recon, stealth and perception

[Prospero]

How do these three skills relate? It seems that recon should cover some aspects of both stealth and perception to some extent: it covers both seeing enemies (perception) and avoiding being seen (stealth). How do you play these three skills?

Pros.

 

[robject]

How do these three skills relate? It seems that recon should cover some aspects of both stealth and perception to some extent: it covers both seeing enemies (perception) and avoiding being seen (stealth). How do you play these three skills?

Pros.

There seems to be a lot of overlap, and your description makes sense.

I'd use recon when in a "neutral" DMZ, stealth when infiltrating enemy territory, and perception when interacting with the environment, i.e. not for people per se, but buildings, markings, telltales, etc.

 

[Prospero]

Thanks for the thoughts. I find it a bit frustrating to have skills that seem overlap substantially but without a good description of how they differ. Recon is described as pertaining to wilderness, so I suppose that might be the difference. It also seems to apply to a larger number of people. That is recon lets you move your squad (because it affects your surprise roll) around without being seen...stealth lets only you move around without being seen.

NT

 

[Renaissance Man]

Traveller is full of skill overlap. I think this is on purpose -- because of the nature of tasks (combinations of skills and attributes), you always want more than one way to skin a cat.

Some characters may have learned stealth and battlefield intelligence duties in a strict military context, and thus have recon. Others may have learned it more broadly, without the additional emphasis on actual scouting, and have stealth.

 

[Gadrin]

How do these three skills relate? It seems that recon should cover some aspects of both stealth and perception to some extent: it covers both seeing enemies (perception) and avoiding being seen (stealth). How do you play these three skills?

Pros.

Never played using T4 system however there's this type of overlap in other
game systems as well.

As a GM I would look at it in three ways and base it on how I need things to happen, so if Stealth (hiding) is more important than Perception, I'd go with what offered the smallest % to the players, meaning someone is hiding from the PCs and it's important.

If the players are doing the hiding and this is a life threatening situation for them, I'd probably go with what gives them the best advantage.

In some cases I've seen games where a Stealth feature offers a basic % for employing it, meaning I'd ignore any other skill detection attempts and use the % offered, unless it's a game killer. Also make sure the players have a way to even detect it first, before rolling.


YMMV


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