Stealth

Tales of Zalanthas will have a stealth system that is intended to be more interactive for players, and more than just a binary "is hidden or not" system. A number of factors will go into determining a character's concealment level and whether or not they can be spotted.

The primary commands used in the stealth system are sneak, hide, scan, search, assess, and reveal.

Sneak

Sneaking in Tales of Zalanthas is pretty straight forward and simple. If you are sneaking and you enter or leave a room, the game makes a check against your sneak skill to see if you display a message to the room (just like how it worked in ArmageddonMUD).

Hide

The system uses one command, hide, for every form of concealment. Whether that is blending into crowds, using outdoor terrain, or slipping into shadows indoors. A character's concealment depends on:

• Hide skill
• Current lighting level
• The room's base cover rating
• Optional hiding features or large objects
• Recent scrutiny of the room
• Actions that make the character easier to notice

Room Conditions, Lighting, and Modifiers

Every room has one base cover rating:

• Exposed - Bare courtyards, empty halls, open roads. This gives a penalty to hiding.
• Standard (the default) - Typical streets, homes, caves, alleys, interiors, and outdoor settings. This provided no penalty or bonus to hiding.
• Favorable - Dense brush, crowded markets, cluttered warehouses, ruins. This provides a bonus to hiding.

The rating reflects the room's general physical or social potential for concealment. Environmental extremes will have meaningful limits on the ability to hide. For example, a well-lit, empty room would offer no viable generic hiding opportunity. While a dark, cluttered room would give a base chance to any character, regardless of skill.

Significant lighting changes will trigger a new hide check for everyone currently hidden in the room. Examples include a lantern being lit or extinguished in dark room, a fire burning down plunging the room into darkness, magickal light appearing or disappearing, and even sunrise and sunset. These new checks will often improve or degrade the hidden character's concealment level.

Here is a simple list of modifiers to concealment:

• Room Cover Rating:
  • Exposed: -3
  • Standard: 0
  • Favorable: +3
• Lighting:
  • Darkness: +5
  • Dim: +3
  • Lit: 0
  • Well Lit: -3
  • Blinding Light (so bright it's hard to see): +2
• Situational:
  • Hiding in a special Hiding Feature: +4
  • Room under active scrutiny (recently scanned): -3
  • Accumulated Exposure (taking noisy actions, being scanned): -1 per incident, cumulative

As a reminder, Tales of Zalanthas will be based on a d20 system. Regardless of modifiers, hide can never go above 20 or below 1.

Characters without the hide skill still have a chance to become hidden if conditions are favorable for it. For example, someone without the skill (base chance 0) in a "Favorable" room (+3), in total darkness (+5), using a hiding feature (+4), would have a 12 in 20 chance to become hidden. In that same situation, a person with an 8 in the hide skill would have a 20 in 20 chance to become hidden. They can still be found with search and scan, but it's much more difficult. In that scenario, lighting a torch would reduce their bonuses.

Hiding Features and Large Objects

In addition to the ability to simply hide in a room, Builders will be able to add hiding features to a room. These are special settings that represent some object or feature in a room that provides natural concealment. For example, a Builder could add "a large pile of rubble" to the room as a hiding feature, and stealthy characters can type "hide rubble". This will give them a small bonus to their concealment chances, based on the settings the Builder adds.

Additionally, certain large objects can be used as natural hiding places, like a large boulder, a thick tree, or a massive crate.

Assess

The assess command can be used on items, NPC's, or rooms. To use on an item or NPC, you type "assess <target>". For a room you specifically type "assess room". When used on a room, this will give a plain-language assessment of the current hiding conditions.

You assess The Wagons Room...
The steady light neither helps nor hinders concealment, and the surroundings
offer ordinary opportunities for concealment.
Obvious cover includes pile of rags.

Assessing a room does not list every possible hiding place, it only shows those which are obvious to the casual observer. In the above example, that would be 'a pile of rags'.

Scan

Scan is a broad, costly sweep for anyone concealed nearby. It takes a few seconds, can't be spammed, and a clean scan doesn't necessarily prove the room is empty.

However, once a room has been scanned, there is a 5 minute timer applied to the room giving all further hiding attempts a penalty until it runs out.

Scanning a room has a chance, based on your skill, to partially reveal that someone is hidden in the room. For example, the first time you type scan:

You sense a concealed presence close by, though you cannot pin it down.

Or you may get no results. After a few minutes, you can scan a room again, further eroding the person's concealment. After a few scans you will eventually be able to spot someone:

You spot the silly-looking elf lurking nearby.

Once spotted, the person hiding is notified with a message like:

The stalwart soldier's gaze fixes on your hiding place. You have been spotted.

However, only the person who scanned can see them initially. To point them out to others, the scanner must use the Reveal command.

Reveal

Used to 'announce' the presence of a hidden person once they've been spotted. This will remove all concealment and point the hidden person out to everyone else nearby. The command is simply 'reveal elf'.

You point out the silly-looking elf.

The hidden elf sees:

The stalwart soldier points you out. You have been revealed!

And everyone else sees something like:

The stalwart soldier points out the silly-looking elf.

Search

The search command is a narrower, but sharper, way to find hidden people or places.

Used with no arguments, it hunts for hiding spots that someone hasn't found yet. Once a character has discovered a hiding spot, it will forever be known to that character.

Aimed a specific hiding spot, it has a much higher chance to reveal a hidden person, but only in that spot. For example:

>search

You begin a careful search.
...
You notice a small crevice in the wall that could be used for concealment.

I can now type "hide crevice", or "search crevice".

Now let's say I've done that: I've found the crevice and hidden in it. The stalwart soldier is looking for me and enters the room. He has never found that specific hiding place with the search command, so he can either:

1. Use the less effective, broader scan command to look over the whole room, or
2. Use search with no argument to find the crevice. After that, he could then type search crevice and have a better chance of discovering me.

Conclusion

Exiting your hidden status can be accomplished by using any sort of command that is obvious, such as speaking, or moving. You can also just type "stand" and it will break your concealment.

This system hopefully makes hiding and finding hidden people more interesting and more than just a simple binary check.

Note that some of the above specific messages may get changed to be more interesting than what these examples show.