Time, Gear, Skill: Sneaking

OSR games tend to adjudicate sneaking and stealth as “just describe what you’re doing, and we’ll go from there”, which is a perfect valid approach in most cases. This is a version of sneaking that incorporates the Time, Gear, Skill philosophy as found in Block, Dodge, Parry and, oh wow, KNOCK #4!

Image: Stealth Mission by KILART (Choe Heonhwa)

To summarize the Time, Gear, Skill idea:

• If you have none or one, a task is impossible
• If you have all three, a task automatically succeeds
• If you only have two, a roll might be involved.

‘Time‘ means literally that; are you doing it in a hurry, or are you completely undisturbed? ‘Gear‘ is what you’re carrying, but also the context/environment (this might seem like a stretch of the word ‘gear’, but the idea is that the environment can be utilized in your advantage. For a climb, gear could be a rope, but also the cliff could have vines growing on it). ‘Skill‘ means either literal skills or things that we can assume a character is good at due to their background or history. Depending on your preferences, Skill can also include your attributes.

Resolving Stealth

First, define what the player character desires to do sneakily; bypass two guards in a dark alley, escape from a crowd, move through a room with multiple magical sigils of alarm. Next, determine whether Time, Gear and Skill can be checked off:

Time

The universal question for time could be phrased as “Are you in a hurry?“. For stealth, this could mean ‘Are guards actively looking for you’, ‘Is this area patrolled and might a sentry pop up around the corner’ and ‘Might someone stumble upon you if you stick around for too long’. To make it a bit more practical, I’d phrase it as

Do you have roughly 10 minutes to perform the desired action without being disturbed?

Gear

For gear, I’d check for any factors in the environment that would explicitly aid in your sneaking: low light/darkness/shadows, cover such as rocks, bushes and trees, and perhaps a route that isn’t in plain line of sight, such as a ledge. Gear can help (special soft-soled boots) but also hinder (heavy armor). In my recent climbing post I made a whole tally system; here, I’d just go for what makes sense. The main question is

Do you have gear, equipment or environmental benefits that explicitly offset any hindrances from your gear or equipment?

Skill

Here, check whether the character is explicitly skilled in stealth (such as the Subtle skill) or has a background/career that implies stealth (Such as being a (former) assassin or thief). Optionally, a DEX of 15 or higher counts, as well.

Does your character have any explicit (skills) or implicit (background) specialization in this task?

To Roll Or Not To Roll

Got all 3? You’re good, no need to roll. Got none or one? You won’t be able to do what you want to do stealthily. Got two? Rolling time!

There’s a few ways of doing this (up to your preference):

• Roll 1d6, higher outcome is better.
• Roll a DEX Save, succeed to, well, succeed.
• Roll Luck.
• Roll 1d6.
  • On a 1-3, you succeed.
  • On a 4-5, you succeed but something in the environment or situation changes, complicating the situation. Someone heard a noise and is coming to check, or you managed to knock out this guard before he noticed, but his buddy is now starting to turn around.
  • On a 6, you do not succeed and are detected before you can complete your action.