Hey guys.
I'm planning a sneaky session in Only War and I wanted to outline some basic rules, that would make it smooth and dripping with ambience. Feel free to post yours.
First of all, the setting. PC's are infiltrating ancient bunker and discover xeno lurking in the dark. They're free to act as they wish, though the alien chooses to fight from the shadows, for it was spawned for this by the hive mind as a lictor (from DH2:Enemies Without book). Players will be provided with tactical map of the bunker complex.
Here are my ideas on how to make sneaky session possible:
1. Draw venting system in a bunker. Be clever though. Don't try to draw separate "floor" for it, cause that will make the whole map messy. Draw only vents and group them into separate systems, by indicating them with a symbol. Then assume that it's possible to move between vents with the same indication if the navigation (or tech-use, fairly easy) test is done. Vents marked with another indication may not be accessible or should require more difficult test to pass (tech-use if it requires messing with machinery or strength-athletics if it requires some climbing for example).
2. Introduce multi-level awareness. It means that success in awareness vs stealth test shouldn't automatically allow to see the sneakee clearly and be able to recognize and/or shoot him. Up to 2 degrees of advantage in this test in favour of the one who's testing awareness should mean that he's merely suspecting intruder's presence and therefore isn't fully sure of it. This will allow the sneakee to hide or silently escape, not forcing him to fight right away.
If you want to grasp this idea mechanically, I might have appropriate tool for you: alertness. Every time the character gains advantage on awareness vs stealth test, it gains alertness level. Number of those levels that can be tolerated depends on couple of factors. Basic number of AL is 3. When the last level of alertness is reached, the character is assumed to be fully aware of the sneakee and may take actions against him. It becomes lower or higher in different situations:
- if character has Paranoia talent -1 AL
- if character is on guard duty -1 AL
- if character is relaxed, intoxicated, exhausted +1 AL
- if character is fooled by sneakee's successful Deceive test (and he decides that the noise he heard was probably a rat or something) +1 AL
3. Allow for sneak attacks with a simple house rule: Point Blank (or Melee) Attacks that are also Surprising attacks make the target Helpless.
4. If the NPC's like to sneak, provide some clues that they do. Think of how they should behave when the fight starts: run away to the shadows, to prepare a new trap? Fight back until death?
Do you have your own ideas?