GM asked me to check on this. Oddly, it has never actually come up in our games so we couldn’t remember it. I’m 90% sure I read it somewhere, but can’t find it.
We wanted to kill a chained-up guard dog-ish creature without alerting the owners. So oracle cast silence on the melee PC as we closed with it. Unknown to us an already alerted group of assassin types was following us to close and kill. The magus was at the back of our group and did specifically say he was checking behind us. However, us not being able to hear should give them a bonus on their stealth checks.
In 3.5 we would have just said the move silently was an auto success and rolled the hide in shadows normally. However, PF has combined the 2 skills. We were not sure how to modify the single skill check.
The GM decided off the cuff. I think he used -10 on the magus’ perception because of the silence and a +4 since he did specifically say he was checking behind us for someone approaching.
Am I correct that there is a rule for this? If so, where and what?
If not, how would you have handled it?
GM asked me to check on this. Oddly, it has never actually come up in our games so we couldn’t remember it. I’m 90% sure I read it somewhere, but can’t find it.
We wanted to kill a chained-up guard dog-ish creature without alerting the owners. So oracle cast silence on the melee PC as we closed with it. Unknown to us an already alerted group of assassin types was following us to close and kill. The magus was at the back of our group and did specifically say he was checking behind us. However, us not being able to hear should give them a bonus on their stealth checks.
In 3.5 we would have just said the move silently was an auto success and rolled the hide in shadows normally. However, PF has combined the 2 skills. We were not sure how to modify the single skill check.
The GM decided off the cuff. I think he used -10 on the magus’ perception because of the silence and a +4 since he did specifically say he was checking behind us for someone approaching.
Am I correct that there is a rule for this? If so, where and what?
If not, how would you have handled it?
Not being able to hear them is a -4 to opposed perception checks
"Deafened: A deafened character cannot hear. He takes a –4 penalty on initiative checks, automatically fails Perception checks based on sound, takes a –4 penalty on opposed Perception checks, and has a 20% chance of spell failure when casting spells with verbal components. Characters who remain deafened for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them."
So if the GM is breaking up their approach to:
do you hear them approaching before they enter line of sight, silence makes you autofail
Once they are depending on concealment to approach, silence gives -4
If you have someone actively looking and they break concealment, personally I'd say, it's time to roll for iniative, because the guy on lookout can act... but he can't warn anyone else as a free action if you are still silenced. (could be a fun complex way to start an encounter)
I like giving someone a bonus for looking in the direction of the approach, in circumstances like this, I'd take cover/lighting into account, and probably force the sneaking bad guys to be revealed close but not 'on' the party, because you had a lookout (i.e. whereever lighting denied them concealment, that is where they are noticed)
That is basically what happened. The magus saw the one in heavy armor so wasn't surprised. The rest of us did not until we were done killing the dog-ish. Reasonable to assume we did not look behind us once combat was initiated. So the magus had to fight them by himself for 2 rounds. He almost died from it.