In the past I've most often run settings involving great a great deal of skullduggery and in many ways I'm very pleased with the rogue in this new iteration. Many of my games have played out like Assassin's Creed, Metal Great Solid or Splinter Cell for example.
One thing that surprises me is the apparent lack of rules for eliminating sentries undetected or performing an assassination. This seems strange as the obscure concept of landing on people in aerial combat surprisingly has a rule! Have I missed something?
The addition of ancestral hit points for low level characters plus the lowering of sneak attack damage would seem to indicate sneaking into fortresses and eliminating common guards could be very, very problematic for low level characters.
Yeah, I was thinking the same. Adding to this, does stealth really work this way? If so, you could never use it as a skill to gain sneak attack. Paizo, you called it *sneak* attack...
From stealth skill's Sneak description:
"If you do anything else, you become seen just before you act. For instance, if you attack a creature you’re unseen by, that creature is not flatfooted against that attack."
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It still works because of Surprise Attack. Since rogues treat enemies that haven’t acted yet in combat as flat-footed, it doesn’t matter if they see you just before the attack hits, they’re still flat-footed to you. That does mean only Rogues can catch enemies flat-footed out of stealth though.In the past I've most often run settings involving great a great deal of skullduggery and in many ways I'm very pleased with the rogue in this new iteration. Many of my games have played out like Assassin's Creed, Metal Great Solid or Splinter Cell for example.
One thing that surprises me is the apparent lack of rules for eliminating sentries undetected or performing an assassination. This seems strange as the obscure concept of landing on people in aerial combat surprisingly has a rule! Have I missed something?
The addition of ancestral hit points for low level characters plus the lowering of sneak attack damage would seem to indicate sneaking into fortresses and eliminating common guards could be very, very problematic for low level characters.
Yeah, I was thinking the same. Adding to this, does stealth really work this way? If so, you could never use it as a skill to gain sneak attack. Paizo, you called it *sneak* attack...
From stealth skill's Sneak description:
"If you do anything else, you become seen just before you act. For instance, if you attack a creature you’re unseen by, that creature is not flatfooted against that attack."
This isn't great for the rogue if she rolls poorly on initiative checks though. It provides for situations where the rogue remains undetected but is denied a core ability because the enemy has already acted.
The ability isnt called "first-to-act attack" it's called sneak attack.
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This isn't great for the rogue if she rolls poorly on initiative checks though.The thing is, you'll be rolling Stealth for Initiative, while the guard will almost certainly be rolling Perception for Initiative. So basically, it just takes one last Stealth check (in the form of skill-based Initiative checks) to see if you can actually get off an attack before your target notices you.
I get that, but I'm still scratching my head on stealth. Let me use an example.
A party of 4 PCs decides to ambush a pair of guards. The guards perception DCs are high enough to notice everyone but the rogue (player 4, lets say). Everyone rolls initiative. The guards roll high, the Rogue rolls a 2 for his Stealth initiative check.
Here is the order:
Player 1
Player 2
Guards
Player 3
Player 4 (rogue)
In this example the rogue is denied sneak attack damage, despite the fact that she hasn't been noticed by the guards. "But wait!!!" you say, "The guards noticed her when they rolled perception checks for initiative!!". To which I would reply: "Did they?"
Does an initiative check serve as a second chance to notice a stealthy character, or does it serve as an indicator of the combat order? Does it do both? It is not clear. What is clear is that they didn't notice the rogue initially, may not have noticed the rogue once combat started, and are at no disadvantage to her whatsoever combat-wise after they act. It seems very very confusing, especially for new players.
By the way, this is why I've moved to 5th. Because I got tired of arguing with players for an hour about these exact situations. The fact that Paizo is making it just as bad with 2E does not bode well for its future.
The important thing here is that stealth by itself does not let you do a take-down on a guard. You need to wait until the guard is distracted. Conveniently Deception (Create a Diversion) does exactly that. You can even flavor the action (from a roleplaying point of view) as waiting for an opportune moment.
Basically the game wants you to utilize multiple aspects of the character to accomplish what you want.
And handily, from the design point of view, this eats up a player action so an assassin doesn't get two or three actions to attack and kill a guard before they get to act.