Hello fellow Battle-Brothers,

I wonder at what distance a character is allowed to make an awareness Test in order to spot a concealing enemy.

A classic situation: A marine trys to sneak up a guard. At what distance would the guard be allowed to make an awareness Test. I think it plays an essential role since it accounts for the metres the marine has to cover to reach the opponen if something goes wrong.

Best regards,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

You'll hate this, but...it depends

I would say the distance depends on when the defender (the guard in your example) could reasonably see or hear the marine if said marine was not hiding/sneaking. The number of checks I'd let the guard make or ask the player to make to remain consealed would be arbitrarily attached to some kind of measurement or mile-markers in the approach.

For example if the marine is crossing a 100m open field towards a guard house, I'd have the guard roll as soon as the marine entered the field. I'd then have something interesting happen at maybe the half way mark- another guard comes up to talk to the guard at the house, maybe he has a dog, maybe he lends the guard a smoke. Maybe a truck drives through the gate, etc. After the interesting diversion I'd have them make another roll to get going again, or if they try to do something to take advantage of the event. Then I'd ask for a final check right before the trap was spung.

If they were just crossing a 100m of field with nothing interesting happening I'd just call for two checks, one to start, and one right before the attack. To the first check I'd make sure to include penalties to the guard for spotting at a distance, etc., whereas in the up close check he'd have a better chance of detection.

If they were turning a corner and taking a guard out, I'd have them make the contested roll immediately before they act in oder to simply determine surprise.

Charmander said:

Not at all.

It is simply an issue that is not very detailed in the core rulebook.

As for your offer I would made it similar.

Maybe something like this:

Assuming there is a certain area that a guard covers, the guard has something like an awareness distance (ad), which is two times the Perception characteristics in metres.

This ad can be modified and say that it is three (or even four) times the distance for an (nearly) open field.

Or the 'ad' is halved (thus the normal Per value) for light obstacles in that area like stones or trees.

Or even less for big obstacles like huge ruins or heavy vehicles standing in the way.

One might further seperate between sight and sound, but this would become very ... detailed.

Cheers,

TechVoid.

It depends... if the stealther makes a hash of their concealment check or the spotter gets a maximum number of DoS then I'd say 'as soon as the stealther was within line of sight or line of hearing'. And then scale from there.

I tend to go with three, very fluid, variations.

Passive guards (bored, tired, etc.) will perceive 5m + 1m per DoS on an awareness test.

Active guards (alert and doing their job) will perceive 10m + 5m per DoS on an awareness test.

Alert guards (edgy, expecting something, high paid pros) will perceive Per + 10m per DoS on an awareness test.

These can be further modified by environment.

These are guidelines that I use as a reference for myself, for npc's, instead of for players.