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Ill continue to run it the way i do for avoid notixe though it may well be that the same setealth roll is then used ro determine initiative, whcih i will concedde iant clear.

If you’re Avoiding Notice at the start of an encounter, you usually roll a Stealth check instead of a Perception check both to determine your initiative and to see if the enemies notice you (based on their Perception DCs, as normal for Sneak, regardless of their initiative check results).

Core Rulebook (479)

Normal sneak rules apply for initiative. Which means
A) you need some kind of cover or concealment or it automatically crit fails.
B) a normal failure makes you hidden.
C) a critical failure makes you observed.

It is hard to remember the distinction between B and C. If the hidden party fails their initiative sneak check, they can still treat the enemy as flatfooted, get the 50% mischance, and can even sneak away without ever being properly seen.

That last one is fun because it leaves the enemy wondering if there actually was something after all.

Thanks for that although the results for sneak and hide are actually on page 251-252 this is what happena when I rely on archives of nethys for checking rules , i completely missed the beimg stealthy box out on page 251.

So if the group can remain undetected by their opponent they can theoretically avoid getting close enough to start the encounter if they roll high enough on their original stealth check to Avoid Notice but if they then have to get close enough to start an encounter they roll initiative, can then remain sneaking and if they roll high enough on that stealth check them they could theoretically remain undetected while they get past their opponent. Thanks @Captain Morgan

syrath wrote:

There is a dc for the check, have a look under the stealth skill

If you specifically look under hide , sneak etc there is an instruction how to make that stealth check, eg hide is a follows

You are demonstrating that there is not a DC for the check when you say I should look under completely different rules elements to find it.

I don't have to check other activities that use the same skill for any other case, so why does this one get free reign to only function if a GM inserts the DC-determining details of a different action?

Answer: It doesn't, and that's how I am 100% certain that the rule doesn't work the way people that read it as being 2 different checks are reading it as working.

So given the section i quote from the gm guide, all you need to do is be hidden at the start of combat is avoid notice . Even if your initiative(stealth) roll is 1 you are hidden (though detected) at the start of combat. So given the rules below you can never fail to hide as long as you Avoid Notice before combat you start either undetected or hidden. No stealth check required as you succeed even when you roll below the Perception DC. As per below.

Edit as for having to look.elsewhere for rules i had to get the rules described on page 468 for initiative, for what happens if you roll for stealth and roll lower or higher than your opponents Perception DC on page 11 of the GM guide ive found that unfortunately the rules are all over the place.

When one or both sides of an impending battle are being stealthy, you’ll need to deal with the impacts of Stealth on the start of the encounter. Anyone who’s Avoiding Notice should attempt a Stealth check for their initiative. All the normal bonuses and penalties apply, including any bonus for having cover. You can give them the option to roll Perception instead, but if they do they forsake their Stealth and are definitely going to be detected.

To determine whether someone is undetected by other participants in the encounter, you still compare their Stealth check for initiative to the Perception DC of their enemies. They’re undetected by anyone whose DC they meet or exceed. So what do you do if someone rolls better than everyone else on initiative, but all their foes beat their Perception DC? Well, all the enemies are undetected, but not unnoticed. That means the participant who rolled high still knows someone is around, and can start moving about, Seeking, and otherwise preparing to fight. The characters Avoiding Notice still have a significant advantage, since that character needs to spend actions and attempt additional checks in order to find them. What if both sides are sneaking about? They might just sneak past each other entirely, or they might suddenly run into one another if they’re heading into the same location.

Ill repeat the important part here

So what do you do if someone rolls better than everyone else on initiative, but all their foes beat their Perception DC? Well, all the enemies are undetected, but not unnoticed.

So, if what you say is correct, then someone at level 1 , untrained in stealth with a 6 DEX , and wearing full plate is going to go into combat hidden against a level 20 investigator and no roll will change that as the only two results are lower than Perception DC you are detected but still Hidden, and higher you remain undetected altogether.

In fact going further that same person standing in bright daylight in the middle of open ground with no cover just needs to declare they are avoiding notice and they start combat hidden and get the benefits of sneak attack even if they roll a 1 for the initiative(stealth) check (as they are hidden)

For reference though the section is on thr GM guide

When one or both sides of an impending battle are being stealthy, you’ll need to deal with the impacts of Stealth on the start of the encounter. Anyone who’s Avoiding Notice should attempt a Stealth check for their initiative. All the normal bonuses and penalties apply, including any bonus for having cover. You can give them the option to roll Perception instead, but if they do they forsake their Stealth and are definitely going to be detected.

To determine whether someone is undetected by other participants in the encounter, you still compare their Stealth check for initiative to the Perception DC of their enemies. They’re undetected by anyone whose DC they meet or exceed. So what do you do if someone rolls better than everyone else on initiative, but all their foes beat their Perception DC? Well, all the enemies are undetected, but not unnoticed. That means the participant who rolled high still knows someone is around, and can start moving about, Seeking, and otherwise preparing to fight. The characters Avoiding Notice still have a significant advantage, since that character needs to spend actions and attempt additional checks in order to find them. What if both sides are sneaking about? They might just sneak past each other entirely, or they might suddenly run into one another if they’re heading into the same location.

So using the above a player remains hidden but detected if they roll low on the initiative/stealth check. So i was wrong about them no longer being hidden

Captain Morgan

Not everyone wants to be undetected / wants to use Stealth.
Typical situations I have GMed many times:
Ranger uses his cloak of Elvenkind - goes invisible while the rest of the group triggers.
Magic trickster stays out of side while the rest of the r group triggers the encounter by opening the door.

I’m often in a situation where avoid notice is auto success. I don’t even bother to ask the player to roll for it. But he/she still needs initiative.

Yes - I use 3D terrain as well as dynamic lighting. This means part of the group can be out of side. Both monsters and players.

I often have players going around a corner and say - oh - there are more. It also means a single char is without cover against monster A but out of sight for monster B.

I allow Stealth as initiative if player declare it ahead (default is perception) and if they try in some way to be stealthy.

If they (I) roll to be unnoticed depends.

Out of sight - auto success
Monster with chemical sense while you hide behind a desk with open door behind you - auto fail
Invisibility - often auto success - especially if you have loud and visible allies attacking at the same time
Invisibility - but the monster had true seeing / tremor sense? Oh - I let you believe you succeeded.

At my table declaring Avoid Notice has a dual purpose: a) someone truly wants to avoid notice b) someone declares he wants to use Stealth as initiative for the next encounter

There is also the issue of secret checks vs a player likes to roll a dice. A player might not like if I apply his secret check done 5 minutes earlier to his initiative.

So one roll, two rolls, secret GM roll, open player roll?

It depends. And if I did a secret GM roll earlier then I always allow the player to roll him/herself for initiative again.

Sorry for tthe double post, but to answer this a bit more dirextly.

I've been trying to say to the OP was that from reading the post I felt that they rolled once for stealth when the players decide to avoid notice and then use that result for the initiative roll.

What l am trying to say is that you make a Stealth skill (hide) when you avoid notice , but when it comes to starting an encounter you make a different singular roll that covers both stealth and initiative (and since this is an initiative roll you would be allowed to use incredible initiative, although as you point out that they likely benefit from cover is a moot point since you have a +2 to the roll minimum from the cover that and that is also a circumstance bonus, so it is likely to be as good if not better than the bonus provided by incredible initiative,

Now if you succeed on the first check(Avoid Notice stealth check) you avoid notice and can likely choose to avoid combat if the party/player wishes but once combat starts (likely if the party chooses to) then the player can choose to roll stealth for initiative and if the perceptopn dcs are higher they are no longer hidden, but they can still benefit from things like surprise attack , but they could also roll higher than the Perception DC and remain hidden.

Now that latter case is actually unlikely, for one simple reason, if they were spotted at the Avoid Notice srage they cannot roll srealth for initiative as they are not Avoiding Notice at the start of combat. And if they dont want to start combat they dont have to start an encounter but they could change their mind by declaring combat , they all roll high on initiative, remain undetected and slink back into exploration mode, but since they choose to initiate combat id be annoyed as a GM for having everyone roll initiative when it wasnt necessary.

Except when you encounter a creature that you'd want to hide from, you roll initiative. If you roll high enough (and so does everyone else in your party) you may be entirely unnoticed and choose not to attack the thing... But the initiative roll is what determines if you're noticed at all. The only exception I can think of is Quiet Allies, where the rest of the party holds off rolling until you see if the lowest score person gets spotted.

I think you misunderstood me here this was in reply to thenobledrakes post directly before, he also makes comment about a "house rule" when the part he quotes is directly from the rules for HIDE.

So in Encounter mode

https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=511

the only part that isnt qualified with if is this.
You attempt a Stealth check to avoid notice while traveling at half speed

So during exploration mode when you declare you are avoiding notice you make a stealth check

Under the instructions for Stealth (skill) you have 3 things you can do Hide, sneak, conceal an item, the last of which isnt applicable for this example

https://2e.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ID=15

Under hide you can see the rules that include the "at best this is a house rule part" that thenobledrake mentions in the directly previous post.

There is a dc for the check, have a look under the stealth skill

If you specifically look under hide , sneak etc there is an instruction how to make that stealth check, eg hide is a follows

You huddle behind cover or greater cover or deeper into concealment to become hidden, rather than observed. The GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you’re observed by but that you have cover or greater cover against or are concealed from. You gain the circumstance bonus from cover or greater cover to your check.

I've read from somewhere else that it is indeed just one roll whenever players enter encounter mode.

That is correct , however if you go with how I see it you also make a stealth roll to Avoid Notice as an exploration activity in the first place, this is a decision you make before an encounter mode is even accepted as happening. If you are not avoiding notice to begin with you CANNOT use stealth for initiative and are not hidden at the start of combat.

Even if your stealth roll is beaten by the Perception DC of your opponent any feat which mentions (if you rolled stealth for initiative , often followed by opponents who have not acted yet also applies,

So order of events
During exploration you announce you are using Avoid Notice
You now make a stealth check to remain unnoticed in exploration. Now assuming you are on your own you now say that you've sneaked up on a guard by avoiding notice (moving at half speed unless you have swift sneak)
You fail the stealth check , you are spotted and nk longer avoiding notice and combat starts using perception for initiative only.
You succeed the stealth check , you are nor spotted and you can now choose to (but do not have to) roll stealth for initative and if you do and have surprise attack anyone who you act before is now flatfooted to you.

The same stealth check that was used for initiative is also used vs your opponents perception dc to see if you remain hidden at the start of combat and note that to remain hidden you have to be still under cover, if you are stopped in the open you are no longer hidden and if you attack you are no longer hidden. As per Hide under stealth this applies in encounter or exploration mode

If you successfully become hidden to a creature but then cease to have cover or greater cover against it or be concealed from it, you become observed again

So stopping out in the open while avoiding notice requires you to get back out of sight (by being invisible or going back into cover and avoidinf notice again assuming an encounter hasnt already started at which time you can hide , but not use the avoid notice activity, so again if you get spotted out in the open before the encounter starts you will be rolling perception only for initiative.

Or at least that is how I understand it.

syrath wrote:

When you Avoid Notice as an exploration activity you make a stealth check and compare the result against perception DCs , if you later go into Encounter mode you make an initiative roll using stealth

Nope, it's one roll, and you don't make it until you go into encounter mode.

The first sentence of the Avoid Notice exploration action is a topic sentence, not an independent event, and this is noted by there not being any DC stated nor details for roll result categories.

Okay lets remove the offending sentence

If you have the Legendary Sneak feat, you can move at full Speed and use a second exploration activity.

If you’re Avoiding Notice at the start of an encounter, you usually roll a Stealth check instead of a Perception check both to determine your initiative and to see if the enemies notice you (based on their Perception DCs, as normal for Sneak, regardless of their initiative check results).

So after removing the topic sentence our only instructions are if you have swift sneak,, if you have legendary sneak the latter part doesnt come into play unless you are starting an encounter

So what does avoid notice do if you dont have swift or legendary sneak. since it has no instruction if you remove that sentence

The first sentence

You attempt a Stealth check to avoid notice while traveling at half speed

the description for the DC is actually there "You attempt a stealth check"

https://2e.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ID=15

For exampke under Hide
You huddle behind cover or greater cover or deeper into concealment to become hidden, rather than observed. The GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you’re observed by but that you have cover or greater cover against or are concealed from. You gain the circumstance bonus from cover or greater cover to your check.

If you only roll stealth at the init and wanted to avoid combat in the first place when would you ever roll stealth.

syrath wrote:

No need for complicated math it would take 2 minutes to fill 1 foot of a 5*5 grid so if you have a room that has 6 squares its 1 foot for 12 minutes ( i did my calculations based on 30 gallons per round which was abased on the dnd version of the item on dnd beyond and it turns out its half that)

So 1 grid its 2 mins per foot of water
2 grid its 4
3 grid its 6
So the relatively simple calculation is 2 * grid * ceiling height in minutes

so a 9 grid room at 9 feet high ceiling is 162 minutes.

Although as a gm id go with speed of plot myself

That is assuming that your room is actually a giant fish tank.

If the room is not water-tight, you will have to account for how quickly the water is also draining out of the room. And how that rate of draining increases as the water pressure rises because of the higher water level.

Now we are talking about advanced calculus and differential equations. Which is going to take an hour or to in order to calculate out correctly.

Given the OP didnt even mention the size of room I at least provided an answer and if you read the original answer I gave way back at post no 2 of this thread

Depends on the size of the room and the water tightness of said room.

I dont know why im getting flak for.providing a workable answer to the OPs question. I did Chemical(Process) Engineering at university and all the calculations were approximate.

for a start the original water input (in both DND and PF2)lists Gallons so straight off the bat are we talking US gallons (approx 3.8 litres) or imperial (appprox 4.6 litres) so we are already talking about 2 figures that have an increase of approx 20%

Anyway if someone wants to fill in the variables like cubic feet.of the.room, input of volume of water, output of water loss, ill have it.calculated in less than couple of minutes , in this case it isnt rocket science.

syrath wrote:

No need for complicated math it would take 2 minutes to fill 1 foot of a 5*5 grid so if you have a room that has 6 squares its 1 foot for 12 minutes ( i did my calculations based on 30 gallons per round which was abased on the dnd version of the item on dnd beyond and it turns out its half that)

So 1 grid its 2 mins per foot of water
2 grid its 4
3 grid its 6
So the relatively simple calculation is 2 * grid * ceiling height in minutes

so a 9 grid room at 9 feet high ceiling is 162 minutes.

Although as a gm id go with speed of plot myself

That is assuming that your room is actually a giant fish tank.

If the room is not water-tight, you will have to account for how quickly the water is also draining out of the room. And how that rate of draining increases as the water pressure rises because of the higher water level.

Now we are talking about advanced calculus and differential equations. Which is going to take an hour or to in order to calculate out correctly.

Given the OP didnt even mention the size of room I at least provided an answer and if you read the original answer I gave way back at post no 2 of this thread

Depends on the size of the room and the water tightness of said room.

I dont know why im getting flak for.providing a workable answer to the OPs question. I did Chemical(Process) Engineering at university and all the calculations were approximate.

for a start the original water input (in both DND and PF2)lists Gallons so straight off the bat are we talking US gallons (approx 3.8 litres) or imperial (appprox 4.6 litres) so we are already talking about 2 figures that have an increase of approx 20%

Anyway if someone wants to fill in the variables like cubic feet.of the.room, input of volume of water, output of water loss, ill have it.calculated in less than couple of minutes , in this case it isnt rocket science.

You're intended to apply any circumstance bonuses or penalties from the stealth check to the initiative check. Whether the reverse is true is a little more open ended. However, most of the time when you're Avoiding Notice you'll probably already be getting a +2 circumstance bonus from cover, so the question is moot. Avoid Notice is basically just continuously using Sneak actions, which means for it to work you have to be ending up behind cover or concealment. And cover is more common than concealment.

In the event that there wasn't already cover or concealment to hide behind, Avoid Notice really wouldn't work in the first place.

Im with Captain Morgan on this one , however the wording of the OP makes me think that they think that while avoiding notice you make 1 roll for Stealth and that becomes their initiative check, but Im fairly suee that isnt the case.

When you Avoid Notice as an exploration activity you make a stealth check and compare the result against perception DCs , if you later go into Encounter mode you make an initiative roll using stealth (which can technically include the +2 from incredible initiative, since it is an initiative roll, (but see above for cover being a circumstance bonus also) and this result is used for the initiative result and also to compare against the Perception DCs. So two rolls have been made, both using stealth, once for Avoid Notice and again when rolling initiative while using Avoid Notice.

With the wording on Avoid Notice id say Incredible Initiative can apply to the stealth check and the same result is used for both initiative and comparing against the Perception DCs (however so does rhe cover bonus

syrath wrote:

legally there is some wiggle room to argue that you could choose a signature spell you dont know.

You could possibly, but you can't cast spells you don't know and don't automatically know signature spells for free.

Further wording of the feat does allow you to cast it going under the specific trumps general rule

You don’t need to learn heightened versions of signature spells separately; instead, you can heighten these spells freely

So RAW as per the feat i dont need to learn heightened versions of signature spells , although following this logic it,you cant cast it at its base level, which is another clue that this is wrong. The wording does at least give the possibility that it could be read either way.

Im confident they mean you to choose from the learned spells list and that the pregen is wrong (and may be incorrect for reasons not related to the above, im onky taking a guess after all)

syrath wrote:

Sorry i did a quick google search as im not familiar with the item nor did I have the rules to hand.

Adding "PF2" on the search would make it the first result.

Regardless of that it still gives the OP the info to approximate how long it would take to fill a room. Given how little info was originally provided , i didnt think I did too badly, just my google fu was off a bit

syrath wrote:

So is the signature spell in addition to those that you know. The wording isnt clear however RAW if I was a rules lawyer then at level 3 you would know 5.

Except it does not say to add it to your spells known, so you still have 4 spells known RAW. 3 plus your bloodline spell.

The pregen in question actually has too many spells for both 1st and 2nd level.

Im personally not a rules lawyer my own thought is that the person possibly read it that way , because the first sentence i quoted (which lost a sentence after it in a copy/paste issue is "You've learned to cast some of your spells more flexibly,

This could be argued to infer that the ability refers to "your spells", which is how I personally read it, but as a legal argument this sentence is completely separated from "For each spell level you have access to, choose one spell of that level to be a signature spell." the rest of the feat tells you what you can do with a signature spell but at no point does it specify that you need to learn it, legally there is some wiggle room to argue that you could choose a signature spell you dont know.

Please note that in no way am I saying that its correct in fact my own viewpoint is that it isnt (for example the iconic has 5 but has adaptive adept for the 5th spell , but lacks a 5th spell for level 2, Im just saying they may have assumed the rule works this way.

One round of the Gyser function fills about 2 cubic feet with water. a 5x5x5ft cube is 125 cubic feet. Scale up from there, so a 10x10x10ft room, which is just 4 squares, would take 500 rounds, or about 50 minutes, to fill up.

syrath wrote:

No need for complicated math it would take 2 minutes to fill 1 foot of a 5*5 grid so if you have a room that has 6 squares its 1 foot for 12 minutes ( i did my calculations based on 30 gallons per round which was abased on the dnd version of the item on dnd beyond and it turns out its half that)

So 1 grid its 2 mins per foot of water
2 grid its 4
3 grid its 6
So the relatively simple calculation is 2 * grid * ceiling height in minutes

so a 9 grid room at 9 feet high ceiling is 162 minutes.

Although as a gm id go with speed of plot myself

Why are you using a D&D item as a reference? The Decanter of Endless Water is an item in 2e and it states it only outputs 15 gallons per round.

Sorry i did a quick google search as im not familiar with the item nor did I have the rules to hand.

Signature Spells
You've learned to cast some of your spells more flexibly. For each spell level you have acceas to, choose one spell of that level to be a signature spell.

Ive only included the relevant wording here.

the key question here is "You've learned to cast some of your spells more flexibly". The wording isnt "choose one spell of that level that you know, to be a signature spell."

So is the signature spell in addition to those that you know. The wording isnt clear however RAW if I was a rules lawyer then at level 3 you would know 5.

No need for complicated math it would take 2 minutes to fill 1 foot of a 5*5 grid so if you have a room that has 6 squares its 1 foot for 12 minutes ( i did my calculations based on 30 gallons per round which was abased on the dnd version of the item on dnd beyond and it turns out its half that)

So 1 grid its 2 mins per foot of water
2 grid its 4
3 grid its 6
So the relatively simple calculation is 2 * grid * ceiling height in minutes

so a 9 grid room at 9 feet high ceiling is 162 minutes.

Although as a gm id go with speed of plot myself

syrath wrote:

I watched a podcast that gave very good advice that im currently applying to me group of 4 new players to Pathfinder and that is to globally apply the weak adjustments from Bestiary page 6 for players that arent as high tuned, you can always ramp it up later if they find it too easy.

I think I prefer my method of just raising the characters level by 1. Pretty similar effect (raising a level gives a little more to the characters, especially at some levels) but less work on the part of the GM :-).

That was actually my first way of dealing with it, however with new players this puts them at level 2 when they havent been able to understand how to cope with combat at level 1, accelerating their learning curve when they are already behind the curve. I upped their level to 2 after the owlbear at the zoo, and I am paying for that mistake in that i made it actually too easy for them that they havent learned how to make themselves better, i just made them that way. Each to their own of course.

To clarify for anyone rhe above are very general appoximations , also there are two types of gallons to account for as well and while similar would vary the figures by quite a bit, i would say just to approximate 1 5' square grid of map would fill up 1 foot of water per minute. Assuming 30 gallons per round of water is the rate of filling. If you want more exact figures if you can elaborate om the size of room, confirm thst it is airtight (at least from the bottom and sides), what the items rate of filling is and if it is in gallons whether you wish to use imperial or US gallons

Depends on the size of the room and the water tightness of said room.

If the room was tiny it would fill much quicker than a banquet hall, if the dnd magic item i just googled equates to 30 gallons per round which is approx 100k cm3 of water and for reference a 10 ft cube of water is just short of 30 million cubic cm so it would take 300 rounds to fit 10 feet cubed assuming no leaks

I think from the sounds of things a lot of the AP games are not only tuned for optimized characters ,but for players that are familoar with group tactics and can work together to bring down opponents.

I watched a podcast that gave very good advice that im currently applying to me group of 4 new players to Pathfinder and that is to globally apply the weak adjustments from Bestiary page 6 for players that arent as high tuned, you can always ramp it up later if they find it too easy.