Stealth and Invis vs large groups


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 21st February 2011, 22:51

Stealth and Invis vs large groups

I find that stealth becomes really lackluster a little while after the lair. The biggest reason for this is because enemies start showing up in very large crowds (Orc Mines are the perfect example). And when you're up against those kinds of crowds, stealthing up to stab them just isn't a good idea. Even if you're playing a spriggan completely focused on stealth, your chances of murdering even a small crowd of orcs or centaurs before one wakes up (And therefore wakes the whole group) are probably 50/50 at best. The solution for a stabber is to simply use invisibility or confusion to get your stab on. But neither of these depend on stealth, at all. Invis works by lowering enemy awareness to 0, so you could be walking around in full plate with a minotaur and still stab them all to death before they wake up. And confusion makes it irrelevant if the enemy is awake, and is best used before you even get near the targets, since approaching 5 confused elves is a lot safer than approaching 5 sleeping elves and trying to confuse them while they all pelt you with spells and summons from 5 tiles away.

I propose that Stealth is only checked against the most aware monster in range, instead of separately fore very monster. Some tweaks could be done to monster awareness scaling to make this not a an outright buff. The goal is to make it easier to sneak up on a half dozen sleeping orcs than a single warg, and make stealth a viable strategy for stabbing further into the game, instead of only being used to scout enemies before backing off to set up however you're going to kill them, which doesn't involve stealth at all. Changing the way invis works to be a stealth boost only against awake enemies would be good too; it makes no sense that being invisible helps you at all on sneaking up on someone with their eyes closed, let alone completely nullifies the fact that you're stomping around in plate armor. Maybe make a separate spell for lowering enemy awareness passively, some sort of sound muffling enchantment or the like.

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Monday, 21st February 2011, 22:55

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

I'd like some more input on this idea, I can't say I'm the most experienced stealther in the world. That being said, I've played a pretty significant amount of SpEn's, and a couple various-raced assassins, and stealth never really stacked up compared to being able to incapacitate or be invisible. But maybe it's not supposed to? I don't know.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Monday, 21st February 2011, 23:10

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

I'd agree with Storms appraisal: stealth only allows stabbing vs singular or a small number of targets. Large groups cannot be taken out via stab without invisibility (and even that's frustrating sometimes. Invs is one of those things that just seems to work better for monsters than us). Stealth's main use vs larges groups is the ability to back up and get out before the crowd spots you, allowing approach from a more tactically advantageous position, or strategic withdrawal.

While it would certainly be nice if stealth worked more effectively against large groups, I'm not sure it should either.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 01:33

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

It doesn't have to be 'powerful' enemies. Wargs aren't powerful, but they're especially good at detecting stealth. There can (and should) be lots of enemies like this.

Stealth sucking against groups isn't interesting at all, because it's the same as stealth over level 15 or so sucking. You get very rapidly diminishing returns for xp and equipment slots spent in stealth past when you can reliably stealth on a single enemy. Having a 95% chance instead of an 85% chance of stabbing doesn't matter at all for a single target, and especially isn't worth stealth levels 20-27 and wearing gimpy stealth artifacts or raising dex. And for a group, it's the difference between 20% and 50%, which is still way too low to ever consider trying to sneak in with.

And even if you never woke up sleeping monsters, how many of them never sleep anyways? And again, this is especially pronounced in the later stages. Making it so that you can stab a sleeping group of ogres or trolls is hardly going to break the game. And avoiding walking into a group of sleeping monsters is a no brainer as is, stealth or not. It would be nice to have some variety, instead of slowing clearing every level by confuse stabbing and slowing luring enemies away.

The difference between 85% and 95% chance of stabbing a sleeping group is actually meaningful, because you care if they wake up but it might be worth the risk since you have decent odds. 20-50% is irrelevant because it's not worth the risk, and 85-95% chances against a single target don't matter since it's not a threat if it wakes up anyways. Checking stealth against every enemy in sight individually means that your odds are always going to be on the low end, unless stealth was so good it never failed at all. Consider with 10 enemies: 85% chance to reach one means a 20% chance to reach the group (And less to wander around and stab them all, that's just the odds for the first stab) But even if you doubled your stealth, say by raising your skill from 17 to 27, Dex by 5 points instead of int or str, and equipping a nice randart, all at major expense of other stats, resists and options, your odds against one guy go to 93% (Big deal) and against the group they go to 48% (Still way too low to risk.)

So why would anyone bother raising their stealth that high, ever? Especially since there's all the enemies that ignores stealth too, as well as mutations and traps that ruin it. It's like having a weapon school with no high end weapons, or a spell school with no spells higher than level 4.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 02:35

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

I haven't experienced these problems with stealth. I like playing casters that have big, noisy elemental bolts that they shoot at everything and their dog. Sometimes I get halfway through the centaur or yaktaur pack before the last one notices my presence. The last time I played a TSO follower, she walked right up and stabbed Cerebov because apparently the divine halo isn't quite enough to counteract high levels of stealth.

Perhaps you're doing it wrong? I can't give any useful advice since I don't know anything relevant about the character you're using, but your experience is so wildly at odds with my own that I have to think there's something else going on here.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 03:25

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

In my experience, I can't walk down the stairs in the orc mines without waking the whole room that very turn one in three times unless I'm invisible. This with a SpEn wearing a robe who's had stealth turned on all game long. All it takes is one enemy, who immediately shouts every time. I usually just run the hell away and come back at them with meph cloud.

Later on, the only thing my stealth nets me is single sleeping enemies.

  Code:
...#...........CC.
...#....C.........
...#....C........C
...@..............
.............C....


Trying to sneak up on that ^ without invis is likely to turn me into a pincushion. You might stab one or two, but using the shortest route, you're looking at 66 stealth checks to stab them all. 24 of those before you even reach the closest two. Compare to ~5 stealth checks to sneak up on one enemy. I don't know what the awareness is on a centaur, but it's going to be high enough (At least 26 or so) that getting less than a 1/20 chance of being found per check is really damned difficult. You'd need at least 'uncannily stealthy'. Unless you're invisible, in which case you might as well be a Troll in gold dragon mail. And even with that 1 in 20 chance per check, you got a 29% chance of reaching even the closest 2 guys before one of the 6 wakes up. This is for lowly Centaurs. And only 6 of them. With stealth higher than what I'd have on a SpEn with 20 Dex and 27 Stealth.

As far as adding variety, right now you might as well strip any +dex, +stealth, and the last 10 levels of the skill from the game. I'd like there to be some actual value to those things so I don't look at a randart ring with +6 dex ++Stealth +rF and say 'eh, the +rF +rC ring actually helps against cold at least. No point in switching'. Or look at my skills and figure that 20k xp is better spent on anything at all other than stealth, even as a spriggan. About the only decisions about my character to make after the lair are what spells to learn. Equipment is a no brainer in favour of spellcasting, resists and carry capacity, with stealth not even on the radar.

Also remember, this proposal really only affects stabbing against groups. Stealth for the purposes of dropping a firestorm on their heads or summoning an army doesn't require more than the initial 1 turn to see them anyways. It hardly matters if you can run circles around those C's above without waking them up if you're a summoner anyways. And if you are a stabber, the current method is to confuse them or invis them, which isn't really any different than dropping the firestorm or summons on them. There's no concern for approaching from different angles or exploring around the other side to see how big the group is; you already know it's a completely lost cause to try stealthing anywhere near them. Every time. Actually making it viable to sneak up on groups means you'll want to scout around the edge of the group to see if there's a sensitive guy mixed in there or something wandering around. And they still have a chance of waking up, just like anything else, just not a 90% chance before you get in melee range. It's certainly more interesting than stabbing entire groups before they (never) break out of confusion, or before your invis (never) wears off.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 09:22

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

Making a pack have the same chance of detecting you than a single monster would be really weird and unintuitive. A better approach would be to scale the stealth check with the distance to the monster. That would also help to reduce the advantage of the diagonal approach. Problem is that it would make the game much easier for any non-stabber, as the chance to wake a monster at the edge of your LOS would be very low. I don't know how to address this. It would require a massive rebalance and would be a good occasion to get rid of the half cost of the skill.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 16:00

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

I don't see how it's less intuitive. It's how I expected it to work myself. In real life, sneaking is about how quiet you are, not how many people are listening. Dropping a pin in a room full of sleeping people doesn't guarantee someone is going to hear it and wake up just because there's 200 of them. Rather, you are either too quiet for anyone to notice, or are loud enough for some (the ones most aware) to notice.

As it stands, I could be in a room with 10 draconians and an orc, and have the orc be the one that snaps awake and starts shouting. How does that make any sense?

The distance thing is unintuitive as it is too, but I agree it wouldn't be balanced given the power and commonness of magic in crawl. I want stealth to be buffed for people who focused on it over other skills, not for dabblers.

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Snake Sneak

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 16:40

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

Stormlock wrote:I don't see how it's less intuitive. It's how I expected it to work myself. In real life, sneaking is about how quiet you are, not how many people are listening. Dropping a pin in a room full of sleeping people doesn't guarantee someone is going to hear it and wake up just because there's 200 of them. Rather, you are either too quiet for anyone to notice, or are loud enough for some (the ones most aware) to notice.


Well, when I first read this thread, I thought "What's the problem, really? Groups should be harder to sneak upon". However, after reading this, I went all "Wait, waaaait, that's how it works? That's insanely silly!". The natural intuition for stabbing groups is "If I want to stab 8 visible mobs at once, it's harder, because I have to approach one, stab him, approach another, stab him etc. so stabbing all 8 is about 8 times harder than stabbing one, because I have to be stealthy the whole time". In fact, that's what I was thinking the whole time, never suspecting that it might be actually 36 times harder.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 17:08

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

I imagine that if you tried to go through a crowd of eight people, stabbing each one to death in turn, your odds of discovery would be much higher than if you went up to eight individual people and stabbed them to death. A group of orcs has to worry about all manner of filthy cannibalistic elves and wild animals, so they're definitely going to be on alert most of the time. It makes more sense that you could sneak up on a single paranoid orc who's looking for trouble than eight paranoid orcs who are all watching each other's backs. That is, in fact, one of the major points of living in a group. It should be nearly impossible to sneak up on a group, much harder than it currently is if anything.

Have you tried using consumables? Blowguns are pretty common on kobolds, and poison needles make short work of most pack monsters regardless of whether they notice you or not. Slings use cheap and common ammunition and are quite effective if you've trained the appropriate skill at all, and of course a spriggan is the ultimate kiting machine with or without one. Hexes are good, too, but you certainly can get by without them.
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Blades Runner

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 18:28

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

Ok. On a completely different note.
In reality it's true that sneaking on a whole crowd is harder than on a lone stranger, so I don't see a reason to buff stealth so that you can stab to death whole orc mines without waking anybody.

What use real assassins to get by, besides stealth? Distraction and confusion (not a spell)

We already have quite useless spell Projected noise. If done right - it can be used to scatter big crowds in corridors, so that a stabber could finish off them one by one. Which is logical, assassins don't leap head-front into the crowd!
For non-caster assassins, some kind of throwable firecracker would suffice if used properly.

Second idea - smoke screen. Right now, it comes in scrolls and not very useful for stealth.
So if a stealth-user sees a crowd he can throw some kind of smoke-bomb right in the middle of it - and most likely, mobs don't even notice the source of the throw if you stealthy enough.
In smoke LOS of every mob is diminished to 1 square radius - so that you can dive in the smoke ant try to stab as many mobs before smoke clears. When you first appear in 1 square LOS of a mob there is a check of awareness, and chances are that in whole commotion - he don't spot you right away, so you have at least one turn to stab. Even if he spots you - you can try to break that 1 tile LOS and dissolve into smoke, just to stab that same mob 5 turns later from another direction.

Just crazy ideas, as always. But heck, assassin not dependent on magic and having his own tricks up the sleeve would be awesome.

Snake Sneak

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 18:53

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

KoboldLord wrote: It makes more sense that you could sneak up on a single paranoid orc who's looking for trouble than eight paranoid orcs who are all watching each other's backs. That is, in fact, one of the major points of living in a group. It should be nearly impossible to sneak up on a group, much harder than it currently is if anything.


Well, paranoia wouldn't help them if they are all sleeping (which is kinda weird, because they really should at least try to be alert. Perhaps they're lazy bastards and the sentry dozed off). Plus, superstealthy ninjas and assassins that can slaughter whole camps of enemies silently are wickedly cool, so there should be a way to do that without resorting to magic for the stealthiest of the stealthy.

Which leads to several interesting ideas how to make stealth more realistic and intuitive and yet not buff it too much (if at all):

  • death rattle - stabbing should be louder than moving (flavour: dying monster's death rattle), so approaching a group is as easy as a single target, but stabbing them all to death isn't (though allows you to trim your opponents a little). Dunno if this is currently the case, though I've never noticed it.
  • sentries - generate one monster of every group (perhaps only intelligent ones) in sentry mode - not moving, because he keeps watch over his companions and inattentive, because he's a lazy slacker. This way, stealthy characters who use stealth to not run into trouble have a chance to back off no problem, while assassins have a turn to silence him via paralysis or sleep needles (though spells and wands would work too, of course). If they manage that, it's group slaughtering time (well, still harder than just one monster)
  • grogginess - monsters woken up are groggy for one turn, so they don't immediately scream and can be knocked out in the same way as sentries above

That's just some ideas that could make groups of monsters fun, interesting and risky challenges for pure assassins instead of unintuitively and artificially hard or overly easy.

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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 23:44

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

Those are all good ideas. The third one in particular brings up another oddity of sneaking on groups: The guy who wakes up first is instantly aware of you, rather than simply being woken up, but when he screams bloody murder to all his companions, they're simply awoken and unaware of you. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

The death rattle one can go either way; while you'd expect it to be noisier than tiptoeing around, you'd also expect that you'd take special care to be quiet while stabbing a sleeping monster, with a knife to the throat rather than the back.

As far as using blowguns to take out groups, if the monsters were vulnerable to poison in the first place, I'd have used mephitic cloud, which isn't dependant on ammo and will let me train stabbing and kill them much faster. My entire gripe is that you shouldn't automatically resort to invisibility or mass confusion every time you see a group. Suggesting needles is kind of like suggesting berserking and health potions; it's still not stealthy at all, and it doesn't mesh with the image of a skulking assassin sneaking up on people to silently kill them while eluding everyone who is already awake.

Another thing, is everyone keeps complaining about it being overpowered/boring to just stab the whole orcish mines, but that's exactly what I do right now anyways. I just cast invis first. Which somehow makes sleeping enemies less aware of me, rather than making me harder to notice. Invis shouldn't work like that. Having mind bogglingly high stealth should work like that. Something like using the silence spell should be an option, or blinking into their midst, or anything other than casting high level spells (Hello intoxication, invisiblity, haste) and going all rambo on them while your stealth stat lies in a corner and cries.

As it is, stealth is great for stabbing single people (Too great in the case of uniques, it's actually rather boring never having to fight them), and awesome for casting spells on groups. I think it should also be ok for stabbing groups too. Making them 2 or 3 times more difficult to stab all together than a single person is perfectly in line with other archetypes. It doesn't take 66 times as many arrows to take out 6 centaurs instead of 1. Or 66 times as much mana. Or 66 times as many hit points to berserk through them. Why does it require 66 times as much stealth?
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Post Wednesday, 23rd February 2011, 04:53

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

Curio wrote:Second idea - smoke screen. Right now, it comes in scrolls and not very useful for stealth.
So if a stealth-user sees a crowd he can throw some kind of smoke-bomb right in the middle of it - and most likely, mobs don't even notice the source of the throw if you stealthy enough.
In smoke LOS of every mob is diminished to 1 square radius - so that you can dive in the smoke ant try to stab as many mobs before smoke clears. When you first appear in 1 square LOS of a mob there is a check of awareness, and chances are that in whole commotion - he don't spot you right away, so you have at least one turn to stab. Even if he spots you - you can try to break that 1 tile LOS and dissolve into smoktualle, just to stab that same mob 5 turns later from another direction.


I actually had a similar thought the other day- a spell analog of a scroll of could be very useful. Currently the only way to way to place clouds of the obscuring (and not damaging) variety away from yourself is with evaporate- and that spell is not stealth friendly (you are super heating and detonating potions, after all).

I see it having some problems to though. First off, it would render the scroll redundant, if not inferior, and as a rule we don't like redundancies in scrolls. Second problem is that if damaging clouds start at 3 with meph, a non damaging smoke cloud would kinda logically be a level 1 or 2 spell. Which means it could act like summon butterflies (a cheap, spammable spell that trivializes a crowd of ranged opponents for a short time) which is getting nerfed.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd February 2011, 10:26

Re: Stealth and Invis vs large groups

I like many of the proposed changes to stealth here!

It could be like armour: There should be one roll for the player, 1d(stealth), deciding how stealthy he manages to move. Then each opponent should get a roll 1d(observation skill). Observation skill should differ by monster kind, but also have large individual variation. It should be a good deal lower for creatures behaving like groups - the poor orc who's sneaking around the dungeon of Zot all alone is probably a bit more tense and on his guard than one who's travelling in a noisy warlord's pack. All monsters rolling higher than the player's roll wake up, and do another roll immediately (with a bonus) to see if they spot the player. If they do, they may shout, waking all, and possibly making everyone see him (this would differ between orcs, who can communicate where they see the player, and ugly things, which can only make general gurgles of alarm)

It'd be a pain to tweak, but it would make stealth a good deal more fun.
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