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Mornin'! Nice day for fishing, ain't it?
I am trying to figure out how Stealth works in 2E and it is not clear to me whether it is an Exploration activity or it should be part of Encounter mode.
Let's say Merisiel is sneaking into a chelaxian vira trying to avoid being noticed by guards. Should I put a gridded map in front of her and let her take turns using the Hide and Sneak actions? Or should I avoid using a map for now and just consider her as taking the Avoid Notice activity? And if this is the case, would this be a single check for the entire vira, or should I ask her to roll for each new room she enters?
Another exemple: let's say Merisiel is in Citadel Altaerein, the dungeon from the first PF 2E AP. After an encounter in the first room, she decides that she wants to scout ahead for the group and check future rooms before the party enters them. Now, do I describe this scene without using the map (physical or virtual) relying on description, or should I ask her to move square by square and use the Hide and Sneak actions as required? I am quite sure that what Merisiel wants is not covered by the Scout activity. Would this be another Avoid Notice activity? Or should I stay in Encounter mode?
Thank you for your insights!
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Well first off, there's nothing wrong with doing Exploration Mode on a map. If you're doing a 10 mile trek through the woods, you probably don't want to do that on one inch = 5 feet scale maps, but if the party is exploring a building, then doing Exploration Mode on a map is probably the most convenient way of running the scene.
The key difference between exploration and encounter mode is that encounter mode is something you do in turns, while exploration mode is a bit more fluid, doing things timed in minutes not seconds. So in encounter mode, people take their turns and move one by one, while in encounter mode you could ask "who's moving in front", and move the whole group of miniatures all at once, keeping the same person in front all the time.
So the Stealth skill is used in both exploration and encounter mode. Exploration tactics answer the question: "what are you doing while moving?", and if you're mostly trying not to be seen, then you're using the Avoid Notice tactic.
If Merisiel wants to go ahead of the party a little bit to get a look around the corner to see what's there and maybe tiptoe back to tell the rest of the party, that would be done with Avoid Notice. (There is also a Scout tactic, but that's more like a lookout who screams to warn the other party members; not very stealthy. The name "scout" for that isn't really well chosen.)
Stealth is also used in Encounter Mode, for Sneak and Hide actions. That represents turn-by-turn actions, which you'd only use if an encounter were really happening.
Now, there are some situations that are kinda on the edge between encounter and exploration mode. Let's show three examples;
- It's a big forest, and the party is trying to move from north to south, meanwhile there's a hobgoblin patrol going east-west. The party doesn't want to fight them because they want to keep their spells for the dungeon in the south, so they try to Avoid Notice. There's lots of space in the forest to evade them so we use the Avoid Notice activity.
- A bar fight has broken out and Merisiel is trying to hide behind an overturned table to try to stay out of it, because she doesn't want people to know she was in that bar. But people are moving around in the fight and if someone comes around the table, they'd spot her. So from round to round she has to decide if she wants to scoot over to somewhere else with better cover. This is clearly an Encounter Mode situation with Hide and Sneak actions instead of Avoid Notice.
- Now for the corner case. Merisiel is trying to get into the castle, and there are guard rotations patrolling. Now, you can't hide if people can just plain see you, you need some cover or concealment to hide. So if Merisiel tries to hide somewhere but the guard patrol is coming from the wrong side, she'll be spotted. However, no fight has broken out yet. In this case, you can decide as GM which way you'd rather run this - is it an Avoid Notice check, or would you prefer a round by round hide and seek game?
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Running all stealth in encounter mode basically ensures that the rogue is going to get caught because it requires more stealth rolls and therefore chances to fail. I strongly recommend using exploration mode when the sneaker is unnoticed. And only have them roll when there would be a significant change.
So for example, it the rogue sneaks up to the edge of the clearing and spots a couple of guards and then goes straight back to the party, I'd make that one stealth roll. If she then decided to try and sneak past the guards to get into the dungeon, that would potentially require another check. (And might not even be possible, depending on the terrain and visibility, but an open gate and an Invisibility spell would generally allow for this as an example.)
So for example, it the rogue sneaks up to the edge of the clearing and spots a couple of guards and then goes straight back to the party, I'd make that one stealth roll.
If we suppose that she fails her Stealth check under this circumstance, would you make her roll initiative and enter encounter mode, or notify her that she has been noticed? The latter doesn't really make much sense to me. A guard may very well have a bow at hand, and if they win initiative, they would use their actions to fire it at the rogue in certain cases.
If entering combat mode is the option, how should the distance between the rogue and the rest of the party determined? Should I go with whatever makes more sense to me? Should the entire group enter Encounter mode?
- Now for the corner case. Merisiel is trying to get into the castle, and there are guard rotations patrolling. Now, you can't hide if people can just plain see you, you need some cover or concealment to hide. So if Merisiel tries to hide somewhere but the guard patrol is coming from the wrong side, she'll be spotted. However, no fight has broken out yet. In this case, you can decide as GM which way you'd rather run this - is it an Avoid Notice check, or would you prefer a round by round hide and seek game?
This corner case is exactly what I was thinking about. I love the possibility to choose based on what I prefer case by case.
I have recently watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFR-7N_nOS0
I think the author made a great job in explaining how Stealth works, but I was a bit confused by his example of Merisiel sneaking into the magic school because it happens in Encounter mode, and I thought: wait, this is cool! A rogue character would enjoy that! When I thought on how to integrate such a scene into my game, however, I realized that if Merisiel was part of a group, she would be in Exploration mode in that particular case, trying to Avoid Notice, so that wouldn't happen in rounds and play as cool as it seems in the video.
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So for example, it the rogue sneaks up to the edge of the clearing and spots a couple of guards and then goes straight back to the party, I'd make that one stealth roll.If we suppose that she fails her Stealth check under this circumstance, would you make her roll initiative and enter encounter mode, or notify her that she has been noticed? The latter doesn't really make much sense to me. A guard may very well have a bow at hand, and if they win initiative, they would use their actions to fire it at the rogue in certain cases.
If entering combat mode is the option, how should the distance between the rogue and the rest of the party determined? Should I go with whatever makes more sense to me? Should the entire group enter Encounter mode?
If the rogue is spotted, she has already rolled initiative. It was her Avoid Notice roll. Everyone else needs to roll for initiative at this point (most likely perception in this context) and you go from there.
It is also worth noting that if she only fails her check (as opposed to critically fail) then she would begin the combat hidden rather than observed. The guard could try and seek to make her observed, move to a position where cover isn't in the way, or fire at them with a 50% miss chance. Depending on how the first round of rolling goes, the rogue might even be able to get away without ever being fully seen, and at your discretion the guard might even think it was just his imagination.
How far the rest of the party is depends on a lot of things. Did they specifically establish where they were waiting? (Usually this happens on a grid.) How far back would they need to be to avoid rolling stealth checks of their own? (60 feet is a good baseline here, but it is heavily terrain dependant.)
I also sometimes have everyone use stealth for initiative if they want to have the rogue sneak into position before anyone pops up, and a power stealth roll means you're further back and arrive at the scene later.
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- Now for the corner case. Merisiel is trying to get into the castle, and there are guard rotations patrolling. Now, you can't hide if people can just plain see you, you need some cover or concealment to hide. So if Merisiel tries to hide somewhere but the guard patrol is coming from the wrong side, she'll be spotted. However, no fight has broken out yet. In this case, you can decide as GM which way you'd rather run this - is it an Avoid Notice check, or would you prefer a round by round hide and seek game?This corner case is exactly what I was thinking about. I love the possibility to choose based on what I prefer case by case.
I have recently watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFR-7N_nOS0
I think the author made a great job in explaining how Stealth works, but I was a bit confused by his example of Merisiel sneaking into the magic school because it happens in Encounter mode, and I thought: wait, this is cool! A rogue character would enjoy that! When I thought on how to integrate such a scene into my game, however, I realized that if Merisiel was part of a group, she would be in Exploration mode in that particular case, trying to Avoid Notice, so that wouldn't happen in rounds and play as cool as it seems in the video.
I checked out that video, it's a pretty good explanation. (There's just one detail it overlooks that annoys me: when you want to sneak away, instead of doing a possibly difficult check to hide just around the corner where you have cover, if you moved one more step so you're completely out of sight, then you're by definition Hidden, so that lets you fulfill the requirement for Sneak without a check.)
Anyway, yeah, for that example they go through it in Encounter Mode. Deciding when an infiltration should be encounter, and when it should be exploration mode is more an art than a science. In general I'd say, if you're casing a building from a safe distance, taking care to avoid being seen but at the cost of not getting a close look, then that's more Exploration, and it probably takes minutes or hours. If you're actually going into a building, trying to evade people making their rounds, then you're clearly in Encounter Mode.
I don't really agree with thenobledrake's somewhat minimalist interpretation of Avoid Notice. It's not just rolling Stealth for initiative. The idea of Avoid Notice is that well, you're trying to keep the Unnoticed status. The not so very well explained assumption in the CRB however is that you're doing it together with a group who will be noticed. So if all goes well, the monsters know all about Valeros in his heavy armor but they don't know that he's not alone, and that Merisiel is lurking in the shadows ready to stab some back.
So where it goes off the rails a bit is when the whole party is trying not to be noticed, or when the sneaky people split off from the party to try to scout ahead in the dungeon (really, the Scout exploration tactic is just a badly chosen name since it lacks the stealth involved in scouting ahead). Anyway, in cases like this, I'd be looking mostly at the distances involved. If the PCs can keep a safe distance between them then running Avoid Notice in Exploration Mode makes sense, and if they're passing by some enemies, then everyone makes a check and everyone succeeds then they pass those enemies undetected. But if the PCs have to get up close (for example, the enemies set up a checkpoint in a spot that everyone has to go through) then Encounter Mode is the more appropriate one to use.
Always remember that these are supposed to be useful tools, not an awkward straightjacket. The idea of exploration tactics is to have a handy way of establishing what everyone is doing when the group is moving at "montage speed". So instead of having to say you search every 10 feet square and roll a check, you say "I'm doing Search", and instead of rolling stealth every 25 feet or so, you say "I'm doing Avoid Notice". Exploration Tactics are a set of rules intended to make this part of gameplay in the intervals between encounters more efficient and enjoyable.
Always remember that these are supposed to be useful tools, not an awkward straightjacket. The idea of exploration tactics is to have a handy way of establishing what everyone is doing when the group is moving at "montage speed". So instead of having to say you search every 10 feet square and roll a check, you say "I'm doing Search", and instead of rolling stealth every 25 feet or so, you say "I'm doing Avoid Notice". Exploration Tactics are a set of rules intended to make this part of gameplay in the intervals between encounters more efficient and enjoyable.
Asthonishingly enough quite the opposite seems to be the case with many gaming groups, i.e. formalizing and naming the individual exploration tactics seem to often straightjacket the once free-flowing gameplay in between encounters. And while exploration mode using exploration tactics is unarguably quicker our entire group and GM severely hate this mode, especially when it comes to the transition in between exploration and encounter mode (removal of surprise rounds and using stealth for sneaking and/or initiative takes a lot to get used to).
My best guess as to why this is the case is that after reading the rules we are trying too hard to take them at face value and are not (yet) playing as intended, that is not asking the right questions. So instead of asking "what are you doing" and then assigning (or making up) an appropriate exploration tactic, the question usually is "what kind of exploration tactic are you using", which (at least subconsciously) seems to limits players and GM to the existing (and partially badly named) tactics.
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Always remember that these are supposed to be useful tools, not an awkward straightjacket. The idea of exploration tactics is to have a handy way of establishing what everyone is doing when the group is moving at "montage speed". So instead of having to say you search every 10 feet square and roll a check, you say "I'm doing Search", and instead of rolling stealth every 25 feet or so, you say "I'm doing Avoid Notice". Exploration Tactics are a set of rules intended to make this part of gameplay in the intervals between encounters more efficient and enjoyable.Asthonishingly enough quite the opposite seems to be the case with many gaming groups, i.e. formalizing and naming the individual exploration tactics seem to often straightjacket the once free-flowing gameplay in between encounters. And while exploration mode using exploration tactics is unarguably quicker our entire group and GM severely hate this mode, especially when it comes to the transition in between exploration and encounter mode (removal of surprise rounds and using stealth for sneaking and/or initiative takes a lot to get used to).
My best guess as to why this is the case is that after reading the rules we are trying too hard to take them at face value and are not (yet) playing as intended, that is not asking the right questions. So instead of asking "what are you doing" and then assigning (or making up) an appropriate exploration tactic, the question usually is "what kind of exploration tactic are you using", which (at least subconsciously) seems to limits players and GM to the existing (and partially badly named) tactics.
Oh, I'll definitely agree that Exploration Tactics are one of the biggest contenders for the Not Working As Intended awards.
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I second that Exploration Modes could have used more time cooking in the oven. Perhaps a lost opportunity on the "legal" (not houserule) side of the equation was to model Exploration Rounds after Encounter Rounds.
For example, if you wanted to Avoid Notice, but were only Trained in Stealth, it would use all Three of your Activities to move at half speed. As you level, pick up Skill Feats, and improve your Proficiency in various Skills and Checks, you could "slot in" more Activities to your Exploration Turns with fewer reduction to speed, etc.
It looks like the game almost went this way (Trapfinder, Legendary Sneak), but then splintered the concept into a few choice feats here and there instead...
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I think one of the problems with exploration tactics is an intuition - understandable, but badly wrong - that all tactics were supposed to be somewhat equal, that people should be using all of them equally much.
This is clearly wrong when you actually look at them closely. You can't even hustle for all that long. Defend is only useful if you actually have a shield. Following the Expert only makes sense in some circumstances. And in a lot of cases, Walk Normally At Normal Speed is actually the most sensible tactic, like when you're just trying to get from A to B without expecting any mischief, because you're nowhere near your designated adventure area yet.