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Overall, I feel pathfinder 2e has pretty solid stealth rules. The degrees of observation make for dynamic interaction. I also like that their is an actual mechanic for pointing out undetected foes; imo, this encourages teamwork, and provides a cool tool in the kit for scout type characters. I also like that the game is more encouraging about sneaking and.hiding against some people but not others; it makes sense that you could use cover to hide from the evoker, but not from the fighter doing a pincer strike that is one the same side of the wall as you
My one of my gripes is that it's still hard to use in combat without magical invisibility. Fane's Escape is a neat trick, thought I wouldn't mind a more flavor agnostic for fantasies like throwing a smoke bomb and disappearing, shooting down a chandelier and escaping in the chaos, etc.
Additionally, theres no RAW way to cast spells without revealing yourself. This isn't an issue most of the time, but it's pretty bad if, say, you are playing a trickster and sleep some guards, but, in doing so, reveal yourself to the whole patrol. Even conceal spell doesn't explicitly allow you remain hidden, or even stay hidden until the spell is done, though it feels like this is very much the implication. This isn't really an issue in home games, imo, since the rules for stealth are open ended enough to allow and encourage DMs to adjudicate these kinds of situations, and most DMs I know would not object to a wizard using Conceal Spell to drop a stealthy sleep spell on the infiltration mission to knock out the guards in a heist mission.
Overall though, I feel the system is robust and interesting. It's still hard to use in combat, but out of combat, and it's uses precombat for initiative amd the like are improved, and the degrees of detection make sneaking around far more interesting than a binary seen/unseen system
Hi, nice to se you again!
Nonat1 had a pretty good breakdown on how the rules work in a video. https://youtu.be/zAo6KZj4aQE
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I'm curious how well PF 2e's stealth rules turned out. I remember the 1e Stealth update and Starfinder's stealth rules both weren't great.
Turned out pretty swell I think.
Here's the most comprehensive summary I know:
Basics of Perception and Concealment
Basics of Stealth
Basics of Initiative and Surprise
Slightly shorter summary videos:
Just the basics of Perception.
Just the Basics of Stealth
EDIT: And here's a link to NoNat's video listed by Vorsk, above.
Who's Jack?
Who's Jack?
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From my own experience, the stealth rules work amazingly. The only downside I have faced is that I have had a couple GMs (and fellow players) who have sucked the fun out of stealth because of grognard rules and "realistic" play. For example, I was not allowed to stealth in a dungeon because someone needed light, and everyone automatically saw us. As far as I understand and have played with in groups coming to PF2e with an open mind, the stealth rules are very fun when played how I understand them.
Additionally, theres no RAW way to cast spells without revealing yourself. This isn't an issue most of the time, but it's pretty bad if, say, you are playing a trickster and sleep some guards, but, in doing so, reveal yourself to the whole patrol. Even conceal spell doesn't explicitly allow you remain hidden, or even stay hidden until the spell is done, though it feels like this is very much the implication. This isn't really an issue in home games, imo, since the rules for stealth are open ended enough to allow and encourage DMs to adjudicate these kinds of situations, and most DMs I know would not object to a wizard using Conceal Spell to drop a stealthy sleep spell on the infiltration mission to knock out the guards in a heist mission.
It takes a couple feats, but wizards do get the ability to cast stealthily by level 4; a non-wizard can pick up the same tricks by level 8.
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From my own experience, the stealth rules work amazingly. The only downside I have faced is that I have had a couple GMs (and fellow players) who have sucked the fun out of stealth because of grognard rules and "realistic" play. For example, I was not allowed to stealth in a dungeon because someone needed light, and everyone automatically saw us. As far as I understand and have played with in groups coming to PF2e with an open mind, the stealth rules are very fun when played how I understand them.
That doesn't even make sense. I mean, the whole group wouldn't be able to sneak past anything together to save their life, but having someone walking around with a torch in the dark is a great distraction for you to hide in the shadows and use stealth for initiative.
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I enjoyed your PF1 thread on the same topic back when I first read it, so I've made an attempt to answer this as thoroughly as I can! A good reference point is the Perception rules on Archives of Nethys.
I suppose I should give some examples. All of these questions are looking for an answer based on the rules-as-written.
How do you do a scene where someone creates or takes advantage of a distraction to escape? Everything from fleeing under cover of a dazzling cacophony that doesn't actually conceal you to straight up "Ninja vanish" or "Hey look over there."
The Create A Diversion action uses Deception to do this sort of thing. You create a distraction - either audible or with a gesture - and if you succeed, you become Hidden. This means they know you're there, but they don't know where you are. You can them immediately use stealth to Sneak, making you Undetected - i.e. they don't know where in the area you are, but do know of your presence. That should cover both of those.
How do you sneak up to someone in a crowd of people? How do you hide in a crowd of people? How does this change when you're trying to hide from someone looking for you specifically, someone searching for any suspicious character, a vigilant guard who is indifferent to you, or a disinterested and lazy guard?
Without something like Halfling's Distraction Shadows, you won't be able to move through a crowd without being observed at all. However, I think most of these would work fine so long as you're only seen as a perfectly normal person to be in the area, so Impersonate with Deception would be the way to go. A vigilant guard versus a lazy one would likely be best represented by either a different Perception DC for the guard, or by a -2 or -5 penalty to their Perception DC (corresponding to the easy and very easy DC adjustments). As a GM, I'd likely also change the amount of time + effort required to Impersonate depending on these situations - just not looking like yourself should be easy and likely not take the full 10 minutes, but if the guard is on the lookout for any suspicious individual, it might be more time consuming to set-up.
How do you do a scene where you silently pick off the guards one by one?
This one is hard to do, I think. If you've successfully used Sneak to get close the guard, they'll be flatfooted from your first attack, but then you'll no longer be hidden. The level-to-proficiency nature of PF2 means you scale very quickly, so if you're at a high enough level to be able to one-shot guards, it'd be possible. The GMG Guard has 20 HP and 18AC, going to 16 AC if flatfooted. If you're doing something like a 7th level Thief rogue with +16 to hit for 2d6+6+2d6 sneak = 20 average, so you're hitting on a 2 on the dice with average damage just barely taking them out, and critting on a 10 for 40 average damage to easily take them down. If the guards were spread out and can't see each other, you could Sneak, Strike, and Sneak away, as you're unobserved. Otherwise you'd need to end your turn in a square you can attack one from, and Strike, Create a Diversion, and then Sneak. They'd know you're there, but you're just disappearing each time (the same guard's perception DC of 17 vs your Sneak of +16 and Deception of ~+13-+15 for this sort of build would make this pretty consistent). If they're closer to your level, it's definitely impossible - but it probably also should be.
How do you do a scene where the sneaky member of the party leads the rest of the party past a dangerous situation?
You can't do this one for the first level or two, but as soon as you become an Expert in Stealth, your allies can Follow the Expert to get their level to Stealth if untrained, and a +2 bonus regardless. That means even very unstealthy characters will have a mediocre modifier, an can be combined with the Quiet Allies skill feat to roll only once with the lowest modifier, often giving you a pretty decent chance at getting past vaguely level-appropriate creatures, and definitely getting past weak ones. If the aforementioned Rogue from before was trying to stealth past those guards (Perception DC 17) with their Paladin, Cleric, and Wizard friends and had Quiet Allies, the lowest modifier would be the 10-Dex, full-plate Paladin with a +9. +9 vs DC 17 is decent odds, and if the party is making something of an effort, that can certainly be improved (+12 for a 12-dex, trained in Stealth Champion is a big improvement)
What happens when you try to sneak past someone who's lightly asleep?
When they're asleep, they're unconscious, and so have a -4 penalty to their Perception DC to sneak past, and are Blinded. This means you can't Critically Fail to Sneak past them, so at worst they wake up and know someone's there but don't know where you may be. You also don't need to maintain cover or concealment to sneak past them.
How do you do a scene where you want to do something in plain sight without arousing suspicion from disinterested observers? (Snatch someone off the street into a doorway, hit someone and make it look like they fell, etc.)
Trying to take a physical object in plain sight will be using Thievery to Palm an Object, with later options to improve what you can steal. Hitting someone and making others think they fell would likely be using Deception to Lie, but I may have misunderstood the scene you're describing.
Can a sneaky character sneak past someone with extraordinary senses? (eg a bloodhound) Can they sneak past someone with supernatural senses? (eg a grimlock or dragon) With or without class-specific abilities, magic spells, or magic items?
How does PF handle sneaking in the context of creatures that aren't primarily visually oriented? How about in the case of creatures so alien that they neither see nor hear?
I'm answering these two together because I think the questions are connected. Senses are more formally defined now, and split into three categories: precise senses (can always tell exactly where someone is with them if they're not hiding; vision for humans), Imprecise Senses (you can tell the general square someone is in if they're not hiding; hearing for humans), and Vague Senses (you can tell the general presence of a creature if they're not hiding; smell for humans). If a creature isn't primarily visually oriented, or can't see or hear, they'll have different senses, with different rules - but they'll still be listed as precise/imprecise/vague so you can figure out what they can tell with it - these are Special Senses. So if an enemy has Tremorsense (imprecise), they can figure out what square you're in, but not precisely see you, with that sense. The Stealth rules are designed around visual perception as the only Precise sense, which isn't too surprising, but there's a side bar about using Stealth with other senses in Special Senses - I'll just quote its text directly here, as it's all relevant:
The Stealth skill is designed to use Hide for avoiding visual detection and Avoid Notice and Sneak to avoid being both seen and heard. For many special senses, a player can describe how they’re avoiding detection by that special sense and use the most applicable Stealth action. For instance, a creature stepping lightly to avoid being detected via tremorsense would be using Sneak.
In some cases, rolling a Dexterity-based Stealth skill check to Sneak doesn’t make the most sense. For example, when facing a creature that can detect heartbeats, a PC trying to avoid being detected might meditate to slow their heart rate, using Wisdom instead of Dexterity as the ability modifier for the Stealth check. When a creature that can detect you has multiple senses, such as if it could also hear or see, the PC would use the lowest applicable ability modifier for the check.
So you pick the most appropriate Stealth-related check, and sometimes change out the ability score if it doesn't make any sense.
All of these are scenes I can definitely see wanting to put a sneaky character through. How does PF2 handle them?
Hopefully that was helpful! I do think the PF2 perception and stealth system is much more robust than most D&D/d20 systems. To do all the things listed, you would need Thievery, Stealth, and Deception, but you can probably safely get rid of Thievery or Deception if you're more focused in what you're trying to do with one character.
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I suppose I should give some examples. All of these questions are looking for an answer based on the rules-as-written.
For a lot of these the flippant answer would be "go read the book", but to be fair, the answers are spread out around multiple sections so you need to know where to go. And reading rules is one thing, a feeling for how they play out in practice is another. Arcaian has already done a good job with most of these but I have a few remarks.
How do you do a scene where someone creates or takes advantage of a distraction to escape?
Going from well-seen to "where is he now" is a two-stage process. First you need to become Hidden, which means people are still aware of what square you're in but don't have direct sight on you anymore. When you're Hidden you can Sneak to a different square to become Undetected, which means they also don't know where you are anymore.
The Create Distraction task of the Deception skill helps you with the first part - people still know where you are, so you're only Hidden. But this allows you to use Stealth to Sneak away.
Taking advantage of a distraction caused by someone or something else would follow essentially the same rules, just that someone else caused the event that gave you a moment of being Hidden.
How do you sneak up to someone in a crowd of people? How do you hide in a crowd of people?
Arcaian pointed at a halfling feat to hide behind a single person. For a crowd, the GM might rule that a crowd counts as sufficient cover or concealment to satisfy the requirements for the Hide and Sneak tasks of the Stealth skill.
How does this change when you're trying to hide from someone looking for you specifically, someone searching for any suspicious character, a vigilant guard who is indifferent to you, or a disinterested and lazy guard?
Most of these could be done with stealth, but if there was for example a checkpoint where you're inspected directly with noone to hide behind, that would become a case for Deception to Disguise and pretend to be someone else.
How do you do a scene where you silently pick off the guards one by one?
This one's a bit tricky. Enemies near your own level typically just have too many hit points to pick off in a single hit. But what Arcaian described, taking out low-level guards whose main threat to you is sounding the alarm, that can work fine.
Can a sneaky character sneak past someone with extraordinary senses? (eg a bloodhound) Can they sneak past someone with supernatural senses? (eg a grimlock or dragon) With or without class-specific abilities, magic spells, or magic items?
How does PF handle sneaking in the context of creatures that aren't primarily visually oriented? How about in the case of creatures so alien that they neither see nor hear?
You can, although it's harder. You should really just read the entries on Perception, senses, and special senses in the "playing the game" chapter. The framework is very flexible
All of these are scenes I can definitely see wanting to put a sneaky character through. How does PF2 handle them?
There are a few pitfalls to keep in mind:
- In a typical published adventure you're dungeon crawling and facing mostly near your level enemies. Their Perception scores will be decent enough so you'll be spotted about half the time. Also, very often they'll just be directly in your path and you have to openly cross their area to open a door to the next room or such.- Sneaking ahead of the party to see what's in the next encounter is dangerous, because if the encounter is not trivial, there's a solid chance the level-appropriate enemies see you and you're on your own then.
The rules are good for supporting a stealth-heavy game, it's really more the typical adventure that's not good for it. In a home campaign where the game is maybe less action movie, more heist movie, with lots of lower grade guards who are just there to try to sound alarms, a stealth character comes more into their own.
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I'll note that the guard can't act before their turn in the initiative order, which means the PCs have one round to kill the guard, not one action. Which is more than enough time to finish even an appropriate level Mook. The only question is if there are other mooks nearby to see it happen.
Also, failing a stealth check when you are unobserved means you are still hidden-- you need critical failure to become observed. That creates a distinct possibility you could leg it away before they get a good look at you, leaving them to wonder if that rustling in the bushes was just a rabbit or their imagination.
There's also the Terrain Stalker feat, which let's you very slowly move around a favored terrain without needing to roll stealth. Great for scouting.
Sneaking by creatures with inhuman senses comes down to whether or not you can take a plausible action to fool those senses. Usually this requires being aware of the senses in the first place, and a certain of buy-in front the GM. But as that example from the rulebook shows the buy-in is meant to be pretty generous. But you can bypass all this entirely with the 7th level Foil Senses feat.
Various feats let you skirt needing cover and concealment or hide behind other creatures. The Legendary skill feats available at 15th level let you sneak up on someone standing in a field and steal the shirt off their back.
Finally, the three action economy generally makes stealth easier to use in combat and creates better rules for adjucatng it than PF1 had.
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I might have missed something but I don't see any reason a sufficiently large crowd of people wouldn't count as cover in and of itself. A stone wall or a group of people 5-10 ft deep seems like they would block LOS similarly. One person already counts as light cover so I think you could also extrapolate from there.
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It does not seem possible to lose a pursuer in a chaotic situation (a pitched battle between armies, a busy city street) unless you can physically break LOS. "Hey look over there!" is supported but taking advantage of a Fireball to run away is not.
Well you can totally run away while a person is busy with a fireball. They can chase you, but then they are leaving themselves open for more fireballs. I'm not sure what the issue is here, besides the crowd thing.
It's disappointing that you're still having to go into fuzzy GM call territory or race-specific feats to hide in a crowd of people. It seems like a basic genre staple.
It may be a genre staple, but it isn't a medium staple. A tactical game with minis and a map is not really a good fit for crowds of unimportant NPCs, and PF2 leaned further into the tactical.
That said, there's more support for it than you think, which I will get into below.
It's disappointing that PF2 doesn't really support this sort of scene. It seems weird that "kill someone silently without giving away your presence" is not an option in a game where one of the core classes is a sneaky killer.
I mean, it is doable, but you need to outclass the opponent enough to make very quick work of them. Insta-death options are rare, partially because it would suck for those to get turned on the PCs and fights are meant to be fights.
Batman can sneak around taking out mooks all day, but he isn't going to be instantly beating Lady Shiva from stealth.
This seems like a huge improvement. It's a little disappointing that the CRB doesn't seem to tackle common cases like scent. I can't really think of any ability modifier that makes a lot of sense to avoid being smelled.
Ability modifiers are not likely the solution here. When it came up in my own game, my players sneaked past goblin dogs by covering themselves in goblin bed rolls and clothes to mask the scent. Lacking that, you could also use Wisdom as the score to determine which way the wind is blowing and use that to sneak by.
I don't really see a good answer for how you handle a scene where a character is trying to avoid being picked out of a crowd, either. It falls into a soft spot between so many different skills, none of which fully cover it.
The entrance to the castle has two guards, and people are filing through as part of their daily business in the middle of the day.
How do you sneak into the castle through that gate if you are Robin of Loxley, known and wanted criminal? How do you sneak through it if you're the sort of suspicious character the guards are tasked with filtering out but not specifically known to them in particular? How do you simply avoid being randomly hassled or remembered if it's important to you that you do that?
Deception to Disguise isn't really helpful for anything but Robin of Loxley, I don't think, and even then it feels insufficient. You're not looking to pretend to be anything you're not, just not be noticed.
I think you're overthinking this, because not being recognized in a crowd is a perfectly reasonable example of the Impersonate activity.
If you want a more robust infiltration challenge, well, the GMG has a whole chapter on it.
. They've implemented them in at least one AP: Age of Ashes book 5.
I think you have misunderstood. I'm describing a scene where you kidnap someone or assault them in plain sight, but without disinterested observers realizing what is happening, or that anything is happening at all. Snatching a person into a shadowy doorway. Hitting someone and making it look like they fell and hurt themselves. Basically any scene where you're blackbagging someone.
I know how you'd handle picking someone's pocket, but not how you'd handle kidnapping someone.
This one feels a little less defined, but it is mostly just combining the things we discussed above. You could run it using victory points much like the infiltration. Checks would include:
*Using stealth or deception to avoid being noticed trailing the mark.
*Survival or Perception to spot the right time and place to make a move.
*Some sort of Deception, Performance, or Intimidate check to get the body guard's attention.
*An Athletics action to grab the person and/or a Strike to knock the mark out.
*Acrobatics to utilize narrow alleyways and window to escape or Survival to cover your tracks.
I built this much like skill challenges in PFS.
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The way I understand this is that there's nothing that serves as a distraction sufficient to escape except the Create Distraction task, and you still need a physical object to hide behind or darkness to hide in by the end of your move. Is this correct?
There does not seem to be a game state for "I know he's here somewhere, but lost him in the visual noise," just "I know he's here somewhere, but he hid behind/in something." It does not seem possible to lose a pursuer in a chaotic situation (a pitched battle between armies, a busy city street) unless you can physically break LOS. "Hey look over there!" is supported but taking advantage of a Fireball to run away is not.
It's disappointing that you're still having to go into fuzzy GM call territory or race-specific feats to hide in a crowd of people. It seems like a basic genre staple.
The Create a Distraction action isn't the only way to become Hidden - the Hide action will also allow you to do so, but it would require you to Stride to cover, Hide to become hidden, and Sneak to move away from that square - a little less action efficient than Create A Distraction. That'd be the likely way to do something like 'people are looking away, so I jump behind the wall', but the Fireball going off wouldn't add anything mechanically, no. It wouldn't be unfair for a GM to give you a bonus there, but it's not an in-built assumption. Physically breaking LOS is not necessarily required for the crowd/pitched battle situation - as Ascalaphus and Captain Morgan have pointed out, it'd be very reasonable to rule that being on the other side of a crowd counts as cover/concealment (I'd misinterpreted your original question as literally stealthing through the crowd, rather than using it as cover to avoid being spotted). If one wanted to be able to point to a mechanical justification for this, creatures more than two size categories larger than you provide standard cover, and Troops (used to reference both violent crowds and squadrons in an army) are typically Gargantuan. It's by no means a clear RAW argument, but there's never going to be one for cover - it's inherently subjective as to what counts as cover for a person, and this seems a very reasonable one to count as cover personally.
The entrance to the castle has two guards, and people are filing through as part of their daily business in the middle of the day.
How do you sneak into the castle through that gate if you are Robin of Loxley, known and wanted criminal? How do you sneak through it if you're the sort of suspicious character the guards are tasked with filtering out but not specifically known to them in particular? How do you simply avoid being randomly hassled or remembered if it's important to you that you do that?
I don't really see how this one could be a Stealth check, if I'm being honest. The definition of Stealth in game is to avoid detection or conceal an item, and this isn't trying to avoid detection - it's trying to avoid identification. This whole situation could certainly be resolved with Stealth - perhaps a stealthy entrance via the water the runs out of the castle, or hiding in a cart being taken into the castle. But just walking through the gate isn't Stealth here, it's trying to pass yourself off as someone else - which should clearly fall under Deception, IMO. We're in agreement on the Robin of Loxely example, but even if you're just a generic suspicious individual, you want to impersonate someone who isn't one - so you use Deception. Avoiding being randomly harassed or remembered is a place where there really aren't any rules for it in the base set of actions - it does seem like it comes down to luck more than anything. If it's fundamental to your plan that it doesn't happen, perhaps the best way to reflect that in-game is to take one of the other methods that don't involve you being seen entering the castle at all?
It's disappointing that PF2 doesn't really support this sort of scene. It seems weird that "kill someone silently without giving away your presence" is not an option in a game where one of the core classes is a sneaky killer.
I think Ascalaphus has a good point here - it's not that the game doesn't support it, it's that the adventures don't. A horde of 1st level guards when you're level 7 isn't something to put in a standard adventure, because in a straight-out fight, it's not very interesting - and if you're assuming they have to kill them all stealthily to avoid a negative outcome, you need some very specific skills to do that. The mechanics I layed out do actually work pretty well for this sort of scene (IMO), but they require that level difference - as they should; if a 7th level rogue being sneaky could wipe out a dozen 5th level guards, the game wouldn't be very balanced. I think the mechanics do represent these sorts of scenes pretty well - very rarely have I seen a scene like this where people are entirely unaware of where the shot is coming from or the presence of the assailant. The scenes have the guards running over to where the arrow came from, only to find nothing and another guard drops - or the sound of a man dying comes from around the wall, but they get there too late to find the culprit. That's represented by these mechanics fairly well, IMO.
I think you have misunderstood. I'm describing a scene where you kidnap someone or assault them in plain sight, but without disinterested observers realizing what is happening, or that anything is happening at all. Snatching a person into a shadowy doorway. Hitting someone and making it look like they fell and hurt themselves. Basically any scene where you're blackbagging someone.
This definitely feels like a more involved procedure than just a skill roll or two - and I'd agree with Captain Morgan here; a use of the Victory Points system seems the most appropriate, with something like the Infiltration system (I think Captain Morgan's link is broken) being a good example. These are a little more abstract, and so it's easier to run it in a way that makes sense - as I do agree that there's basically no mechanics revolving around 'precisely how much noise does this person make when we knock them out'. Rules could be improvised, but at base the game doesn't have a mechanic for saying 'does someone walking by in the street hear the sound of someone knocking a person out in the alley nearby', really.
It's a little disappointing that the CRB doesn't seem to tackle common cases like scent. I can't really think of any ability modifier that makes a lot of sense to avoid being smelled.
Captain Morgan's suggestion of Wisdom to understand the way the wind is going to affect things is certainly one you could go with, but I think the important difference from PF1 for me here is just that it is possible to attempt it without some strange combination of feats. For most of these, I think keeping it with Dexterity is going to make sense - can you stealthily and quickly move in such a way that you're never close enough to the creature with scent for them to pick it up? That seems fairly appropriate for Dexterity still, personally. I do agree that it's more of a framework for non-visual senses - but the base mechanics embrace that it's a framework, don't try and put down hard-and-fast rules that break as soon as you get out of visual senses, and as long as the table is willing to improvise around that framework a little bit, I've found it quite easy to have interesting outcomes with it. Even for something like scent, you have the fact that if you fail, the creature knows you're present but not where you are - so you could have a situation where you fail your roll, the chained up dog starts barking, but while the farmer's coming out to investigate you get to a spot where the dog can't smell you (maybe hidden in a tree?). The farmer takes the dog out to track the scent because he's feeling very protective of his chickens, but the Guard Dog has to make a Survival check to Track. Your GM figures you're basically at an Expert task difficulty here (you're a Master in stealth, but the tracks are fresh and scent helps here too), so the dog attempts a survival check with a +4 total bonus vs the DC of 20. Predictably this fails, and while the dog is failing to track you, you have access to that precious chicken coop for a short while relatively unguarded.
Overall I'd agree that the perception/stealth/senses/etc rules are a framework more than rigorously defined, but I feel that helps them in this situation. Stealth is a much more subjective thing than combat in almost any ttRPG, and the PF2 rules don't pretend otherwise - but if you embrace that framework, you can get interesting results out of them. The Victory Point-based systems for things like heists, kidnappings, and so on, is also a substantial improvement on the mechanics available in a game like PF1, at least to my personal tastes.
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The way I understand this is that there's nothing that serves as a distraction sufficient to escape except the Create Distraction task, and you still need a physical object to hide behind or darkness to hide in by the end of your move. Is this correct?
There does not seem to be a game state for "I know he's here somewhere, but lost him in the visual noise," just "I know he's here somewhere, but he hid behind/in something." It does not seem possible to lose a pursuer in a chaotic situation (a pitched battle between armies, a busy city street) unless you can physically break LOS. "Hey look over there!" is supported but taking advantage of a Fireball to run away is not.
To remain Hidden you do need to end your actions behind something that allows that, yes. If you ended an action out in the open with nothing to hide behind, you would be spotted immediately.
That doesn't mean that the Create Diversion action is the only possible thing that could temporarily make you Hidden so that you can Sneak away - it's just a way that's always available. Other ways may be available in the moment, with the GM's agreement.
It's disappointing that you're still having to go into fuzzy GM call territory
PF2 leans a lot more on GM calls, but I wouldn't call them fuzzy. PF1 tried in vain to cover all situations specifically, but there are always more cases they didn't think of so you end up with an unsystematic patchwork of rulings for specific cases. PF2 aims more for a central core of rules and examples, that are easy to stretch to specific situations. If a player does something that isn't covered by explicit rules but sounds like something you could plausibly try, you can compare it to similar actions and ask for a check and set a DC. Because you also have a solid framework for determining reasonable DCs (either Simple or based on the level of an opponent) this is actually quite easy.
So I wouldn't call it fuzzy, I would call it more "principled GM call" territory.
Is it plausible that the rogue in the courtyard takes advantage of the wizard throwing in an airburst fireball and the guards looking up for a split second? Certainly, and as a GM you could just looking at the Create a Distraction ability to get an idea of how the mechanics for it might work. You might for example decide that the rogue could Ready an action to Sneak when the guards look up for a moment.
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I'm not reading all of that, sorry, I'm just here to note that all skill checks have that caveat. And it's an optional one. Many more things in the game are optional, based on "GM whim", are encouraged to be tweaked to taste, or otherwise assume you have a reasonable table you talk and work with rather than throw the rules at. In turn, the rules aren't meant to get in your way quite as much as in PF1 — that was the subject of your old thread, right?
Stealth is pretty complicated in this one, but these worries of GM involvement and flexibility apply to the whole game, pretty much. It's a paradigm shift that I think works, (though I'm biased of course,) because a GM you don't vibe with is not going to vibe better just because you're protected by the letter of the rules, so there might as well be more openness. The intent is the GM being up-front if stealth is undersupported in the game or not the intent or whatever, people talking about different ability scores or approaches rather than having it sprung on them, and using the framework you mentioned to run the scene, filling in little holes or smoothing over corner cases as needed. At least, as far as I can tell.
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The biggest issue with most of these scenarios, from a game stand point, is that they are not team challenges, but solo character challenges. The basic rules of PF2 are written assuming encounter mode is going to involve everyone playing and not just stealth master jack. The VP system from the GM can easily be adapted to cover all of these situations very easily, but the important part is making sure you, as GM, are not creating challenges that only one character can meaningfully interact with.
PFS scenarios adapt the VP system for all kinds of really interesting unorthodox challenges/encounters and might be a good place to look if you need help with a specific example. I haven’t played them all, but I have played ones that involve the whole party trying to evade an army of undead through hostile territory for days, and get into a temple that is being watched to get information out of one of the priests there without alerting who ever is observing the temple. Doing these kinds of situations as skill challenges instead of combat encounters let’s the party avoid the sheer terror of risking splitting the party for the duration of the challenge as well, which is the number 1 issue with stealth challenges that I have experienced.
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What skill covers pretending to be an upstanding citizen so you don't get hassled by authorities?
Deception.
Or just not get picked out of a crowd as someone they should be looking into?
Also Deception.
Outside of concealing your face because it's on wanted posters all over town, it's only impersonation in the absolute most abstract way. It's not about how you're dressed or covering up your face, it's about how you act and how you avoid catching the eye.
I think a lot of your confusion is that you are still thinking about the Disguise skill from PF1. Disguise is no longer a separate skill. It has been lumped under the Deception skill using the Impersonate activity, which reads:
"You create a disguise to pass yourself off as someone or something you are not. Assembling a convincing disguise takes 10 minutes and requires a disguise kit (found on page 290), but a simpler, quicker disguise might do the job if you’re not trying to imitate a specific individual, at the GM’s discretion."
In this case, the disguise is to make yourself appear as something you are not: a normal person. It doesn't require a disguise kit or 10 minutes, but it probably involves making sure none of your weapons or scars are visible. Beyond that it is just acting casual.
Other feats might allow you to use Stealth or Performance here instead, but the default is clearly Deception to Impersonate. They lumped the two skills together for the same reason you think they should have put Deception and Diplomacy together-- they are too intermingled to be separate.
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Also, there's lots of ways to get around cover requirementa with the right feats. Looking at the base rules but ignoring feats in a game where you get literally 30 of them is a bad way to evaluate the game, but we are getting into "just the book dude" territory.
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It's always going to involve some judgement call on the part of the GM, but there isn't even a basic framework for how losing pursuers in a crowd of bystanders or in a pitched battle should work. That's disappointing.
Chase rules provide a framework for escaping people pursuing you
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But it would also be very reasonable to rule that being in a crowd of people is only lesser cover and not sufficient for Hide or Sneak, because, well, that's what the rules say.
It also says that any creature 2 or more sizes larger than you counts as normal cover rather than lesser which would suggest that a 3x3 grouping of medium creatures would count as regular cover for another medium-sized creature.
If a creature between you and a target is two or more sizes larger than both you and your target, that creature’s space blocks the effect enough to provide standard cover instead of lesser cover.
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I for one think it is a good thing that many of the rules' specifics are left up to the GM. Gives them a lot more freedom to quickly handle corner cases without having to argue with a player who thinks they know more. Another example is determining Cover and Concealment; in this edition it is much more freeform/hand waved than it used to be.
But it would also be very reasonable to rule that being in a crowd of people is only lesser cover and not sufficient for Hide or Sneak, because, well, that's what the rules say.It also says that any creature 2 or more sizes larger than you counts as normal cover rather than lesser which would suggest that a 3x3 grouping of medium creatures would count as regular cover for another medium-sized creature.
If a creature between you and a target is two or more sizes larger than both you and your target, that creature’s space blocks the effect enough to provide standard cover instead of lesser cover.
This could be considered especially true now that we have Troops (essentially bigger swarms) in the Bestiaries. They generally consist of Medium component creatures, but are treated as a single Gargantuan creature.
I will say crowds not providing cover seems to be intentional. Other terrain from that chapter is called out as providing cover, not just difficult terrain. And there are several feats that make them cover. Which I wouldn't really object to if they were skill feats widely available, rather than archetype or ancestry feats.
I think house ruling otherwise is perfectly reasonable though, or just using a bespoke skill challenge. You could let a medium creature Hide or Sneak in a crowd but give them the cover bonus to stealth, for example.
I will also admit that while ending your action outside of cover is a very solvable problem, there is little to no support for not revealing yourself by taking an offensive action. You can immediately hide after, but not avoid alerting allies within line of sight. This goes back to the rules assuming a reasonably competitive opponent (within 4 levels of you.) If the level gap exceeds that, you frankly might as well go into montage mode and let the players narrate how they do it, because rolls won't really matter.
Also, working with your party makes it very possible to take out a room of people before they can act. And this is a team based game, after all.
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How do you do a scene where you silently pick off the guards one by one?
I run it as a Hazard that uses Stealth to disable.
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I'm just here to note that all skill checks have that caveat. And it's an optional one.It seems strange to me to have that caveat for skills when it isn't similarly applied to any of the other common attribute-based checks.
Anyhow if you don't feel like reading the posts, feel free to not reply!
The biggest issue with most of these scenarios, from a game stand point, is that they are not team challenges, but solo character challenges.Only for the sake of readability. I do also wonder how you'd make those scenes work with Jack and his friends; I'd just rather not get into answers that boil down to "the wizard casts Mordenkainen's Expeditious Exit."
Follow the Expert (an activity anybody can do) and Quiet Allies (a skill feat that Jack or anyone with Stealth training can take) do a great job of allowing the party to sneak almost as well as Jack, even if they didn't invest in Stealth. The latter even sets up the whole party for a single Stealth check, rather than several, vastly improving the odds that the party remains undetected.
There's also the common problem that skills are generally atomized and personal in a way that spells and attacks are not, because they mainly act on the self rather than the target. You can have a fighter cut down an orc, or a spellcaster cast a spell that slays the orc or turns the whole party invisible, but generally skill-based characters start from the assumption that they only can use their skills for themselves but need special exceptions or eat significant penalties when they use them for anyone else.
Not anymore! As Ravingdork points out (I think he meant to quote this bit of your post) Follow the Expert and related feats has made it better than ever to use your skills for your allies. And that's just for letting your allies excel at those same rolls. There's also a ton of ways to have your skill checks help your allies. The base rules have Aid, Demoralize, Grappling, and Tripping for combat. The wizard or alchemist might be the one who Repairs their fighter friend's shield. And of course the most important skill in the game is Medicine, so you can Treat the Wounds of you and your friends after a fight or use some Battle Medicine to get someone back on their feat during a fight. Feats let you add all sorts of fun things, like Bon Mot letting you insult someone hard enough to penalize their will save.
There is still the issue that Jack can't wring the neck of a chicken stealthily without resorting to the trivial encounter rules or reducing a chicken to an object rather than a creature.
Sure he can. Striking makes him observed, but only by creatures that could actually observe him. The farmer and Woof are outside the building and the other chickens are asleep. If a tree falls in the woods...
It is still disappointing that there's no way to do that scene as a challenge, though, even if you're clever enough to figure out how to disable the enemy in one hit.
Well, in practice, the way you'd usually do this scene is by waiting until people are alone to attack them (possibly through some degree of trickery), or coordinating an ambush with your allies where you can take out individual groups of enemies in one round before they can cry out an alert to other groups of enemies.
Really, the biggest immersion problem is the lack of facing. You can't really account for ganking someone and dragging them away while their buddy is looking the other way in a game that constantly assumes 360 degree awareness. But aside from simplicity, the 360 thing makes sense in combat when people know they are in danger. It is the sort of rule you can bend outside of combat if it fits the narrative better.
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Follow the Expert (an activity anybody can do) and Quiet Allies (a skill feat that Jack or anyone with Stealth training can take) do a great job of allowing the party to sneak almost as well as Jack, even if they didn't invest in Stealth. The latter even sets up the whole party for a single Stealth check, rather than several, vastly improving the odds that the party remains undetected.These are the kinds of things I was looking for, thanks!
It is interesting to look at how they reflect some of the baked-in assumptions of D&D-likes, though.
Follow the Expert is very weak in a subtle way. Most people don't think about how or why skills are weak this way, but the way it's weak has shaped player behavior in most WOTC-era D&D-likes (Pathfinder included). The problem with Follow the Expert is that you are probably going to fail four or five skill checks rolled in series. If Jack rolls a 2+ to sneak and everyone else in a party of four rolls a 3+, that sounds like a very trivial task, right? Well, you have a >30% chance to fail. It gets worse very fast, as a party of four all rolling 6+ fail ~68% of the time, with a crit failure ~20% of the time. If everyone has to roll pass-fail, things get XCOM-shaped very quickly.
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The assumption is here is that you have to get every person to roll a success or the group fails. Checks like that are pretty rare. In fact, plenty of skill checks really just need one person to succeed-- Recall Knowledge, most charisma checks, athletics to break down the door, thievery to pick the lock, tracking... One person does this and the entire party reaps the benefits. Stealth is one of the few exceptions to this, really.
But this is also why Victory Points and fail forward are being implemented for skill challenges. A single bad roll doesn't sink the whole ship. And for VPs, they encourage the application of a wide variety of skills to keep the whole party useful and engaged.
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I don't really think the real world examples are applicable, though. In a situation where no one is on the look out for the PCs or cares about people walking by, you don't need to roll stealth. You probably don't need to roll Deception either-- you just avoid doing things that will draw attention like visibly carrying giant weapons or whatever. As you out it yourself, most people do that automatically when they walk around in public, so you don't need to make it a dice challenge anymore than tying your shoes.
You usually roll stealth in scenarios where your mere presence will lead to conflict. The lairs of hungry monsters or violent criminals. And if those creatures would be distracted by, say, playing a card game with their mates or are otherwise lax in their guard duties, the rules tend to account for this with a significant penalty to their perception DCs.
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Pf2 has a lot of really great resources for helping GMs arbitrate these kinds of scenarios in ways that have been missing from games for a long time. Having a couple of activities like: Seek, create a distraction, hide, sneak, etc. really help create a framework for comparison, so GMs can say, "this feels most like X" and then just adapt as necessary. As a player, if you have tactics you really want your team to be able to employ, it is a great idea to talk to your GM about them and how they will work, rather than try to keep it a secret and then Gothcha! your GM by trying to point to obscure rules that they might not have read or try to pull up discussion board threads.
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I agree with Unicore, I think this is a bit in how the GM and players communicate.
Let's start from the assumption that the GM and players are friends and trust each other to run and play a fun game. Trust is important.
Now, as a player you might have the beginnings over some grand cunning scheme to achieve something in the game world. It involves subterfuge, tricking NPCs or escaping their notice.
Where this seems to be going off the rails a bit is that as a player, you're not trying to fool the GM, you're trying to fool some NPCs. It's perfectly fine to tell the GM your grand plan and where you're going. The GM isn't the adversary. (Remember that I started with trust?) The point isn't to construct a plan with no apparent weaknesses and spring it on the GM as an ironclad case that he can't somehow wedge open.
Rather, the players and the GM are collaborating to play a cool story. The player proposes a plan, the GM broadly agrees but on some details thinks that's not how it works, so talks with the player about how to adjust.
It could go like this:
Player: "I want to cross the courtyard unnoticed."
GM: "Well that's going to be hard, because you'd be crossing in the open and there are guards on watch."
Player2: "My wizard could distract them for a moment with a fireball. While they're looking at what the hell just happened my buddy could tiptoe past."
GM: "Well. There's no rule for that in the book, but it makes sense that it could work. So I think that might work like using Deception to create a distraction, except it's not a distraction for yourself but for a friend, and it'd be more about magical skill. Why don't you roll Arcana to see if you can do an impressive airburst explosion? I'll give you a bonus because it's pretty distracting to have a fireball suddenly come out of nowhere. And depending on how well you succeed your buddy will be Hidden for long enough to maybe make it to the other side unnoticed."
Notice what didn't happen here? The players didn't individually or as a group try to come up with a complete plan and then ambush the GM with rules saying this is how it's going to go down. And they weren't worried the GM was going to abuse their openness to find a way to shut them down or sabotage them.
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Exactly! They're rules written for a dungeon crawl, and they stop working once you move outside of the dungeon.
Correction: A mode of the rules is written for a dungeon crawl, and doesn't work as well once you move outside of the dungeon. But that's why there are other modes. The game can't be designed to handle every situation all at once to the same degree of satisfaction, so it splits parts off into sections relevant to achieving a particular experience.
Movement rules are a great example of this. The basic movement rules are designed to quickly and easily handle grid based movement in tactical combat, and they by and large do a pretty good job of that. If you want one party to flee across a city and another party to chase after them, though, the grid based movement is not going to create an interesting or enjoyable experience. Which is why you stop using those rules for that purpose, and use the Chase rules instead.
Likewise, for stealth, there's the Infiltration subsytem. That's aimed at things like heists first and foremost, but it can be adapted to other situations where the party needs to achieve an objective subtly. Failing that, adjudicating a stealth scenario using the generic Victory Point subsystem is also an option, or improvising something else based on the philosophy of having these different modes of play.
If you only run stealth scenarios using the combat stealth rules, it will be difficult to do some 'genre typical' stealth actions. So, switch to a mode of the game that better facilitates that gameplay instead.
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This sort of mother-may-I design doesn't apply to class abilities that aren't skills, though. There's no "Well, there's no rule for hitting someone with an axe, but it makes sense that that could work" or "There's no rule for casting a spell, but I guess I could let you do it this time." You're describing a scene where you're not allowed to sneak across, but if you ask the GM really nicely, they might make up some different rules on the spot to make up for the deficiencies of the written rules.Player: "I want to cross the courtyard unnoticed."
GM: "Well that's going to be hard, because you'd be crossing in the open and there are guards on watch."
Player2: "My wizard could distract them for a moment with a fireball. While they're looking at what the hell just happened my buddy could tiptoe past."
GM: "Well. There's no rule for that in the book, but it makes sense that it could work."
I don't view it as a deficiency. I see it as a strategic choice on where to pin down your principles and give people the tools to extend from there.
Imagine they'd said that crowds provide cover to hide in. Then next we'd be talking about "yes but do crowds of medium folks provide cover for large PCs?" "what about your radioactively glowing sprite PC, who's really small but emits a lot of light?"
Rather than trying to nail down ever weirder corner cases, the GM has a framework for principled rulings. It's really much more solid than "mother may I". One of the genius elements in PF2 compared to earlier iterations is putting all the different checks (skills, attacks, saves, spells) on essentially the same scale. You can make spell checks against skill DCs, attacks against save DCs, and the numbers will be reasonable. It makes it very easy to extend on the fly to cover any number of situations that no writer could have ever imagined in advance.
You still can't do the scene where Merry sneaks up on the Witch King because he's beneath the Witch King's notice. "Beneath someone's notice" isn't a state in the game; you're just visible or not visible.
Sure you can. I mean, Lord of the Rings isn't quite a typical D&D party because some of the characters are obscenely higher level than others. Anything that poses a threat to Gandalf in a prolonged fight can kill Merry in a single hit. Merry sneaking up to the Witch King is basically two high level opponents ignoring the trash mook right until it turns out he actually has some trick up his sleeve.
You don't even really need mechanics for this. But suppose you really wanted to mechanically model Merry trying to get closer to the Witch King without drawing attention. Then since this is all happening out in the open, it's really a matter of concealing your intentions, which is more a Deception thing ("look at me all puny") than a Stealth thing.
The thing is, the Witch King could see Merry just fine. This wasn't about Stealth. A bit about Deception to hide intentions perhaps but really, the Witch King simply didn't care about Merry because he thought he was protected by Prophecy™. So even though he saw him just fine, saw his intention to creep up on him probably just fine, he just cared more about confronting Gandalf, cuz they'd been working up to this confrontation for hundreds of years.