Prowl is broken?

Lord-Sion · Post by **Lord-Sion** » Mon Nov 03, 2008 1:59 am

Hey there! Had a question to ask here.

Is prowl broken? Or am i just using it wrong? I am thinking about the baldur's gate / Icewind dale Stealth. I begun my game with 1 in prowl, raised it to 2 and nothing happened. Every monster and creature saw me miles away. After an hour of swearing i made a new character and raised prowl to 4 with a savegame editor. And what happens? The damn wolf's still atack me!

So is prowl anything like stealth? Am i using it wrong? Or is it just very bloody underpowered ?

-Lord Sion

GuiOhm · Post by **GuiOhm** » Mon Nov 03, 2008 9:08 am

PROWLING
--------
When you activate the prowling skill, all NPCs on the screen will have an
awareness level of your presence. The levels are: Safe, Risky, Dangerous,
Perilous, and Aware. You can basically get away with sneaking around a
person if it is Safe or Risky. If it becomes Dangerous, chances are the
person will shift to Aware in a few seconds, especially if your prowl skill
is low. Perilous, you should only get this close if the NPC is asleep.

If an NPC is sleeping, apparently the NPC will not wake-up unless you
try to do a pick pocket and fail. This is especially useful when sneaking
into shops at night to steal some goodies.

The higher your Prowl skill, the closer you can get to an NPC without
him becoming aware. Most NPCs also have less visibility in darkness,
so try to do your sneaking at night.

Q: How do I douse a torch or lantern?
A: Sorry, I don't know yet. I don't think it matters, though.

Also, what you wear has a big effect on your prowling percentage. Noise is
a factor in prowling, and most armors have an NP (Noise Penalty) rating
which impairs or aids your skulking around. For instance, Bronze Plate
has a NP of -50%, which really makes it unsuitable for thieves prowling
around. Leather Armor is only -10%. Some items actually help you sneak,
like the Elven Boots which give a +10% chance.

Take note that, depending on whether you are tech or magical, some items
may or may not give you their bonuses. For instance, if you are highly
technical, Elven Boots (which are magical) will not give you the sneak
bonus.

Taken from a random Arcanum thief guide.

Basically, prowling mainly works if the person (or animal in your case) you want to sneak past isn't already aggressive... something most, if not all, wild animals are. You might want to check the whole guide if you're planning on playing a thief.

Lord-Sion · Post by **Lord-Sion** » Mon Nov 03, 2008 10:09 am

Thank you for the answer!

I have to say that i am very dissapointed with prowl. Its quite worthless if it only works like that, atleast in my opinion. I am going to put the points into other stuff instead.

-Lord Sion

GuiOhm · Post by **GuiOhm** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 3:49 am

Well, think of it as a skill for urban thieves, not really for hunters. It's not much help to avoid combat in the wilderness, but it does come in handy when you're robbing honest folks in town ^^
But if you put points there from the start, you'll have to wait until you get to Shrouded Hills to get some use out of them.

Deadalready · Post by **Deadalready** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 4:46 am

Prowl is extremely powerful (if not brokenly powerful), in order to be effective it requires pretty much maxed points and full training in all levels.

With maxed prowl it's possible to dissappear in combat and dissasemble enemies at leisure. Remember this isn't much use with party members or with ranged weapons.

The game difficultly seems to affect its effectiveness (or cheesiness).