Group Stealth

[PencilBoy99]

If the companions attempt to take attackers by stealth, and only some of them pass (and the others don't have extra successes to give them if you allow that house rule), what happens? Do NONE of the companions get surprise attacks, or just the ones that succeed. I think it's the former.

[zedturtle]

If the companions attempt to take attackers by stealth, and only some of them pass (and the others don't have extra successes to give them if you allow that house rule), what happens? Do NONE of the companions get surprise attacks, or just the ones that succeed. I think it's the former.

Take a look at page 168 of the core rules... It says that all heroes need to succeed, but it also explicitly (not a house rule) allows a great success to help one companion and an extraordinary success to aid two companions.

So, if after that has been taken into account, all the heroes did not succeed then the ambush has failed... combat occurs as normal instead, with the enemies having the initiative.

Hope that helps!

[jamesrbrown]

This topic came up in our game last night (and often does). Two player-heroes attempted to ambush some enemies by sneaking up in tall grasses. They both made a Stealth roll at TN 14. One of them failed, but the other got a great success to cover his friend's failure! So, the ambush was successful (the enemies were surprised) and the companions were able to use ranged weapons against their opponents (unreturned) and hold the initiative.

What's interesting is that when ambushing, either all the adversaries are surprised or they're not, depending on whether all the companions were successful or not. When being ambushed, however, individual player-heroes may or may not be surprised, depending on their individual Awareness roll (or Battle or Hunting). I like the simplicity of this and I think it's fair to players who succeed.

[Falenthal]

Something that has come up in my group when the heroes try to ambush the enemies, is that those with low or no Stealth ranks do "stay behind".

That means that those players know that their characters will surely fail the test (dwarves, beornings, etc.), and risk the whole ambush that the elves/hobbits/woodmen could enjoy. Therefore, the low-stealth-heroes don't approach the enemies and only those with medium-high Stealth do.

But once the onset is over, of course, the ambushing heroes (wether succesful or not) call their comrades for help, who come rushing to the battle.

The way we've been playing it is simply by allowing the "reinforcements" to enter combat only during the second round of melee combat.

So it goes like:
1) Ambush (with only a part of the company)
2) Determine inititative
3) Roll for Advantatges (all the company, although we only allow the bonus dice of the ambushers to be used during volleys and the first round of combat)
4) Opening Volleys
5) First round of melee combat (only ambushers)
6) Second round of melee combat (whole company)

Most of the heroes with good stealth are also good at ranged weapons and weak at melee weapons (or only average). That means that the first round of melee combat they mostly stay in Defensive stance until the brutes come and allow them to go into Rearward.