The game applies a -5 modifier to distracted characters. Thus, when figuring the RDR, apply the modifier on the skill before multiplying by 10 feet.

If a distracted character has Spot +8, he is an effective Spot +3. Thus, his RDR is 130'.

The GM may impose other appropriate modifiers. For example, out on a flat, desert plain, at noon on a cloudless day, where a character can see for an incredible distance, the GM will place a theoretical positive modifier on the RDR so that it has great range, making it impossible not to see an enemy's approach.

In a dense jungle at dusk, visibility may be limited, thus the GM may place a penalty on the character's Spot check, which, like the distraction above, will reduce the character's RDR.

RDR can also be reduced due to lighting or other visibility conditions.





THE RDR IS LESS POWERFUL AT RANGE

Think of a character's RDR as an area surrounding the character where the character is constantly making Spot checks. Because he is considered to be constantly making checks, we use the average by Taking 10. Because Spot checks are penalized at a -1 modifer per 10 feet, the RDR becomes less effective the closer you get to RDR range limit. Thus, a character's RDR is more effective at 30' than it is at 100'.

Another way to think of this is to consider the character surrounded by a number of 10' wide bands, circling and centered on the character. From the character out to 10', the character is considered to benefit from his full Spot Take 10 total. At a distance of 10-20' from the character, the check is the character's full Spot Take 10 total minus one. And, so on.

A character with an RDR of 150' has a series of the concentric check zones that looks like this:

Distance      Spot Check
0-10'             15
11'-20'           14
21'-30'           13
 
31'-40'           12
41'-50'           11
51'-60'           10
 
61'-70'           09
71'-80'           08
81'-90'           07
 
91'-100'          06
101'-110'         05
111'-120'         04
 
121'-130'         03
131'-140'         02
141'-150'         01

THE ENCOUNTER DISTANCE RULE

As described in the Spot skill description, the distance at which an encounter starts can be determined by making the enemy's Hide check, subtracting that roll from the character's Take 10 Spot number, then converting to 10' units.

Out in the wilderness, Silaigne is Spot +6, and Taking 10 give the character a total Spot of 16. To find out how close the panther got to the party before it was spotted, simply roll the panther's Hide check and subtract that total from Silaigne's Spot and multiply by 10 to find the range. If the panther rolled a total of 11, then Silaigne spots the panther at 16 - 11 = 5, which means the encounter begins with the panther spotted 50 feet away from Silaigne.

What if the enemy has a higher check? Should the enemy's Hide total be higher than the character's Take 10 Spot check, then the enemy is able to ambush the character during a Surprise Round.

Let's say the panther rolls 22 on his Hide to Silaigne's Take 10 Spot of 16. The means that the panther successfully sneaks up on Silaigne and can ambush him in a Surprise round.

How long does it take the enemy to reach the character? This question is for the GM to answer, but remember the character's RDR. Silaigne's RDR is 160'. The stalking panther's Speed is 40', but while stalking, it will move no faster than half speed to avoid taking the penalty to its Hide and Move Silently checks. It's not always important to know, but when it is, we can assume the panther moves at Speed 20' each round and needs to cross a minium 160'. This means it will take 8 combat rounds, or about 48 seconds, for the stalking panther to reach its target.





ACTIVE SPOTTING

According to the Spot skill description, a character can attempt to spot an enemy in a reactive manner any time the character has a chance to spot them. This is covered under the RDR above. If a player calls for his character to perform a spot check, then active use of the Spot skill is a Move Action.





MULTIPLE SPOTTERS

Rarely in a roleplaying game are the player characters alone. If the party is composed of four characters, it can be quite a chore for the GM to figure four Take 10 Spot sums vs the enemy's single Hide throw. It is easiest and logical to simply take the Take 10 sum for the character with the highest skill bonus. At times, though, a character with a lower Take 10 sum may be more appropriate (due to the character's location, for example).

So, when rolling Hide or Move Silently, the GM should simply make one Hide or Move Siliently throw and compare it to the most appriate character's Spot or Listen Take 10 sum. In effect, the character's Take 10 sum is a DC for the enemy's Hide or Move Silent check.

At the GM's option, a single d20 throw can be made for reactive Spotters and Listeners. This is an extra step for the GM, but it does throw variety into the mix. Simply make a single die throw and add the highest Spot or Listen bonus from among the party members.





SPOT OR LISTEN

Just about all that has been reported above about the Spot skill can be applied to the Listen skill. A GM can roll for both Spot and Listen, if he wants to, but it is easiest picking the character's strong suit and simply playing to that strength.

There can be a Listen Reactive Destection Range just as there is a Spot Reaction Destructon Range.

Instead of figuring multiple RDRs, simply figure the RDR for the most appropriate character, or the character with the highest skill. The most appropriate is not necessarily the same, as a character's positioning may come into play.

Instead of Taking 10 to determine a character's RDR, the GM can roll it normally for varied results.





EXAMPLE OF PLAY

Silaigne and Caelis are traveling across the Cracked Lands where the terrain is such that the two can only cross one mile per hour. The normal day of walking is 8 hours. Outside of that, the characters risk fatigue and exhuastion.

The GM rolls for a daily random encounter and finds that the party will encounter a panther this day.

Throwing 1d8, the GM randomly determines that the panther will be encountered around 11:00 am. It's an overcast but shadowless day.

The GM has pre-recorded each PC's Spot and Listen checks. With Spot, Silaigne sits at Spot +6 and Listen +2 while poor old Caelis has Spot +0 and Listen +0.

Of the two, the GM uses the character with the best chance of catching the panther, which will be Silaigne and his Spot skill. The GM determines that Silaigne is not distracted and no modifiers are required due to terrain or visual conditions. Therefore, Silaigne's Spot RDR is 160'.

Secretly, the GM rolls for the panther's Hide and totals an 11. This means that Silaigne will spot the panther before it attacks, and he will spot it at a distance of 50 feet.

Therefore the GM describes the two PCs as they cross The Cracked Lands, rounding a bend only to see the crouch on a ledge 50 feet ahead of the PCs. Roll initiative. Go into combat rounds.





SECOND EXAMPLE OF PLAY

The GM rolls for random encounters once per night and once per day. The panther from the day's encounter ran off after its first hit to lick its wounds. The GM rolls a second encounter that night, and again it is a panther. So, the GM surmises that the same panther is hungry and has stalked the PCs throughout the day.

The moon has replaced the sun, and it is so dark out in the Cracked Lands that neither Silaigne or Caelis can see their hands in front of their faces if it were not for the fire they had built, assembled out of the scarce wood from the area.

Visability is extremely limited in this situation. The fire illuminates 40' brightly and another 40' in shadow. This makes Silaigne's (and Caelis') Spot RDR at a maxium 80'.

Silaigne's Listen skill, though, is +2. Thus this stealth battle will be between Silaigne's Listen and the cat's Move Silently skill.

Therefore, Silaigne's RDR score is 12 with a range of 120'. The GM secretly rolls the cat's Move Silently and gets a total of 8.

The GM describes how, over the crack of the fire, Silaigne hears something out in the darkness.

12 - 8 = 4. The Panther is in the shadowy area of the fire, just at 40' from the characters. This puts the panther in the character's limited Spot RDR range. Secretly, the GM throws the panther's Hide against the PCs' RDR number.

Using Silaigne again, the cat throws an 18 Hide, which means neither Silaigne (Spot 16) or Caelis (Spot 10) see it (Spot 16) out in the dimness of the fire.

"You definitely hear something, but when you turn, you don't see anything," The GM says.

Both players want their PCs to look around to see if they can see anything, making active Spot checks. Since the reactive Spot failed, the skill reads that active Spot checks (this one with a maximum distance of 80' due to the fire and the night) require a move action.

Both checks fail. The panther, though, can see both characters clearly due to their proximity to the fire (not to mention low-light vision without the fire).

The GM decides to have the panther pounce of Caelis (a pounce is a combination charge and full attack), so he describes this lightning fast black beast that blasts in from out of the darkness, straight at Caelis. Initiative is thrown, and the combat is played out normally.

 

[Water Bob]

ANOTHER WAY TO USE RDR



One way the RDR might make Stealth play during the game quite easy is to consider it like you would a spell radius. Take something like Detect Evil 10' radius. If Evil comes within 10' of the mage, the evil is detected.

The Spot RDR and Listen RDRs can work the same way.

In a game session where the stealth skills are used, simply calculate RDRs and Encounter Ranges for every character. Write this down. Keep it for the entire encounter.

Let's look at an example:




Silaigne has found his way through the wilderness, crossed the mountain stream, and tracked the enemy back to a cave. Now, he sits behind a rock, peeking over its rim, to see the entrance. He can see one guard walking around there at the entryway. It's 250' to the cave opening from Silaigne's current position, and between the two, Silaigne can see lots of scrub, large rocks, uneven ground and trees to hide behind, but there's also a lot of open areas between all the hiding positions.

This is where the GM starts the encounter, with Silaigne, hidden, observing the situation.

The guard has a Spot RDR of 170 feet. Think of this as a detection radius around the character. Remember that the detection is strongest closest to the character. It is very week at 170 feet.

The GM will now roll Silaigne's Hide skill, getting a total of 12. This means that if Silaigne, at anytime during the encounter, comes to the guard 50' or closer, that he will be detected.

Once you know this, just play out the encounter normally. If Silaigne ever does come within 50' of the guard, Silaigne will be detected, and most likely the game will go into combat rounds with the two characters at that distance from each other.

If Silaigne never comes to within 50' of the guard, then Silaigne will not be seen, barring something like walking out in the open where the modifiers would change.

If you know where a character will detect another, then simply consider that when it comes time to move the character throu ghe game board. Each character will have a range to designate when things happen.

Make sense?

 

[Water Bob]

I just stumbled across THIS, which is the exact type of information I've been searching for. Does anybody know where I can find this in the D&D books? I've flipped through the 3.5 PM and 3.5 DMG, and I'm not seeing it (failed my Spot check, I guess).



EDIT: After spending A LOT of time on this, I've found that the linked page must have come from the 3.0 edition. This information seems to have been folded into the terrain section of the DMG for the 3.5 version, starting on page 87.

 

[Celebrim]

Ok, so I think I can see where you are going with this and why, because it seems you are in your own way trying to address the linearity problem.

However, your rules are just way too complex in my opinion, and I'm not sure that they actually fix the versimilitude problem.

If you look at the Spot and Listen skill descriptions you will see a statement to this effect, "Every time you have a chance to spot something in a reactive manner you can make a Spot or Listen check without using an action." That is basically saying what we all know to be logical and true--that a character should have a chance to see or hear an enemy as long as he's conscious.

But, how far can he see? How far can he hear?

He can hear as far as his sight or hearing would allow. In particular, he can't ever spot anything that would require him to roll better than a 20. So, if you can imagine that there is something out there fairly obvious that requires a 0 to spot at close range, then by the rules he can't spot it at 210' away. If he was walking slowly towards it, it would get progressively easier to notice and at some random point he'd go, "Aha, there is a red cloak lying atop the grass there."

We can kind of extend this concept out. If the thing is Colossal then we know that it has a -16 penalty to hide, so we'd expect that compared to the ordinary easy to spot thing that you'd see it further away. In this case, according to the rules as written our ordinary fellow couldn't see it more than 370' away. And at some point while strolling towards it, he'd go, "Aha, there is a colossal red dragon lying on the grassy knoll yonder!"

The basic problem with this though is that as things get linearly further away that they don't in fact get linearly more difficult to see. In point of fact, whenever something gets twice as far away, it has 1/4th the apparant size. So the relationship here is roughly when something gets 1.4 times as far away, it's half as easy to notice. From the fact that the penalty for being a larger size class to hide is -4, we can assume that half as easy to notice equates roughly to a -4 penalty. In fact, this is probably too high. If we were to use such a large penalty, we'd need to not start our table of penalties at 0, but make +0 equate to some fairly far distance away and apply bonuses for trying to spot things closer than that.

Getting an exact table of penalties to spot and listen for distance that involves easy computation and reasonable results is hard, but the important take away from this is that a good table requires a greater and greater interval between each successive penalty. For small distances, it's going to be approximately linear, but as you get further and further out the gaps between penalties get further and further away. It's not really that much harder to spot something at 210' than it is at 200'. The difference this extra 10' causes in apparant size is small.

I'm using something like following currently. I'd welcome refinements that made sense.

+0 Up to 5’ away
+1 Up to 10’ away
+2 Up to 20’ away
+3 Up to 30’ away
+4 Up to 45’ away
+5 Up to 70’ away
+6 Up to 100’ away
+7 Up to 150’ away
+8 Up to 225’ away
+9 Up to 350’ away
+10 Up to 500’ away
+11 Up to 750’ away
+12 Up to 1100’ away

 

[Celebrim]

I just stumbled across THIS, which is the exact type of information I've been searching for. Does anybody know where I can find this in the D&D books? I've flipped through the 3.5 PM and 3.5 DMG, and I'm not seeing it (failed my Spot check, I guess).

EDIT: After spending A LOT of time on this, I've found that the linked page must have come from the 3.0 edition. This information seems to have been folded into the terrain section of the DMG for the 3.5 version, starting on page 87.

Carefully thinking about the numbers reveals that they are pretty much useless though, especially given how many factors and calculations are involved in using the system as given.

A few sniff tests will suffice to prove this. The table gives that maximum spot distance for open grassland at 720 feet - about two football fields end to end with the ends zones. This is for want of a better term, rubbish. With enough time to scan or a bit of luck, you can spot a moving person or animal on open grassland at a distance measurable in miles. Two parties walking across the open prairie would sight each other well beyond the average person's effective rifle range of 400 yards. Particularly keen eyed pilots have been known to spot other airplanes beyond the effective range of most radars.

What we would really like to know is how much concealment was on average provided to someone who wasn't stationary at a given distance depending on their size and the available terrain. Low brush or high grass might not provide a human any appreciable cover unless they lay down and crawl, but its easy to see that they'd probably provide a snake 100% or nearly 100% concealment until it was quite close indeed. And we'd also like to know exactly how much of a bonus to hide was provided by a given level of concealment short of 100%.

One way to look at this is to note that 3/4 cover reduces your profile to the same extent that being a smaller size class would, so the bonus to hide for 3/4 cover must be around +4. Similarly, 95% cover or concealment - such as a arrow slit or a thick mat of vegetation - must provide around a +8 bonus. A tiny peephole or a keyhole, to small to attack through or even have a wide field of vision might provide a +12 bonus. A fine sized beetle on the other hand, would get no such benefits, since its already about as small as the peephole. Instead, 95% cover or concealment for it might equate to crawling on the backside of a curtain.

 

[Water Bob]

Ok, so I think I can see where you are going with this and why, because it seems you are in your own way trying to address the linearity problem.

The "problem" I am trying to address is twofold:

(1) I want to know how the Stealth rules in the game are intended to work by the game designers. There are no good examples, logic problems (Encounter Distance is equal to a Spot check? Always?), and unanswered questions (When does a GM make the first Spot check? Does one Spot check serve the entire encounter? If there are many throws, when do you throw them?).

A Move Silently check is made during movement, but if you make the check each time you move, you'll make so many checks that you will eventually fail, and stealth becomes impossible. So, if one check serves the entire encounter, at what distance is this check made?



(2) The rules are both abstract and situationally speciific. A Spot check is used to find the encounter distance, sans any map that shows line of site. This is abstract. We don't know the true line of sight that the character faces and we trust the die throw to represent those vision obstacles.

Yet, the Spot check suffers a -1 penalty per 10' of distance. This is situationaly specific in that it measures an exact distance.

However, your rules are just way too complex in my opinion, and I'm not sure that they actually fix the versimilitude problem.

Too complex? Too much verbage to read?

Here's the simple version:



1. Each spotter takes 10 on his spot. This gives him both a Spot skill check result and a maximum distance in which he can spot things.

Silaigne has Spot +6, thus his Spot check is 16 to a maximum of 160 feet.



2. Roll the stealther's Hide against a DC equal to the spotter's check.

Panther has Hide +8. Result is 12.

If the Hide throw is lower than the Spot check, figure the distance at which the spotter will see the stealthing creature by subtracting the two.

16 - 12 = 4. Spot happens at a distance of 40 feet from the Spotter.

If the Hide throw is higher than the Spot check, the stealthing creature can move up and Surprise engage the Spotter. The stealthing creature is 100% in his stealth movement.





That's it. That's how complicated it is.

Let's say the panther's Hide result is 12 as indicated above. This means that the panther will stay hidden up to and until the panther comes within 40' of it's target. Once the panther gets within 40' of the spotter, the spotter sees the panther (and presumably combat rounds will start at this point).

Why do you think that's complicated?

He can hear as far as his sight or hearing would allow. In particular, he can't ever spot anything that would require him to roll better than a 20.

No, I cover this in the modifier section. If in terrain with long line of sight, a bonus is given to the Spot check. If in limited visiblity, throw a penalty modifier on the Spot check.

Plus, there are logical limits to line of sight. On a starless, overcast, pitch-black night, the limit of a character's spot is his lighting. If the fire gives off 40 feet of bright light and 40 feet of shadowy light, then the character can see no father than 80 feet, and an enemy cannot stealth his way closer to the character than 40 feet.

Out on a sandy plain, at noon, on a bright blue clear day, visibility may be measured in miles, making it near impossible to use Hide to sneak up on a spotter unless some logical means is used (crawling towards he victim will get you closer).

I'm using something like following currently. I'd welcome refinements that made sense.

I think my system above, which is really not my system but a take on the official rules (using the Encounter Distance rule).

You roll Hide (or Move Silently) vs. a DC that equals the object's Take 10 of Spot (or Listen). If the Hide check beats the DC, then the stealth character will be able to attack the target, catching the spotter unawares.

If the Hide check does not beat the DC, then the stealth character may be caught only if he falls within a certain range from the spotter. If he never falls within that range, the spotter doesn't see him.





Here's a simple example....

Silaigne is walking through the Cracked Lands back to his village. In this terrain, the character has Spot +6. Thus, his reactive check is 16 to a maxiumum range of 160 feet.

Think of this as a line-of-sight disc with a 160' radius centered on the character. And the line of sight gets weaker (the disc gets thinner) the father you move away from the character at the center.

This is simple, yes? The GM knows that a panther is going to stalk Silaigne because the GM rolled the panther as a random encounter. Simply looking at Silaigne's Spot skill tells the GM that the DC for the panther's Hide throw is DC 16.

The GM makes the roll for the panther. d20 roll = 3 + 8 = 11. The panther's Hide result is 11.

16 - 11 = 40.

So, now the GM knows that the panther will stay hidden as long as it keeps at a distace of 41 feet plus.

If the panther gets 40 feet or closer to the character, then the panther is spotted and combat rounds begin at that point.

It's pretty simple.





EDIT: BTW, I like your use of the concealment modifier.