Stealth Penalties for Squeaky floors?

[BraselC5048]

Here's an idea:

If you're sneaking around near someone, or multiple someones, who are sleeping, (examples: sneaking into the enemy camp, the downstairs of the house or the next room over), make a simple stealth roll.

It would probably take a coupe of rolls to do anything useful - one for "general sneaking," and maybe one any time you do something that might make noise, such as going through a cabinet or two, or opening and/or closing a door - I might allow picking the lock on the door and opening/closing it to be a single roll.

If you pass, nobody wakes up. If you fail, then it's either an IQ roll to wake up (automatic with combat reflexes), or a quick contest as below, with an extra +5? to each person sleeping. If somebody has danger sense, roll a single quick contest for the whole thing between stealth and that person's perception, with the person waking up if they win, in addition to any other rolls.

If you try to sneak up to someone (in the same room as the person sleeping, or to get close enough to stab the enemy general in his tent), roll a quick contest between stealth and the Perception of the sleeping person. You might well have to make a few of the stealth rolls above to get to this point! If there are multiple people close enough (such as everyone sleeping in the room, or the general's aide sleeping in the back of the tent), the person sneaking only makes one quick contest roll, compared to the results of each person in the room separately (so you might only wake up one or two of them). If your quick contest roll would also be a failure, everyone you're rolling a quick contest with wakes up automatically.

Each sleeping person has -10 to the roll, with +5 for combat reflexes, +5 for light sleeper (cumulative), acute hearing bonuses?, and the range penalty from the speed/range table from the closest the person sneaking comes. (if it's a big room, and they're far apart). If you have danger sense, you still only get one roll for the whole thing, as above.

Edit: Opening the door to the room they're sleeping in requires another quick contest of the sneaking up to them variety.

If the sleeping person passes, they wake up but are stunned, unless they have combat reflexes, in which case they're good to go.

If there are squeaky floorboards, you randomly step on them as in the last post (1-3 on 1d). Roll an additional quick contest between stealth and Perception, with either a penalty to the stealth roll, or a bonus to perception (I don't know which), of - I have no idea what.

If you make a loud noise, such as any gunshot, or most forced entry rolls, in addition to the rolls above, everyone around gets an unmodified hearing roll, using the hearing table in High Tech. This could very well be the entire block, although I'd rule that in this case, a 3 or 4 is NOT automatically successful, so if the penalties reduce the roll to 2 or less, then nobody that far away can hear it (but of course there's acute hearing).

If someone passes, they wake up, and make an IQ roll - on a failure, they either know that something woke them up, and will likely make a decision on whether to see what that was (if it was close), or that something woke them up for some reason, and likely turn over and go back to sleep (down the block). In the latter case, make another IQ roll for them to see if they even remember waking up!

If they pass (automatic with combat reflexes), they heard whatever you did that woke them up, and remember it (honey, I just heard a window breaking). In all cases, they are stunned, unless they have combat reflexes.

How does that work?

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by 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.

personally I'd just give a negative mod to stealth for the squeaky floor and allow the sneaker to use more or less time to cross it and apply the time spent rules on pg346. (Taking Move 1 as the basic speed to determine time, and instead of the flat -5 for moving faster than move 1).

What I tend to do when waking sleepers, is determine a number of failures in stealth that will wake them up* (subject to light sleeper etc, etc), and once the sneaker has failed by the requisite MoS over however many rolls they attempt they wake the sleeper.

I envision this as the sleeper's unconscious self being eventually disturbed enough to flip to conciousness. (i'd probably ask the newly awoken person to make some kind of relevant roll to determine what woke them up situation depending).

This slowly accumulating disturbance may not be strictly realistic**, but it does means you can have little sub game going on with the sneaker gambling on how far to push things as he accumulates failures and approaches an unknown threshold.


*guard dog, maybe 2-3, drunk guard who's just pulled double shift 20-30. (a critical failure is either wake them up straight away or counts as 10+ failures depending etc)

**I have occasionally allowed a sneaker to buy back some accumulated failures by sitting tight for a suitably stressfully long time (i.e as the sleeper slips back into undisturbed sleep)!

[Figleaf23]

Squeeking tends to be worst in parts of the structure that have carve-outs, bear extra load, or where miniscule movements are maximized, e.g. doorways, stairs, and the middle of large floor expanses.

FWIW, I live in an older home. Earlier owners refloored over the original sub-floor. It looks nice, but it's virtually any movement will make squeeks in certain places -- even our 6lb cat.

[BraselC5048]

I've got some rules to use, but all I'm missing is the size of the penalty due to squeaky floors, and whether it should be a penalty to stealth, or a bonus to Per - or are the two equivalent?

I'm learning toward either -4 or -5. Anybody got suggestions?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

I've got some rules to use, but all I'm missing is the size of the penalty due to squeaky floors, and whether it should be a penalty to stealth, or a bonus to Per - or are the two equivalent?

I'm learning toward either -4 or -5. Anybody got suggestions?

I'd say a penalty to Stealth, simply because someone with very high Stealth should be able to cope with them better than someone who isn't very skilled. The penalty could be as little as -1 for a "natural" squeaky floor that nobody has enhanced deliberately to about -6 for one that an expert has built.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

I've got some rules to use, but all I'm missing is the size of the penalty due to squeaky floors, and whether it should be a penalty to stealth, or a bonus to Per - or are the two equivalent?

I'm learning toward either -4 or -5. Anybody got suggestions?

Stepping on a squeaky floor without it squeaking requires either a very long time, some interfering substance (LT suggests sprinkling some talcum powder to lubricate the floorboards), or a cinematic/magic ability (worth [5] in a moderately-realistic setting, a Perk in a highly cinematic one; failing that, you're probably looking at a -10 or so). A better option is to just not step on them in the first place - LT allows a simple roll against Carpentry to notice a squeaky floorboard, after which point avoiding it is perfectly easy. A One-Trick-Wonder type Perk might let you use Stealth (or Traps) instead; to conflate the two together, simply apply a -1 to the Stealth roll.

If you do step on a squeaky floorboard, and you're not slow/awesome enough to prevent the squeaking, the Hearing distance is probably somewhere around 2 yards (see B358), comparable to a padded grapnel or harpoon striking concrete.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Stepping on a squeaky floor without it squeaking requires either a very long time, some interfering substance (LT suggests sprinkling some talcum powder to lubricate the floorboards), or a cinematic/magic ability (worth [5] in a moderately-realistic setting, a Perk in a highly cinematic one; failing that, you're probably looking at a -10 or so).

The most obvious candidate is the Light Walk skill (B205, requires TBaM).

Originally Posted by Varyon

A better option is to just not step on them in the first place

Which is presumably a large part of stealth anyway. There are plenty of surfaces that will make noise if you walk on them, and stealth comes down to not walking on them.