I’m working a Skills guide for my players. (And to share.)
I like tinkering with the rules sometimes.
As I’m writing up this guide, and I get to Stealth, a thought popped into my head. Why not make Stealth based on Cunning instead of Agility.
It makes a bit of sense to me. Skulduggery, Deception, Streetwise are all Cunning skills. Stealth is about trickery as well. Hiding a blaster from a search. Creeping around Jabba’s palace unseen. Picking the right hiding place when the bounty hunters come a’ calling.
It would make Cunning incredibly powerful for rogue-type characters, as all of their main skills would fall under it (plus Survival). Splitting Stealth off does serve as something of a counterbalance and forces splitting your growth rather than min-maxing Cunning. Additionally, you could argue that Stealth is just as much about body control and precision–Agility, in other words–as it is about guile or cunning.
Currently Agility is very powerful characteristic for a wide array of character types. Piloting, Ranged, Gunnery, Coordination, and (RAW) Stealth.
Yes, Cunning would shift a little for your rogue types. However, your rogue types are probably also stressing their Agility as well.
Stealth is sneaking around unseen. Stealth is also used for wilderness camouflage skills. Hiding people or objects “either through concealment or misdirection,” shadowing and following,
Stealth checks are usually opposed by Perception [Cunning].
Extra successes can be used to help allies also Stealth. “Effectively, the successful character points out a factor that might otherwise have caused the ally to fail.”
I think Stealth might fall more under an umbrella of guile or trickery than how well you can move your body.
Honestly, I think it’s kind of a pedantic in the long run. It’s also most certainly something people have changed in the past. I’ve also seen some people argue the opposite about some skills, like Skulduggery.
Really, IMO, the argument could have gone either way as far back as the beta- or even alpha-tests, but the developers landed where it’s at for reasons that might be found buried in the FFG forum archive, if at all. I take the view that it’s an abstract game element and not worry about it, as the way the CRB describes some skills and the way them actually used them in the game are often different.