Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Idea on making stealth more challenging

At the moment, stealth relies exclusively on avoiding cones of visions from the enemy. It's already interesting but too easy to cheese. Some creatures have different kind of detections, some animals can hear you or smell you before they even see you.

I find it silly as well you can stealth right behind an enemy in full plate armor without even triggering a detection check personally.

So there should be another kind of detection for certain enemies. Worgs, bears or gnolls, for example, should rather have a 360 circle around them and if they detect you they would come to investigate around the area you are, just like it's done in mimimi studio games.

It would add another dimension to stealth and would be more challenging in some areas.

i agree that stealth is too easy to cheese at the moment, and like you said, my heavy armour fighter can just as easily sneak as my rouge, as long as he stays out of the vision cone.
Another thing that bothers me (this might be a bug however) is that I sometimes don't even get a stealth check while in a cone, I'm just automatically discovered (this also applies when I am lighty or heavily obscured).

I agree that there should be some sound involved too.
Only doing the tests when being looked at is a bit... easy to cheese.

Rogues are gutted as a class, I only take Astarion along because the guy is funny, and thief isn't half bad, but as a rogue he doesn't do much.

Cones of vision shouldn't be a thing at all. It should just be a stealth check. A high stealth roll means you've successfully utilized your opponents field of vision to sneak. This is included in the stealth roll.

I think it would be cool if all creatures had two detection areas adjusted by various factors.

1. The current cone for sight.

2. A circle that's generally smaller than the cone that surrounds the creature, representing: sound, smell, any kind of extrasensory or supernatural sensing the creature may have.

The size of 1. would probably be normal for most creatures, but could be adjusted for creatures with exceptional sight or blindness.

The size of 2. could be larger or smaller, affected by WIS and depending on if the creature is one that relies heavily on scent or hearing like a dog or bat.

Alternatively, you could assume that the creatures perception score already takes these factors into account. All creatures could have the same size areas for gameplay sake, but the perception v stealth would still balance going in for sneak attacks.

I just assumed it was lacking stealth checks for 'move silently'. It's just not complete. I really hope this isn't the intended implementation of stealth since as long as you stay out of sight anyone can sneak up on anyone else, which is obviously overpowered.

i imagine it is very difficult to make a complex detection/stealth mechanic.
of course i would like it if they managed to implement such.
but sometimes a very simple abstract one is just enough. like one based on cover and distance.

personally i dislike the erratic and way too narrow vision cones that don't even see you if you are lightly obscured just because you rolled enough stealth.

So the best way to handle it would be to force a check from stealthed characters every 6-10 seconds, compare against a set DC for all enemies, and cause failure if you are lower than this DC and within sight or hearing range (which could be the cone/a circle around the character, maybe with a disadvantage interval and an advantage interval as well if that's not too hard to program). That way you aren't rolling 20 times or something, but you do have to actually beat multiple enemies perception DCs.

In other words, using actual 5e rules.

Oh, also, the way to fix combat stealth right now is to add readied reaction and fix the reaction system, so that if a character tries to pop around a wall and take a shot against 30 goblins the goblins pin them to it with a wall of arrows.

Thing is - facing direction isn't a thing in the tabletop system. It makes sense if your CRPG has a literal backstab system but that's not a thing in D&D5 because it's fiddly and bound to cause arguments over silly things like the orientation of a miniature. If a monster's FOV was a straight up radial flood and they would look around or go, "I 'eard something!" every now and then it would be more of a challenge.

That's why flanking instead of literal "backstab" makes much more sense.

there should be a cone of no vision, or blind spot as exists in real life XD, but the sound and the smell should be considerate