Making Perception a valuable stat: Psyonics!

[Otaku]

I’d imagine you’d need to drink something or eat an artifact for powers like that.

I am in full support of eating artifacts. Especially if they are rocks. but eating artifacts should be possible.

[AerialK7]

Maybe another use for the marloss berry?

[Killa_Croc]

Why not make it a profession? Before all hell broke out across the world you had your own personal hell inside of a science lab. Once things got out of control you fled and took refugee inside of an evac shelter. Of course you’d be deformed and people would react as such. And that is how you found out you’re very different and more importantly why beside yourself, the shelter is devoid of life.

[GlyphGryph]

I am completely and 100% opposed to psionics.

Artifacts can be magical because they are dangerous and intentionally unknowable and meant to represent things the player cannot understand beyond the veil of our simple reality.

But players should not be magical. Player wizards do not fit the theme of the game.

If you want something, provide a goddamn method of action for it, it’s not that hard considering the game is sci-fi.

There’s nothing that could possibly be done with psionics that couldn’t be done equally as well, in a way that better reinforces the feel of the game, through another method.

And perception will probably be less useful for a while but when the stealth system hits I think that will change very quickly, since it will effect both your ability to notice other things and your ability to avoid detection.

[woflsipder]

Yup , i completely agree that psionics shoul never get nowhere near the game.

Having players running around as wizards and boiling squirel blood with their mind is just stuidly ridiculous.

This isn’t your average RPG with orcs and goblins and dragons where you can cast fireballs and throw ice shards that slow enemies.

[Morrigi]

can i cast Ice Lance now???

I am neutral in this matter. If implemented properly I could see it working, but that clearly isn’t going to happen.

[system]

I want a Magnetic Iron Telepathic Movement Device.
M.I.T.D
Basically telekinesis but only for enemies.

[KA101]

[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:10, topic:2464”]<snipped, no disagreement–KA101>

And perception will probably be less useful for a while but when the stealth system hits I think that will change very quickly, since it will effect both your ability to notice other things and your ability to avoid detection.[/quote]

Being able to notice things (PE) may help you detect hostiles, but I’m not sure it ought to let you remain still and unnoticed. That feels more like DX territory. :-/

[system]

Nah, pe is tied so you can know if the area ahead is quiet to walk on.

[darth_servo]

And perception will probably be less useful for a while but when the stealth system hits I think that will change very quickly, since it will effect both your ability to notice other things and your ability to avoid detection.

Aside from stealth, I think PER should influence how fast you gain skills and should also affect Skill Rust. If you are less perceptive, i.e. not paying attention, you are not going to learn as well, regardless of how intelligent you may be. On the flip side, someone who pays more attention should learn faster and retain those skills longer.

[woflsipder]

[quote=“xibalba”]Should perception affect dodge and critical hits somewhat? You can’t dodge what you can’t see coming. You can notice an pattern in your opponents attacks and use that to your advantage.

As I see it perception is literally how much a person pays attention to their surroundings, using all their senses. It’s their awareness, their self-awareness, and their awareness of others, their intentions, and their motivations. This can tie perception into everything involving interaction between actors, including things like traps and camouflage (a survival skill action?), and stealth.

I’d like perception to affect a lot of things, but subtly. You can survive without high perception, but with it you can get a little luckier, you have a little more slack.[/quote]
I think perception shouldn’t affect dodge because all you need to see an attack coming is a working eye that can follow objects.
Maybe when you have high perception you can see a bullet coming , but your body still fails you when your mucles just can’t move faster than light even if you see the bullet flying out of the gun few seconds before it’s in your head.
But critical hits should be for more perceptive/dextrous characters.

About stealth i think it’s purely dexterity skill , because i don’t see how perception can help you stay invisible.

Perception shouldn’t be one of the importnanat stats because you can literaly be half blind and still survive.

[GlyphGryph]

Stealth has… almost nothing to do with dexterity. We’re talking about stealth, not acrobatics or mechanical manipulation here.

Why the heck would stealth be dex-based?

[Rivet]

Just check out this guy’s awesome sneaky walk and try to say that doesn’t require catlink agility.

In all seriousness I think PER seems like the better choice, though perhaps high enough DEX could grant a bonus because you move so smoothly that you make less noise/are less noticeable than usual or something.

[KA101]

[quote=“xibalba”]Okay I’m the former homeless guy here, right? I’m the one who knows about dodging crackheads and hiding from the cops.

Your awareness of your surroundings and how other people see you is hugely important for stealth and to a lesser degree in evasion. It’s important for communicating with people, persuasion, intimidation (to a degree), and bartering.

When I was stuck in Salt Lake City I would walk around the homeless shelter a few times before lights out and talk to myself to intimidate the bums standing around smoking and drinking. That was based on my perception and intelligence.

When some random tweaker got pissed off at me in Coos Bay and started chasing me, I ducked into the wooded park where I lived, stepped off the path behind a tree, ducked down and pulled my hood over my head. I stayed still and he walked right past me. I waited for half an hour until I heard sirens at the other end of the park and then walked home, staying off the paved path.[/quote]

I don’t recall any previous mention of your having been homeless, but fair enough: I don’t memorize the entire forum. DX in this case would be the whole “Duck behind tree, get hood over head fast, then stay still” portion of the op. (I’ve got pretty poor DX IRL and don’t think I could manage that.) PE was useful for keeping track of your attacker: awareness of surroundings. I’m thinking “awareness of others see you” seems more like a CH issue, but Cata doesn’t have that so wev.

Thanks for the insight, in any event.

[Hyena_Grin]

[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:18, topic:2464”]Stealth has… almost nothing to do with dexterity. We’re talking about stealth, not acrobatics or mechanical manipulation here.

Why the heck would stealth be dex-based?[/quote]

Traditionally, in pretty much every game I can ever remember which included both stealth and attributes, stealth has been linked to Dexterity or Agility. That doesn’t make it a reasonable choice, but it is pedigree.

Stealth is obviously a very complex thing involving empathy, perception, planning, and kinesthetic awareness.

Avoiding making noise is often a function of agility and kinesthetic sense. A clumsy bumbling person will not avoid brushing against things and stepping on things and bumping things as well as a dexterous person. If you are stalking through the woods surrounded by twigs and branches and things that crack and snap, then body control is a major factor in whether or not you can successfully maneuver without making noise. Even though it doesn’t take an especially perceptive person to notice that these branches/twigs/etcetera are there.

The rest of stealth often comes down to planning and strategy. Which should be up to the player, not a stat.

Dexterity should determine how effectively the character can move through the environment without making noise, and because noise is what generally gives people away when attempting to hide from a pursuer, this would be important. It isn’t enough to duck into a closet, you need to do so without drawing attention. That means careful footing and careful hands so as to avoid making noise.

Perception is a weird choice IMHO. While it helps to be aware of where people are, I don’t think that is the kind of thing which affects stealth. It tells you where people are. Maybe a perceptive person hears a zombie around the corner that is too close to sneak past. A non-perceptive person might be very stealthy but not give the player enough information to make the right PLAYER decisions in order to succeed. Ie, they can’t create a plan, they can’t choose their path in such a way that it avoids detection.

If you are going to roll any stat for whether or not a zombie spots/hears the player on any given turn, then the only active stat the character has that can reasonably be applied in that isolated moment is dexterity. Body control/awareness (kinesthetic sense) despite being a kind of perception, cannot be divorced from dexterity. Without it you cannot be agile. It is one of those things that has overlapping categories, but as we understand dexterity, it is practically another word for kinesthetic sense.

[Otaku]

Well this is off topic.

But anyway I see there are two different opinions on what perception is.

One side is saying that perception is how much you can see. Like that picket fence has holes, or that tree has 4 branches.
On the other hand we have some people saying that perception is not what you see but sorta what you feel/sense. Such as there are some footsteps around the corner, or kinestetic awareness.

You might want to solve this difference before getting into further mechanics.

[GlyphGryph]

[quote=“Rivet, post:19, topic:2464”]Just check out this guy’s awesome sneaky walk and try to say that doesn’t require catlink agility.

In all seriousness I think PER seems like the better choice, though perhaps high enough DEX could grant a bonus because you move so smoothly that you make less noise/are less noticeable than usual or something.[/quote]
There is absolutely nothing stealthy about the way that man is moving, hah.

Avoiding making noise is often a function of agility and kinesthetic sense. A clumsy bumbling person will not avoid brushing against things and stepping on things and bumping things as well as a dexterous person. If you are stalking through the woods surrounded by twigs and branches and things that crack and snap, then body control is a major factor in whether or not you can successfully maneuver without making noise. Even though it doesn't take an especially perceptive person to notice that these branches/twigs/etcetera are there.

Perception is about being able to see things and notice their relationships. It tells you whether or not someone can see YOU, and let's you spot the place to put your foot that will actually be quiet. It tells you the best way to hold your body so that you won't be noticed, because stealth is all about [i]blending in[/i], not about being quiet. Perception is what you need if you want to blend in.

Perception is about more than “seeing”, but about your senses in general. It’s about hearing, seeing, smelling, and just plain noticing thing. Bringing in lots of data and picking important elements out of it to build up a high quality representation of your surroundings.

Strength and Dexterity certainly play a role in pulling it off and sure, they should both give bonuses (since agility is a combination of the two of them, fine motor control and the strength to remain motionless in awkward positions). But when you are being stealthy, you will be spending most of your time not moving in the right place, until the right time. How does dexterity aid you in this, what is the central and most important aspect of stealth?

But for stealth, Perception should far and away be the most important stat.

Now, it might not give direct bonuses - that’s true. Perhaps it will be the most important stat primarily by informing player decisions - the higher your Perception, the more likely your assessment of a given squares visibility and noise-making potential. While a low perception picks a value from a wider range.

So, say the range is (20-perception)*2.

So a perception of 10, when looking at a square with a stealth value of 25%, might see that square at ±20. They might see it as having a stealth value of 5% or as having a stealth value of 45% (significantly better than it is)

And stealth isn’t about “sneaking” so much as it is about “hiding”. The point is to avoid being noticed, not to be an uber-silent acrobat.

But having played a large number of games (I’ve played large-field paintball, HvZ, and Assassin, all quite extensively) where stealth is a central component, NO ability is as useful as perception. I’d like to see that represented in the game.

[kevin.granade]

I think I see the misunderstanding here, GlyphGryph wasn’t talking about a “stealth check”, but rather how perception will influence your ability act stealthily.

In the trivial extreme, if you can’t percieve your opponent, you will be greatly hampered in trying to hide from them. Spotting an opponent is key to avoiding detection. If you approach a town, you know from experience that the zombies are “over there”, but until you spot the individuals, all you can do is try to take advantage of every piece of cover between you and the town, and once in a town, when you may be surrounded, it becomes effectively impossible to hide and still move unless you can spot what you’re trying to hide from. There are meta-issues like cutting through houses, crawling through ditches, etc, but your options will generally be wider with higher perception.

In the other extreme, you might percieve where your opponent is, where they’re headed, where they’re looking, and whether they can detect you or not, and can percieve all of the above at a great distance, this gives you a godlike ability to avoid detection. Consider MGS, now imagine trying to play it without the extra input it gave you about the enemy LOS arcs, that’s the power of perception. We’re not solid on how the stealth system is going to work, but it’s not out of the question that we would provide a perception-based map overlay of some kind that would inform you of what squares are visible from monsters you can see that you can use to navigate while hiding. With a low perception such a map would either be unavailable or unreliable to some extent.

In a competitive sense, the advantage goes to the side with the higher perception. By default the player has a much greater perceptive ability than monsters, but the monsters have numbers on their side.
Dex would enter into it, by e.g. adjusting how much noise you make when moving around, possibly mediated by a stealth skill, but that only matters when you’re at medium range (or short range with an intervening barrier), and even then, hearing is also adjusted by per, so greater detection range and location precision also helps.

Your ability to stay hidden is going to be almost entirely tactical, and consist of keeping obstacles between you and opponents to block their sight and maintaining enough distance to prevent detection via sound or scent. The only thing dex changes in this equation is how far away you can be heard.

Having said that, the player will generally have a large advantage in stealth. Like now, your spotting distance will generally be greater than most if not all enemies, what being proficient at stealth will do is allow you to push it and possibly achieve feats like looting within a zombie-populated town.

[GlyphGryph]

When compared to zombies anyway. There is at least one enemy I’d like to implement that has a significant advantage over the player.

[Hyena_Grin]

I pretty much covered the same stuff re: perception being vital in planning movement.

I wasn’t trying to make a case that higher dexterity aids you in being invisible. The focus here seems to be on vision and I think sound is the more passive control. The player needs to make good choices about where to be based on their perception to avoid being seen. I agree, and I mentioned that in some detail. Games that use stealth as some kind of invisibility cloak irritate the heck out of me and I don’t want that any more than anyone else.

But not being heard is a function of body control. Being aware of where your body is, having precise control over your body’s movements, that is muscle control and that is covered by dexterity/agility. If you want to climb over a fence without being heard, you want dexterity, not perception. If you want to walk across gravel without being heard, you want dexterity, not perception. If you want to slip between some bushes without being heard, you want dexterity, not perception. Perception only tells you those things are there. Dexterity affords the fine muscle control to not make a great deal of noise while traversing.

Stealth is one part mind games and one part not drawing attention. Just because someone isn’t looking in your direction doesn’t mean they won’t hear or otherwise sense your presence, and if you have ever tried to sneak behind someone without them noticing you, it’s difficult. You can’t just wait until their back is turned and then walk past. Avoiding their line of sight is a big part of stealth but it’s not the part I’ve been talking about.

I actually like the interplay of Perception to detect enemies (and thus plan your character’s movements) and Dexterity to avoid being heard when enemies aren’t looking in your direction.