Hiding in a Blur Spell.

[Mats Öhrman]

PF2 Introduced the Sensed condition, where you know which square an opponent is in, but you cannot target or discern them reliably.

In PF2 spell effects also rely heavily on keywords/traits, and less on "fluffy", more loosely interpreted spell descriptions.

So, connecting the dots between the Blur spell and the Sensed condition:

A) The Blur spell gives you concealment straight off, with no explicitly written caveat or exception.

B) If you are concealed, you can hide or sneak. With blur running it is kind of bloody obvious which square you are in, so you'd be Sensed rather than Unseen.

C) Sensed is broken if you leave your concealment, but you never leave your blur behind if you move.

D) I have not really found no way in the current rules for an opponent to downgrade your Sensed condition to Seen using e.g. Perception. There are rules for downgrading Unseen to Sensed, but nothing to allow them to do the next step, unless you break it yourself by making a non-hide/sneak action, or leaving concealment.

E) Upgrading your Concealed condition to Sensed this way comes with some pretty good perks: DC 11 miss chance instead of DC 5, and opponents are flatfooted against you.

Now, it could be argued that this is intended; a trained rouge can use the uncertainty of exactly where their weapon is to pull of a sneak attack from an unexpected angle, but just as using Finesse for Combat maneuvers (confirmed here) or Assurance for Combat Maneuvers (Confirmed here), I'd like it to be explicitly mentioned in the rules, rather than something you derive from multi-step logic. :)

[Fuzzypaws]

Yeah, that seems to work just fine per RAW. There should definitely be some way to see a sensed creature though.

[Mats Öhrman]

We ran a few warm-up fights before our first Doomsday Dawn session, and in one a goblin ran away and hid in a subterranean mushroom forest. We soon got a hunch of in what square it was, but since it refused to act we could not get a better situation than having it Sensed as far as the rules went.

[shroudb]

My 1st alchemist character did more or less the same thing.

Mistform elixir for concealment, and then hide/sneak/attack for flat footed bonuses and miss chance for survivability.

I don't see any issues with it.

The sensed example is describing the state like something behind a waterfall, blurry, messed vision, but you can still tell whereabout it is.

You can even take 2 actions to attempt to "hide in plain sight":

Hide requires concealment and upgrades you from seen to sensed.

Stealth requires sensed or unseen and at the end of your move, you become/remain unseen, as long as you're still in concealment (which with blur/Mistform you are)

The downside is that if you fail sneak, not only you don't become unseen, but you immediately become just concealed (instead of sensed that you were by the hide action)

Take note, that ANYONE can do the exact same thing under dim light (a fight in the night as an example)

The way I see it:

Concealed in blur: everyone sees you but has trouble hitting you because of blurry image.
Hide in blur: you "move" within your square, your movements cause enemies to be unable to pinpoint you exactly, but can still see you that you are in that 5x5 square
Sneak after hiding: that one requires more imagination, but I assume that as you move, your after images /blurred images, alongside some subterfuge, confound your opponent to the point where he loses track of where you actually are completely.