Stealth
This Ability is important in combat.
Stealth is used to avoid being noticed, evading the sight of one’s pursuers through physical deftness and cunning. In combat, it can be used to catch foes unawares with sneak attacks or to hide from threatening enemies. Outside of combat, it can be used for covert surveillance, silently infiltrating a guarded building, or blending into a crowd after committing a crime.
Stealth Dramatic Rules
Stealth
Stealth is a powerful advantage in battle, affording the opportunity to strike when an opponent least expects it, or when he doesn't realize he's in danger at all.
All stealth attempts consist of opposed rolls, generally (Dexterity + Stealth) against (Perception + Awareness). Stealth rolls can easily take penalties if the conditions aren't amenable to sneaking or hiding—dry underbrush, bright light, and scant cover can all make stealth more difficult. Likewise, Awareness rolls can take penalties due to cluttered or noisy environments (such as market crowds or stormy nights)—Stealth and Awareness are both very context-governed Abilities.
Assuming that a character has successfully concealed himself, he may then attempt to make an unexpected attack. Unexpected attacks are either an ambush or a surprise attack.
An ambush is defined as an attack against a target completely unaware of the attacker's presence—generally only possible during the first round of a fight, against a target with a lower Initiative value than the attacker. An ambush attack completely ignores the target's Defense; the target is considered to have Defense 0 against the attack.
A surprise attack, on the other hand, is an attack launched from hiding against an opponent who knows he's in battle and who is actively on the lookout for attacks, even if he isn't sure exactly where all of his opponents are at the moment. A target faced with a surprise attack suffers a -2 Defense penalty against that attack.
Attempting to re-establish surprise is a combat action that cannot be placed in a flurry.
A character in stealth cannot take Rush actions. If he wants to move normally in combat for more on movement in combat) while maintaining concealment, he must have some adequate place to hide in the spot he's moving to, and must make another reflexive (Dexterity + Stealth) roll when he moves, to keep from being spotted while moving. If this movement crosses wide-open terrain with no appreciable cover, the Stealth roll's penalty climbs from the usual -3 (for attempting stealth while already in combat) to -5.
Hold at Bay
A permutation of an ambush, to hold someone at bay is to succeed at an ambush without attacking, choosing instead to hold the target hostage for a number of rounds. The character points her weapon at her target's vital organs; the target knows he will suffer a deadly attack if he so much as moves, allowing the character to speak her mind before battle commences. The character may interrogate, threaten, cajole, or otherwise detain her opponent for a number of rounds equal to the difference in their Initiative. If the target chooses to struggle or try to escape before these rounds are finished, the character may make an immediate decisive ambush attack against him with onerous results: not only is the target's Defense set to 0, but his Hardness is set to 0 as well, and the attack gains +5 automatic damage. If the character chooses to attack her target before the rounds are up, he may defend normally.
If the target chooses to cooperate, the hostage-taker's Resolve and Guile are at +1, while the target's are each at -2 until the specified number of rounds have passed. When the hold at bay rounds have passed, if the target has not agreed to surrender, both roll Join Battle to determine who will act first, with the hostage suffering a -2 penalty to his results. If the hostage-taker wins, she can immediately execute a standard ambush attack.
A dramatic overview of Hold at Bay:
The character's ambush may be an elaborate trap: she arranges for her target to be in a certain room at a certain time, and sits in a darkened corner with a crossbow aimed at the door. It might also be a spur of the moment grab: a Night Caste reaches out of an alley to snare a passer-by and put a dagger to his throat. In all cases, for a character to be held at bay, he must be intelligent enough to feel fear, or otherwise competent to understand a threat. The action won't work on mindless automata, beasts, or mindless monsters. While holding a person at bay, his mental faculties are concentrating on survival, or on looking for a way out, so his Resolve and Guile is weakened, while the person holding him at bay has the social upper hand. In this type of scenario, the target will generally agree to all simple commands such as "Turn around" or "Move over there" which do not directly cause him harm, but can still resist agreeing to things which would harm him or deprive him of safety. When the character's control rounds end, if the target has not surrendered, the new Join Battle roll reflects a shift in the drama, at which one character or the other figuratively blinks. If the target wins this roll, it means he's seized a moment to fight for his life. If the character holding him at bay wins, she can continue to talk for a number of rounds equal to the new Initiative difference, or she can choose to attack. In this case, the target is only at Defense 0.
Go to Ground
Sometimes a character needs to get out of a fight, but surrender isn't an option and the hopes of escaping by way of a withdraw action seem slim. In these situations, the character may attempt to escape the fight by going to ground. A character who goes to ground is attempting to hide somewhere on the battlefield and to avoid detection until the fight is over (and, hopefully, any hostiles have left). In order to attempt to go to ground, a character must already be in stealth. His player must then declare he is attempting to go to ground, and then make a successful (Dexterity + Stealth) attempt to maintain concealment over the next three turns. The first roll is at a -3 penalty, the second at -4, and the final roll at -5. If all of these rolls successfully defeat the (Perception + Awareness) rolls of the character's enemies, he is considered so well hidden that there is no hope of finding him until he voluntarily emerges from concealment.
This climbing difficulty can represent either the increasing difficulty of maintaining a single hiding place in the face of concerted efforts to find the character or the risk of moving about from hiding place to hiding place to evade searching opponents. Players are encouraged to think about how their characters attemp to go to ground, and to stunt appropriately—they'll need all the help they can get to deal with the penalties.
A character who goes to ground successfully, but then emerges from hiding to re-join the fight in the midst of the same combat, re-enters the fight in Initiative Crash, at -10 Initiative.