My MC locks in conversation with a character. That character now faces away from his own goods, or a door he's supposed to be guarding or whatever. I switch to Astarion and sneak. Because said character locked in dialogue or combat or whatever is no longer facing in that certain direction, I could literally sneak Astarion all over the place and said character is frozen in time with 0 ability to attempt to spot Astarion robbing him or anything. 0. None. Why? The character is frozen in a weird time freeze.
Perfect example was during one PFH. Swen just had 1 character lock the Hag in dialogue and combat. Then he went to other unfrozen in time characters and spent obscene amounts of time positioning them just right while the hag could do nothing about it. They could free Mayrina, rob the hag of all her belongings and the hag is still frozen in time. They were outside the entire hag lair before combat started, and he brought them all the way into it.
I think I am starting to understand difference between Larian's systemic design and Arcanes systemic design (which I brought up to discuss in this older thread). Arcane's systemic design adds gameplay, Larian's - removes it. The situation you discribe doesn't add to stealth, it more or less removes it. That's I think is the fundametal flaw I find with many of so called "cheese" mechanics. They don't add a wrinkle to the gameplay, that can be utilized and combined with other pieces, it hacks off chunks of potentially interesting content.
In this istance at least. As it was pointed out before, shortcomings of the stealth system are numerous and multifaceted.
Exactly. If the mechanic is totally unrealistic and/or completely undermines other mechanics, I don't think it's a good mechanic.
Stealth is just one example of this. You literally don't need the Stealth skill because you can distract an enemy by freezing them in time. Then you can do whatever you want while they're frozen. Unrealistic AND it totally negates Stealth.
How would some of us like this to be fixed? If your other characters are anywhere within say 300 feet (doesn't have to be 300. Just throwing out a number) of the "frozen" characters, pull them into turn-based mode too. Even if enemies aren't aware of said other characters, time is slowed down for everyone in the area so that there is still the potential for your other characters to sneak around and snatch things while the enemy is distracted, but it isn't so absolute. Then also give the enemy the ability to detect via sound, not just sight cones. So Stealth is used even if you try to maneuver a character around sight cones to get behind them. This, having a good Stealth becomes so much more important if you want to use stealth tactics.
See, the problem a lot of us have is that you can have Stealth -5 and still slip behind an enemy with Perception+10 without a roll simply by staying outside sight cones and locking that enemy in combat or dialogue. That's an extreme example, of course, but it's totally possible in the game. This makes Stealth completely useless. There's no need for it.
Now, before I shut up, I will say that it is MUCH better in Patch 8 than in the past. MUCH better. I wonder if some players might need to play the game again to test it out for themselves. For example, Arron the halfling merchant caught Astarion EVERY time I tried to have him pickpocket him - with Expertise. I even tried the method of distracting him with conversation so Astarion could slip up behind him outside of sight cones. That tells me they're working on it. They're trying to prevent such gimmicks. So I do think we should give them some credit. It used to be that I could steal full suits of armor with little trouble using the same method.
