Defeating the Senses


Rules Questions

Grand Lodge

What senses can be beaten by stealth/invisibility/other, and how?

1) Scent?

2) Tremorsense?

3) Blindsense?

4) Blindsight?


Tremorsense would need flight or float.
Insubstantial could beat blind sense an sight.

Grand Lodge

Insubstantial in what manner?


I am sorry I meant Incorporeal. The prd on it is below.

Nonvisual senses, such as scent and blindsight, are either ineffective or only partly effective with regard to incorporeal creatures. Incorporeal creatures have an innate sense of direction and can move at full speed even when they cannot see.


1) scent can be beating with Stinking Cloud. Get a Mask of Goz or the spell Hunter's Eye so you can see through magical fog, all the while the hounds of war can't sniff you out in the 40' stink bomb.

2) tremorsense can be beaten by fly or levitate.

3) blindsense is already beaten by invisibility. blindsense lets the monster know the exact square you are in within the range of his blindsense ability, but does not negate the miss chance for invisibility or concealment, or foul your ability to sneak attack. (he knows where you are, but not if you are crouched down or how exactly you are striking with your blade).

4) blind sight you are trumped. blind sight works exactly as regular vision, except gaze attacks are negated. however, blind sight typically has a limited range of 30-60', so stay out of range and you should be okay. with sniper goggles & invisibility, you can still get the ranged SA damages to land..... assuming you can hit the flatfooted AC of the CR20 monster who has blindsight 60' =)

incorporeality is weird. not weird weird, just really rules heavy in 3.x so i haven't even had a desire to look at them for Pathfinder.

Spoiler:
i remember Skip Williams 7-8 years ago had his "All About" column on the WotC site for 3.x. Sneak Attack was a 4 installment article, and incorporeality was a 3 installment article. The difference was the SA column dealt with all of the SA corner cases along with the SA ability and applications itself. The incorporeality column was JUST rules clarifications on how incorporeality and etherealness worked b/c the write ups were so imprecise in the PHB/DMG. like for Pathfinder, do incorporeal creatures still have to "manifest" to appear on the Prime Material? Or are incorporeal creatures and ethereal creatures separate entities, with incorporeals only being present on the Prime Material albeit with the "incorporeal" condition? Are incorporeal creatures inherently invisible and can only be seen if they choose to manifest, or are they always visible unless the monster stat block includes a separate ability? it's not that i don't want to know, it's more that i'm afraid to know and have my brain bubble out my ears.....

Grand Lodge

Would Instant Enemy(Undead) and Hide from Undead work?

Hide from Undead works against blindsense, blindsight, scent, and tremorsense.


i think Instant Enemy is a benefit to you, not a hindrance to the target. it does not say it changes the enemy's type or subtype, it merely says that you treat it as a favored enemy of your choice for the duration of the spell. so no, Hide from Undead wouldn't work because the NPC you are trying to hide from is not actually undead, you would just get to use any Bluff/SenseMotive/Survival/Attack bonuses against him that you would normally only get to use when interacting with undead. That said, Hide from Undead is a fantastic spell when you need to hide from a real, lumbering, unintelligent corpse-eater.

"With this spell you designate the target as your favored enemy for the remainder of its duration. Select one of your favored enemy types. For the duration of the spell, you treat the target as if it were that type of favored enemy for all purposes."

(as a funny note, the spell says "you designate the target as your favored enemy for the remainder of its duration". the spell seems to imply the target himself isn't going to have a very long duration =)

Shadow Lodge

Negate Aroma also tricks Scent, making my druid sad and mad.

EDIT: Negate Aroma

Grand Lodge

The "for all purposes" part is what make think it might work.

Are there alchemical items that screw with scent?

Shadow Lodge

Scentbane Incense
Terrap Sap

Prevents tracking but not necessarily combat location: Scent Cloak

Doesn't even effectively prevent tracking, but does make you less identifiable by scent: Beast Scent

There has been significant debate over whether "for all purposes" was actually intended to mean all purposes. Most notably whether you can Instant Enemy something as for example undead, and then use a Bane(Undead) weapon against them.


Import this feat from 3E.
http://dndtools.eu/feats/lords-of-madness--72/darkstalker--512/

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