How good is D20 Modern for stealth? - OG Myth-Weavers

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How good is D20 Modern for stealth?

   
How good is D20 Modern for stealth?

Hey long story short a friend bought me Payday 2, and my inability to play a videogame without taking ideas from it is acting up.

So how good is a D20 Modern game when it comes to playing stealth missions? I kind of don't want to do Shadowrun, because the system confuses me, and I'd like to avoid all the weird magical powers for once and focus on the stealth play, or gun play when things go shape of the pear.

In my personal experience, very much like D&D 3.x stealth focused games (minus magic unless using EX abilities). D20 modern's core equipment includes a few more stealth enhancing items (silencers, ghili suits, ect.)

hmmm...that's not a good sign, D&D 3.5 isn't that great for stealth.

D20 modern is almost a clone of D&D in many aspects. it looks like it could run a spy game rather decently but predominately stealth game? not so much from appearance. more stealthy equipment than D&D but the same core mechanics run it.

I don't know. I have always felt that D&D/D20 is basically as stealth based as your going to let it be.
Some real world rules of stealth kind of apply. (Unless you have hide in plane sight)

That being said, I have had at least one Pathfinder Game where every member of the party had good stealth from the get go. (Even The Cleric) And the party actually stealthed though most of the missions.

If you or the GM have the mind set that #1: Stealth can only get you past 'this' or 'that' section. Then its the GM's problem not the system. And likewise #2: You can stealth past anything. Its the other end of the problem. No. No system should let you have full proof stealth. Some one can always notice you.

So in short.
I find It better for Stealth then most any other system out there. (d20 in general that is) But it like everything in RPG's. Is mostly up to the GM's Style.

I'm definitely not an expert in systems (and have no idea about d20 modern), but I've always felt like most systems do a poor job when it comes to stealth. The best system I was able to find is this:

http://dreamersanddicepools.blogspot...er%20simulator

It's incomplete, but rather simple and elegantly designed, in my opinion. I'd be curious to see it playtested.

I find it humorous how it has rules for "Masked" and "Unmasked" swap the two around and you basically get Payday 2 with literal masks.

The problem with stealth and most RPGs is that stealth is an entirely different type of skill to pull off in practice. If we take video games as an example, one of the main parts of a stealth game is waiting. Stealth is very much an interactive puzzle where you need to figure out what to do and when. There are a lot of things to take into account: guard line of sight, patrol paths, potential cameras, silenced takedowns, alternative routes, civilians, etc. Many of those things just don't exist in any meaningful way in the RPG environment. Especially when a proper stealth video game isn't random: failures should always be part of the player's skill, not some arbitrary RNG.

RPGs, however, are almost all about rolling dice. In a standard D&D-esque stealth section, most everything boils down to repeated "roll a dice and see if it beats the opposition", with one failure leading to people noticing you. There are very few ways to make tabletop stealth actually interesting (as opposed to "as competent as it gets"), because so much proper stealth relies on the immediate and often visual dynamics between the thieves and guards.


That said, there is one RPG being made that has stealth as its entire thing: Project Dark. It was Kickstarted successfully, but so far I don't think it's ready yet. I'm sure there other games too, but none that I've particularly looked into.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyber_Goddess View Post
hmmm...that's not a good sign, D&D 3.5 isn't that great for stealth.
the secret to making 3.5 good for stealth is the facing rules in unearthed arcana

Quote:
Originally Posted by tuypo1 View Post
the secret to making 3.5 good for stealth is the facing rules in unearthed arcana
also you may want to look into the hexagonal grid same book





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