Myrlan/AwarenessVsStealth Discussion

This was on the page [[[Myrlan/AwarenessVsStealth_Discussion/Perfects]]- Awareness vs Stealth]] and has been moved here, please feel free to continue the discussion.

House Rules and Suggestions

My own opinion is that you should treat Stealth as the defense and Awareness as the offense, so long as the Stealth charm doesn't operate by some principle that involves directly affecting the target (ie, a charm that wraps me in shadows is a defense, one which reaches into your brain and removes your ability to percieve me is an offense). -- JohnBiles

Comments on the Suggestions

That's crazy! ^_^ Caste Book Night is totally correct. If you are ever in doubt, the offence is the Charm that allows you to kill others. That would be the Stealth Charm - it allows you to sneak up and kill others.

The defence is the Charm that stops you from being killed by others. That would be the Awareness Charm - it allows you to see that sneaky blighter, so that you don't get killed before you even notice he is there.

Its actually irrelevant whether your Charm is "attacking" or "being attacked by" another person's Charm. The point is whether the Charm helps you attack or defend against another person! -- BrokenShade

I think Mr. Biles' suggestion is the most rational and easily-applicable one I've seen on this subject. _Ikselam

Agreed, except that you can just as easily propose a situation where a person stealthily tries to sneak away from an attack as their attacker uses Awareness Charms to try and not only find them but put an arrow through their head. Yeah, I've just gotta throw it all in a blender. But, seriously, I see both as being defensive or offensive depending on the situation. - haren

You both make interesting points. The suggestion is rational, and perhaps I exagerated a little by calling it crazy. ^_^ And its interesting to see how you sometimes consider steatlh a defence, haren (nice blender ^_^). To me though, the Awareness is always the defence. You are never trying to sneak away "from an attack". You are simply trying to sneak away. The attack if it comes is itself an offensive action - but the person who spots you and fires the arrow has no advantage from simply being able to see you! Seeing you does not aid the attack, merely allows what would normally happen. So the Awareness Charm is not offensive, it is simply preventing the Stealth Charm user from warping the aware person's senses. -- BrokenShade

How does this interact with a situation where a Stealth user is concealed by normal means (behind a curtain, for example), the Perfect Awareness charm is being used to pierce the normal concealment, and the Perfect Stealth charm is being used to 'defend' against that Awareness? -Ben-San

Good question, Ben-San. ^_^ Its something that causes a lot of people a lot of confusion.

I need to stress that I am referring specifically to Stealth as "hiding your presence", and Awareness as "noticing the other person's presence".

First, using a Charm to improve an action does not affect whether that action is a defence or an attack. If you are parrying, the use of a parry improving Charm does not change the parry into an attack. ^_^

Next consider the normal condition, which is also "pre-attack". The normal position here is that there is no attack - nobody is swinging a blade at you. Similarly, the normal position is that there is no Stealth - nobody is trying to hide from you. (In your particular example, someone is already hiding and an attack can be considered to already be in progress. An action has clearly already taken place.) Base level awareness does not require an action. The normal condition is clearly not for both opponents to be blind - that is abnormal, whatever the reason for it.

Now consider the nature of an attack action. (1) It changes the normal position, introducing a threat (2) The defence action is not needed without it (3) It puts the opponent at a disadvantage, where the defence puts the opponent onto equal ground.

A Stealth action (hiding or sneaking) changes the normal position, introducing the threat of a sneak attack. Without a stealth action, there is no need for an Awareness action. The Stealth action puts the opponent at a disadvantage ... he doesn't know you are there, but you know he is there.

Awareness does not change the normal position, and there is no more threat than in the usual position. (Sure there is a threat, but no more so than before the first attack in an attack and parry combination). An Awareness action does not change the need or otherwise for Stealth. And Awareness does not put your opponent at a disadvantage, it puts you on equal ground where you can both see each other.

So I think it is fairly clear that Stealth is the attack? ^_^ -- BrokenShade

Except that in the curtain case, if neither person makes a roll the person behind the curtain will not be seen. That's the "normal position" for the situation. -Ben-San

No its a position where one antagonist has the advantage (all other things being equal) ... its abnormal. ^_^ The stealth puts him at an advantage, and he has no "perfect" right to retain that advantage. Wheras the awareness Charm has the right to "perfection" in making each antagonist as aware of each other as the other is aware of him; (limited) equality. -- BrokenShade

Other Comments

Both make sense because you can use awareness to find and attack someone, or you could use stealth to ambush (which both seem like the irresistible force to me). -Myrlan

Page 76 of CB:Night, under Eye of the Unconquered Sun, makes it clear that Awareness charms are considered Defenses and Stealth/illusion stuff is Offensive; thus the Perfect Awareness charm is considered a perf. defense. - Miedvied

Agreed, the book does say that. I think that's bogus, though. I think it needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, in direct contradiction to the Awareness Charm from CB:Night. - David.

I believe that the nature of the charms exists independant of whatever they're used for. We know that Parries are Perf Defenses, but if I happen to parry in the course of performing an assassination... well, then, really, it's part of an Offensive action, overall. But we don't examine the overall action; we create a single solid rule because you can argue things like the defensive/offensive nature of stealth or parrying until the world ends without coming any closer to a correct or incorrect answer. - Miedvied

Under normal circumstances (that is, without either person using abilities or Charms), the person using Stealth would be seen by the person using Awareness (if this isn't the case, why are you using stealth effects to begin with?). He is using his ability (Stealth) to attempt to change this state in his favor, while the other is using his abiliy (Awareness) to attempt to prevent this state change. Similarly, under normal circumstances without either party using abilities or Charms, neither person will be hit with a sword; use of an attack action is an attempt to change this state while use of a parry action is an attempt to preserve it. Thus, while I think referring to Awareness or Stealth as a 'perfect attack' or 'perfect defense' is fairly absurd, I consider Awareness the preventive effect in the case of "person on the road uses Sneaky Burglar Prana and his enemy uses Sharp-Eyes Technique to prevent it". On the other hand, this also implies that if Sneaky is on the other side of a wall and his opposite number uses a Charm to look through a wall, using Stealth charms to avoid being seen constitutes the preventive effect. Unnecessarily complicated? Yes. Blame the Bureaucracy. The papers are easier to file for people not seeing each other through walls or being invisible right under another person's noses, so when they can get away with it they favor the preventive effect. -Ben-San

Hmm. That explanation actually made sense. Interesting food for thought. :) - David.

I'd say to treat it like the 'magical tracker' scenario presented in a few Charms; the two cancel each other out , a la Countermagic spells (albiet with less flash-bang). The situation is resolved by an opposed roll. Arafelis

That sort of defeats the purpose of Perfects. - Miedvied

And don't you feel silly for buying them?

No, really, if one perfect always defeats another perfect, why bother get the perfect that can always be defeated? If the answer is, "to use it on the people who don't have the trumping Perfect," then you have my response, and more besides. &Arafelis

The point remains that Perfects are perfect. Make them nonperfect, and you've changed what perfects are<i>. The game has different level of roll-requirements for different charms for different splats for a reason; it highlights their power differences. There's no reason to break that pattern because a perfectly clear canon ruling of what "offensive" and "defensive" is just happens not to sit well with people for whom the words become muddled outside of combat. - Miedvied

How is it less than perfect? A perfect Awareness charm negates all Stealth enhancements, and a perfect Stealth charm negates all Awareness enhancements, thus cancelling each other out Perfectly. In the case of Perfect attacks and Perfect defenses, I consider the attack to simply no longer be applicable; it's still Perfect, but its target is no longer something that can be attacked (though some partial Perfects leave a vector open, such as Seven Shadow Evasion, which cannot dodge attacks that cannot be dodged). If this were applied to Stealth vs Awareness, the Stealth charm would always succeed; the Awareness Charm would still be perfect, but the Stealth Charm would render its user to something that could not be sensed. On an instant-by-instant basis, Stealth charms are defensive in nature; they protect the user from being detected (the best way to never get hit is to never be seen)- even if the purpose of that stealth is to slit someone's throat from behind, the Perfect Stealth itself is a protective measure. Always, unless it's a cross function Charm that <i>grants an attack (ie, a simple Charm as opposed to a supplimental one which only grants bonuses on an attack). Stealth might be said to have offensive applications, but no more than Defense charms; they allow the user an opportunity to attack where they might otherwise have had none, and to escape when it might otherwise have been impossible.

The Night Caste book actually switches the game's stance thus- for a number of reasons, but primarily due to the "incomparable light" nature of the Unconquered Sun, who seems to be the most singly powerful entity in the cosmology. Also partly because of the powerlessness a player would feel if the storyteller rolls a couple dice apparently out of the blue, and demands the character sheet thanks to some Sidreal assassin (which is why there are no Perfect Defense Charms that last for a time duration; they can always be overcome by a volume of attacks, so players don't feel helpless to damage their enemy as they are picked off by pings). Thus, it's not accurate to say that they're drawing a parallel between Perfect Defense/Perfect Offense. The language of the Charm in question is simply to make it clear that it always works. At the time of the publication of Eye of the Unconquered Sun, there were no Perfect Stealth Charms (to my knowledge, there still aren't, though Ceasing to Exist Approach comes close). $.02 &Arafelis

"A roadblock can't stop something that can't be stopped!" ..anyway, as said above I hold that, in Awareness vs. Stealth, the 'defensive' charm is the one that is preserving the normative state of affairs. If the position is such that the person trying to be Stealthy would be seen if he were not using his stealth ability and the Aware person were not using his special talents, Awareness is the defense. If the position is such that the person trying to be Stealthy would not be seen without the use of special Awareness abilities, Stealth is the defense. -Ben-San

It's not quite the same thing. When most people say, "can't", they usually mean in a relative fashion; "You can't stop a runaway train!" Well, yes, you can- and indeed, the train will come to a stop sooner or later. It just takes a massive amount of friction and/or opposing force. In the case of a magical "can't", it's more a question of applicablility; An immobile roadblock can't stop a crashing wave, because the wave will eventually swell over it or will pass through its cracks. If you're falling, you can't dodge the ground; no use of the Dodge skill will enable you to avoid it (though certain Dodge Charms will, if your ST is gullable or derranged enough). Can Heavenly Guardian Defense (which allows even attacks that cannot normally be blocked to be parried) prevent the character's reputation from being attacked with Venomous Rumors Technique?

Incidentally, I sort of agree, but Stealth and Awareness are not combat actions and are thus exempt from Offense/ Defense. If a standard was accepted, it should be based on the interaction of those two Abilities, not on the precedent of combat Charms. &Arafelis

See above for my stance on a generalized standard for interactions of Perfects. -Ben-San

Nowhere does it say that the immovable object/irresistable force standard only applies to combat charms; just because it was first mentioned there doesn't limit it's scope. Myrlan

Can Heavenly Guardian Defense (which allows even attacks that cannot normally be blocked to be parried) prevent the character's reputation from being attacked with Venomous Rumors Technique? If the stunt is good enough, yes! -- AntiVehicleRocket (who goes by the rule of "it resolves in the way that is the most awesome")

Actually, I'd allow it too- but it's not the intent of the Charm, and they are not designed to interact in that fashion. Myrlan: Sneaking isn't an irresistable force or immobile state, nor is Awareness. &Arafelis

Sneaking and awareness are just as much irresistable force and immobile state as an attack or defense, they apply metaphorically just as well to both ideas. You may disagree whether they should be applied, but I think it's clear that it can be applied and I have heard no reason why it shouldn't.Myrlan

Because it's difficult to agree on which is which when. In the case of offense/defense, it's clear which is which- but different players and different STs will rule even identical awareness/stealth situations differently, and possibly the same situation differently different times it's encountered. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't even be a discussion about it; it would be obvious to all players and STs from the information provided. If a 'standard' is accepted, it should be as close to self-evident as possible.

About HGD and VRT - IIRC, HGD can only defend against an attack if it has some physical component, which I would see as unusual for an attack against your reputation (like spitting in your face, but not something like a witty remark or a rumor (even a charm invoked rumor)). As for stunts, that lies solely in the discression of the ST, but while "normal" stunts are somewhat defined, I know of no guidelines for stunting to increase the effects of charms. Does that mean you could stunt DSD into a perfect defense (which only makes sense to me if you can stunt HDG into protecting from rumors)? I guess it just matters how Anime you want your game to be.Myrlan

HGD does not specify it requires a physical component in order to block, and the errata only sidelines it. DSD cannot be stunted to be a perfect defense, because you can't 'stunt away' the roll. You could stunt it into blocking something that isn't normally blockable- as the core book says, stunts allow characters to do things that normally aren't possible (such as deflecting the miasma of an Essence-based curse like VRT). Arafelis

The quote from the errata is: "Heavenly Guardian Defense can still block pretty much any sort of physical attack..." which implies that even some physical attacks can't be blocked by it. While I wouldn't call it a "sideline", it isn't as clear as it should be, so I won't press the issue. I never said anything about not needing to roll to make it a perfect defense, but I would assume it would be in the region of a diff 5 (legendary) roll. My original gut feeling about allowing a simple stunt to overcome defense applicability is that it seems wrong, but I'll have to think about it to come up with solid reasons. - Myrlan