Ranging Ahead
It seems like only yesterday we were talking about splitting the party. Of course, that was Handbook of Heroes #7 way back in *adjusts glasses* September of 2015!? Holy crap we’ve been doing this comic for a while. Any dang way, rather than rehashing that old chestnut, I’d like to talk today about a specific aspect of party-splitting. Namely, the need to send the stealthy guy on a solo mission to collect intel.
First and foremost, this mess is dangerous. I’m assuming that you guys have seen any spy movie ever, right? A single botched roll behind enemy lines can mean a one way trip to the laser circumcision table, and that is not a fun place to be. So before you head off all loniest wolf style, make sure you’ve got your ECEC covered.
- Exigence
Solo stealth is a high-risk play, so make sure there aren’t any low-risk alternatives. Can you send a familiar? Hack their computers? Maybe beak out the scrying mirror? Even if sending in an operative is your best bet, there’s nothing that says it has to be a solo mission. Like we talked about back here, there are statistical reasons to minimize the number of stealth rolls in a covert op, and additional bodies on the field mean more chances of tripping the alarm. Even so, it’s always worth weighing the pros and cons. Group stealth remains an option, and even a single sneaking partner can go a long way if it comes time to cut your way out of a bad situation.
- Communication
How are you reporting back to your party? If you’re caught and tortured by red leather-clad fantasy dominatrixes (a common scenario), you’re going to wish you had a better plan than “I’ll be right back.” It doesn’t matter how tough your squad is if they don’t know you’re in need of rescue. Cell phones, rockie talkies, and strict “report in every five minutes” policies are all relevant here.
- Extraction
How are you getting out? Patrols can rotate, doors can close, and the way in might not always be your best way out. Before you creep into the BBEG’s secret inner sanctum, make sure you know the exits. Teleportation is ideal, but daring leaps from “no one could survive that jump” waterfalls work just as well. Even something as simple as hitching a ride on a sheep can mean the difference between life and death. Do your research, and plan multiple escape routes when possible.
- Contingencies
This is a roleplaying game. Things will go wrong. When that happens, you need to be ready to improvise. Pulling your best John McClane impression and crawling through the vents is a go-to play. So is releasing the villain’s attack beast, uncorking an iron flask, or otherwise setting off a spark in the fireworks factory. Causing distractions, taking hostages, and calling in air strikes all fall under this category. These are your “oh shit buttons,” and the wise stealth monkey will always have a couple.
Question of the day then. When you’re running a stealth operation, what are your favorite strategies? Any especially good tools or tactics for the rest of us black pajama wearing Solid Snake wannabes? Let’s hear it in the comments!
EARN BONUS LOOT! Check out the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. We’ve got a sketch feed full of Laurel’s original concept art. We’ve got early access to comics. There’s physical schwag, personalized art, and a monthly vote to see which class gets featured in the comic next. And perhaps my personal favorite, we’ve been hard at work bringing a bimonthly NSFW Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comic to the world! So come one come all. Hurry while supplies of hot elf chicks lasts!
My party doesn’t do stealth any more. The first time they tried, their sneak botched his rolls so badly he ended up bumping into a torch and making a giant glowing beacon right at his location. Luckily for him, having your camp suddenly catch fire is very distracting, so very few goblins were looking for a fight, but after that it was decided that in the future they would just mortar the camp with spells instead of bothering with this “sneaking” nonsense. It doesn’t matter how many goblins there are if theyre all on fire.
Findin that “sneaking sweet spot” is tough. On the one hand, you want to encourage diverse play styles and keep infiltration a viable play style. On the other, the “stealth god” that can never be seen under any circumstances gets boring in a hurry. You want the risk of getting caught, but not the headache of getting caught all the time.
I wonder if you could implement “detected” as a sort of condition?
In general, I try to make it so that being detected isn’t the end of the world. If a couple of sentries spot you, they’ll try and deal with the problem themselves rather than put the whole camp on high alert, for example, so you still have some opportunity to overwhelm them before they sound the alarm. Its just that this time, it was such a catastrophic failure that the bare minimum reasonable reaction was still “the whole camp wakes up”.
Pathfinder Eidolons make this so easy…
Sure, you need a spell (Unfetter) to allow the eidolon to leave the summoner behind (usually, it would vanish if the distance becomes to big), but then you have a disposable scout with a telepathic connection to a party member. For [level] rounds/day, the summoner can even see through its eyes if the eidolon isn’t sure what exactly it’s seeing.
If the eidolon gets caught? Dismiss it or call it back.
If the group gets ambushed? Dismiss the eidolon and summon regular critters, or call it back.
It helps that sneaky sneaking is very in-theme for my fetchling shadow caller and his shadowy eidolon.
Is there any conceivable reason why you might want to go in person rather than sending the eidolon?
For scouting? No, I can’t think of any reason to do that personally when there’s a scouting-capable Eidolon around.
For everything else, the summoner should be around, but when it comes to stealth and scouting, nothing beats a disposable class feature that, at worst, gets disabled for 24 hours – and even that can be bypassed with the proper spells.
Acid. Melt your way through the roof while the party kicks in the front door. Bonus points if you kill the BBEG with roof tiles on your way in!
They were the distraction and you were the infiltrator? Nice! Did this become a go-to tactic for the group, or was it more of a one-off?
They were distraction team A. Our Bugbear Monk/Chef kicked in the kitchen window and became distraction team B. Our 2-ft tall Kenku Battlemaster (looks like a winter wren with 2 scimitars, named WRENEGADE) who came down through the ceiling was distraction team C, and the gnome bard and I were the infiltration team.
We were playing a connected series of one-offs due to scheduling conflicts, so the team comp changed every session, but yeah, melting through the roof became our default strategy. If that failed, melting through the doors, floor, and/or walls became our second tactic.
We also spent a weirdly large amount of time in barrels or pretending to be barrels, hoping the enemy would load us into their base when resupplying. That worked more often than it probably should
“Stealth”? You mean “Overtly subduing all your enemies before they could raise the alarm”? Scouting is best left to my Paladin Steed and Arcane Eye.
Horses are famously sneaky.
Paladin steeds don’t die, they poof. Poof’d steeds can be re-summoned It’s not aboot not being noticed, it’s aboot being expendable, mobile, and able to telepathically relay information while within a mile.
Counterpoint: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/11/02/assassins-steed
Yeah, you guessed it, Spheres of Power. The Dark sphere offers a talent called Shadow Lurk, which can separate the shadow from the party’s sneak with the same skills. The shadow can be called back as a move action, and if killed, the shadow winks out granting the target knowledge of everything the shadow observed while detached. With more investment (talents, feats), the shadow becomes more and more powerful, being able to cast any spells the target had, carry and use objects, etc. With the right build, your shadow lurk will even undetectable by divinations.
Is there any reason you might want to go in person rather than send in the shadow?
Not really. The shadow lurk is just as good at stealth and perception as the target, with none of the risk or danger. It also means that you don’t have to split the party or lead the enemies back to the party location.
Another scout character I had was an Incanter who specialized in the Divination sphere. He was able to detect traps, creatures, traps, etc within long range (400+40ft per CL). The character also received a free perception check whenever he came within 10ft of a trap. Due to his sphere specialization, he also knew whenever he or an ally failed a skill check or saving throw. To top this all off, his divinations could pierce dense substances like lead. This party scout never needed to split from the party to “scout ahead”.
My party is the one whose sole successful stealthing operation was the one where the plan was built around us making a ton of noise and getting noticed, so we’re not the best ones to come to on this. That said, if we deploy scouts, we do send them in pairs, sometimes with a familiar keeping an eye on them. Only once has that gotten them involved in a significant encounter.
That said, our current scout is the guy-whose-build-is-focused-on-ludicrous-movement-speed, so maybe sending him solo is the way to go, since he can outrun anything that notices him.
Run speed is a great asset. There’s a speedster on Dirigible’s team, and it’s hilarious how much she’s everywhere at once. Her kryptonite, however, is dudes with nets. I therefore advise a pair of scissors as a backup plan.
Am I seriousy the only one who noticed the BraveStarr reference…?
Thine ears are life a wolf’s, thine eyes are like a hawk’s.
Thine companions are a mile behind, getting ambushed by the orcs.”
I used to be a poet, but I never knew it.
Whenever I tried to make a rhyme, I found I didn’t have the ti…
Your ECEC list is all what Wizard will try to avoid. Exigence: if you try the most difficult path you will have more chances of being discovered. Communication: Why? To have the rest of the party steal the spotlight. UH!!! Extraction: you don’t need a escape route until you really need a escape route, high emotions, suspense and excitement in “Looking for a escape route after awaking a very angry red dragon” coming soon to your cinema. Contingencies: If you have the minimal chance of escape, then why would you make some sort of heroic sacrifice? No, you don’t need contingencies when you are going to make a heroic sacrifice which will put the name of your character in the histories books as a drama queen even in death.
In my personal case these is, at least for me, one of that cases when chaos is a great tool. Sow chaos between the enemy, raise the alarms and see what happens. For example once the party where in a mountain near a fortress. My idea of scouting? Throw fireballs and lightning at random and inflammable spots. That way my party have a good idea of how many enemies there are, how they react to threats, how fast they can discover us and how much time they take to come to the mountain. With that knowledge we put or plan in action. Once again my wizard, attacked from the mountaintop, once again there was panic among the fortress soldiers, once again, after like half of the spells slots, they get out to go to the mountaintop, once again my companions waited that the soldiers get out of the fortress to enter and conquer it, oh wait, right, this time we defeated and left them in a mountain where a well placed sonic damage spell can create a huge avalanche, je, silly me 🙂
Like you say, having the proper preparation for any job ensures that it’ll go haywire within two dice rolls.
I had a ninja, Jyunichi, who was the short range scout for the rest of the party while we were trying to extract ourselves from a thieves den in the slums. We were very quiet for the most part, though everyone who didn’t have ranks in Hide and Move Silently (3.5 game, incidentally) stayed an appreciable distance back, like at the top of the stairs until the foyer was clear sort of back.
It almost went wonky when we were traversing the last bit of distance to the door we needed to get out of, and Jyu heard the sounds of a big old feast behind a closed door. Someone shouted for more wine, and if the servants who were going to get the liquor opened the door, literally every bandit in the room would see us.
We did a quick check, does the door swing outwards? It did, so Jyu hoarsely whispered “Ham! Guys, the plan is ham!” and leaped over to the door and jammed his foot in it. In a couple seconds, someone tried to open it, while he was frantically pointing to the meat locker we’d just passed by while we were trying to find the exit route. He had some ninja power that let him disguise himself as some sort of ‘quicker-than-you-ought’ action, so he morphed into Random Overworked Grunt #14 and someone got him the biggest ham they could unhook.
With our caster adding Ghost Sound to help make it sound normal on our side and the beatstick helping hold the door closed vs Strength checks, Jyunichi immediately began yelling at whoever was on the other side of the door to stop doing whatever they were doing, he needed to get in, they yelled back that he was jamming things up. They both hollered at each other until the party was out of sight and the fighter found a bolthole, upon which time he freed the door and gave the wine-getter a furious stink eye, which was returned. No one cared about the guy bringing a huge ham to the kitchens, the cooks said ‘just put it over there,’ and then gave him the good beer to bring to the head honcho’s place.
Given that at this point there was no sense in going very far solo, Jyu dropped off the beer, passed a disguise check, and only took away a little mental map of the boss chambers. After that he met up with the rest of the party without too much more trouble, and we made our exit in fine form. We only had to kill half a dozen dudes total in the whole building, which is a pretty good pacifist run as D&D sessions in bandit houses are concerned.
I am -very- thankful that I had backup here, because I could not have done all the actions that were required of me alone. We did go back and murder a bunch of people and the boss, though. We also took more ham for the party ration stash, which was the cause of considerable mirth and I thought was a nice touch.
I always like just casting invisibility on the scout character if you have no familiar who can go in, or if manual dexterity is required which your familiar likely doesn’t have. Combined with some method of regular communication, such as message or something else, and a few well prepared distractions, as well as your contingency plan characters for when it likely goes wrong halfway through, you can have very good odds of success.
This kind of thing is why Blades in the Dark is currently my favorite system. Not only is it much less common that there’s a major benefit to splitting the party, it’s designed such that you don’t actually have to spend three hours of your life thinking about all those plans and contingencies on what later turns out to have been a completely pointless side treck into a place you had no need to go to.
Your scout is suddenly caught behind enemy lines? Flashback to a plan you’re now saying you made for this situation.
You want to find all the entrances and exits you can before entering in a timely manner? That’s a single roll, not a game of “gotcha! You didn’t say you looked THERE!” with your GM.
Ah yes, I remember my first group stealth mission.
Literally the very first roll involved our warlock critically botching his roll from the underside of the carriage we were using to sneak into the enemy manor, nearly getting castrated by one of the carriage’s wheels in the process, getting the attention of half the guards in the district, and narrowly escaping with 1 hitpoint.
By contrast, my idiot bard’s attempt to bluff his way through the front door went way better than it had any right to. Perhaps my comrade’s bungling provided a distraction.
It was Mutants and Masterminds, but I recall being frustrated by our one speedster-loving player’s tendency to split the party when he’d run ahead of us.
…So when he ran a game and nobody had dibs on a speedster for once, I made Split Second, a speedster so fast she could run out of her own body, creating duplicates. I made sure to never use this power to rush ahead of everyone else, but when we needed to split the party, my power basically gave us extra characters to split be the groups, so both sides had their speedster clones available. My bodies also shared one pool of thoughts, so I was kinda like a radio for the party. Useful when we were divided.
Pathfinder makes sneaking easy as „Word Of God“ (or head designer) is documented as „take 10 is always possible outside combat“.
So my current design is a Shadowdancer with Hide in plain Sight, 35 on a Take 10 for sneak, Expeditious Retreat to get away, Shadow Jump in case of emergency and a wand of Message to report back.
I mentioned back in „Damage Type“ how that went south with Take 10 on perception (36) for BBEG.
Familiars. It’s one of the reasons why I thought about Chain Pact warlocks and why Sending Stones tends to o my work once per day; the ability for long range communication is crucial for spy types. A familiar is relatively disposable and with the right spells it can even handle itself in a fight using itself as a proxy for you.
Even when you need to be there in person, imagination is both a tool and a weapon. Send my spider familiar into a hostage situation where the hostages are tied up? Have it drag a knife to one of the hostages. Bad guy with the maguffin doing evil stuff? Owl swoops in for a steal. Help Timmy out of the well? Fly is a touch spell.
As your previous comic about stealth showed, all it takes is one guy to botch his roll to screw over an otherwise amazing stealth check. So usually you want scouts who you can afford to loose but still need their information. Familiars are practically made for that sort of thing. Even if you get a standard familiar with only a 100 for range telepathic link (and let me tell you that ain’t enough when you don’t want to be spotted by castle sentries) they aren’t animals; their creatures smart enough to remember things and can easily report back if thy aren’t spotted and killed.
Which brings me to my next point; there’s more to stealth than just not being spotted. Camouflage is just as important if not more so than having a good stealth roll. Another comic of yours with the Tiefling Rogue was about that. My spider familiar in a cave isn’t going to attract any attention; it’s a cave and it’s a tiny spider, so even if it did somehow botch it’s stealth at worse you might have a bandit swat it or a rat try to eat it. The same could not be said if say, a shady looking half-Elf who totally isn’t wearing the guards uniform. Hell I’ve even went metal gear once and hid inside of a crate. My botched acrobatics roll had me clattered in the ground, but thanks to winning an iniative check I was able to hide back inside the box and the guard just figured it fell over. Didn’t even need to roll stealth.
For my group, let me put it this way….. https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/michigan-j-fighter
Even if it’s a solo attempt, there’s a good chance any party I’m in fails. XD
Ain’t no cure for rotten luck. Every table has one, lol. My only advice is to develop your sense of humor and to go in with “comically inept” as a character trait.
Playing Tonkers, a bard in a 3.5 game, a former child captive turned pirate cabin boy/ship jester with a squeezebox who swore off the sea after surviving a shipwreck during a storm to join the rest of the party. Not too bright, but an enthusiastic believer that narrative causality ensured that he would be alright no matter what happened, since that was the story of his life.
We had just leveled up and I picked Invisibility as my first 2nd level spell when we were tasked to investigate your classic dormant volcano turned into a massive fortress that some cult was rebuilding.
After getting in a side door or something, our rogue went off to scout and get the layout of the place. After a while, Tonkers got bored, so he turned invisible and started to do his own scouting. Wound up finding a group of cultists that turned out of be an upper level cult leader giving an orientation/tour to a bunch of underlings, so I followed them around until they got to the central chamber with a huge chained up ball of lava/fire hanging in the middle.
At this point, while they were all gawking at it, I started asking stupid questions from the back of the group (while still invisible, of course) which they all assumed were coming from the newer cultists I was standing behind, which led the leader to lecture the whole group on what the thing was (imprisoned fire demon/god), what they were doing (harnessing its power while gathering what they needed to release it), and what their plans were (release their god and take over the world). After getting all the info I could, I stole one of their holy symbols they used as keys and went back to the party.
The rogue came back from his scouting with a partial map and some random valuables he pilfered. I came back with the plot and the key to put a stop to it.
I remember the DM had to convince me to play a bard when starting up that game, and he wound up being one of my favorite characters.
This gives me some hope for the sneaky guy playstyle. Not getting caught is one thing. Not getting caught with style is another. Well done that bard!
I have a long history of “sneaky gal”. Back when the 4th Ed was happening, so much of our playstyle was “Rogue sneaks ahead, sets up ambush, leads enemies back to waiting Fighter and Paladin frontline.” In pathfinder, I did so much sneaking, assassinating important enemy targets, and stealing everything that wasn’t tacked down that I made the GM put a Level 9 Spell on a small town’s vault. Then the Summoner and I tormented him with the idea of using a Luck Feat to get a +8 to the Disarm roll and forcing the GM to give me CR 18 exp for surviving the trap if I could roll above a 12.
My favorite one comes from that game though, and the GM had us defending a small village from an Orc army. An actual army of 200 orcs and their champion versus our six man group. So, i did what any sneaky gal would do in my situation. I crept into the orc camp, cut their bowstrings, poisoned their food and water, and assassinated any sleeping target who was conveniently alone. He said the poison actually had a higher kill count than the wizard.
And I have mentioned the Changeling game previously, but I played a super sneaky character who crept into a Gentry’s Outpost, way point, something. I wasn’t in Arcadia proper, but it was effectively a shipping point for the dreaded True Fae Krampus Claus. (My GM was combining the two for a sort of joke horror thing. ) One of my friends had been kidnapped by privateers who were going to give him to Krampus so he could then be returned to his Keeper, who had been “good” that year. But I asked if the List was there, and the Gm tossed a die (which came up 10) and said “Yeah…you find the list.” So i changed his Keeper and my Keeper to the naughty list, put myself on the Good list, and changed my present to my friend. Had him delivered to my doorstep by the villains.
Alternate question for GMs:
How do you handle stealth, solo or television in groups?
I like an idea I recently picked up, which is to allow group stealth rolls where everyone rolls, and the second highest is the roll we take. There are some feats/abilities meant to make group stealth easier, and if anyone has those then we take the highest instead.
What ways do other DM/GM/Storytellers use? I’ve heard of having only half the party roll (players choice), or having everyone simply roll assists for the person with the lowest bonus. Or do you just have everyone roll?
A story happened in my game Well, not as much “happened”, as “was orchestrated” by me. The party’s dark elf noble get an invitation to an elite brothel. This time the party was searching clues to an evil cult, and they assumed the brothel had some connection to it. So they made a plan: the elf will go forward to investigate, while the others will be ready to support him. What could possibly go wrong?
The elf went inside and… it was a brothel. No connection with evil cult was found. So he decided, as long as he’s here, he can enjoy some wine and some orgy. While his friends were waiting outside and had no idea what happened to him. They decided to break into and they met the security, not happy to see them at all. The party started to lose against security and ran away, and had no choice but to spend some well-earned money on hospital bills. And they went to the hospital right away, so the elf, when he returned home, had no idea where did they all go.
Gotta keep those lines of communication open. Unless your bro turns on privacy mode. That mess is supposed to be private.