Has anyone else noticed that wearing the ghoul mask makes the radroaches in vicinity of ghouls ignore you but if they're encountered away from ghouls they attack?

Once your sneak skill gets to a certain point, don't know what the number is, the radroaches, at least in my experience, become friendly characters on my pip boy, and run right past me. Only if I initiate a beat down do they turn hostile. When I have followers however, they tend to freak out and run all over the place chasing roaches. Kinda annoying sometimes.

Ooooh, that's what that is. Thought it was just a glitch. Or that roaches liked me once they got to know me better.

I don't really think that it is related to your Sneak skill. Some roaches in the metro tunnels did show up as friendly for some very low level and low stealth characters of mine. I think these roaches are acting like that, no matter what.

Thanks for the replies, since posting I've had them scitter past me when wearing the mask and other times attacking, so perhaps it is sneak rather than the mask.

I doubt it is the sneak skill. Mine is 100+ and most roaches are red. Some metro roaches are blue, and those run past my character very fast like they are running from something. However, I never find what they are running from.

What I've noticed about them, and I've never confirmed this in the GECK, just from experience, is if you don't get close enough to them they aren't a problem. They seem to have a pretty small radius that you have to enter to aggro them. Also, if you move past them quickly enough they don't seem to aggro, or if they do, they don't pursue, or if they do, they don't go far after you; not like a viscious dog would, for instance.

I don't know the actual reason, but I doubt it's that. I never wear the mask (which I probably should due to extreme fear of ghouls..) and never get radroach aggro either. They're rather lazy actually. If they end up having a problem with me, they aren't very persistent. The only time I've had radroaches stalk me to death was at the very beginning of the game, while I was still in 101.