Per the SRD, Listen and Spot skills may be used to determine awareness for surprise rounds: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/initiative.htm The ToEE manual states that the Listen skill "can alert you to the presence of enemies, taking away surprise rounds (for example, the enemy could surprise your character, but she succeeds in making the Listen check and manages to avoid a surprise round), or possibly even give your party a surprise round (in turn, you are able to surprise the enemy)." As for the Spot skill, the ToEE manual says that it's "used solely as an opposed check against Hide and is rolled automatically to determine success or failure." Surprise rounds are not explicitly mentioned. Does anyone know whether the Spot skill is actually used in ToEE surprise/initiative calculations?
There are no surprise rounds in ToEE. Initiative is just rolled as you normally expect from d20 rules. On that note theres some leftover code for surprise rounds but it doesnt do anything.
Does this mean that Listen/Spot are essentially useless in ToEE? I've seen a lot of feedback that suggests otherwise, but perhaps these players are assuming that the manual/SDR are in line with the implementation instead of having experienced the skills' effect for themselves, let alone reviewed the code.
I think they play into how far away enemies appear on random encounter maps (in conjunction with Survival).
Apparently, yes, and I found a situation where you might get pickpocketed by an NPC: http://www.co8.org/community/index....on-dealing-with-dala-might-be-a-spoiler.9588/. Not sure if it can happen elsewhere. Although Listen/Spot might have a few niche applications, if they are not used for initiative/surprise rounds, their value is greatly diminished and possibly not worth the investment at the expense of more important skills. In addition, surprise rounds might have been the only reason to give *all* of your characters Listen/Spot. The remaining applications of these skills can probably be handled by a single character in the party, allowing players to reduce the investment and still be covered for the rare situations where these skills are useful.
