Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Sneaking Around in Groups

Stealth as an Individual

Stealth as a Group

A common problem in Call of Cthulhu (CoC) is that sometimes a group of PCs want to sneak into a location and one PC (yeah, that one guy) has the default Stealth of 20%. Or with a large group, by the law of averages, someone would fail even if everyone had a Stealth of 70%. So, how do you handle this fairly?

When someone's Stealth check fails!

I offer a group Stealth check. The PC with the lowest Stealth rolls for the whole group. If the roll fails, the whole group isn't Stealthy. Otherwise, success. But what if several people have a low Stealth score? I give them the option of not sneaking in. They can sit out and do something else while their compatriots sneak in.

World War Cthulhu: Cold War offered another solution. They have a Tradecraft skill. If someone with Tradecraft aided others in Stealth via scouting ahead and using hand signals, they can instead roll a combined skill roll. They roll once and if the die roll is below both their Stealth and Tradecraft, the whole group would succeed.

Trail of Cthulhu (ToC) offered a Piggybacking solution. The PC with the most Stealth points to spend rolls (the Lead), but each PC piggybacking on the Stealth must spend a Stealth point and for each PC lacking in a Stealth point, the difficulty is increased by 2. ToC uses 1d6 for skill resolution, so a 2 pt penalty is pretty hefty. Typically a 4-6 is a success. Having one noisy PC increases the chance of failure by 33%. This can be offset by having the Lead spend Stealth points.

So, another solution is to have the PC with the highest Stealth roll, but add penalties based on the skill levels of the rest of the group. For example: -20% for each PC who only have the default. -10% for each PC with Stealth below 50% but above the default of 20%. -5% for each PC with Stealth above 50%. On failure, you assume someone inadvertently stepped on a twig, knocked over a vase, stepped on a creaky floorboard, or got spotted.

Individual Stealth checks

Another solution is having everyone roll Stealth and those that fail can be noticed, but those that fail are silent and well hidden. This may happen if the PCs scatter and look for various hiding places, like in a closet, under the bed, in a steamer trunk, etc. In this case, I generally ask for individual Luck rolls for those that failed and the one with the worse roll gets spotted and attacked. Sometimes for brevity's sake, the GM could just pick the one with the lowest Luck score instead.

Delta Green uses an opposed Stealth roll. So, there's a chance the bad guys won't notice you even if you have a low Stealth score.

In that spirit, some GMs roll a Spot Hidden for the bad guys, but that should have already been taken into account by the success level required. If the bad guy's Spot Hidden is < 50%, a regular success is required, <90% Hard, >=90% Extreme. And remember, when dice are rolled, it is always for something that matters and at a moment high drama. If the PCs fail a Stealth roll, something should happen.

Well, that's my thoughts on group Stealth.