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You're right, you mentioned a distraction indeed (I meant retreat as an extradiegetic description).
In theses cases, don't your PCs find it a bit artificial a xeno would break from a (fire)fight to run to another one, leaving them a miraculous chance to live a bit longer?

Lokaarth, you meant my players (not the PCs) when you said, "Don't your PCs find it a bit artificial that a xenomorph would break from a fight to run to another one?" ...

Hi folks, I have a related question regarding opposed passive observation rolls made against drones, soldiers and scouts, which have the Silent Assassin rule (p217), meaning players roll two less dice for observation. I think the players will quickly realise this as the situation repeats. How do you tell the players to roll two less dice without giving the game away that they're in proximity to one of these creatures?

I was thinking of giving the xeno two MORE dice for their roll, made in secret by the GM, but how do others handle this?

Well, xenos most often use the Ambush choice if they win the observation roll which means that they are revealed. If they loose or tie the observation roll they are also revealed.
NPCs may be a bit more versatile when it comes to what they do so they might ambush, remain hidden or back out. In this case the players know that something was hard to detect, but they don't know if it was a Stealthy NPC or a Silent Assassin xeno (that doesn't want to ambush for some reason).

So yes it might come into play if the sneaking enemy is an NPC and the GM doesn't want to ambush with the NPC and in those cases you could use the +2 approach.

Personally when it comes to make these observation roll and the NPC I roll for is someone that I want to remain hidden I make the observation roll a player faced roll (i.e. I don't roll for the NPC, I simply set the successes they get). The pre-set number of successes they roll against in this case is one success for each 4 dice they would have rolled. So if an NPC has a total of 6 in Observation, I will give them one success or two successes if they have the talent Stealthy or if they are in a very dark area. I do this to avoid ruin a good scenario by having extremely bad luck (or good luck for that matter), making the only variable, the players roll.