Burrow + stealth and speed question

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

So, i'm planning an encounter for my group that involves Oread burrowers. The set up is an ambush, mostly using archers and monks.

Here are my questions:

If a burrowed character is stealthing, does he get a bonus to stealth from being burrowed?

If he is moving, does he create sounds while moving through the earth? How would that effect stealth?

Would you get able to pinpoint or recognize where a person went into the ground?

I know that the Oread's burrow (looking at their feats for these) is calculated from base speed, does that refer only to the 20ft speed of Oreads, or can things like the speed increase from monks also effect burrow?

Finally, how long can a creature stay burrowed? Specifically, an Oread, would they run out of air ever?

Thanks guys!

[Shane LeRose]

Dotted. Cause I'd like to know all this too.

By the way, awesome idea for an encounter!

[gustavo iglesias]

FrodoOf9Fingers wrote:

So, i'm planning an encounter for my group that involves Oread burrowers. The set up is an ambush, mostly using archers and monks.

Here are my questions:

If a burrowed character is stealthing, does he get a bonus to stealth from being burrowed?

If he is moving, does he create sounds while moving through the earth? How would that effect stealth?

Would you get able to pinpoint or recognize where a person went into the ground?

I know that the Oread's burrow (looking at their feats for these) is calculated from base speed, does that refer only to the 20ft speed of Oreads, or can things like the speed increase from monks also effect burrow?

Finally, how long can a creature stay burrowed? Specifically, an Oread, would they run out of air ever?

Thanks guys!

Burrowing is ill defined in Pathfinder.

Anyways: improved cover gives +10 to stealth. I'll give them that AT LEAST.

Depending on the kind of burrowing, you could sense or not. For example, a mole has burrowing, because he claws. A Thoqqoa melts the land. And a Earth Elemental just glides through earth as if it weren't there.

With oreads, i'd go with the Earth elemental stuff. So I would say they don't disrupt the land at all.

[Joesi]

As someone said already, the rules don't cover lots of things. I'd assert they aren't even clear or in agreement in invisiblity/darkness/blindness situations, let alone this.

That said, I'd say this scenario seems to work well with my interpretation and general twisting/house-ruling of PF's invisibility/blind and stealth rules.

When in a situation where a creature is not visible, such as a viewer is blind, in darkness, or that creature is invisible, that creature will automatically be in stealth (even if they have bad penalties) and not have any stealth roll. Instead they get a flat out 20 for stealth, since the rules (on invisibility) do state that an invisible creature is DC 20 to notice, and 20 more to pinpoint (no mention of rolls or stealth. Darkeness/blind does though, which is dissonant, since it's not like an invisible creature can be any more invisible to anyone than if someone just has their eyes closed).

So what would result is a setup where it'd be DC 20 ± stealth modifiers to notice the creatures, and DC 40 ±x to pinpoint their square while they are underground. Movement penalties to stealth will make this worse of course if they were moving.

However on top of that, it might make sense to add additional difficulty based on the depth they are burrowed, like if they're deeper than 10 feet or something, possibly even keeping the material in mind (stone conducts sound well, while soft soil or sand probably would not)

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

How about the length of time said creature could stay burrowed? Would a group of borrowed creatures commonly sleep underground? Or do they need to hold their breaths?

And then the question of speed while burrowing, would there be a good way to increase one's burrow speed?

EDIT: Moving some text into a different thread, more of general discussion.

[gustavo iglesias]

FrodoOf9Fingers wrote:

How about the length of time said creature could stay burrowed? Would a group of borrowed creatures commonly sleep underground? Or do they need to hold their breaths?

And then the question of speed while burrowing, would there be a good way to increase one's burrow speed?

EDIT: Moving some text into a different thread, more of general discussion.

Again not covered by rules. It depends on the creature, GM allocation if not covered in the description.

Polymorph spells give you the ability to breath underwater/under eartg with swim/burrow, if that helps