Reactive Stealth (3.5e Variant Rule)

Reactive Stealth
Hide and move silently are odd skills. They do things only passively, as any checks with them simply set DCs for other skills to beat, other skills that are rolled against by multiple opponents at a time. The arrangement makes the odds of their success or failure quite complicated in ways that aren't particularly useful, and cause the odds of success to fall very quickly for any extended tests. They're also frustrating from the other side of things, since they make spot and listen required skills for any guard. This is very odd from a mechanical and fluff standpoint, as the classes often doing the guarding don't have these as class skills and also don't get a lot of skill points to invest in them.

This variant aims to remove these concerns by changing the check mechanic and providing all creatures a minimum ability to resist stealthy individuals. It does not remove the double check penalty that these skills possess, though that can be resolved with a simple skill merger.

Changes to Hide
The following text replaces the check description from the hide skill:


 * You may make a check to prevent creatures who are unaware of your position from seeing you. The DC for this check is 10 + half the creature's level or CR or 10 + the creature's spot modifier, whichever is higher. Creatures who are aware of you or who have been alerted to your presence add +5 to their DCs. You may not take 10 on this check, nor may you retry it. If multiple creatures could spot you, you make one check and compare it to the DC of each individual creature to see which ones fail to spot you. You do not need cover to make these checks.


 * Success on this check means that the creatures do not see you and remain unaware of your location, unless they would be alerted to it by some other sense. Failure on this check means that the creature spots you and is alerted to your position. Once you have been spotted, you may not hide from a creature again until you have broken line of sight with them.


 * You suffer a -5 penalty to this check if you are moving faster than half your speed, and a -20 penalty to this check while you are running, charging, or attacking (including sniping). You gain bonuses or penalties to this check based on size as normal.

Changes to Move Silently
The following text replaces the check description from the move silently skill:


 * You may make a check to prevent creatures from hearing your movements. The DC for this check is 10 + half the creature's level or CR or 10 + the creature's listen modifier, whichever is higher. Creatures who are aware of you or who have been alerted to your presence add +5 to their DCs. You may not take 10 on this check, nor may you retry it. If multiple creatures could hear you, you make one check and compare it to the DC of each individual creature to see which ones fail to hear you.


 * Success on this check means that the creatures do not hear you and remain unaware of your presence, unless they would be alerted to it by some other sense. Failure on this check means that the creature that hears you and is alerted to your general location. They remain alerted to you until they have searched the area and found nothing, have been given reason to believe you have moved on, or sufficient time has passed for them to believe it was a mistake.


 * You suffer a -5 penalty to this check if you are moving faster than half your speed, and a -20 penalty to this check while you are running, charging, or attacking. You suffer a -2 penalty to this check if you are moving over a noisy surface, and a -5 penalty to this check if you are moving over a very noisy surface.

Changes to Spot
Removing the checks against hide removes many of the checks from this skill. It remains useful for reading lips, noticing or pinpointing invisible creatures, making out details at a distance, and determining the distance at which an encounter begins. Note that the farther out an encounter begins, the more chances there are for those hiding to roll poorly on their avoid spotting checks.

Changes to Listen
Removing the checks against move silently similarly removes many of the checks from this skill. It remains useful for hearing noises or conversations across rooms, through doors, or against significant background noise.