Stealth Penalties for Squeaky floors?

[Ejidoth]

One way to handle it, rather than penalizing Stealth directly, would be to say that the Stealth roll to cross the area / get past the doors / etc. takes longer than usual; they have to be slower and more cautious to avoid making more noise.

So, they can make the roll against Stealth normally, no penalty but it takes them a lot longer than sneaking normally would.

Or they take the usual -1 per 10% time reduction, for haste, up to whatever penalty represents moving at normal speed.

Or they can opt to gamble and go full speed with no penalty, which means they're not worrying about squeaky floors and such. The stealth roll isn't, itself, penalized, but the GM determines whether they happen to step on a squeaky floorboard by chance. If they do, noise is created and people might wake up, completely independent of the stealth roll.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Aesthetically, it is more pleasing to my GM sensibilities.

I suppose. Personally, I figure someone making a stealth roll wants to know 'how hard is it to hear me', so treating the boards as a penalty makes it more obvious how well you've done.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's a totally meaningless distinction -- in a quick contest, you win if (my margin of success/failure) - (opponent measure of success/failure) > 0. A penalty to the first term and a bonus to the second term have identical effects.

That's only true if we were using linear distribution rolls. With the Bell curve the GURPS actually use it has a big difference cause a penalty and or a bonus can have disposition effect on the probability for each other

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I suppose. Personally, I figure someone making a stealth roll wants to know 'how hard is it to hear me', so treating the boards as a penalty makes it more obvious how well you've done.

I've always viewed some penalties as things beyond a character's control. A squeaky board seems like that to me. It doesn't matter how good your Stealth skill is, the board is going to squeak regardless, so giving others a bonus to hear you makes sense. It also fits the dramatic convention often seen in fiction. The stair creaks as the guard looks towards the general area, he just heard the noise, but not seeing anything he thinks it's just the building settling. A few yards away we see are dashing sneaky thief gliding up the stairs like a ghost.
I suppose you could say that you catch yourself in time before committing your full weight and thus you're mitigating a penalty with skill but that begs the question of how much did you commit? Do you get a full penalty for that? Somewhere in between? No, better to use your skill vs. others Perception plus whatever. That's exactly the sort of thing that would slow down gameplay with little reward for doing so and therefore is something I avoid like the plague. I don't run games to simulate reality - I've got life for that - I run games to have fun, for my players to have fun, and to use a approximation of reality. I think this is almost universally true of most GMs. Those who call for more simulation with a jillion modifiers to factor in rarely play or run games themselves. At least in my experience. And of course this doesn't include games where the "little numbers" are the whole point - though I rarely run such games I have played in them before and they can be fun in small doses.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's a totally meaningless distinction -- in a quick contest, you win if (my margin of success/failure) - (opponent measure of success/failure) > 0. A penalty to the first term and a bonus to the second term have identical effects.

It is not always a Quick Contest:

Originally Posted by B222

A successful roll lets you
conceal yourself anywhere except in a
totally bare room, or move so quietly
that nobody will hear you,
[ . . . ]
If someone is specifically on the
alert for intruders, the GM will roll a
Quick Contest between your Stealth
and the sentinel’s Perception.

[BraselC5048]

A penalty to stealth, or a bonus to perception in the quick contest (I'd go with a bonus to perception?) if there are squeaky floors in the area sounds like a good way to handle it. What kind of a penalty are we talking about? -2? -8? Something in between?

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

They'd have a penalty to their Perception rolls - I think it's -10 or no penalty with Deep Sleeper and Combat Reflexes.

Any idea where that's from (to avoid waking somebody up)? And I think you mean Light Sleeper?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

Any idea where that's from (to avoid waking somebody up)? And I think you mean Light Sleeper?

Deep Sleeper [1] is the advantageous one: it might be better called "skilled sleeper", since you sleep through disturbances except ones that are dangerous, when you get an IQ roll to wake up, or succeed automatically if you have Combat Reflexes.

Light Sleeper [-5] means you wake up easily, including all the times you don't need to. You're stunned unless you have Combat Reflexes.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

A penalty to stealth, or a bonus to perception in the quick contest (I'd go with a bonus to perception?) if there are squeaky floors in the area sounds like a good way to handle it. What kind of a penalty are we talking about? -2? -8? Something in between?

If you're asleep, penalty to the sleeper's Perception. I can't seem to find the quote at the moment, but I'm pretty sure Kromm elaborated on this somewhere.

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

Any idea where that's from (to avoid waking somebody up)? And I think you mean Light Sleeper?

What John said.

[BraselC5048]

Wow, it seems on sneaking up on somebody sleeping, I've stumbled into an area where the rules are needed, but there doesn't seem to be actual rules. As best as everyone can seem to agree, it's either a stealth roll, where only a failure results in either a quick contest of Per vs. stealth or a simple IQ roll, or a quick contest between stealth and the sleeping person's Perception, with the person asleep getting some large penalty of unknown size.

It seems everyone agrees that deep sleeper doesn't actually give you a penalty in this somewhere. Which probably calls for a new disadvantage for someone who likely won't wake up, but that's beside the point.

Light sleeper should, IMHO, give some sort of a bonus toward waking up, as should combat reflexes. Honestly, Danger Sense should factor in here somewhere, even if it's only an additional roll of some kind by somebody. And somebody with more then one of those traits should be harder to sneak up on while sleeping, which should be a feature of whatever system winds up being used.

If you do wake up, I think everyone who's talked about it more or less agrees that with combat reflexes you're good to go, otherwise you're stunned/total surprise (I'm not sure whether there's a difference there or not).

On the original topic, I think we can somewhat agree on this: If there's a squeaky floor, you step on it on 1-3 on 1d. If you do, there's either a bonus to perception or a penalty to stealth in the quick contest, and if you're sleeping, the same bonus/penalty applies. And nobody seems to have the slightest idea what kind of penalty/bonus it should be. Somewhere between +/- 2 and +/- 8 seems right, inclusive, but what should it be?

As for sneaking up on somebody sleeping, or waking up in general, there are three ways to handle it people have suggested - simple stealth roll (with appropriate modifiers, not including anything related to the person who's sleeping; on a failure the person sleeping gets an IQ roll to wake up, automatic with combat reflexes (how other advantages/disadvantages factor in isn't clear), as above but a quick contest instead of an IQ roll, and a simple quick contest, with stealth modifiers on one side, and modifiers for sleeping/sleep related traits on the other side.

Anybody got ideas?

[Edges]

The last time I asked in this forum about the mechanics for sneaking up on a sleeper, a discussion ensued. I think the result was:

1. Roll a contest of Stealth vs Hearing to see if the sleeper hears something.
2. If the sneaker wins, sneaking was successful.
3. If the sleeper wins, they must then roll a success on IQ (Combat Reflexes grants +6) to not write the sound off as a dream, etc. If failed, sneaking was successful. If the IQ roll succeeded, sneaking failed.

I don't know if that is RAW though. But it works well enough for me. Determining degree of surprise is a further complication.

If the sleeper had Danger Sense, I would allow the first roll be be straight Per uncontested by Stealth with a critical success granting the usual benefit and eliminating the need for an IQ roll.

Just my 2 cents.