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How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?
(biglemmowski.win)
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Thanks for sharing! yeah I do use the PB Encounter tracker but it does not work well with my setup and workflow - probably boils down to having 14" laptop screen.
With all the PCs, minions and NPCs in the tracker, I can't just scan it and see perceptions of all N/PCs, have to filter who is who and also scroll (which somehow sucks because half the time I scroll the whole page instead of the list).
I should try the offloading that is a good tip, though my players are bit meta/gamey - not to cheese but they are just not used to separating themselves from characters, instead playing their chars like pawns and taking all information given into account - so I tend to keep stuff secret.
PS: Thanks! ENL Rocks! hah
*looks shiftily at my 12.9 inch iPad*
taaz@biglemmowski.win said in How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?: > I should try the offloading though that is good tip, my players are bit meta/gamey
Be judicious in what you off-load to them, then. Maybe don't let them track which NPCs can see which PCs, but let them track which NPCs the PCs can see. Make sure they're all tracking their own HP, and not leaving that to you. Let one of them handle calling out initiative, telling everyone who's up and who's "on deck". These all work towards treating you more as the player of the NPCs and less as the person who's organizing/running the game.
One thing you can do with stealth and initiative, when the NPCs are the ones hiding, is just be transparent about how many enemies there are. Say something like "You think you can hear three distinct sets of sounds." This makes it so that NPCs are never Unnoticed (which is how the designers seemingly wants you to treat it, anyway). This lets you roll initiative for all of the hidden NPCs openly, and incentivises the players to start looking for them. This keeps it so the players can keep track of the initiative order, even when there are hidden enemies.
yep, already noted, that's about the best I can do in my case I think
They do track things for their own characters (HPs, statuses etc) and I obviously track NPCs. I am not sure about the init order, I use Pathbuilders Encounter builder thingy to do that and players do not have access to that, someone could absolutely do this once I build the order but I would have to change my workflow a bit to accommodate it.