Was playing Fall of Plaguestone and my druid transformed into a spider with pest form and started sneaking around.
I made him roll a sneak which ended up being a 29 IIRC (lvl 2). Since I didn't want to switch to turns and had no clue how to run stealth yet. I just rolled perception for the Sculptor every time my player voiced a move action.
I read some threads on how to do it when it leads to an encounter but couldn't find any rules for when you just want to roleplay a stealth segment.
PS: I gave them a surprise round later against the Sculptor because I thought 2e would have it but I should have had them roll Athletics (with a bonus) when they were busting down the door and the sculptors nat 20 should have negated most of the surprise.
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If you expect the environment largely to remain static and you are dealing with one player attempting to sneak around the area (or at least the group to stick together), you can more or less ad hoc it in Exploration Mode. The main benefit of Encounter Mode for a stealth encounter is being able to track how, when, and where multiple people are moving in a tense round-by-round infiltration.
Regardless, in this scenario your druid is functionally using the Avoid Notice activity, where they move at half speed and try to remain hidden without needing to track every exact movement they make until they encounter a creature which has a chance of noticing them. In this case normally you would move into Encounter Mode with the sneaky PC rolling Stealth for initiative and vs. Perception DC to see if they begin the encounter hidden from the creature, however if the stealthy party merely wants to bypass the creature, you could skip with the pageantry and have them simply roll stealth to get past the creature (at least so long as there is a reasonable means of doing so that maintains cover and concealment at the beginning and end of their halved movement).
The main point is that a creature being sneaky will usually roll one Stealth check vs. the Perception DC of all creatures which are close enough that they may notice (purely GM discretion as far as I'm aware), and if the situation calls for it they will roll once per movement. Furthermore, taking any action except stealth or Step is liable to break this stealth unless it is sufficiently unobtrusive (again GM discretion). Generally you would not roll Perception checks unless they already knew there was a creature hiding nearby and spending their turns Seeking them out (in which case the tension has likely ratcheted up to the point where Encounter Mode is more useful)
As an aside, yes, surprise rounds are a thing of the past. I don't know for sure why but I would suspect it is because they were too powerful as a mechanic. Too punishing on the players when they are ambushed by clever foes (the much more likely occurrence) where those ambushes could as easily be represented by other abilities, and too enticing for players to engage in elaborate shenanigans in attempt to obtain surprise (or alternatively, arguments establishing who exactly surprise whom and when and how). Instead of surprise the benefits of ambushing an opponent are usually represented in the ability to attack a flat-footed target from stealth.
TL;DR - The druid should have rolled Stealth whenever they moved, rather than the sculptor roll Perception. Otherwise, how you ran it mostly works. Encounter mode is useful for tracking round by round activity during an infiltration mission, but not strictly necessary until the tension ratchets up. Surprise doesn't exist anymore in the format you are accustomed to.
PS. I was going to ask how your druid rolled a 29 at level 2 but I suppose it's not entirely impossible? I'm coming up with 27 without cover on a nat 20 but my math may be off...
Thanks for writing all this out it's much more thorough than I expected.
Pest form gives a +10 to stealth modifier that's how the druid ended up at 29.
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The key thing to understand about exploration mode is that it's a convenience that you can use to skip repetitive, uninteresting detail.
Suppose someone is moving through a dungeon scared of traps, so they Seek for them every 10ft (the range of a Seek action). Most 10ft areas don't have anything special in them, so that's a LOT of checks where nothing happens but you're rolling dice and moving minis across the map anyway. Boring!
This is where Exploration mode comes in. Instead of having to track all that to individual Stride and Seek actions, the camera zooms out a bit and goes into montage mode. Instead of rolling for every step, the GM only rolls for the spots where there is something to be found. If something interesting is actually spotted (or missed, and triggered) the camera zooms back in, we go back to round by round encounter mode for a moment to resolve the event. But maybe we skipped half an hour of pointless pawn-pushing and rolling checks to notice nothing out of the ordinary during the exploration mode montage.
How does this relate to sneaking around with Avoid Notice?
Sneaking around a creature is a bit more involved than being on guard for traps that are sitting still. When you look at the stealth rules, you see that a requirement for staying hidden/undetected is that you don't end your movement in plain view of someone. You can cross a spot where you'd be in plain sight if you can cross it in a single Sneak move, but it requires a check.
So suppose there was a monster in the woods, but it's entirely stationary. Say some kind of ancient elven guardian statue. And there's lots of shrubbery that you can use to constantly have cover or concealment from the guardian. Then you could, if we were talking encounter mode, use a series of Steps to move around it entirely without having to make any repeated Stealth checks. You started out undetected, didn't take any action that violated that, and didn't end your movement in any spot that violates it.
So knowing that, we could also abstract that a bit by using exploration mode and have you move around it, instead of doing a round by round of the 30 steps it takes you to cross a flipmat from one long edge to the other.
However, most of the time, it's not that easy.
Maybe there isn't that much shrubbery, and you have to Sneak from one tree that gives cover, across the gap, to another. Or maybe there's also a patrol that's circling around, and the timing of their movements compared to yours becomes important. At this point, we can't use the easy abstractions of exploration mode anymore.
So what about Avoid Notice again?
The premise of Avoid Notice isn't really that you'll use it to slip past enemies. The premise of AN is that the rest of your party is probably not that sneaky, and you're going to end up running into enemies. But when it happens, you'll have been skulking around and start in some kind of cover, and maybe enemies won't have seen you. So enemies think they're facing a dude in heavy armor, one with a pointy hat, and one with a holy symbol. But they don't see the fourth dude with the poisoned dagger.
So what if the whole party is trying to Avoid Notice?
It could happen of course. You've defeated the evil overlord but everyone's low on spells and health and you'd like to sneak out and recover, not get punked by some random patrol looking to avenge their boss.
So the whole party is creeping along until you come to an area with enemies. If everyone was Avoiding Notice and rolls well, enemies may not realize your party is there. But since precise timing and positioning do matter, you would drop into encounter mode. Since you want to resolve things step by step it makes sense to roll initiative. Or you could just run it in "team rounds": enemies move, then all PCs move, then all enemies move. And if the PCs decide to launch a surprise assault, then you roll initiative, using Stealth for the PCs probably.
To be honest, the rules in the CRB and GMG on sneaking around and initiative aren't super clearly written. It's almost as if the writer couldn't really believe that all the PCs would really manage to roll well enough on stealth to bypass the enemies. Or that if they rolled well enough, that they would choose to keep creeping along and not launch an attack.
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One thing to note in PF2 is that creatures do not roll vs. each others' rolls. This lowers the crazy variability of two d20s compounding, which w/ PF2's crit system would be extra bonkers.
Either the Druid rolls vs. the Sculptor's Perception DC or the Sculptor rolls vs. the Druid's Stealth DC (depending on who's initiating what). In the instances presented, it's just the Druid rolling unless something makes the Sculptor suspicious enough to do a few Seek actions. If somebody new walked in, they'd likely roll vs. the Druid's Stealth DC.
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One thing to note in PF2 is that creatures do not roll vs. each others' rolls. This lowers the crazy variability of two d20s compounding, which w/ PF2's crit system would be extra bonkers.
Either the Druid rolls vs. the Sculptor's Perception DC or the Sculptor rolls vs. the Druid's Stealth DC (depending on who's initiating what). In the instances presented, it's just the Druid rolling unless something makes the Sculptor suspicious enough to do a few Seek actions. If somebody new walked in, they'd likely roll vs. the Druid's Stealth DC.
ah right so I don't even make a countercheck by the sculptor and if his perception was below 10 (the pest form value) I wouldn't even have to make the player roll unless he gets into plain view of the sculptor, potentially triggering him to seek and then figure out if a spider would intrigue him.
This thread has been very helpful.
One thing to note in PF2 is that creatures do not roll vs. each others' rolls. This lowers the crazy variability of two d20s compounding, which w/ PF2's crit system would be extra bonkers.
Either the Druid rolls vs. the Sculptor's Perception DC or the Sculptor rolls vs. the Druid's Stealth DC (depending on who's initiating what). In the instances presented, it's just the Druid rolling unless something makes the Sculptor suspicious enough to do a few Seek actions. If somebody new walked in, they'd likely roll vs. the Druid's Stealth DC.ah right so I don't even make a countercheck by the sculptor and if his perception was below 10 (the pest form value) I wouldn't even have to make the player roll unless he gets into plain view of the sculptor, potentially triggering him to seek and then figure out if a spider would intrigue him.
This thread has been very helpful.
Technically, the player always has a chance of rolling a nat 1, even if their modifier is more than 10 higher than the observer's Perception DC, and a nat 1 would downgrade even a Success to a vanilla Failure, but if the player is so competent at stealth compared to the general, they're probably beyond being threatened by them anyway. Besides, a vanilla failure only gives away their location, it doesn't reveal them.
(Do note that Perception DC is 10 + the observer's modifier, so it would be very unusual for any creature to have a Perception DC lower than 10. The lowest possible for a level 1 character is 12 without special penalties (calculating based on lvl 1 + 2 Trained + -1 Wis))
Ah right that makes more sense for the DC than just the perception save value.
Unlikely to come up often but I don't want to make a player roll just to check if it's a nat 1. If they are that much better they just succeed imo.
Generally, resolving things with one roll outside of encounter mode is the way to go. If the druid is scouting ahead, spots someone and rolls well to Avoid Notice, I generally let that roll apply until they do something risky, like a sneaking up to steal a vial off a lab table, or trying to slip by a guard post. If all they are doing is watching for a bit and going back to the party, there isn't much reason to go into initiative or require multiple rolls. Even if the entire group was rolling to bypass an encounter, I probably wouldn't require multiple rolls if they had a safer alternate route to take.
Avoid Notice is designed to determine if you avoid being noticed, after all. And given that you can no longer get really absurd for your level stealth bonuses (+5 items at level 3 and such) giving players less opportunity to roll bad is nice.
Oh yeah, fir sure, if my player could only fail on a nat 1, I'd probably hand wave the few rolls they would have had to make anyway. Unless there's tension riding on which way the die lands, you can save the rolling for when it might matter
How is the druid scouting and avoiding notice at the same time?
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The druid was "scouting" using the Avoid Notice tactic.
What most people think when you say scouting is going out there to see where the enemies are, without them seeing you. So that you can decide to maybe head in a different room instead, or perhaps cast some specific buffs based on what you've seen. For that you need Avoid Notice.
The exploration tactic called Scouting doesn't really accomplish what most people expect from that name.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The druid was "scouting" using the Avoid Notice tactic.
What most people think when you say scouting is going out there to see where the enemies are, without them seeing you. So that you can decide to maybe head in a different room instead, or perhaps cast some specific buffs based on what you've seen. For that you need Avoid Notice.
The exploration tactic called Scouting doesn't really accomplish what most people expect from that name.
Apart from the mislabelled scouting exploration activity I think what confuses many players is the fact that due to the "no opposing rolls" rule you can only actively conduct one action at a time whereas in real life you'd expect a "scout" to actively sneak and seek simultaneously.
However ingame you just use the Avoid Notice activity to roll your Stealth checks and your Perception DC (no roll) in order to notice things, which usually means that you will probably only notice things that are plainly obvious or hidden poorly.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The druid was "scouting" using the Avoid Notice tactic.
What most people think when you say scouting is going out there to see where the enemies are, without them seeing you. So that you can decide to maybe head in a different room instead, or perhaps cast some specific buffs based on what you've seen. For that you need Avoid Notice.
The exploration tactic called Scouting doesn't really accomplish what most people expect from that name.
Apart from the mislabelled scouting exploration activity I think what confuses many players is the fact that due to the "no opposing rolls" rule you can only actively conduct one action at a time whereas in real life you'd expect a "scout" to actively sneak and seek simultaneously.
However ingame you just use the Avoid Notice activity to roll your Stealth checks and your Perception DC (no roll) in order to notice things, which usually means that you will probably only notice things that are plainly obvious or hidden poorly.
1) That doesn't really have anything to do with no opposing rolls. It has to do with "only one exploration tactic at a time."
2) You can still spot creatures lying in ambush... It just requires them to roll badly on their stealth check.
3) In this particular case, it makes sense when you think about what the activities entail. Avoiding Notice means you are scurrying from cover to cover, minimizing time exposed. Searching requires you to be meticulously examining every inch of open space between you and your goal. The two are pretty much incompatible without feat investment.
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1) That doesn't really have anything to do with no opposing rolls. It has to do with "only one exploration tactic at a time."
2) You can still spot creatures lying in ambush... It just requires them to roll badly on their stealth check.
3) In this particular case, it makes sense when you think about what the activities entail. Avoiding Notice means you are scurrying from cover to cover, minimizing time exposed. Searching requires you to be meticulously examining every inch of open space between you and your goal. The two are pretty much incompatible without feat investment.
Ad 1) PF1 would have handled a two assassins situation using opposing rolls for both Stealth and Perception because you could do, or rather had to do both, thats what I had in mind.
Ad 2) As most creature lying in ambush (not all of course) are usually specialised in Stealth you would either need a higher than average Perception DC (or level) or the creature to roll less than average in order to somewhat reliably detect hidden creatures. Not impossible for sure, however I would not expect to find many hidden creatures using passive Perception only.
Ad 3) Agreed.
Actually w/ encounters generally favoring the PCs, a PC Ranger or Rogue can detect a mundane ambush as often as not, even vs. stealthy opponents. Note that each enemy has to roll separately, which makes for better odds than the PC rolling once w/ all that d20 variance. Of course, w/ solo stealthy bosses, the encounter's likely built around them successfully ambushing you. And then there are the Mimics, Ropers, and such with their extraordinary abilities that'll ambush you too, though often that's to make up for low mobility (like the many monstrous plants that blend in well w/ other plants).