This may have been addressed before but I haven't seen anything about it. I was wondering with skills like the stealth skill that combines both hide and move silently what should we do about items and the like that give modifiers to one or the other of those skills but not to both. Like boots of elvenkind and a cloak of elvenkind, shoul;d we add both of those bonuses to stealth for a blanket +10 bonus or should we only allow a bonus to stealth for the boots when trying to use stealth to move silently and a bonus for the cloak when trying to use stealth to hide? If we divide the bonuses like that it makes it a bit harder to track on a character sheet. See what I mean? Or is there already a solution to this?
Charles
I am not an expert, but I would say Use it as you see fit for your "brains".
I would still separate the bonuses, but you are right, when things get higher, it might get (too) complicate.
You could argue that the boots produce some kind of "field" that dampen the sound around you (like your breath, the rushing of leaves, etc) so they are still useful if you just cower behind some bushes or similar stuff.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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If you do choose to split the bonus so the boots only are useful on stealth vs. hearing and the cloak only on stealth vs. seeing, then you might want to adjust the price of the items also, since they're not really giving a bonus to a full skill anymore.
Personally, I'd allow either item to give the bonus to stealth, and not let them stack, or alternatively, drop their bonus to +3 and let them stack, but probably just have one, and free up an item slot for the character for something else.
I am not an expert, but I would say Use it as you see fit for your "brains".
I would still separate the bonuses, but you are right, when things get higher, it might get (too) complicate.
You could argue that the boots produce some kind of "field" that dampen the sound around you (like your breath, the rushing of leaves, etc) so they are still useful if you just cower behind some bushes or similar stuff.
I was thinking that one solution might be to reduce the bonus a little bit to like +2 for each item or something (2.5 actually but following the great round down rule we round down to +2)and let the bonuses apply to the entire stealth skill and make them a kind of special generic bonus that can stack instead of both being competence bonuses that would not stack. Because since we are really dealing with what was originally 2 separate skills it would kind of be unfair for both of them not to do something for the stealth skill and since hide and move silently always kind of intermingled so much anyway this kind of thing would make sense. Thoughts comments suggestions???
Charles
I asked this very question in Alpha 1, but unfortunately did not receive any answers from Jason or anyone else at PAIZO.
For the moment, I am waiting ever so patiently (not) for the beta to come out, as that should answer the question.
I asked this very question in Alpha 1, but unfortunately did not receive any answers from Jason or anyone else at PAIZO.
For the moment, I am waiting ever so patiently (not) for the beta to come out, as that should answer the question.
Yeah I think the price that we pay when ever we compact the skill list is that we loose a little bit of detail that we might have with the individual skills but the payoff in simplifying things is pretty great in this case. I can't count the number of times that I would ask the rouge player in our group to roll a move silently check and since they were usually trying to stay out of sight at the same time I would have to say ok now roll a hide check. It got pretty redundant after a while. Another option that I thought of was to treat the stealth skill kind of like we do AC. Ac is divided into regular AC which applies most of the time and also touch AC and Flat-Footed AC.
Well we could have a Stealth box on the character sheet and have the stealth skill divided into Base Stealth and then Hide and Move Silently we could then use the normal bonuses as is but it seems that this approach might actually defeat the purpose of having a stealth skill because it would probably end up being more complicated than just keeping hide and move silently. I guess I am trying to think of a way of doing it that would be not only easy to record on paper and keep track of but that would also work easily in any character generation software that might support Pathfinder in the future as well. Crap man, I am starting to sound like I am designing the game.
Charles
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We could use the precedent already set in 3.X of having specific skill bonuses (Lion - +8 to Hide in tall grasses, 5 ranks of Decipher Script - +2 synergy bonus to Use Magic Device checks to read scrolls) and have the Cloak add to Stealth checks involving remaining unseen and the Boots add to Stealth checks involving being quiet.
Or, easier, IMO, just cut the bonuses down and make them stack. If the Boots added +10 Move Silently and the Cloak added +10 Hide, then the new Boots can add +4 Stealth and the new Cloak can add +6 Stealth.
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For Stealth, I have Stealth (Move Silently) and Stealth (Hide). When my PC is invisible, he gets a +40 to Stealth (Hide), but not Stealth (Move Silently).
I think the bottom line is that if you need to continue to track things separately (skill consolidation or no skill consolidation), continue to do so.
Actually the more thought I give to this the more problematic it becomes. The same rogue in my game that has the cloak of elvenkind and boots of elvenkind also has a suit of +2 elven chain with the silent moves special ability which also gives a +5 competence bonus to move silently checks. Of course I know that the competency bonus of the boots and the competency bonus of the armor wont stack because they are the same kind of bonuses, however the competency bonuses of the boots and the cloak should stack because originally they affected two different skills which now have become different aspects of the same skill.
Hmmm... maybe that is the solution. Just realize that the stealth skill has two different aspects, hide and move silently if you are hiding you add the hide bonus for the cloak, if you are moving silently you add the move silently bonus for the boots if you are doing both you add the average of the two bonuses which in this case would be +5 still, and then two bonuses of the same type that apply to the same aspect of the skill will not stack but two bonuses of the same type that apply to different aspects of the skill will stack. I think that works. It would require a little rewriting of the stealth skill in order to insert explanation about the different aspects (that is if they were to adopt this as a viable solution) but so far it seems to be the simplest and most overall compatible solution that I can think of at the moment.
Charles
Another idea:
Remove either the Boots OR the Cloak and rename the other to:
ELVEN GARMENT/RAIMENT (including both the boots and the cloak).
But then again, halving the bonuses and let them stack, or let the bonuses as they are, not stacking are both good solutions.
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It's doing the same thing it did before. There's no reason to decrease the price just because someone combined two skills.
I think he was talking about lowering the cost because if you were to create the magic items under the new system it would cost less, since you are now only giving an increase to one skill when you used to be giving it to two.
Its basically like saying that 3.5 would sell you shoes and socks. Then the alpha comes out and says, if you buy shoes we'll just give you the socks. By not reducing the cost on it(or adding some secondary benefit) you are basically saying 'If you buy shoes, we'll give you the socks. Unless you had got them separate before, then you are still going to have to pay for both.' It just makes someone who had the legacy versions have less cash then a comparable new character..
-Tarlane
The problem that I am seeing is that even if you divide the skills into their various aspects such as making hide and move silently aspects of the stealth skill you would be doing it to avoid ungodly skill totals. If you just used the skills as they are in 3.5 even with just a cloak of elvenkind and boots of elvenkind if you allow them to stack a +13 stealth modifier quickly turns into a +23 stealth modifier. You get a +5 competency bonus to hide for the cloak you get a +5 competency bonus to move silently for the boots.
Before you could use them together because they applied to different skills, however two competency bonuses should not stack on the same skill but these two items were designed to work together. That +23 stealth bonus could happen as early as 7th level if you allow the bonuses to stack. If you don't allow the bonuses to stack then that would mean that the character really only gets the bonus from one item. The cost has nothing to do with it.
Another possible idea would be to allow the full bonus if only one of the two items were used, then if another of the pair were used instead of another full +5 to stealth maybe the use of two items that were basically designed to affect different aspects of stealth or of any other skill could grant a +2 synergy bonus instead. You would actually still be getting more than you would get through standard 3.5 because if you had these two items the most you could get would be a +5 bonus to either hide or move silently withe the skill synergy options that I was just talking about you get a +7 to every stealth roll. Crap I don't know what the best solution for this is. I guess I am hoping to stumble on to something or say something that will give somebody else a brain storm.
Somebody said earlier that they used a Stealth(hide) and a Stealth(move silently option. Can you do this without requiring two rolls every time you use the stealth skill?
Maybe I am just thinking about this to much. Maybe if I just chill out a while the answer will come.
Charles
For Stealth, I have Stealth (Move Silently) and Stealth (Hide). When my PC is invisible, he gets a +40 to Stealth (Hide), but not Stealth (Move Silently).
I think the bottom line is that if you need to continue to track things separately (skill consolidation or no skill consolidation), continue to do so.
In which case you might as well have seperate skills. Defeats the reason for reducing the number of skills. On the other hand maybe they reduced the number of skills a bit too much. This is an Alpha / Beta of the final game. If it's an issue they may make changes. I'm on the fence about the new skills changes. I can see good on both sides of it.
I'm with DracoDruid. I've already ruled that the cloak and boots of elvenkind are always found and worn as a set.
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Somebody said earlier that they used a Stealth(hide) and a Stealth(move silently option. Can you do this without requiring two rolls every time you use the stealth skill?
I can't. In my opinion, they're two different things requiring two different rolls.
In which case you might as well have seperate skills. Defeats the reason for reducing the number of skills.
I agree. I just don't see how being invisible makes you any less quiet.
I mean, on the defensive end, if you will, even though they consolidated Search, Spot, and Listen into one skill, Perception, they then broke out Perception into 5 subskills. However, on the offensive end, they went the opposite direction and combined Move Silently and Hide into one skill, with no subskills.
Admittedly, it will be a rare case when someone tries to sneak around trying to avoid detection by taste, and there probably isn't too much one could do to lessen his odor, so I'm not advocating 5 subskills for Stealth (based on the 5 senses). However, I think you need to at least cover the visual and audial separately.
And to be fair, Sleight of Hand (avoiding detection by touch) remains broken out as its own skill. Why wasn't that consolidated under Stealth as well?
You could make them more flavourful:
Cloak of Elvenkind
Grants the character the ability to Hide in Plain Sight (as ranger).Boots of Elvenkind
Grants the character the ability to Woodland Stride (as ranger).As a set, these items grant a +5 bonus on Stealth checks.
Ok I think I like this option. I was toying around with someone's suggestion that they be found and work as a set or that they be changed to elven garment or something of that nature but this just sounds cool. I think that I might just go with this idea. At least until Paizo Shows us the direction they are going with things of this nature. My suspicion is however that this is not the only place we are going to run into this kind of thing. I guess we just overcome them on a case by case basis until everything works as smoothly as we can get it to. I am sure when the Beta book comes out there will be answers to a lot of questions. At 400 plus pages there certainly should be. :)Thanks a lot folks.
Charles
+1