If a character is not being actively hunted, but they want to avoid being noticed by a group of people, it is acceptable to roll Dexterity + Stealth or Wits + Stealth, against a flat difficulty without a resisted roll, but frequently characters have to sneak past specific people. Such Stealth attempts are normally opposed by resisted Perception + Alertness.
It is beyond the ability of most sane Game Masters to predetermine the Perception + Alertness pool of every person the PCs may encounter, so here is a chart to provide guidelines for figuring out a random person’s Perception + Alertness on the fly.
Perception + Alertness of Random NPCs
1 Comically oblivious people
2 Scarterrans with relatively sheltered lives.
3 Most Scarterrans
4 A soldier who periodically gets assigned to take watch duty
5 A person’s whose livelihood depends on being aware such as a full-time guard or a shepherd guarding his flock.
6 A person’s whose very life depends on being alert such as a seasoned bounty hunter or a cat burglar
7-10 Heroes and villains known for their sensory prowess
If evading a group, a Game Master can roll for every NPC in said group but that is normally inefficient. It’s best to roll the highest Perception + Alertness of a group only and if the group is aided by fairly alert people helping in a reasonable fashion (like a search party or guard patrol), lower the difficulty of the persons roll by a point or two if it’s a very large group.
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