Stealth¶

Stealth lets a character conceal themselves, move unseen, and strike from hiding. It resolves as an endroll contest (roll over the threshold; margin matters), driven by the Hiding and Perception skills.

Hiding¶

HIDE       attempt to conceal yourself
UNHIDE     (REVEAL) step out of hiding

A hide attempt rolls a margin; on success you are hidden and the margin is stored as your hide quality — the number any observer must beat to find you.

hide margin = d100 + HidingBonus + AGI bonus + INT bonus − 100

Hidden when margin > 0; quality = the margin.

HidingBonus uses the skill bonus curve on your Hiding ranks.
Higher quality (a bigger margin) makes you proportionally harder to detect.
Moving normally, attacking, or casting breaks hiding.

Sneaking¶

SNEAK <direction>    move while attempting to stay hidden

Each sneaking step is a fresh hide check with a −20 penalty (moving is harder than standing still). Fail a step and you are revealed in the destination room.

sneak margin = d100 + HidingBonus + AGI bonus + INT bonus − 20 − 100

Searching & detection¶

SEARCH           actively look for hidden characters in the room
SEARCH <corpse>  turn out a kill's pockets — the loot drops to the ground and
                 the remains crumble away (SKIN first: the hide goes with them)

An observer contests your stored hide quality:

perception margin = d100 + PerceptionBonus + WIS bonus + INT bonus − 100 − hideQuality

Spots you when margin > 0.

Creatures hunting a vanished target are harder to hide from — a mob's spot check scales with its level and an alertness bonus of +25:

mob spot margin = d100 + mobLevel × 3 + 25 + mobPerception − 100 − hideQuality

ANALYZE/ASSESS (the low-risk lock/trap read) also runs on Perception — see Lockpicking & Treasure.

Ambush¶

AMBUSH <target>    strike from hiding (you must be hidden)

An ambush is a normal attack with two bonuses applied to the opening strike:

Bonus	Value
Attack Strength	+30
Critical rank	+1

The higher AS makes the hit far more likely to land, and the +1 crit rank pushes the wound one step more severe — a skilled ambusher striking a vital location can open with a crippling or fatal blow. After the strike resolves, hiding is broken and combat proceeds normally. See Combat for how crit rank maps to bleed, stun, and death.

Tracking — stealth's other half¶

Everything that walks out of a room unhidden leaves sign behind it for ten minutes — players and NPCs both. A successful SNEAK leaves the ground unmarked, which is the whole argument for sneaking.

TRACK           read the room's sign (needs 5 Survival ranks)
TRACK <name>    follow the freshest matching trail

Bare TRACK crouches you over the ground (3s) and lists everyone who passed: name, age of the sign (fresh under two minutes, recent under five, faint to ten), and the way they went. TRACK <name> is one judged roll to follow it out the exit the quarry took:

follow endroll = Survival bonus + (Perception bonus ÷ 2) + (INT bonus ÷ 2) − (30 + 8 per minute of age) + d100

Fresh sign is easy; nine-minute sign is nearly rain. Success walks you through; failure and the trail goes cold where you stand. An escort who wandered off, the travelling tinker, the player who robbed you — if they didn't sneak, the ground remembers.

Picking pockets¶

STEAL <person>                lift coins from a purse
STEAL <item> FROM <person>    go after something specific in their pockets
STEAL ITEM FROM <person>      rifle for whatever's there

Every lift is one endroll — Picking Pockets bonus + DEX bonus + (AGI bonus ÷ 2) − the mark's awareness (level ×3 + Perception bonus) + d100, success over 100. Coins deplete a purse that reseeds only with a fresh spawn; succeed quietly and only you know. Fail and you are caught: the mark turns hostile, remembers your face, and in town your name goes straight onto the region's roll (the watch).

Some townsfolk carry more than coin. An object is harder to spirit away than silver (each piece adds its own difficulty on top of awareness), and it comes out hot — a stolen flag rides the item, and every honest merchant in the realm refuses it on sight:

The merchant turns the locket over once, and something about the look of it comes up wrong. "Not through my books."

The fence is the other half of the trade. A fence buys hot goods at a discreet rate (about half worth — discretion costs), asks no questions, and is the only merchant who will trade with the WANTED. There is exactly one so far: a hollow-eyed figure on the Emberford flotsam bank, presiding over the river's salvage. Fenced goods go up on the secondhand shelf clean — once the fence has moved a piece, nobody asks after it again.

Skills involved¶

Skill	Role	Stats that assist
Hiding (`skill.hiding`)	Sets hide quality; sneak success	AGI, INT
Perception (`skill.perception`)	`SEARCH`; resists ambush; `ANALYZE`; assists `TRACK`	WIS, INT
Survival (`skill.survival`)	Leads `TRACK`; forage and skinning kin	AGI, INT
Picking Pockets (`skill.pickpocket`)	`STEAL` coins and pocket items	DEX, AGI

Both are trainable mental-leaning skills (see Skills & Training); Rogues, Bards, and Rangers train Hiding most cheaply.