Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

I can get my stealth char to 99 hide and no further

Sputnik wrote:I took as much detection as I could without gimping my build or compromising my character concept. The gear I'm getting over time, but will still never be able to detect a dedicated sneak with equal gear.

I highlighted the decisive point for you.
Playing stealth characters for many years in NWN2, I can assure that here is simply no way to play a successful sneak without "crippling, gimping and compomising" your build.
I mean - I'd love to have a sneak char with 300+ HP, 50+ AC, all saves above 25, 45+ AB, immunities to several energies and whatever else you can think of.

Doesn't work, though. Not even nearly.
If you want to be able to sneak you have to live with numbers that make every level 20 fighter laugh at you.
A fully buffed 41 AC (dispelled by everyone and their dog, down to 29)
A fully buffed AB of 37 (dispelled down to 33)
Saves of 12 / 36/ 12 (dispelled down to 9/33/9)
HP barely above 200
no immunities, no DR, no fast healing, no permanent displacement or haste and so on and so on and so on.

If I had completely minmaxed the char I would have gotten some numbers up one or two points but that's still pretty lousy.


Considering this I do not see any reason why your character - which just needs some UMD for those blasted Clairaudience/Amplify scrolls for example - should be able to detect me without at least a bit of investment.
(Not to mention that there are several stacking spells for listen and Spot, but only a few for Hide to counter. Move Silently? Heroism, that's more or less all you got.)

I have - after many many years of trying - given up on playing spies in NWN2 online, just because 7 out of 10 people will "see" (well, hear, mostly) me nevertheless, without investing anything but 33 skill points and a couple lowlevel spells.
On BG:TSCC it is even worse - almost 10 years of grandfathered items (which I don't own myself) shift the balance even more away from my char.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I accepted that my (by far) favourite kind of character is impossible to play here, changed my playstyle and have a lot of fun with Shea now.
But claiming that detectors have a hard time here, compared to sneakers, and demanding to make it easier to detect characters, made me chuckle and almost fall from my chair.

It is plain fact that detection every couple seconds is a bug when compared to PnP and should be nerfed somehow, not to mention there is also line of sight that doesn't apply when hiding behind most objects that people often ignore since they "detected" you mechanically. Even not considering available spells and additions Kaedrin made that allow 100+ detection - its still bad.


If you have 19 skillpoints less than sneaker then you detect them in all spying situations. That means at leat 6 itemslots/feats less dedicated to detection than sneaker has dedicated to his hide/move silently skill.

With spells it gets even worse, and its entirely possible to still detect someone who made its character completely devoted to hiding while all detector has is 33 skill and like one feat and couple item slots with +skill.

@VillageGreenWitch:

Not sure why you only quoted one small snippet of what I wrote, seeing as context is pretty important. For example, in my first message I also wrote:

Sputnik wrote: I accept that there will be toons who I will not be able to detect under many circumstances. So....

In my second message, immediately after the quote you used, I then wrote:

Sputnik wrote:That's OK with me. That's why I asked about areas.

As you can see, nowhere did I ask for better detection skills, or even whine about wanting more from my build. Rather, I accepted its limitations.

VillageGreenWitch wrote:But claiming that detectors have a hard time here, compared to sneakers, and demanding to make it easier to detect characters, made me chuckle and almost fall from my chair.

Since the rest of the message seemed to be directed at me, I feel the need to respond to this..

Re-read my messages VERY carfefully. NOT ONCE did I claim that detectors had a harder time than sneaks. ALL I asked for were places where toons can go to be safer from spying.. places where sneaking might be more difficult (for obvious, or not so obvious reasons)

There are areas where one cannot cast spells mechanically. There are many areas where one cannot commit physical violence or cast (most) spells for fear of godmodding. The IC laws in effect create zones safe from certain methods of offense.

Since spying on someone is considered a hostile action, which normally would normally be forfeiting said sneak's RP-out, should there not then be areas where this sort of hostility is made more difficult?
Just as there are areas safe from what the other character archetypes can do...

Doubly so for lawful areas where attacking the offending sneak (if caught!) is not an option because that would be godmodding.

Keep in mind that I am only the OP. I cannot control what others are debating about.
Healthy discussion is great, but please do not put words in my mouth.

Moving forward, are there any other areas where one might be safer from being spied on?

Sputnik wrote:
Keep in mind that I am only the OP. I cannot control what others are debating about.
Healthy discussion is great, but please do not put words in my mouth.[/color]

Sorry for (a) misunderstanding you and (b) misunderstandably wording my own post, then.

My reply was indeed meant as a general remark about what I read here throughout those three pages. Not all of it (not even the most of it) was written by you, admittedly. And you personally didn't demand anything about detection, either.

Mork wrote:It is plain fact that detection every couple seconds is a bug when compared to PnP and should be nerfed somehow, not to mention there is also line of sight that doesn't apply when hiding behind most objects that people often ignore since they "detected" you mechanically. Even not considering available spells and additions Kaedrin made that allow 100+ detection - its still bad.


If you have 19 skillpoints less than sneaker then you detect them in all spying situations. That means at leat 6 itemslots/feats less dedicated to detection than sneaker has dedicated to his hide/move silently skill.

With spells it gets even worse, and its entirely possible to still detect someone who made its character completely devoted to hiding while all detector has is 33 skill and like one feat and couple item slots with +skill.

This is not really the case here. We don't have everything from Kaedrin implemented (only very small portions in fact). In addition, C&C and Amplify don't stack. So you can get +10 listen if you cast amplify or you can cast C&C and get EITHER +10 Spot OR +10 Listen. Stealth vs. Detection is actually in a pretty good place right now. As Valefort mentioned earlier in the thread it's 'barely' in a good place, and probably that barely is considered accurate by most sneaks as well as detectors, which is frankly the best we can hope for.

It's doable to reach 100/100 on hide ms you know

Valefort wrote:It's doable to reach 100/100 on hide ms you know

And doable to reach or exceed 100 detection, though you really only need one or the other.

Sputnik wrote:@VillageGreenWitch:
Since spying on someone is considered a hostile action, which normally would normally be forfeiting said sneak's RP-out, should there not then be areas where this sort of hostility is made more difficult?
Just as there are areas safe from what the other character archetypes can do...

Just because someone is sneaking shouldn't mean he does any hostilities at all.
Everything depends on context. If someone is sneaking after breaking into some fractions base then sure its hostile.

But if someone is sneaking like in town - trying to overhear some conversation, even if he gets detected you shouldn't automaticly assume he is trying to murder you. IC all he could be doing is standing behind a corner of some building witch hardly can be considered hostile.

VillageGreenWitch wrote:

Sputnik wrote:I took as much detection as I could without gimping my build or compromising my character concept. The gear I'm getting over time, but will still never be able to detect a dedicated sneak with equal gear.

I highlighted the decisive point for you.
Playing stealth characters for many years in NWN2, I can assure that here is simply no way to play a successful sneak without "crippling, gimping and compomising" your build.
I mean - I'd love to have a sneak char with 300+ HP, 50+ AC, all saves above 25, 45+ AB, immunities to several energies and whatever else you can think of.

Doesn't work, though. Not even nearly.
If you want to be able to sneak you have to live with numbers that make every level 20 fighter laugh at you.
A fully buffed 41 AC (dispelled by everyone and their dog, down to 29)
A fully buffed AB of 37 (dispelled down to 33)
Saves of 12 / 36/ 12 (dispelled down to 9/33/9)
HP barely above 200
no immunities, no DR, no fast healing, no permanent displacement or haste and so on and so on and so on.

If I had completely minmaxed the char I would have gotten some numbers up one or two points but that's still pretty lousy.


Considering this I do not see any reason why your character - which just needs some UMD for those blasted Clairaudience/Amplify scrolls for example - should be able to detect me without at least a bit of investment.
(Not to mention that there are several stacking spells for listen and Spot, but only a few for Hide to counter. Move Silently? Heroism, that's more or less all you got.)

I have - after many many years of trying - given up on playing spies in NWN2 online, just because 7 out of 10 people will "see" (well, hear, mostly) me nevertheless, without investing anything but 33 skill points and a couple lowlevel spells.
On BG:TSCC it is even worse - almost 10 years of grandfathered items (which I don't own myself) shift the balance even more away from my char.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I accepted that my (by far) favourite kind of character is impossible to play here, changed my playstyle and have a lot of fun with Shea now.
But claiming that detectors have a hard time here, compared to sneakers, and demanding to make it easier to detect characters, made me chuckle and almost fall from my chair.

This is only kind of true. Avacus, my old hips wizard, had immunity to crits, 50 AC buffed, and 99 MS/ 99Hide and level 29 spell level. He couldn't sneak attack worth anything and could barely hit anything in melee, but he had a full repertoire of deadly spells with bonuses to necromancy. Even when spotted (Which I think there was maybe 5 people on the whole server at the time that could do it.) he was pretty difficult to take down. When he was defeated finally during an event, it took 4 epic characters to take him out, one of which was a dedicated spot/listen monk with all their gear dedicated to spotting hiders.

I think that Flasmix has had a similar experience with his old wizard as well some time ago. There are some builds that are very strong.

The down side to these builds, is they are garbage in PvE, even if they are super good in PVP/spying/RP. So it really depends on what you want to do with your character.

This was also achieved when +4 hide/ms gear was easier to come by. But even without that, he still would be very potent even today.

Rask wrote:[A lot of talk about a wizard

Oh come on, Rask, I should have been more precise, I know - but I spoke about a real, mundane sneaker, a roguebased character, not a wizard that has HIPS.
We all know that casters can do everything way better than non-casters.
And yes, I could build a druid 26/SD4 and call that a sneaker, too.

But that is just not my idea of a character that should be one of the four true archetypes of D&D in particular (and RPG in general) - the Rogue.

What you described as your char is one of the reasons why playing a rogue feels so pointless and obsolete in NWN2 online.

*bites tongue*
/rant end