I was thinking of taking the Shadow bloodline as a sorcerer and you can rake in a pretty impressive stealth check, so I was just wondering - what are the rules of casting a spell while stealthed? I know there is the sniping ability if you are firing a bow, would it work very much the same way?
My friend pointed out to me, ray attacks against a flat footed ac = awesome.
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Without the use of (at least) the Silent Spell feat, it is safe to say that casting a spell would ruin an chance of making a Stealth check, the presumption being that once you started casting, anyone within hearing distance would hear you and thus you would be considered observed.
Obviously spellcasting at extreme medium or long range could be a different story, but even then (as GM) I generally make it an easy Perception check to find the source of the spell (because the game is designed to *not* allow spell-sniping).
On a related note, I ran an where Stealth was the default mode of movment which made use of the rules found here for sneaky spellcasting.
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If you're casting a spell with a verbal component, then you must speak in a loud, clear voice in order to cast. This is much louder than pulling a bowstring, and does not work the same way. Imagine you have to shout "Hey, I'm going to hurt you now!" before you can hurt anybody with a spell. Not conducive to stealth.
If you're casting a spell with no verbal component, I don't think there's any penalty to stealth while casting.