How much Stealth is needed?

moody_mage

Does anyone know what kind of numbers your Hide/Move Silently scores need to be at in order to reliably hide every time? Also what other environmental factors play into this - I seem to recall if you try to hide in broad daylight outside you receive a penalty etc.

Does anyone know what kind of penalties exist?

abacus

As far as I know, they represent % chance to succeed (like other thief skills), and it uses the average of hide & move silently. I think values above 100 will compensate for negative modifiers like sunlight or armour.

Eudaemonium

I think hiding in daylight gives you something like -40% to your stealth check.

Also, I have heard (so this my be inaccurate) that your stealth chance is calculated between an average of both Move Silently and Hide in Shadows, however checks to remain stealthed only rely on MS, and thus it is more beneficial to pump MS to high levels than it is to level them equally. I do not know if this was accurate, though.

Kurumi

Even though I also can't give any exact numbers, I can tell you, that my SD/Mage never had any problems with hiding (under any circumstances) @ 150/150.

abacus

What @Eudaemonium says would be logical.

Itstucktwice

There is no reason to invest any points into hide in shadows. The chance to enter stealth is based on the average of HIS/MS, and the check to remain in stealth only relies on move silently. Therefore you might as well pump MS and ignore HiS.

ryuken87

Eudaemonium said:

I think hiding in daylight gives you something like -40% to your stealth check.

Also, I have heard (so this my be inaccurate) that your stealth chance is calculated between an average of both Move Silently and Hide in Shadows, however checks to remain stealthed only rely on MS, and thus it is more beneficial to pump MS to high levels than it is to level them equally. I do not know if this was accurate, though.

MS and HitS are equal in all regards.

It's long been established that an average was used for hiding, but someone somewhere at some point on the internet said that checks to remain stealthed rely on MS and people (including me) just went with it. After testing I think it was just misinformation.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/272380/

Mitchfork

Pretty much everything I've read says that the game only checks whether you're indoors or outdoors, and if you're outdoors it checks whether it's night or day.
Ourdoors, night: no modifier
Outdoors, day: 50% reduction
Indoors: 33% reduction

Most of the time you'll be stealthing indoors so it seems like 150/150 would guarantee you succeed 99% of the time (there's always a 1% failure chance).

I have heard (and I hope I'm not just throwing more misinformation on the pile here) that Move Silently determines how long it takes for you to break stealth when you fail a Hide in Shadows check. Two thieves with 75MS/100HiS and 100MS/75HiS have the same chance to initially hide and the same chance to break stealth (87.5% unmodified), but the 100MS/75HiS thief will take longer to actually appear when he breaks. Obviously taking an action that breaks stealth will do it instantly. I haven't tested this, though.

Pantalion

I believe that 210% in each should allow you to hide in any armour that allows stealth, whether in daylight, or in brightly lit interiors.

In effect however, 150% or so should more than cover all but extreme outdoor action (and how many exteriors are you worried about losing stealth?).

Freche

Afaik it's (ms + his)/2 * (envirorment modifier)

elminster

@Dee Unless I'm mistaken I feel at some point you mentioned you were going to look into how much sunlight actually affected a persons ability to hide in shadows (like -50 to stealth, etc). That was after I brought it up in an old thread in the version 1.2 part of the forum (which now no longer exists). Any luck with that? (assuming of course I'm recalling correctly)

Dee

The environment adds a modifier; anywhere from -100 to +100. That full range isn't necessarily used in the game, but that's the available range.

Freche

Dee said:

The environment adds a modifier; anywhere from -100 to +100. That full range isn't necessarily used in the game, but that's the available range.

Is that modifier applied to the total of MS & HiS or to each of them?

Dee

To each, I believe.