Let's say the PCs are in exploration mode in a dungeon, using the Avoid Notice activity. They enter a room with a mimic in it doing its Mimic Object thing.
Do they automatically get a Perception check vs. its Deception, or do they have to explicitly say they're examining it? Or does the Mimic roll a Deception vs. their Perception DC, since its the one actively attempting something, i.e., fooling the PCs?
So, as I go poking around AoN trying to answer my own questions, Impersonate seems to be what the mimic is doing.
In most cases, creatures have a chance to detect your deception only if they use the Seek action to attempt Perception checks against your Deception DC. If you attempt to directly interact with someone while disguised, the GM rolls a secret Deception check for you against that creature’s Perception DC instead. If you’re disguised as a specific individual, the GM might give creatures you interact with a circumstance bonus based on how well they know the person you’re imitating, or the GM might roll a secret Deception check even if you aren’t directly interacting with others.
So unless this is one of the situations where creatures don't follow rules for PCs, it looks like the player would have to specifically say they're suspicious of that bookshelf, or what have you. (Takes me back to AD&D, where there was one player who, literally every time we encountered anything, would open with, "I attempt to Disbelieve the [insert monster name here]" just in case it was an illusion.)
Or if the player said their character was going to, say, take a book off the bookshelf, would that count as the mimic "directly interacting with" the PC so the GM would roll a secret Deception check vs its Perception DC before the PC triggered its Object Lesson?
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I'll make my players act as they want, but as soon as I want the Mimic to attack, I'd roll initiative. Deception for the mimic, Stealth for the players. Winning initiative over the mimic means you felt something and stayed hidden from it.
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Let's say the PCs are in exploration mode in a dungeon, using the Avoid Notice activity. They enter a room with a mimic in it doing its Mimic Object thing.
Do they automatically get a Perception check vs. its Deception, or do they have to explicitly say they're examining it? Or does the Mimic roll a Deception vs. their Perception DC, since its the one actively attempting something, i.e., fooling the PCs?
The description of the Mimic doesn't say one or the other, so we default back to the Deception skill. This is clearly an example of the Impersonate task. It explains in there (p. 246) that since the mimic is just passively sitting there, it will only be detected if people use Seek.
Players don't do Seek while exploring in Avoid Notice mode; that would be Search mode. So the players won't notice the mimic.
If they roll a Perception check vs. its Deception, does that count as their Initiative roll, or do they roll a Perception check to see if they're fooled and then another roll for Initiative?
You would make another roll. It's entirely possible they notice the mimic but combat doesn't immediately happen - maybe the mimic is waiting for them to come closer, unaware that it's been recognized.
Do they roll Perception for Initiative since the last thing they did before Encounter Mode was Seek, or do they still roll Stealth because they were using Avoid Notice as their exploration activity?
They should be able to use Avoid Notice, the mimic might not have seen all of them.
What does the Mimic use for Initiative: Stealth or Deception?
If combat breaks out after it's fooled the PCs, then Deception seems appropriate. If they've identified it, and stood around for a while whether to get closer to it, then Perception is more appropriate. Since the mimic isn't trying to hide (it's trying to disguise), Stealth is not appropriate.
In general, if you're using a skill exploration activity (like, say, Borrow an Arcane Spell), do you use the specified skill for initiative, or do you use Perception unless the activity specifically says you use something else (like, say, Avoid Notice does)?
"Up to the GM".
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The big elephant in the room question is what happens when a whole party is using Avoid Notice.
Avoid Notice says that when you roll initiative you should roll another Stealth check to see if enemies noticed you specifically. That sounds to me like the writers assumed not the whole party would be using Avoid Notice, so at least someone else in the party would be seen and the encounter triggered. But what if the whole party did Avoid Notice and was good at it, perhaps using Follow The Expert?
The most sensible answer to me is that if the whole party manages to sneak, the enemy doesn't realize anyone is there. And if the enemy is also successfully pretending to be innocent furniture, then both groups might just pass each other without any encounter happening.
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Another question is how the party is doing the stealthing. During encounter mode, if you're trying to Sneak, you have to start out hidden, and if you end your turn in full sight of someone, you stop being hidden from that person even if you rolled really well on stealth, because you just don't have anything to hide behind.
Obviously it's easier to make sure you don't make that tactical mistake if you can see the enemies. But the party won't know that that chest could be watching them. So they might end their movement in front of it.
However, during Exploration mode, we don't track rounds, and therefore we can't end a round exposed to view. So... not sure how to handle that.
Sure it is. Drawing a distinction between the reaults of hiding from the treasure chest and hiding behind the treasure chest is obviously disregarding the PCs that made that choice, right? [/s]
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...the only answer we've got is the one given by thenobledrake: as a gm you shouldn't care about the PC's action and just run your railroad as you want.That is most definitely not the answer I gave.Obviously not.
In the other hand, the answer you gave completely ignored the fact the party is hidden : you just said the mimic attack when she wants, as if the party weren't hidden.
In other words, you didn't care about the PC's actions. This isn't what you wrote, this is what you did
That's not accurate. Thenobledrake's answer did not say the party is attacked even if they are hidden, but pointed out the ways that they might not be hidden (not hiding well enough, or moving to positions where they aren't hiding from the mimic, or deciding there's nothing in the room and leaving their hidden positions to do other things).
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Even leaving the specifics of the mimic aside - how do you handle a case of 2 stealthy groups - perhaps a group waiting hidden in an ambush and PCs sneaking through the woods?
Normally, as I understand it, it's assumed one party would be sneaking and the other looking and thus would use Stealth and Perception for initiative respectively. But with both doing both?
If they both roll well enough and don't unintentionally leave cover from one another (basically, if they don't wander into each other) they pass by without interacting, no initiative needed.
If one side rolls poorly enough that the other side spots them, combat starts and everyone rolls Stealth for initiative, as they were all Avoiding Notice. At least I think they all reroll, not positive there.
At least I think they all reroll, not positive there.Nope, when Stealth is going to be initiative you use the same result for both initiative and for determining detection.
Otherwise you're making the odds that a character go unnoticed and win initiative significantly worse (example: if 2 rolls at 50% odds are needed for an event to happen, that's 25% odds of that event happening)
This is also explicitly stated in the Avoid Notice exploration activity.
Got it, thanks for the info!
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At least I think they all reroll, not positive there.Nope, when Stealth is going to be initiative you use the same result for both initiative and for determining detection.
Otherwise you're making the odds that a character go unnoticed and win initiative significantly worse (example: if 2 rolls at 50% odds are needed for an event to happen, that's 25% odds of that event happening)
This is also explicitly stated in the Avoid Notice exploration activity.
I find the Avoid Notice ability a bit hard to parse;
You attempt a Stealth check to avoid notice while traveling
at half speed. If you have the Swift Sneak feat, you can move
at full Speed rather than half, but you still can’t use another
exploration activity while you do so. If you have the Legendary
Sneak feat, you can move at full Speed and use a second
exploration activity. If you’re Avoiding Notice at the start of
an encounter, you usually roll a Stealth check instead of a
Perception check both to determine your initiative and to see
if the enemies notice you (based on their Perception DCs, as
normal for Sneak, regardless of their initiative check results).
The first roll seems to be for overland travel, but who is the roll actually against? How frequently?
The second roll, I always read it as "you make two stealth rolls, both for initiative and to see if anyone has spotted you". I can see why you'd read only one roll into it, but it's not what I would call "explicit".
It also seems a bit inconsistent - if you're rolling Perception for initiative, is that roll also combined with the roll to find enemies/threats? It would be rather strange if sometimes initiative was a two-roll business and sometimes a one-roll business.
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Even leaving the specifics of the mimic aside - how do you handle a case of 2 stealthy groups - perhaps a group waiting hidden in an ambush and PCs sneaking through the woods?
Normally, as I understand it, it's assumed one party would be sneaking and the other looking and thus would use Stealth and Perception for initiative respectively. But with both doing both?
In the case of a party Avoiding Notice as they explore, and coming into the area that a group of creatures have set up an ambush here's what happens:
1) both sides roll stealth for initiative - even though they might not end up even interacting with each other, this is part of determining if any one side notice any of the other side.
2) those same roll results are compared to the Perception DCs of the opposite side of the encounter to determine if anyone notices the other side.
3) play technically continues turn by turn - but a GM is free to skip back to exploration mode if they don't want to track detailed movement through the ambush zone and see if one or more characters involved can't be unnoticed because of lacking concealment or the like.
You could make a whole "stealth mission" thing out of it by setting up the ambush zone with all kinds of terrain and obstacles, then the GM secretly positioning the creatures setting the ambush and selecting the areas they Seek each round and then letting the players take their turns Sneaking bit by bit across the map to see if they ever bump into one of the creatures (which the players could also Seek if they wanted to) or get caught in one of the Seek zones.
I think this is indeed how you would do it if you were going by the book. It feels a bit weird though - your players have been creeping through the wood for hours in Exploration mode, suddenly they drop into Encounter mode but spot no enemies, carefully creep across a flipmat but encounter no enemies, and then go back into Exploration mode. At the end the players are a bit puzzled about what just happened.
Thanks for the responses. That helped sort some things out in my mind. I still kind of miss surprise rounds. With the three-action system, ambush-monsters feel more dangerous in this edition. I guess I'll see how it plays out.
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Thanks for the responses. That helped sort some things out in my mind. I still kind of miss surprise rounds. With the three-action system, ambush-monsters feel more dangerous in this edition. I guess I'll see how it plays out.
It's not entirely a bad thing. I've seen a lot of scripted encounters where hidden monsters would be more than 5ft away from the characters when doing the ambush, so they couldn't actually close in and attack during the surprise round. Which is... a lame ambush.
I find the Avoid Notice ability a bit hard to parse;
You attempt a Stealth check to avoid notice while traveling
at half speed. If you have the Swift Sneak feat, you can move
at full Speed rather than half, but you still can’t use another
exploration activity while you do so. If you have the Legendary
Sneak feat, you can move at full Speed and use a second
exploration activity. If you’re Avoiding Notice at the start of
an encounter, you usually roll a Stealth check instead of a
Perception check both to determine your initiative and to see
if the enemies notice you (based on their Perception DCs, as
normal for Sneak, regardless of their initiative check results).
I agree it's not the easiest to parse, but if we remove a few words which are extraneous to whether it's one roll or two it looks like "you...roll a Stealth check...both to determine your initiative and to see if the enemies notice you". In this case I think it's clearer that one roll is being made, otherwise it would say roll stealth checks (plural).
Okay, new set of questions:
The PCs enter the room, and the mimic's automatic Deception check of 28 beats all of their Perception DCs. (None of the PCs are actively attempting a Perception check, as they are all using Avoid Notice.) The mimic opts not to attack, hoping to snare a PC with its Object Lesson reaction.
One PC, believing the room to be empty, decides to search it before the group moves on to the next room and rolls over 28 to Search. I assume this means that, with a closer look, the PC sees though the mimic's disguise.
Huh, so as soon as they enter the room, I say, Valeros, you're up; take your three actions. And if they don't touch the mimic and the mimic opts to stay in disguise, it's possible for them to leave the room and never figure out what was going on. That's ... definitely different.
3. Rolling init as soon as the PCs enter the room solves all kinds of other problems and prevents even more from cropping up.
^This. The way I was trying to go about it, there were all kinds of dice being rolled that didn't end up meaning anything and just slowed everything down. (Do the PCs get a new Perception check now that they're on the same side of the room as the mimic? What about now? What about now?) Running it where initiative begins when they enter the room makes it clear to everyone what's going on: If you want to examine something, you have to use an action to Seek; if you see something, you have to use an action to Point it Out to your allies, etc.
And in my head, it kind of amuses me to think that the PCs know danger is near because ominous background music started when they entered the room. ;)
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Yeah, running the whole thing in initiative is probably the easiest thing.
The players were trying to Avoid Notice so maybe the mimic doesn't see them enter the room. The PCs definitely didn't notice the mimic.
Now, the PCs cross the room, trying to sneak, but if they ever end a turn in view of the mimic, it'll spot them, because they didn't meet the requirements for staying hidden.
The chance of that happening is pretty high, because who thinks to make sure to stay out of sight of one particular chest?
Yeah, running the whole thing in initiative is probably the easiest thing.
The players were trying to Avoid Notice so maybe the mimic doesn't see them enter the room. The PCs definitely didn't notice the mimic.
Now, the PCs cross the room, trying to sneak, but if they ever end a turn in view of the mimic, it'll spot them, because they didn't meet the requirements for staying hidden.
The chance of that happening is pretty high, because who thinks to make sure to stay out of sight of one particular chest?
Actually, a canny PC will probably avoid entering the room and spend a few actions or rounds studying it before doing so. Thus they might see through the disguise and be able to act accordingly.
Which doesn't feel horribly off from just letting them decide to stop and search the room if you just kept them in exploration mode. The in character actions remain about the same. Exploration mode just uses one Seek roll for the whole area rather than encounter mode letting you do it in declared boundaries.
One more thing: a stealth check is usually a secret check, so the Initiative roll would be hidden from the players, would it not?
One more thing: a stealth check is usually a secret check, so the Initiative roll would be hidden from the players, would it not?
Nope. Because an initiative roll is it's own distinct type of roll. It is not a skill check of the skill used, and should not have any of the effects of that skill.
Edit: To be clear, it also wouldn't have any of the traits of one of those rolls, so would not be secret.
One more thing: a stealth check is usually a secret check, so the Initiative roll would be hidden from the players, would it not?Nope. Because an initiative roll is it's own distinct type of roll. It is not a skill check of the skill used, and should not have any of the effects of that skill.
Edit: To be clear, it also wouldn't have any of the traits of one of those rolls, so would not be secret.
But Avoid Notice says that it is both the initiative roll, and the check to see if someone notices you.
You attempt a Stealth check to avoid notice while traveling
at half speed. If you have the Swift Sneak feat, you can move
at full Speed rather than half, but you still can’t use another
exploration activity while you do so. If you have the Legendary
Sneak feat, you can move at full Speed and use a second
exploration activity. If you’re Avoiding Notice at the start of
an encounter, you usually roll a Stealth check instead of a
Perception check both to determine your initiative and to see
if the enemies notice you (based on their Perception DCs, as
normal for Sneak, regardless of their initiative check results).
One more thing: a stealth check is usually a secret check, so the Initiative roll would be hidden from the players, would it not?Nope. Because an initiative roll is it's own distinct type of roll. It is not a skill check of the skill used, and should not have any of the effects of that skill.
Edit: To be clear, it also wouldn't have any of the traits of one of those rolls, so would not be secret.
But Avoid Notice says that it is both the initiative roll, and the check to see if someone notices you.
You attempt a Stealth check to avoid notice while traveling
at half speed. If you have the Swift Sneak feat, you can move
at full Speed rather than half, but you still can’t use another
exploration activity while you do so. If you have the Legendary
Sneak feat, you can move at full Speed and use a second
exploration activity. If you’re Avoiding Notice at the start of
an encounter, you usually roll a Stealth check instead of a
Perception check both to determine your initiative and to see
if the enemies notice you (based on their Perception DCs, as
normal for Sneak, regardless of their initiative check results).
Hmm, fair dues on that. Feels odd, though I suppose it is one way to remove an "unnecessary roll". I do like that they added that you compare that initiative Stealth check to the Perception DC rather than their perception initiative roll.
I suppose in that case, if you are using stealth for your initiative, it would be a secret check that the GM would roll for you. He would then have to tell you when your turn in initiative is up.
From one direction, it's nice not to require a second Stealth check. From the other side I dislike that this gives Stealth the only in built effect for being rolled for initiative that I can find.
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That's part of why I just have people roll once at the beginning of exploration mode and then let that ride until it matters. You're stuck with that result, good or bad, until something comes up which uses it.
That's part of why I just have people roll once at the beginning of exploration mode and then let that ride until it matters. You're stuck with that result, good or bad, until something comes up which uses it.
I typically do the same. It makes me wonder why Avoid Notice even allows you to use your Initiative stealth roll for your "new" stealth value. Unless circumstances changed drastically, which is possible since you are now in combat I suppose, you should be just as sneaky as you were when you began sneaking.
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My take is this: combat starts when one side becomes aware of the other side and intends to take action.
So if two different groups have been moving about doing Avoid Notice and they all succeed, no encounter happens. Only of someone fails and is no longer Unnoticed does an encounter happen. That doesn't mean anyone was spotted per se, it could be "hey, was that door open all along? I think we have company!"
At this point, at least one side is aware that the other exists, and everyone rolls initiative. Anyone (everyone?) using Avoid Notice uses their result both as initiative, and to compare to the Perception DC of the other side.
- If all of you pass the Perception DC and the other side hadn't Noticed the existence of your side, you stay Unnoticed for now.
- If you pass but the other side had already Noticed your side then you personally somewhere between Unnoticed and Undetected; they know someone is there, but not how many. So if they spot another member of your party maybe they think he was the only one and stop looking.
- If you fail then you become Observed or Hidden, depending on what scenery you were using to creep around.
Then, people start taking turns. If your side manages to stay completely stealthy then you all remain Unnoticed. This could, if you're rolling very well, last several turns while you all move into position and enemies continue doing what they're doing, unaware that they're in initiative.
Then as soon as one of you attacks, or fails a Stealth check to Hide or Sneak, the other side knows there's someone there and they can start reacting to the threats.
Note that if you are in a sufficient hiding spot and don't move, you stay hidden until someone successfully searches that spot or you do something to break your stealth (some noisy or aggressive action, or a failed check to Sneak to a different spot perhaps). So as the rounds tick by, and the other side has no idea there's an encounter going on, you could wait for them to wander exactly into the spot where you want to attack them.
Also, it would theoretically be possible for your whole team to Delay their turns until they're all clustered up in initiative so that you can together launch a massive first strike.
However, that would not make for a fun game I think (both when the players do it, and when enemies do it to them!), so I would say that that's only possible under exceptional circumstances. I think I would say that usually, communicating your initiative timing to the other characters so that you can coordinate requires some noise or gesturing that enemies get a check to notice.
Alternatively, if you all just remain completely Unnoticed and don't do anything, it's possible the other side eventually just leaves because they've finished their business in the area.