Why stealth kills dont work ?

[Deleted *******]

i killed a dude standing alone with his back to my character, not in the red zone, astarion was crouched. He kills the guard and the red goblin raid boss (act 1) suddenly becomes agressive...

[RasaNova]

Well, if I saw one of my comrades suddenly fall over dead with blood pouring out of a big gaping wound, I might become aggressive as well.

Stealth kills work, but you need to chose your targets carefully and time your attacks.

[SoloQ]

Once you do the attack you're out of sneak and more easily visible. Both of my play throughs I've successfully executed sneak kills without alerting anyone else. The torturers and the priestess in the goblin camp are good examples of times where you can get away with it.
But just because you're "not in the red" doesn't mean your actions aren't visible. The red zone is their vision of you when sneaking. Their vision of you when not sneaking is as far as you can see basically. So while sneaking you were fine but as soon as you killed and were taken out of sneak you were caught.
There are trickety trick ways to get NPCs off in rooms on their own. One of them involves a cat.

[EricHVela]

Several possibilities:
A creature might not show a field-of-view area (particularly if they're very high up like in the rafters or high girders) and will alert nearby potential enemies. The creature will show an eye icon under its portrait in the initiative, indicating the creature being a "witness".

A creature can go into alert mode if they come across a body of an ally.

Sounds of crimes matter. Hiding helps, but it still required a successful Stealth check if potential enemies are nearby.

[Bloodwest]

probably heard screams when you stabbed their kin

[ULTRA]

In order to stop someone from crying out when you kill them, you'd have to grapple them, a feature that doesn't exist in this game

[Chadner]

raid boss

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by EricHVela:

Several possibilities:
A creature might not show a field-of-view area (particularly if they're very high up like in the rafters or high girders) and will alert nearby potential enemies. The creature will show an eye icon under its portrait in the initiative, indicating the creature being a "witness".

A creature can go into alert mode if they come across a body of an ally.

Sounds of crimes matter. Hiding helps, but it still required a successful Stealth check if potential enemies are nearby.

Also, there is a hearing mechanic in the game. So, the NPC could have possibly heard something as well.

[*****GameFolder]

Activate turn-base before attacking, much easier to get away/hide the body this way.

[orthostatic]

Originally posted by EternalFun:

i killed a dude standing alone with his back to my character, not in the red zone, astarion was crouched. He kills the guard and the red goblin raid boss (act 1) suddenly becomes agressive...

Sometimes they do work, and rather well at that. I haven't quite figured the distance for hearing or line of sight, though I can tell you that line of sight to a dead body appears to measure considerably longer than sight cones you dodge for normal sneaking. Also if you're ambushing with a dual-wielder, it's basically a lost cause if your off-hand strike lands the kill; a stealth kill needs to be one-shot or it's not stealth at all. This, of course, is discussing stealth kills in otherwise friendly areas, which the developers did not seem to want to encourage.

If you want to stealth kill in a group that's already hostile, a lot of the "arenas" offer ways to exploit by striking with a ranged sneak attack, then taking five steps back to exit combat range for everyone else, then hiding with your bonus action. I did the entire outer goblin fort this way. Took a bit but it ensured that Owlbear Cub was left alone while I was clearing that area.

You can find the spot I used by going right of the fortress entrance in Goblin Camp; there's a little cliff guarded by one drunk goblin who either pees in the corner or vomits over the edge of the cliff while declaring how talented he is. A good shove on him and you have that entire area to prep and stage, and from there you can do the whole outside of the fort with one dude.

[Xiwang]

Originally posted by EternalFun:

i killed a dude standing alone with his back to my character, not in the red zone, astarion was crouched. He kills the guard and the red goblin raid boss (act 1) suddenly becomes agressive...

there is a sound ratio, shared by all npcs, if you kill someone near other people there is a chance for them to notice it, you also need to oneshot the enemy before it can "scream" in his turn, the best way to do it in my experience is not dealing crush falling damage, attacking with light one handed weapons in melee, using magic from VERY far away.

for example i managed to get inside the temple where all the goblins are, killed them extremely fast not alerting anyone, then at some point i found 2 goblins throwing someone into a pit, when i kill any goblin using spears while hiding form the heights everyone is aggroed, however when i used dual hand-crossbow only aggroed the second goblin at his side.

that and putting barrels to end the combat fast with powerful npcs its the way to go.