nevinera's page

Somehow I had never looked up "Hellcat Stealth", assuming it to be a class ability or something.. while I was looking for a homebrew (and getting confused why nobody had written one), I determined that that feat chain totally exists, and my last rogue was wildly inefficient.

Just out of curiosity, why would you think you need to make a Stealth check every round to stay hidden? You're generally not required to reroll unless you take some action that would cause you to break stealth, such as attacking, running, or charging, or if an enemy takes a move action to actively search for you. Regaining psionic focus wouldn't cause you to break stealth, so that shouldn't be an issue.

*Edit*
Just saw that you're using the modified stealth rules, so I'm not sure how that changes things.

It is supposed to be more costly and less efficient than Hide in Plain Sight normally is though; it comes online 5-10 levels earlier than most any other class accesses it, and it's intended to be a stealthy replacement for the Disengage class ability, essentially allowing you to break away from a combat that's gotten too personal and find some cover.

The stealth rules are incredibly underspecified. From the description of the skill, it appears that you can (without HiPS) move around staying *entirely* within concealment during a turn without prompting another stealth check, but it is unclear what other actions during a turn might prompt a new check. Picking a lock? Opening a chest? Tickling a guard's bum? The skill's description doesn't indicate that anything besides attacking or stepping out of concealment breaks stealth.

Most of that stuff is fairly obvious, and gets handled via GM fiat just fine. But once you toss HiPS into the mix, everything gets much stranger - now you can leave concealment without prompting a stealth check, which means that you pretty much can just walk around inside the room with the guard as he makes his tea. There's no obvious edge to where you *ought* to require a new stealth check, but only the most insanely supernatural ideas of stealth would allow that to make sense - even the most unrealistically skilled ninjas of fiction would have to run some risks to silently stay in the guy's blind spot as he putters around the break room (Break Rooms being my favored terrain). It breaks the narrative to indicate that you can walk a slow circle around the guard while he's watching, and not get seen.

The looser rules we had been playing by handled HiPS by letting you end your turn still not in concealment, but you still needed to make a stealth roll to not get noticed during the movement (vs normal stealth, in which you cannot end your turn unconcealed and remain hidden). This gave a convenient place for the GM to pull a penalty number out of his rear indicating how hard it would be to go unnoticed while you did whatever you were doing. The modified ones I linked to earlier clean that up quite a bit, but still function in a similar way - each round during which the other party could perceive you, you have to roll your stealth. If you know of a writeup of how HiPS ought to play out with the stealth approach you must be playing with, can you link it to me?

Your explanation of the intent of Shroud's HiPS makes sense - it functions less as a cloak-and-dagger infiltration tool, and more as an escape tool. Not what I was hoping for, but such is life. There really should just be a feat chain that gives the ability (maybe I'll brew one) - I hate having to build all my infiltrator characters with combat reflexes, dodge, and mobility to dip Shadowdancer..

The Marksman archetype 'shroud' has a "Hide in Plain Sight" feature (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/marksman/archetypes/dre amscarred-press/shroud)

Hide in Plain Sight

A shroud of 7th level or higher can use the Stealth skill even when being observed by expending her psionic focus when making her Stealth skill check.

This ability replaces Disengage.

But I'm having trouble understanding how it works exactly. It says that to 'expend your psionic focus' when making the check.. but in any situation where HiPS would be useful, you need to make at least one stealth check per round (one for staying stealthed and then one for any extra action you perform, like opening a door, or regaining focus with meditation).

It looks to me like you cannot Hide in Plain Sight for more than one round, unlike every other incarnation of the ability - you can't regain your focus while stealthed as a move action without making another stealth check, can you? Am I misunderstanding the ability, misunderstanding its intent, or is it just very weak compared to other sources of HiPS?

We're also using modified stealth rules (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2oxkx?New-Stealth-Rules), so I'm more interested in the functional intent than in the rules as written - is it supposed to allow longer-term HiPS, or just one round?

Can I snag a copy of the final version?

I have to see how hard it is to convert an adventure path, but the "really early" version google gives me is already very interesting to read. You seemed to pay careful attention to correcting some of the problems that bother me most about the base system, so I can't wait to see where you landed at the end of it :-)

>Monk//Druid is actually a really solid gestalt.

I find that surprising - now I'll have to roll one up and see :-)

>Have you considered using player-controlled henchmen with NPC classes? They can shore up action economy and provide some additional support without stealing the limelight from the PCs. Maybe just a couple warriors or a warrior and an adept for some extra healing and divinations?

I didn't think of it, no - all the npcs mentioned so far in the path have normal character levels, the simplicity of this approach interests me.

>The spellcasting thing I would be leery on, honestly.

I am, I just couldn't come up with any other way to let them be competitive. NPC casters to tag along also works though.

>I have some house rules which allow new saves each round for stuff like Dazing Spell, Fear, and Greater Forbid Action, so the chances of the party being completely neutralized by a single effect for long enough to get TPK'd probably shouldn't be any worse than in a normal game with 4 PCs but no house rules.

I'm stealing that house rule, thanks :-)

Overall, I'm seeing:

1. Break the spell-casting off into tag-along npcs
2. Gestalts are fine!
3. they'll probably still die
4. Let them level ahead

My reaction is to think that maybe we should go with gestalts after all, and use XP as written to keep them a level ahead of the expected position. If druid-monk actually works well, then we can probably help construct a viable character for my non-munchkin to play at least.

Should I try to keep the complexity in check with some multiclassing restrictions, or just let him go to town?

Edit: I hear you Wiggs, but I'm a relatively new GM, and I'm interested in keeping my cognitive load as low as I can - running additional named characters alongside the PCs would probably make for a better story, but I'm going to have trouble using them properly, especially if I keep changing them out and having to pick up new sets of mechanics.

>May I inquire what you consider so 'Munchkinable' about Gestalt? Keep in mind the AP is expecting 4 characters and you only have two.

It was when my optimizer started talking about the possibilities of a [bloodrager 1/skald N geslated with an alchemist 2/summoner N] that I realized what was going to happen if I let him build a full gestalt. If I tie him into no-multiclassing at all, it's harder to abuse, but he can still swing it. I have a bit of a munchkin in me as well, and my best idea for playing a pair through here was a summoner/druid gestalt filling the field while a half-orc skald/holy tactician paladin rages the group and shares out amplified rage via the tactician's aura.

And I read your point on 2 characters vs 4 - if they were *both* like that, it would be entertaining to see what they come up with. But one doesn't play like that - he plays original monk because he 'likes the idea', and I'm pretty sure his gestalt pick would be monk/wildshaper druid, becase kung-fu panda.

>I don't really understand point 5. Do you mean that the two PCs will be the same level as a normal group of four PCs?

No, the rules for staggered advancement in Unchained allow characters to gain part of the benefits of their next level when they get halfway there. And yes, I was planning them to be the same level as a normal group of pcs would be expected to be.

>Will you, as GM, force your players to go through a grueling 4+ hours of the exact same thing just so your players can retry the trap?

As a GM, I don't allow party-wide save-or-die traps; if I encounter on in the adventure path, I'll convert it somehow to drop them into a disadvantageous combat situation instead, or to trigger an obvious alarm that is certainly going to cause their death if they stick around, etc. But your point is a good one - if they tpk on a boss after a full-session dungeon crawl, I'll offer that they just try the fight again first (they may have been beat down on the way sufficiently that that won't do it though). Save points were meant to be a rule-of-thumb, and I'm mostly concerned with having a good time - the rules there are meant to avoid save-scumming, not to make my players do a lot of work.

>My solution was to have the players both run two characters each.

We tried that at one point on a module. They were able to keep up mechanically, but role-play got completely lost. It's too difficult to identify with more than one character at the same time. I might be able to get past that by making one of the characters for each of them a boring character that obeys orders from the other. Not sure how to model that in-story, but I could work something out. I think I'll keep that as a reserve option - it wouldn't be too difficult to extract the caster part out into another character later if we had to.

>Point Buy is the devil.

I don't disagree, but I assume you're talking about it from an optimizers-abuse-it point of view? I don't generally allow multiple dump stats, and I do try to hit players on their weak points (social encounters for the wizard-pariah, for example) often enough to make full-dumping unattractive.

>Save points require a lot more book work

Yeah, I didn't think through how much I'd have to keep track of to make that work. Maybe just restoring from the most recent point they could reasonably have extracted themselves would be better? The goal is to keep the balance problems inherent in modifying the game for two players from killing them unfairly.. but that might be an impossible task anyway.

I'm GMing a run through Rise of the Runelords that will just have two players, one a serious munchkin/optimizer, and one who just likes to play. We tried a session with multi-character play once, and it absolutely crushed our ability to role-play, but gestalt rules turn the game into 'what abilities are absolutely broken together?'

My hopeful solution is to houserule in some extra power and a few safeguards to allow my players to have a shot at living through it, without having to modify all of the encounters in the whole path. Here are the mods:

1. only one class (no original summoner), with one free variant multiclass (don't lose the feats for it)
2. gain the spellcasting ability of one other class, as CL - 1 (no class features etc).
2b. Alternatively, gain the animal companion and wild empathy class features as a druid of CL - 1.
3. 25 point-buy
4. Free skill unlocks for class skills (unchained rogue gets extra bonus feats to replace edge)
5. staggered advancement (two phases instead of four - we will be levelling as expected, rather than by xp)
6. Automatic bonus progression (any replaced loot found will be instantly sold for half value)
7. Save points before each dungeon/major adventure (roughly each session) - once per chapter (rolling over), you can restore after a tpk. If one of them was still alive and escaped, it only costs half of a save point.

I cannot tell if I am under-powering or over-powering them - I suspect it depends on what kind of characters they build. If I had to guess what they will build:

1. An unchained monk (rogue) with an animal companion
2. An unchained summoner (gunslinger) with oracle spell

What do you think? Part of the goal is to make characters that are gestalt-ey, but not as munchkinable, and part of the goal is to make my players feel like they are really working for their success. Also, I just got unchained, so a lot of that won't make sense to people that haven't. Sorry about that >.<