Astomoi, Telepathy, Telepathic Senses

[Danzibe1989]

Astomoi can't speak or see, but have Telepathy 100 feet.

Languages: Astomoi begin play knowing Common, but as they have no mouths, they cannot speak. They have telepathy with a range of 100 feet.

ok thats fine and dandy. BUT

Telepathic Senses: Astomoi can’t speak or see, but can mentally sense the area within 60 feet, as per darkvision, and can speak telepathically. An astomoi can’t see anything beyond 60 feet. An astomoi must provide thought components for spells that normally require verbal components. It can use language-dependent abilities with its telepathy, but not abilities that depend on audible components.

Does this mean I can't telepathically sense anything beyond 60? making my Telepathy 100 actually Telepathy 60? Can it go beyond closed doors or does it stop at such barriers? What are the limitations? Clearly I don't know enough about Telepathy.

Telepathic Senses is clear enough to me: My visual range is 60 and does not go beyond that, the problem is Telepathy 100.

[Kayerloth]

I'll take a poke at it. Between 60 and 100ft you can 'hear' someone. If you knew them you'd know who you were talking to. I'd probably let you sense anything capable of communication at those distances but you would have no idea of who or what it was. At 60ft and under you pick up enough thoughts combined with how well your telepathy radiates outward to 'see' your surroundings. So walls/structures impede you telepathy enough to let you know its there without necessarily blocking it outright, an echo of sorts and lets you build up an image of whats around you. But that's flavor text to explain how I think it works.

That said I don't know if one of PF books goes into more detail about how telepathy works but I suspect you and your GM/friends will be doing a lot of deciding how to handle it in your campaign.

Note that Telepathic Bond mentions absolutely nothing about being blocked by any intervening terrain (range is unlimited as long as it remains within the same plane of existence) and it is not of the scrying subschool so it is debatable whether lead, thick earth or stone etc. actually block Telepathic Bond or telepathy. However, the various Detect spells all carry notations about being blocked by intervening terrain (and also don't carry the scrying subschool) so be prepared to have telepathy messed with depending on the campaign/GM. I'd write such off as being similar to trying to shout to make yourself heard on the other side of wall/blocking terrain.

[dragonhunterq]

Universal rules were not as helpful as I hoped.

My take is that sure, you can communicate to a 100', but not sense anything. So I differ from Kayerloth in that I think no ruling should give you more information than the ability permits. So you can, for example, telepathically 'shout' to everyone beyond 60' (or that you cannot telepathically 'see') and if someone replies you can then converse with them normally, but it wouldn't give you any clue as to how far away they are (other than within 100' of you), nor their direction from you. You should also be able to maintain a conversation with someone who moves out of range of your ability to sense them up to the maximum range.

There is nothing to indicate that you require line of effect or line of sight (it doesn't target and doesn't create an effect) so barriers seem irrelevant to communication. I wouldn't argue with a GM who rules otherwise though for the same reasons as Kayerloth.