Yet another Stealth question

[Fedorchik1536]

It seems that Stealth gives you no benefits while in combat, but I can spot some threads here about sniping or sneak attacking in combat due too stealth. And other threads, about Stealth being strictly non-combat skill and the only benefit it may grant is a surprise round for stealthed character.

The question is 'Which part is true and why?'

If first part is true (Stealth may provide some combat bonuses, like sneak attacking), what part of rules states it? Current Stealth description from PRD says you are threated as if you have concealment and concealment grants no combat benefits aside from, well, concealment (duh). There is also some part about 'not aware', but it is never explained in the rules.

If second part is true (you may only have surprise round from Stealth), than what if we have stealthed Rogue before the combat but he is not the one who starts a combat and he does nothing in the first round of combat (for whatever reason)? Did he just blew up his opportunity to make a sneak attack? Or what about 'highly optimized' halfling/goblin/gnome shadowdancer, who's Stealth is so high that no one can beat his stealth check and his class feature allows him to stealth anytime he wants (lets assume he's fighting in some shadowy [dim lighted] room and his opponents have no means to negate it's effect)? Does he never gets any bonus for being, basically, undetectable? There actually IS something about 'not aware' in Stealth description.

[Honorable Goblin]

The general consensus is that the first part (being stealth-ed allows you to make sneak-attacks) is how it's supposed to work.

One quick thing:

Fedorchik1536 wrote:

. . .Current Stealth description from PRD says you are threated [sic] as if you have concealment. . .

The PRD is actually slightly inaccurate; they omitted the word "total" before "concealment." If you download the errata, it says:

Errata wrote:

"Page 106—In the Stealth skill, in the Check section, in the first paragraph, add the following sentence after the first sentence:

Creatures that fail to beat your Stealth check are not aware of you and treat you as if you had total concealment. Emphasis mine.

RAW, having concealment or total concealment does not deny your target its DEX to AC; HOWEVER, the devs have said that it was intended for your target to be denied its DEX to AC if it's unaware of you (e.g. you are using stealth), so most people house rule it this way.

EDIT: This post is the closest thing to showing that, by RAW, stealth denies your target its DEX to AC (therefore allowing you to SA). A bit lawyer-y but I follow his logic.

[darth_borehd]

It's worked that way in every d20-based game too.

[Fedorchik1536]

So it's kinda like "Screw rules, we want our SA!", right?
Well, thanks for answers!

[Xaratherus]

Actually, it very much allows you to deny DEX by RAW. There was an errata to the skill that was published a couple months back, and the designers stated the intent of that errata was to allow you to use stealth to deny DEX.

The DEX denial isn't granted because of concealment, but because you can use stealth to keep your attacker unaware.

You can see the errata as the portions of the Stealth skill description in italics on the PRD.