Rules: Multisensory Tests

From Jackpoint

"What's that noise!? Just a box"

"Did you see that? Nah, and I didn't hear anything"

Stealth is not a singular event. Evading a guard dog might be hard, but if the handler can't see you, it's not that important, and if you are caught in a quick flash of a camera feed, but no one can hear you, it can be hard to say you were really there. This means:

When rolling Perception, the best applicable bonus is applied. This means if a character has +2 Enhanced Hearing a +3 Enhanced Vision and is chasing someone. they roll with the +3 from Vision and no other bonus. If they are later blindfolded, they will then use the +2 Hearing bonus.

When defending, the best penalty is also used. This means that if a character has the Traceless Walk Adept Power (-4 to be heard) on them and Rating 3 Full Body Ruthenium, and are being hunted with vision and hearing, the hunter gets a -4 penalty. If the Ruthenium was Rating 4, the hunter would get -4 as they overlap. If the Ruthenium was Rating 3 and they had Traceless Walk and were trying to bypass just a camera, the penalty would be 3 since the Traceless Walk doesn't apply.

If penalties or bonuses that are not single sense are applied, they do not overlap. So if an Adept has Enhanced Perception 3 and glasses with +2 Enhanced Vision and earbuds with +3 Enhanced Hearing, their total bonus is + 6, since the Hearing overlaps the Vision.

For most stealth, Vision and Hearing are almost always applied, unless, for example there's only a microphone in the area or the hunter is blinded. Creatures with Enhanced Sense (Scent) like Dogs (and their awakened cousins) can use Scent bonuses alongside hearing and vision. Taste could be used if the hunter was a snake or other similar creature.

Olfactory Tests and Chem Sniffers

Chem sniffers are a generic term for: Olfactory Scanner, Olfactory Booster, Chemsniffer Ring, Chemical Detect Nail polish, the noses of critters/adepts with Enhanced Sense (Scent)

  1. Olfactory Scanners roll their rating and have a range of 3 meters
  2. Olfactory Booster roll their Intuition+Perception plus their rating and have a range of LOS
  3. Chemsniffer Rings roll twice their rating and have a range of 1 meter
  4. Ch/emical Detect Nail Polish rolls twice its rating and has a range of touch
  5. Enhanced Noses rolls Intuition+Perception and has a range of LOS
  • LOS of course being Line Of Scent, like Earshot, being hard to define and the GM's final call

Chem sniffers can:

  1. detect exploses/ammo (Threshold 2)
  2. detect toxins with a threshold of 15-Power
  3. detect creatures with an opposed Stealth Test (this stealth test requires the character to intentionally use Scent based stealth or else Stealth successes are reduced by 2)
  4. detect drugs (threshold 5-Addiction threshold)
  5. detect Reagents 4
  6. magical Preparations 10-Force

The following modifiers apply:

  1. Ammo +1/10 bullets (round down)
  2. Grenade +1/Grenade
  3. Non-plastique explosive +1/30g
  4. Plastique +1/100g
  5. Stored In Plastic -1
  6. Designer Drug -2
  7. Street Cooked Drug +1
  8. Inhalation vector toxin deployed -5 Threshold
  9. Inhalation vector drug deployed +3 Dice
  10. Tailored Pheromones (or other pheromone alteration) -1 Threshold

Pheromone Detection Software

Allows the character to identify any pheromone alteration, requires a chem sniffer on the character's Persona via DNI. This means that if a creature's scent is detected (they did not pass a stealth roll), then Perfumes, Tailored Pheromones, Tailored Critter Pheromones, and so on are all identified automatically.

Drug Sniffing Dogs

Critters without the sapience power (dogs, Hellhounds, Cockatrices, and so on) do not automatically find drugs or toxins. If they have been trained that an area is home, they will automatically search for intruders, but other things are different.

Animals need to be taught a trick to search for Drugs, Toxins, Explosives, Ammo, Reagents, and so on (as per Howling Shadows), the tricks are:

  1. Ammo
  2. Explosives (includes Explosive and Ex-Explosive ammo which is included above)
  3. Synthetic Drugs
  4. Awakened Drugs
  5. Magical Preparations
  6. Magical Compounds
  7. Reagents
  8. Toxins (by vector)