Listening/Hearing and the rules
 

Hi everybody,

allthough doing a Forum search, I did not find an answer to this question:

Is there an asset, that enables characters to listen carefully to their surroundings?

IIRC it was very hard to listen, when you wear a helmet. The slightest movement of the air produced some kind of noise (on the edge of the steel helmet). Certain sounds are obvious: You can hear a tracked (and in most cases wheeled) vehicle, you can hear the firing of a gun, explosions, even people talking, if you are close enough. When I was serving, we usually did not wear helmets, when we patrolled a wooded area - because we were tasked to listen. On my only reserve exercise, we had to wear helmets (Mostly because of the reports of Falkland veterans of the British Army, who had losses from fragments, that injured people's heads.).

In most cases the characters will avoid sounds, using their stealth skills, when they sneak up on a foe's position. But what to do, if the PCs are the guys, who are sneaked up by some enemy? I could just make a roll versus the enemy's stealth asset, but I would like it more, if the players could make a roll for their charakter.

Any suggestions? How do you handle such situations or do you have some kind of houserule?

Is might not be the answer your looking for, but here's mine. In my campaign I run v1 with some house rules. I have added the alertness trait. It's completely seperate from the other traits. It's based on the 4D6(-4) and I use it regularly.

I would probably just keep it simple and use the characters' observation skill for listening. It follows that if they're more observant, they're probably going to hear/notice more.

The system we used in my campaigns has a Hearing stat (and Eyesight, Smell/Taste and Touch stats). To determine whether a character hears a noise the GM would assign a difficulty multiplier to a hearing check and the player would roll a d100 against it. For instance, a relatively easy hearing check might have a x 5 multiplier, so the player would multiply his character's Hearing stat by 5 and try to roll under that amount on a d100.

A roll which is under the required amount and divisible by 5 (for instance, 05, 10, 15, 20 etc) is a critical success. A roll under the required amount but not divisible by 5 is a marginal success. Same logic applies for rolls over the required number, interms of critical failures/marginal failures.

The base hearing stat might be reduced for wearing a helmet or other head covering that covered the ears. Many (actually most) military characters would have their hearing stat reduced during char gen due to long exposure to loud noises.

I use Observation myself.

Interesting. What system is that by the way?

Hey, I've been good! I didn't mention the "System That Shall Not Be Named".

LOL... I thought I'd catch you off guard.

Hah! You nearly did. 0500 start at work this morning and my mind isn't feeling very sharp.

Paranoia. :D

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean little green men AREN'T out to get you!

I'm not worried about the little green men. It's the gray ones you have to watch.....

I agree with Raellus and Fusilier - I make it a contested roll between the one person's Stealth skill and the other person's Observation skill (whether it's an NPC sneaking up on a PC or a PC sneaking up on an NPC) with appropriate "situational" modifiers. If the task check is particularly relevant to hearing and the person observing was wearing a helmet I would probably apply a -1 penalty to their Observation skill for the task check.

Thanks a lot, guys!

I'll do it the way, Mahatatain solves these situations.

Again, this Forum has been a great help.

Glad to help! :)

One of the guys I know never liked the notion of using Observation as a check against the other senses e.g. hearing or smell and his game group didn't want hundreds of extra skills that have limited use so they made a new skill called Awareness (I think they stole it from Cyberpunk 2020).

It covers all the other senses (hearing, smell, touch, taste) along with sense of balance, temperature and movement etc.
The reason for that was simple - one of the PCs was temporarily blinded and the player thought it was daft that tests involving his sense of smell and hearing were made on a skill that implies the use of sight.
The Awareness skill was typically half the character's Observation skill for character generation but was raised as normal during gameplay

I'll dig out some rules i found in Merc. They cover distances and stuff for looking/listening. They will give you some reference for ranges, modifiers (ie rain) etc. I'd still use observation as the skill, but use these other additional rules for when and how difficult looking/listening is. I'll post back here in a bit ....

Hi kcdusk!

Thank you. I have a copy of merc2000 and I use the noise levels. I think, these are very helpfull and should have been in the "yellow bible". But I still think, they do not solve the afformentioned problem.

But it would be nice, to post them. If anyone does not have them, they are woth a look or two!

@ StainlessSteelCynic: A good idea! I'll give it some concideration. The reason, why I did not use the skill:Observation in the past is, that I've allways thought, observation was meant as everything involving optical/sight things.

+1
 

Me too. I also let PCs loose observation points if their hearing is impaired for instance by damage from explosions etc.

I keep a tab on "handicaps" on the PCs on my XP sheet. If someone is half deaf but eyes like an eagle he will roll using obs skill for visual and say diff obs skill for hearing..

Hi there, HQ!

What kind of handicaps do you have on this list?

This is again a very fruitful thought!