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

I play a paranoid character. He often suspects that he is being followed.

As such, I like to take certain precautions. Light spells, items that help with detection, staying in relatively safe areas. You know, logical steps to make spying on me difficult.

However, looking at the numbers I find that many can still spy on me with impunity, even in a well-lit room with no obstacles to hide behind. RCRing into a druid or ranger for detection doesn't make sense either. I accept that there will be toons who I will not be able to detect under many circumstances. So....

Are there areas where there are penalties to stealth?

I'm not referring to situational bonuses like light vs. darkness, or standing still vs. walking.
What I'm asking about is specific areas where sneaking might be more difficult..

Example: A Well-lit temple with no hidden alcoves and many acolytes going about their duties should be pretty hard to sneak around in.

The available spot gear is equivalent to sneak gear, so if you take the appropriate feats, max spot, carry a C&C wand and maybe put some points in WIS it really should just be a matter of saving up and getting spot gear in every slot (just like sneaks get sneak gear in every slot) it will all help.

All this said, IMO more areas have penalties to sneak than should. Temples among them, but many others that make less sense.

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.

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

chad878262 wrote:All this said, IMO more areas have penalties to sneak than should. Temples among them, but many others that make less sense.

Which areas?

Back when I was involved with some intrigue people the go to was casting teleport to a safe location before conducting business. Take off your area on scry and it seems pretty foolproof.

Now lacking The ability to do that you may have to take them past that rope swing in the gullykin crypt.

Durlags used to give -50 stealth to prevent PvP by drow assassin PCs or whatever. Not sure if it is still the case but I thought it was dumb that one of the 'darkest' areas on the server gave a penalty to stealth.

spot / listen gear appears to be slightly behind, currently, compared to stealth gear.

No spot/listen necklaces
slots such as belts are behind

Not a huge difference but its there

Impossible to sneak in the temple of Lathander.

People that sneak don't get hide and move silently rolls, whereas people that listen or spot do, so standing still you can get as much as +25 to your listen with a good roll. A character built and geared to catch a sneak who's got equal gear and stats will spot them most of the time. And there's a belt in the avernus shop that grants the alertness feat which gives +2 spot and listen which doesn't go toward the skill bonus cap of +50 so I wouldn't say detection items are behind/lacking

people that sneak don't get hide and move silently rolls,

Both sides get a roll. http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/How_Stealth_ ... tion_works

Not sure where you get the '+25' from for standing still. Not being snarky I don't understand, +20 on a roll of 20, yes, but where is the other five coming from?

There is a belt with +3 hide/ms, alertness adds +2/+2, thats what I meant by the item is 'behind'

YourMoveHolyMan wrote:

people that sneak don't get hide and move silently rolls,

Both sides get a roll. http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/How_Stealth_ ... tion_works

Not sure where you get the '+25' from for standing still. Not being snarky I don't understand, +20 on a roll of 20, yes, but where is the other five coming from?

Supposedly only both sides get a roll if the spotter was turned hostile. So in a normal situation you as sneaker don't get a roll while the spotter does... Don't ask me why

You'll need full ranks + top gear + spells to detect someone with any measure of certainty, scrolls of owl's insight also help. If you lack any of those you're screwed forever as far as standard detection goes, sneakers just have too much gear bonuses.

In the meantime there are alarm spells, running fast (hasted if possible), AoE spells, planting traps in narrow passages, going invisible, and last that I can think of (but it requires sneakrs who play fair and understand what you're doing which is not always a given) some areas where tracks are easy to see : snow, a beach where the tide just receeded.

Valefort wrote:and last that I can think of (but it requires sneakrs who play fair and understand what you're doing which is not always a given) some areas where tracks are easy to see : snow, a beach where the tide just receeded.

For that there should be a spell: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/passWithoutTrace.htm

Yes it also exists on the server, but that's not every sneak : http://bgtscc.wikia.com/wiki/Pass_without_Trace

If a sneak has invested 3 feats, their background, maxed their DEX and has all item slots dedicated to stealth and the detector has invested the same (except in WIS) the detector will win EVERY TIME. Even without investment in WIS, if all else is equal, even if the sneak gear has a couple point advantage, the detector will still win every time. Turn on the little magnifying class to enter detect mode and you get a roll every 2 seconds. Eventually you will out roll the sneak. Only if the sneak has a full 20 points more than the detector will the remain hidden indefinitely (so long as their are no detection bonuses or stealth penalties like light, hard floor, detector standing still, random location modifiers, etc.)