Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Stealth mechanic

Just curious on thoughts of how should work in the game. A sage podcast said 5e doesn't have facing. I think facing and distraction is part of role playing sneaking past some guards. Or waiting for the guards to go on patrol. You select the least stealthy party member and give an area for the enemies perception check. When you try to sneak (at least out of combat) you get green area (don't attack, cast a fireball etc) you can pass safely. Amber the npc get a perception check against everyone's stealth. And red only invisible, or gloom walker Rangers, etc can try to sneak past.
Maybe similar in combat so your halfling can move behind the barbarian and he checks, finds he's in amber (or red?) then can try to hide.
The colors would represent partial or fully obscured, the creatures awareness. Your stealthiness.

Thoughts welcome. What crpg has done stealth well? How should it be implemented? It should give stealthy characters a chance to shine (but not I'm always invulnerable in combat)

Hey, I like this topic! Assassin main here.

I like stealth in BG/BG2 well enough (mostly BG2, with the Assassin kit). I won't say it's the best stealth implementation in existence, but I've been playing these games with heavily modded AI and encounters in general, so it works well enough for me. (When I mention "BG2", I will mostly mean a modded game, not vanilla.) One thing about stealth that BG2 conveys well is that, in ideal situations, stealth and backstabs are extremely powerful. One single backstab can kill many powerful enemies. It feels good to land a backstab. It's as simple as that. So how do you keep it from being too broken? Also very simple: with NearInfinity you can easily assign the properties "Immune to Backstab", "Immune to Critical Hits", and "Invisibility Detection" to any character.

What this means is that, you have some flexibility in customizing an encounter. This mage is very powerful, but the moment his protections are down, you can oneshot him with a backstab. On the other hand, you don't want the two bruisers to be taken down by two backstabs, then you can make them immune to backstabs, either by giving them special equipment, or just making them Barbarians. It's fun to play around with this system. A nice touch here is that, because the game is in real time, there's this element of "having a small time window to land a backstab, then successfully landing it". With modded AI, what usually happens is, after a mage's initlial protections are down, you will have about 2 or 3 seconds to move your assassin into position to land a backstab, before the mage's contingencies/sequencers are activated. If you fail this chance, your party may be wiped out because this mage proceeds to summon Balors and Glabrezus like there's no tomorrow. This is a rather specific example, but it does happen.

All these details convey the role and the playstyle of the assassin: you move in for the kill without anyone knowing, you have a small time window to make your move, you capitalize on that chance, take down the critical target in a blink, then move back into the shadows before other enemies can focus you. That's the essence of it.

Another game that does the stealth and assassin thing well is Borderlands 2. The Assassin class was the reason why I fell in love with that game and kept playing it until now. No, it's not an RPG, but it conveys the same key thing about the Assassin: in ideal situations, the assassin can do a ridiculous amount of damage to a single target. Without the conditions that make the situation "ideal", the assassin becomes much, much less effective. I've played all BL2 classes, and Zer0 is the most engaging character to play. His melee build rewards skill, speed, precision, positioning, and the ability to plan ahead and think ahead in a short amount of time. Also, there's the "high risk, high reward" element. You are greatly rewarded by investing the extra effort into making your attacks effective; your performance will be very underwhelming otherwise.

But I digress.

I was thoroughly disappointed by DOS2 stealth (it barely exists, to be honest). Basically you have to spend the extra effort to position your rogue and land backstabs in order to deal damage comparable to a bruiser who can just walk up to an enemy's face. The ROGUE talents don't even have an ability to stealth. Instead, you have to grab Chameleon from Polymorph. Mortal Blow is a total joke. First playthorugh I played Sebille, intent on making the ultimate ASSASSIN. Eh. Wasn't much. Second playthrough I played a Pyro/Geo mage. During this playthrough I kept asking myself so why the hell would I even want to play a rogue archetype? There are other things I can whine about, but there's no need here.

I don't know much about stealth in DnD 5e. I know just a little, because I watched a few episodes of Critical Role. Apparently, the assassin can still do pretty decent damage when they land a flanking attack, especially if it's a crit. The rogue of their party would do way more damage than their barbarian - again, when the conditions are favorable. That's about all I know.

I understand to implement a solid stealth system can be tricky. A lot of work has to go into AI; just opening up some skills and adjusting the numbers won't be quite enough. You have to code the AI in a way such that it takes into account all the things that are enabled by stealth. Over the years I have played around with AI in the BG games as well as DAO, and things can get pretty complicated sometimes.

I really, seriously, hope they come up with something at least enjoyable to some extent in BG3.

Hi Try2handing

Thanks for your thoughts.

Anyone else has ideas/ thoughts- just in case the devs are reading and are open to ideas!

Stealth mechanics? Cool
I think the Rogue series are the games that are used to measure every roguelike RPG game ever made. But even if you can take some hints from there, those are specialized roguelike games only.

One game that has a cool stealth system is POE2. You can buy firecrackers to distract guards and enemies while you position yourself with your sneaky rogue. You can use it to kill but also rob people. The game also features detection UI and backstab-from-stealth skills.

One stealth system very interesting was the one from TES Oblivion: Stealth is skill-dependent, an eye over your character marks your detection chances, stealth slows your character, Pickpocketing needs that the objective is unaware of your presence, so sneak is important. A stealthy attack improves your damage too. The only drawback is that you do not have any distraction nor trap mechanics.
That thievery system also has some good points: guards summoned if you commit some crime, day-night cycles, so people call the guards if they found you in their homes at night. the stolen goods cannot be sold to the same merchant you robbed, you have to sell it to a fence.
The new fallout series took most of this system from TES so it is almost the same, but with a major focus in ranged damage and some cool features. You can even put poisons or bombs into somebody´s pocket to damage him.

I kind of like the stealth system of DOS games. You can see the detection zone of the guards and civilians. Improving your skill allows you to have less detection radius (to be honest is not much needed but...). You need to be stealthy and undetected to rob someone. And even if you manage to do that the objective pursuits you. I preferred the beta version of DOS2: Before launch, the robbed one even called his friends to pursuit you.
The cool thing is that you have skills and actions that do not broke stealth so you can set barrels in the field and use chloroform and jump and the enemies are none the wiser.
I do not care much about the high cost of stealth in combat ( I use a mod that reduces that to 2 AP and it is manageable).

And about damage, the Guerrilla feat is crazy: A ranged stealth attack from an expert huntsman with "guerrilla" is by far the most damaging non-skill attack in the entire game. It dwarfs most skills. I one-shotted mini-bosses with that before I stop using that trick whatsoever because it made some fights pointless.

Thanks _Vic_
I didn't mind DOS2 stealth, not saying it was great but could be built upon to make it better. The fireworks type distraction you mentioned sounds really good.
In DOS2 you could 'turn off' light sources, being able to change the environment to change your sneak options also gives good role play options. In the Thief game you could shoot arrows to dowse flames. Again the aim should be for with some quests you could roleplay the heck out of stealth and let your stealth character shine. This wont stop other options to complete the quest (barbarian could kill the guards, or bribe, or intimate, or teleport..)

DOS style is different from DnD stealth because DnD relies soley on checks while OS2 is about positioning.

T2H: you need to think of stealht in OS like you do in DnD, its a standard hting everyone can do.
the scoundrel isnt the backstab class, and the reason its not very good in OS1 EE is because it used to be OP so they nerfed it hard.
Basically mid combat stealth is not the point, the point is to set up extremeley potetent alpha strikes.

in DnD it mostly works the same, at least in later edition, going invisible during combat is something you only realy see in 4E outside of wizards.

either way, i hope they include sight lines in this one. It not mattering just doesnt translate well to a PC game.
5E is a very simple game, including things like facing is not the intention for WOTC, the idea is that basic 5E is a skeleton of a game that you can add on to, you can clearly see that iwth the inclusion of feats as an optional rule.

D&D 5E doesn't have back stabbing anymore. They have what is called Sneak Attack. The following is from the D&D 5E SRD.



So while the position of the rogue in not of concern to get a sneak attack, and can even be a ranged weapon. The position of others in your party can contribute to whether you get a sneak attack.

5e has a mechanic called "surprise", which happens when your rogue rolls stealth and beats the enemy's passive perception score.
A surprised target can not move or take any actions during the first round of combat, and the Assassin has a skill that grants him advantage ( roll twice for attack) and an automatic crítical hit if he succeeds.
I really hope they implement this mechanic into BG3, and I'm curious to see how this could be implemented without turn based combat.

Most of these should be simple enough to implement in RTWP, even if not in an exact same manner. The perception check against stealth is there in NWN and Dragon Age Origins. The auto-crit effect is also simple.

The advantage thing is more or less like the +4 attack roll bonus when attacking out of stealth in BG1-2. They may not be exactly the same technically, but the idea is the same: you are more likely to land the attack. From this angle, the concept of "attack roll bonus" makes more sense to me than the "rolling one more time" thing.

As for the not being able to move or take actions for one round, the only thing close to that that I know of is the delay timer in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. When combat starts everyone gets a countdown timer based on their initiative roll. You can still move, but you can't do anything else before this timer runs out. When I was playing that game, sometimes I could go make myself a coffee then came back and the timers on some of my party members would still be running.

That's some cool suggestions.
I remember BG stealth, but the surprise mechanic is new and the Assassin class is built around it in 5e, and 5e made them pretty badass. In fact Assassin multiclass is capable of the highest single target damage in the game.
I think I have never used stealth in DAO because even being a Rogue/Assassin main, most rpgs make rogues underpowered, and therefore I never created a Rogue PC or used the companions.
Rogues are specially sucky in PoE.

Stealth mechanic is going to be whatever the 5e edition rules states it's going to be, so I assume you can magically stealth behind somebody during combat and make a sneak attack? As long as that opponent doesn't see or hear you?

Rogue sneak attack is different from enemy is surprised and different from 'stealth mechanic'
A rogue can do a sneak attack if his enemy has a nearby enemy,for example.

Sneak attack is a precision strike to an unprotected and vulnerable point in the enemy´s body. You do not need to be stealthy for that, but it helps. In fact stealth is a totally different mechanic unrelated to SA. Basically stealth in d&d is a skill check like all the others.

Basically as long as the enemy is not inmune to sneak attacks because they do not have vulnerable points(ex: undead, elementals...) and it is not aware or targeting the rogue directly, you have a sneak attack on them. Of course you can have it if you are invisible (also have bonuses) but it is not needed anymore: You can attain it if you have advantage, or the enemy is blinded, if you used skills like surprise attack or feint(or their counterparts in 5e), or if the enemy is attacking another party member. You do not even need to be behind the enemy or have melee weapons anymore (as long as you are closer than 2m).


Ed: What I would like to see in BG3 is a mix between the tabletop and a videogame: You need the skill to be stealthy, but the success not only depends on your skill and the skill of the enemy, but also in your positioning, equipment, the ilumination, environment characteristics, the use of distraction items or tactics, etc.

Sorry, of course I meant the "Thief" series

Hi Vic
Yep, i think the Thief series had a crystal mechanic where by looking at the crystal showed the level of light you a standing in.
Not that we expect that mechanic.. as long as its fun.. at times useful.. but not game breaking.

If in most fights you can't hide, shoot, hide, then enemies take no action.. then you shoot, hide....repeat.. not fun.
But if your friendly half-orc barbarian is beating the enemy senseless... and theres no reason why the enemy should target your hiding halfling gloom stalker ranger in darkness.. then hiding should work. In fact if you know you arent going to be targeted because the enemy is busy you don't really need to hide!

But fighting solo against a spellcaster.. expect them to try to find you.. AOE.. cast find hidden... cast see in darkness.. go invisible themselves, call for backup, run away etc