This is something that's been brought up in multiple other threads, and moved past, but this needs a moment of consideration. A game built on ranks, stats, and skill checks should not grant such a large mechanical advantage without any type of control. Pulsing invisibility, instant stealth, granting hidden immunity without any kind of skillcheck should not be a thing. It breaks target, aim, requires someone potentially thousands of ranks of perception above you to manually search and spend that roundtime (in which you could react or get away) to find you. Allow for passive perception checks against targets you're engaged with pulsing into invisibility, at least. Grant the spot effect so you can continue to act against them without breaking things like AIM/TARGET.

>>lol wut... bugs aside, it's a regular stealth check.

Invisibility pulses from RF, Silence, EOTB and the hider cuffs do NOT have any skill check involved. They put you into invis/hiding with no skill check for spot effect or point. That is not a regular stealth check. That invis pulse breaks AIM, breaks TARGET, and removes ones ability to act against you (granting a heavy mechanical advantage) until roundtime is spent searching (and for some actions pointing as well).

Removing watch has nothing to do with this. Rebalancing stealth is a whole other animal. I am talking about strictly these buggy, broken, non checked mechanics. If you want to campaign more for watch to be removed, bring it up in an appropriate thread.

Watch was not created to counter the immunity granted by pulsing inviso. Watch was created to attempt to balance stealth as a whole. Watch has no impact on invis pulses avoiding skillchecks (which nothing in this game should do), therefor has legitimately zero play in this discussion. I understand it's your sore point, and you need to get it in there every time you can, but really, start a thread on stealth re-balancing, watch re-tuning, but don't keep dumping your baggage on every topic-adjacent post.

For the record I am 100% fine with -- and believe it's actually good game design -- for magical items to be capable of bypassing skill checks in the specific situation in which they are meant to function (e.g. stun hiders, anti-locate devices), provided the use of those magical items is available to everyone.

The abilities that are available to players should not, under any circumstances, bypass skill checks anywhere in the process of their function. That is antithetical to what the game is regardless of what the design documents may have indicated a decade or two ago. I'm not a fan of DFA, for the record, because DFA is not available to all guilds -- although if you want to give Barbarians a BERSERK LIGHTNING that allowed them to make regular attacks ignore shield checks, that'd be super (and, I believe, mean every guild would have a DFA).

The development goals are multitude, obviously, but if thought is not given to improving problems within the current paradigm, e.g. bypassing skill checks with abilities or putting in huge roundtimes or making basic training activities multi-step in an attempt to discourage scripting of an activity (which is ridiculous on its face, for the record, because it just makes people more likely to seek out scripts or write them because who wants to stare at a monitor for 52 seconds waiting on roundtime?). These things should be addressed at the highest priority and to see new releases exacerbate existing problems is, bluntly, more frustrating than not seeing any development at all.

Yes, this is a "can't win" scenario for the staff; except they very obviously can win: address the problems, publish the standards, and develop in accordance with them.

>>Removing what amounts to a survival prime perk (invisibility) without countering what amounts to a survival prime penalty (watch) is a net loss for the survival prime guilds.

Moon Mages are going to be super disappointed to learn they're no longer going to have invisibility as it's a Survival prime perk.

(Again, the skill set perk problem is not something you want to bring up with Barbarians.)

>>I see invisibility as no more harmful than instant retreat or hangback spells/abilities.

Uh no. It completely shuts down TM/Aiming with a ranged because at top ends it pulses faster than target/aim completion, and even fires off if they're incapacitated. Its granting a mechanical advantage with NO skill check. Justifying something completely broken as a balancing mechanic is why we're in the position we are with a lot of things. I personally DO think the stealth contest at level in pvp for a thief is too hard at the moment. I also see them getting all kinds of development to fix the situation they're in in alternative ways. If stealth (and watch) need to be re-tuned/re calibrated, then do so. Don't desperately cling to bad mechanics in hopes they'll succeed where balancing failed.

We seem to be rehashing the same stealth rhetoric for/against watch over multiple threads. A GM has responded that although there are no current plans for changes, it is something they are aware and want to change.

Further discussion on this issue should be taken to the Equine Cemetery.

While there, please be respectful of one another.

Helje
DragonRealms Senior Board Moderator

It is fine to not consider the entire thread dead, but further discussion should be moved, as Helje requested.

Behind the scenes discussion of invisibility thus far left us with two points of clarity:

-- We don't want invisibility and hiding to be identical.

-- To really fix this, we will need to make adjustments to all the forms of invisibility, along with all the systems that interact with those forms of invisibility, and we may also have to go through an undetermined number of the rooms in the game to make sure they're set up for whatever we've done with invisibility, once we've made adjustments.

Since determining those two things, the only approved project that even tangentially touches on invisibility is GM Javac's reworking of Khri, which was not an extensive rewrite of Thief invisibility, nor was it a deep dive into any of the systems that any of the forms of invisibility interact with.

As we bring new staff up to speed, invisibility will remain on the list of systems to be triaged for review and adjustment. (This means that there are things we'd like to do with it, and they'll be weighed against things that are too broken to function, and projects that can be tackled by people who are available to tackle them.)

When Javac returns from vacation next week, he might have something more to add.

Iocanthe
Doing stuff

The discussions I've been part of haven't gotten as far as "Now we have the staff to be able to work on it, it should be X or Y or Z."

We know the various systems need more updating, but that's all I can speak to.

Iocanthe
Doing stuff