Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
Does, or does not, use of Camouflage negate the Plain Sight bonus in the Quick Contest of Vision?
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Here's my house rule on how I play it in my games.
For the Plain Sight bonus, I
always apply it. I stole this idea from Douglas Cole's site, but I've modified it a bit. Basically, everyone always gets a +6 to spot anything directly in front of them, +2 to the front sides (GURPS still considers this the front in tactical combat), and -2 in the rear sides (what GURPS calls "side" in tactical combat). You can't see behind you. If you're concentrating on spotting things around you, you get an additional +4, thus giving the full +10 to spot something in front of you if you Concentrate.
To balance the +10 to be spotted, I allow Stealth and Camouflage to provide cumulative bonuses.
A successful Stealth skill roll means moving silently and picking the "best" places to hide. Your margin of success (minimum 1) becomes a penalty to the other person's senses to spot you. (Against unsuspecting opponents, who aren't on guard in the least, I merely allow an uncontested Stealth roll to get by them.)
If you actually hide, and are not moving, and the area you hid in has visual concealment (e.g., bushes, lots of objects/furniture, etc.) you can also roll against Camouflage, modified for equipment based on how it matches your surroundings. On a success, this also gives a penalty equal to margin of success, which is cumulative with the Stealth roll bonus (i.e., you picked a good place to hide that you also blend in well with). Once you start moving again, you lose the Camouflage bonus. You can reroll when you pick a new hiding spot.
Failing one of the two rolls doesn't give any penalty, but it will make it difficult for you to beat a full +10 for others to spot you.
I make a single sense roll to notice someone, and note the margin, which I then use to determine at what distance he'd spot the hiding/camouflage person. If they move within that distance, then they're spotted. From that initial roll, I then apply the Time Spent rules so that starting at 2 minutes after searching a given area, the observer gets a +1, and an additional +1 for each doubling of the time. If you stay too long in the same area with an
active observer (and let's be honest that most guards aren't that active), you'll eventually get noticed.
I've been using that for a few years now in my games, and it seems to work fine. Sure, assuming you have both skills at 14, with average rolls of 10, you're looking on average giving a total of -8 to their rolls, which against the +10 gives a final modifier of the opponent having a +2 to see you... but this quickly gets eliminated with the range modifier to vision rolls, and even more so with darkness penalties. You can still get much closer to someone with these than you could if you didn't have the skills. And if you want to get real close, then don't get in their line of sight.
The one issue I have with Camouflage that I haven't addressed yet is how it interacts with Darkness penalties. I'm thinking of capping Camouflage + Darkness modifier at -10, because eventually it's too dark for your camouflage to really have any greater difference, since your opponents can't even see the camouflage in the first place.
Side note on Stealth: Vicky, you also asked about the effect of Range on hearing vs Stealth. High-Tech clearly elaborates that sound drops by -1 for every doubling of distance. Myself, I simply use half the modifier of the Range/Speed Table, which comes out to roughly the same thing as that's roughly but not quite a -2 for every doubling of distance. The last thing you need here is the inherent bonus to hear the person in the first place based in what he's doing. Use the table in High-Tech to determine this initial modifier, apply half the Range/Speed modifier to it, and then reduce by your Margin of success on Stealth. At least, that's how I game it.
Even more of a tangent, but I apply light sources modifiers the same way. Each sources has a "starting light modifier"; e.g., a torch starts at -3, a flashlight at -1, and a floodlight at +6. Then, I use the Range/Speed Table modifier, halve it, and apply it to the starting value of the light source, and that's the "darkness penalty" you're standing in. A positive value doesn't give a bonus to see, but if you're in a positive value, the light source is "blinding" and gives you that value as a penalty while you're looking at it. This is also relevant in the "hiding" skills such as Stealth and Camouflage, but less directly so.