Stealth is useless in combat.


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells


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So, they appear to have done something counter intuitive in writing up the Stealth skill.

Playtest Rulebook wrote:
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 flat-footed against that attack.

... What? So, it is literally impossible to get the drop on someone. There is no explanation of why. There are no skill feats to get around this. There are not even any Ranger or Rogue feats to get around this, which means a rogue cannot get sneak attack on someone they are hidden from.

Am I missing something?


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You can get sneak attack from winning initiative with stealth... but you can't get it from sneaking, this does appear to be a problem.

EDIT: Ahhhh! I'm flanked by rats!


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You're not missing anything.

Sneaking no longer allows you to sneak attack.


Or be a goblin and roll well on your Stealth.

p. 31 wrote:

VERY SNEAKY

FEAT 1
Taller folk rarely pay attention to the shadows at their feet, and you take full advantage of this. You can move 5 feet farther when you take the Sneak action, up to your Speed (see page 158).
In addition, if you critically succeed at a Stealth check against a creature and then attack that creature, your target remains flat-footed during your attack. The GM doesn’t reveal that your Stealth check resulted in a critical success until you declare your attack.


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Ugh. Not cool. Literally makes the rogue slightly useless in first round of combat.


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JDLPF wrote:

Or be a goblin and roll well on your Stealth.

p. 31 wrote:

VERY SNEAKY

FEAT 1
Taller folk rarely pay attention to the shadows at their feet, and you take full advantage of this. You can move 5 feet farther when you take the Sneak action, up to your Speed (see page 158).
In addition, if you critically succeed at a Stealth check against a creature and then attack that creature, your target remains flat-footed during your attack. The GM doesn’t reveal that your Stealth check resulted in a critical success until you declare your attack.

This is way to important to be locked to one ancestry. This needs to be a stealth skill feat. Maybe give goblins the option to get it as an ancestry feat or give them something that makes them trained in stealth but getting sneak attack while sneaking needs to be possible because words.

Sovereign Court

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Or maybe give rogues the ability? At level 1?

Because Stealth was so good in PF1 apparently.

Let's not forget that you, unlike the errata added into PF1, you now need to be in cover or concealment at all points of movement or you aren't stealthed. It's completely useless in all regards now.

I've had a simple wish since the beginning of PF1. If you beat your opponent's perception with your stealth, why can't we just say their back is turned? Stealth was bad in PF1, now it's a dead skill.

EDIT: Someone else pointed out in another thread that you have to make a stealth check every time you use sneak, and that's true whether it's multiple in the same turn or across different turns. Even a legendary stealther WILL fail over time. That one rogue feat becomes mandatory.

I'm not exaggerating at all. I'm playing Doomsday Dawn part 1 as a rogue right now and I feel like dropping out.


You're better off "creating a diversion" than actually sneaking. At least creating a diversion lasts till the end of your turn. I'm not sure what the design goal is here, but ensuring that rogues need to make some noise to remain hidden, or to leverage their sneak attack, seems to be a weird fallout from that.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Morblot wrote:

The errata fixes Sneaking somewhat; you can now Sneak from cover to cover, etc. However, it seems to me that to be able to sneakily attack anyone, you have to attack them from a square that has cover or stealth; otherwise, they won't be flat-footed. Is this correct?

If so, that means no starting your move from behind a corner (or hidden in a bush), Sneaking up to someone and then attacking them; you have to hope there's a corner or bush or whatever next to them, and then Sneak to that square, if you wish to catch them flat-footed.

Note: attacking while invisible may or may not work now, I don't know, nor do I really care. Trying to mentally apply some word changes to the "third sentence of the third paragraph" or whatever is taxing enough as it is.

By RAW, I think you are correct. This doesn't seem entirely unreasonable-- I always got a little tripped up on people charging out of the bushes during the surprise round, as it sort of felt like the characters should get to roll initiative as soon someone pops into view. And in a combat situation with no facing rules I guess the assumption is the person is keeping an eye on their 6 at all times so it is hard to get that close without terrain.

That being said, I think out of combat a reasonable GM should probably let you try and sneak up behind someone where doing so would make sense, cover or no.

Also might be worth noting that a 14th level rogue can more or less pull this off as one action with Spring from the Shadows. And the errata'ed Very Sneaky Goblin feat means you can Sneak out from behind cover and don't become visible until the end of your turn, so you can creep up and stab someone with that. And that's technically open to anyone with Adopted Ancestry, I guess.

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