CLOK BBS

The stealth system in general has received an overhaul today (so it actually works now!).

You can skill up your Stealth skill by successfully hiding unobserved around critters or other player characters that have a fair chance of spotting you. On the flip side, successfully spotting someone in their attempt to hide will skill up your Perception skill slightly. The rogue Molly should be sought out by those who wish to receive Stealth training (though she's not very good to practice against - she's very perceptive).

Players can SEARCH to try and find hidden PCs or critters in the area. Once you've found someone hiding, they will show up when you LOOK with (hiding) next to their name. You can now perform actions targeting them as normal (attacking, waving, pointing, anything), and performing actions targeting the hider will reveal their hiding place, effectively pulling them out of hiding. If you spot someone in their attempt to hide, you don't need to search for them, since you saw them enter their hiding place to begin with.

Attacking from hiding will have a chance of reducing the target's resulting TDR roll (not to be confused with their flat TDR number), dependent on skill rolls of the attacker's Stealth versus the target's Perception. With enough stealth skill (and a decent skill roll), you can reduce a target's TDR roll to 0, even if their original unmodified TDR roll had been, say, 500. A character with little combat skill but extreme stealth skill can thus manage to hit an incredibly skilled combatant who has low perception skill by hiding, then attacking.

Ranged weapons can be fired from hiding without pulling one's self out of hiding, though each shot will have a chance of revealing your hiding place to the room's occupants, depending on their individual perception skill rolls.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of bugs to squash with this overhaul, so test and BUG away.

There is now messaging indicating whether you successfully ambush a target from hiding and cause a TDR roll pushdown.

att
You emerge from hiding to attack!
An animated training dummy is caught off-guard by the surprise attack!
You swing a pair of closed fists at an animated training dummy!
AAR(19): 100 vs TDR(0): 36 = Result: 64
13 crush damage!
A strike to the left hand!

Also, critters won't search for you if they have no reason to suspect you're there. If you hide right in front of them, they'll immediately start searching for you. If you fire an arrow from hiding, all critters in the area will start searching as well. If they haven't found you after a certain amount of time, they'll give up searching and assume you've left.

There will also be hidden stealth VS perception rolls every now and then for critters to randomly detect the presence of hidden people, the effectiveness differing by the type of critter (those with a powerful sense of smell will have higher chances of randomly discovering someone is hiding nearby, for instance).

Finally, I forgot about GET and PUT from hiding before, and they now work with an automatic attempt to stealthily pick something up or put it somewhere without being seen (if the target is the ground or a container in the room) followed by automatically returning to hiding. GETting/PUTting items from/into containers you are holding or wearing has no chance of revealing yourself to others in the area.

Successfully ambushing or sniping (without being seen) will now increase your Stealth skill, provided your Stealth skill isn't so high over the observer's Perception skill that there would be no challenge.