Aquatic Ambush: what the monster knows

[SuperParkourio]

The adventure I'm planning to run has crocodiles in it, which have the Aquatic Ambush action. A monster with this action can move towards its target quickly and make a Strike against it (against which it is off-guard), but this requires the monster to be undetected by the target.

How does the monster know that this requirement has been met? Avoid Notice is not a secret roll, but Hide and Sneak are. How does the monster know if it has succeeded on both Hide and Sneak? Does it just guess? What happens if it's wrong? Does Aquatic Ambush fail? Does the movement still happen but the Strike fails? Is the target simply not off-guard against the Strike?

(As an aside, I noticed that this action doesn't have the move trait, and it technically doesn't rely on subordinate actions like Stride or Swim which do have the move trait. I'm pretty sure this is unintentional and the action still uses Swim and Stride. That way it still provokes Reactive Strike, is unusable while immobilized, etc.)

[shroudb]

You may not be aware of what you roll, but you can be aware of its results.

As an example, recall is a hidden check, yes, but if you recall and get "nothing" then you know that you didn't get any information.

similarily, if you sneak and you see the guard turn towards you, he probably heard you. if you sneak and they casually continue to chit-chat with one another without paying you any mind, you probably succeded (unles they are bluffing for whatever reason)

in the case of the aligator, it is an animal, so of simple intelligence. If it thinks that the enemy isn't aware of it, it will lunge. It doesn't need to know of any "result of a check".

Now, if the target was aware, and it was an elaborate ruse playing the unaware, then it will probably cost the aligator two actions to swim+strike as opposed to 1, but i would play it off as a gm that the lost action was due to the ruse startling the aligator.

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for the second part, it's clearly a mistake that it lacks the action used to swim forward, which would have been actually Swim, and the activity would inherit the move trait from said action.

[Baarogue]

SuperParkourio wrote:

The adventure I'm planning to run has crocodiles in it, which have the Aquatic Ambush action. A monster with this action can move towards its target quickly and make a Strike against it (against which it is off-guard), but this requires the monster to be undetected by the target.

How does the monster know that this requirement has been met? Avoid Notice is not a secret roll, but Hide and Sneak are. How does the monster know if it has succeeded on both Hide and Sneak? Does it just guess? What happens if it's wrong? Does Aquatic Ambush fail? Does the movement still happen but the Strike fails? Is the target simply not off-guard against the Strike?

(As an aside, I noticed that this action doesn't have the move trait, and it technically doesn't rely on subordinate actions like Stride or Swim which do have the move trait. I'm pretty sure this is unintentional and the action still uses Swim and Stride. That way it still provokes Reactive Strike, is unusable while immobilized, etc.)

1. If you're running the adventure, then presumably you're the GM and will know if the crocs are undetected by anyone in range. There's no need to agonize over it. If there are no valid targets... don't use that action. If you absolutely have to justify it to yourself, chalk it up to animal instinct. They just know

2. You can run it how you want, like if you want to add in subordinate actions, etc. But the aside about it not having the move trait nor subordinate move actions simply means it doesn't provoke. Since it's supposed to be used against foes it's undetected by it's a moot point, since they wouldn't know which square it's in anyway. Maybe they'll change it in Monster Core (I haven't looked at any previews, in case it's already out there), but for now it is what it is

[Taja the Barbarian]

Sadly, this general question comes up fairly frequently and I'm not aware of any decent answer. Personally, I've scratched my head over secret checks with both the Rogue's Hidden Paragon capstone feat and the classic Halfling Luck ancestry feat.

[lemeres]

I would run it that the crocodile DOESN'T know, but it tries to do it anyway.

As you noted, aquatic ambush is just a single action move+strike with some bonuses based off of the idea that it is attacking defenseless prey.

If the prey is not defenseless, then I'd rule that there is enough of an actual engagement that the crocodile could not sneak anything in.

[SuperParkourio]

I'm probably only going to have the crocodile use it with a good Avoid Notice either way. It seems like a lot of work to Stride back into the water, Hide, Sneak, then use Aquatic Ambush.

[lemeres]

SuperParkourio wrote:

I'm probably only going to have the crocodile use it with a good Avoid Notice either way. It seems like a lot of work to Stride back into the water, Hide, Sneak, then use Aquatic Ambush.

Yeah, I can't see them doing it (without some kind of magical compulsion).

The one thing to know about crocodiles is that they are lazy. As reptiles that can store a fair bit of fat in their tails, they can go up to a year without eating. So they are masters at picking their battles.