Camouflage: Unformed idea
Technically I’m sorta stealing this from the SJ Forums user Kallatari, but not exactly.
There’s a thread that just cropped up on the Camouflage skill and the distinction between Camouflage and Stealth. This is an old discussion, but still mostly unresolved.
Maybe a successful Camouflage roll subtracts from the bonus you get for being In Plain Sight.
You’d want to balance it such that in order to completely remove it, you need the right materials and plenty of time.
Again, not fully formed, but Stealth to me is about movement, sound, and picking the right time to make transitions. It’s about not being seen in the first place, not blending in with the environment.
Anyway, +Jake Bernstein has been egging me on to unify all of the sensory rules in the same way I tried to do in Dodge This. This might be my starting point.
Yes. A thousand times yes, please do! And also, this is pretty clever. In fact, it makes a lot of sense. Margin of Success on Camouflage could simply subtract 1 for 1 from the IPS bonus, with a crit (which is success by 10 often anyway), completely eliminating it.
Problem is that people often camouflage themselves and then hide in a ridge line or something. You CAN camouflage yourself and then sit down in the middle of a field. You usually don't.
I think camouflage MoS acting as a negative TDM to visual perception checks (and others, if you disguise your scent/noise/etc) makes more sense. Will still eat into the In Plain Sight mod if you're trying to pretend to be a shrub in the middle of the field, but has further benefits if you're being sneakier.