Stealth feels pointless

[Overlord Byron]

Enemies have such a ridiculously high Perception that getting within sight of them almost always means you'll be spotted. My Woljif at level 6 has a +19 to stealth; that feels like it ought to be pretty good. But a Babau has a Perception of +23! So even if I get a little lucky and beat one's perception, chances are good that any enemy will have buddies with equally high perception and I'm guaranteed to lose the numbers game.

I dunno. I feel like a rogue/ranger ought to be able to reliably sneak around a comparably-leveled group of enemies with only minimal magical assistance. Giving how easy it is to proc a sneak attack in WotR, getting the drop on an enemy doesn't even seem like *that* big of an advantage in the first place.

[Princess Pilfer]

Stealth is kinda always pointless in games like this.
The majority of conflicts are solved in open combat with like 20 enemies, you can rarily/never do what you might do in the tabletop game and sneak in ahead of the group to assassinate a leader or poison a water supply.

Quirk of the genre.

[stars2heaven]

Originally posted by Princess Pilfer:

Stealth is kinda always pointless in games like this.

There are a number of recent and notable games in this genre where stealth is useful. You can do exactly what you are describing in the Dragon age games, Pillars of Eternity, and the Divinity-OS games.

Stealth in this game seems semi useful. It will help to get close enough to a group to see what you are going up against and you might be able to get close enough to disable some traps, depending.

[Overlord Byron]

I dunno. Teamwork feats make positioning a little important, and a little preliminary scouting is useful. Hell, something as simple breaking the monotony of "buff boards, kill with boards" is worth the price of experimentation.

If programming, time, and resource limitations limits the efficacy of stealth in comparison to the PnP that's understandable. Doubling down on that by giving common enemies a staggeringly-high perception seems like overkill.

[Stechhelm]

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

I dunno. Teamwork feats make positioning a little important

Well that would be the case if "charge" would finally work correctly. Same as healing sometimes.

[zaroua]

You can have 70+ Stealth and you still won't be able to sneak up to a lvl 1 enemy, from behind, without being detected. Stealth is functionally worthless in this game, as it was in Kingmaker. Have someone put points in Stealth to pass skill checks and pretend it doesn't exist otherwise.

[Stechhelm]

Originally posted by zaroua:

You can have 70+ Stealth and you still won't be able to sneak up to a lvl 1 enemy, from behind, without being detected. Stealth is functionally worthless in this game, as it was in Kingmaker. Have someone put points in Stealth to pass skill checks and pretend it doesn't exist otherwise.

Critical hit with ranged weapons anyone? Invisibilty and greater Invisibilty make some fights easier, its not useless. try it.

[Dondu]

its kinda use for surprise attack, you get the first turn and caught them flatfooted, if you play realtime its useless who the hell needs to skip mob when you need exp to level LOL

[Princess Pilfer]

Originally posted by stars2heaven:

Originally posted by Princess Pilfer:

Stealth is kinda always pointless in games like this.

There are a number of recent and notable games in this genre where stealth is useful. You can do exactly what you are describing in the Dragon age games, Pillars of Eternity, and the Divinity-OS games.

Stealth in this game seems semi useful. It will help to get close enough to a group to see what you are going up against and you might be able to get close enough to disable some traps, depending.

I'll break that down on a game by game basis.
Pillars 1: Stealth doesn't really do anything. For starters it's kinda broken but even if it works at best you get a single opening salvo against a group of enemies who then immediately turn you into mulch because the rest of your party had to stay back to avoid detection so it's 1v10 for the first 6 seconds of the fight. *At best* it's used occsaionlly in the storybook skill check sections.

Pillars 2: Less broken, but the above didn't change.

Dragon Age Origins: Same as above unless you're an archer, in which case you lay 50 traps between your party and the enemy and pick off 1 of them from behind said traps. Techncially functional, objectively bad compared to the other options.

Dragon Age 2: Stealth isn't a thing, you have rogue-magic concealment from some ability you used, or you don't, it's not a skill.

Dragon Age Inquisition: See above.

Divinity OS/2: With the exception of very rare instances of reactivity, it's primary use is for getting into position prior to a fight, or for AI exploit cheese where you pick off 1 enemy and nobody else even bothers to look for you once you stealth. It's painfully bad in fights. Especially as the game cheats with undetectable ambushes where like 10 enemies just spawn around you.
(Side note: Undetectable enemies asside, this probably the best implementation, because being able to have everyone in position near the particular enemies you want them to kill first or being able to open the combat with group wide CCs is incredibly powerful. Also also, you need next to no stealth-skill investment to do this, it's just a thing you do whenever you have the option.)


It's a format thing. Actually implementing all the ways in which one might use stealth in this kind of game would be basically making an entirely seperate isometric hitman game and layering it on top of the existing game, which simply isn't going to happen. Quirk of the genre. A live GM can accomidate that (still a lot of work) but this genre of computer game stands more or less no chance.

[Nismu]

I like how traps are set in game making stealth more useful , but yeah enemies tend to detect youno matter of skills ranks

[Dixon Sider]

Stealth is excellent in this game. I am stealthing constantly.

[GameNerdVeggie]

Stealth is great but it's used to get Close to the Enemy so they can't attack You from far aways like 4 Mages all usig Ice Wave against Your Party. Also you can Cast Spells at Enemies First and some Spells don't delete Your Stealth.