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The Seek action is what creatures need against hidden enemies.
Seek [one-action]
Concentrate Secret
You scan an area for signs of creatures or objects, possibly including secret doors or hazards. Choose an area to scan. The GM determines the area you can scan with one Seek action—almost always 30 feet or less in any dimension. The GM might impose a penalty if you search far away from you or adjust the number of actions it takes to Seek a particularly cluttered area.The GM attempts a single secret Perception check for you and compares the result to the Stealth DCs of any undetected or hidden creatures in the area, or the DC to detect each object in the area (as determined by the GM or by someone Concealing the Object). A creature you detect might remain hidden, rather than becoming observed, if you're using an imprecise sense or if an effect (such as invisibility) prevents the subject from being observed.
Critical Success Any undetected or hidden creature you critically succeeded against becomes observed by you. You learn the location of objects in the area you critically succeeded against.
Success Any undetected creature you succeeded against becomes hidden from you instead of undetected, and any hidden creature you succeeded against becomes observed by you. You learn the location of any object or get a clue to its whereabouts, as determined by the GM.
In essence, if a creature know that the rogue is hidden--which includes knowing which square the rogue is in, then they can use the Seek action and on a regular success the creature observes the rogue. This allows the creature completely normal attacks against the rogue until the rogue takes another Hide action.
Invisibility and Foil Senses can mess this up with the special clause in the Hidden rules, "When Seeking a creature using only imprecise senses, it remains hidden, rather than observed." Sight and touch are the only precise senses on a human, while hearing is an imprecise sense and scent is not good enough to serve as a sense for humans. Scent and tremorsense are an imprecise senses on creatures with that ability.
Don't underestimate touch. "I reach my arm into the invisible rogue's square and Seek by touch," counts as using a precise sense. And a creature that has grabbed the invisible rogue knows precisely where the rogue is due to touch. A swarm that covers the rogue's square also counts as touching the rogue. I count telling a player about their Striding character, "You cannot enter that square because an invisible creature occupies it," as finding the creature by touch, but I don't know whether that is official.
The typical defense against invisibility are spells: Revealing Light, See the Unseen, and Truesight. Some creatures have abilities like those spells naturally, and some items such as Dust of Appearance have the same effects as the spells.
Another defense against an invisible creature it to simply aim for its square and put up with the DC 11 flat check to guess the right spot. That cuts the number of successful hits in half, but half damage is better than no damage.
And invisible characters reveal their location with any action that is not Hide, Sneak, or Step. Well, I also houserule that Seek and purely mental actions such as Recall Knowledge maintain the hidden condition. Stride, Strike, Cast a Spell, Interact, and most other common activities reveal the invisible character's square. "The invisible rogue opened a door. He is in the doorway!"
Point Out is handy if only one creature has senses to find the invisible rogue or if only one creature succeeded at the Seek action.
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When sneaking, after making an attack the Rogue becomes fully observed.
You become observed as soon as you do anything other than Hide, Sneak, or Step. If you attempt to Strike a creature, the creature remains off-guard against that attack, and you then become observed.
The same happens any time that they make an attack while invisible too, except the improved invisibility prevents full observed and caps it at Hidden (the target of the attack knows what space the Rogue is in, but can't see them).
Activating the cloak to gain Invisibility while the entire enemy party knows where the Rogue is also means that they start out at Hidden.
Hidden will cause enemy attacks to miss half the time (DC 11 flat check) but they can be targeted by things as normal.
The Rogue then has to use Sneak in order to move to an unknown location and gain the Undetected condition (the enemies know that the Rogue is somewhere on the battlefield, but don't know what space).
An enemy can use Seek to try and find them. Again, being invisible will cap their detection if they are successful to Hidden. But that will at least let them target them with attacks or know where to aim their AoE effects.
Also to note - the frequency of usage of that Cloak is once per day. Unless they are sleeping for the night after every fight, the Rogue won't have it available for every battle.
Rogues are brutal. High level rogues are extremely brutal. If they have built for Stealth, the action cost to see them and target them is going to heavily favor the PCs while doing very little to stop the rogue.
As a DM, mostly focus on the targets the enemies can see.
Rogue probably took Blank Slate too, so he can't even be detected by magic.
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It probably means the rogue has to sneak in, strike, sneak out - only a single attack.
Enemies can ready an attack, as soon as the rogue strikes it is only hidden and can be hit - with the appropriate miss chance.
Or enemies focus the other group members and you let the player enjoy its fantasy, while dropping in counters from time to time.
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Let's first focus on what the conditions mean, in normal-person language.
Observed: can see you perfectly. No miss chance.
Hidden: knows exactly what square you're in, but can't see you. DC 11 flat check to target.
Undetected: knows you're somewhere, but not where. So could guess which square you might be in, and then still needs a DC 11 flat check.
Unnoticed: doesn't even suspect you're there at all.
An invisible creature can't be observed with sight. So they're at least hidden, possibly undetected or unnoticed. If they just stabbed you in melee, they'd be hidden because they revealed their location by stabbing.
For a hidden creature to become undetected, they have to do something that makes you lose track of what square they went to. The most obvious way to do that is to succeed at a Sneak action.
If an invisible creature just walks away without Sneaking, they're not taking extra effort to be quiet etc, so they stay hidden and don't become undetected.
If a hidden creature is Sneaking but opponents have special senses, it's possible that they keep track of the sneak anyway, such as by scent, lifesense etc unless the sneaker is taking measures against those senses; but the Foil Senses feat of your rogue means that that's always the case.
Finally, the Legendary Sneak feat means you could Hide and Sneak even without cover/concealment. (And some stuff in exploration.) This doesn't really do anything extra if you're already invisible. But it can help if you're fighting enemies that can see invisible creatures.
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In summary: the rogue is indeed hard to get Observed. But to become undetected instead of just hidden, the rogue has to take actions to Sneak and succeed at the check. Spending all those actions to Sneak means a lot fewer attacks.
So either the rogue is attacking less, or he's only hidden a lot of the time. Well, even when hidden he's still hard to hit.
What to do? Well you could just attack other PCs more. That's one of the big issues with abilities that cause monsters not to attack you: they're just gonna attack someone else, they're not gonna attack any less. If the rogue is trying really hard not to be a target, then focus fire on the tank, or go for the healer in the back.
Also, it's good to set your expectations: it's a high level game and the characters are going to become ridiculous. They're supposed to be, it's a reward for making it to high level. It's like a rollercoaster that keeps going faster and faster at the end. Enjoy the ridiculousness :)
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Between the "always sneaking" and invisibility, I don't see a way to target him aside from a big AoE attack.
Always sneaking comes at 2 conditions: Ending each of his rounds with a Sneak or Hide (so losing an action) and succeeding at the Stealth check (not hard but it still shouldn't always be a success). If your Rogue does that every round, chances are high that their damage output is rather low and the enemies should focus on the more efficient characters on the board.
I have the same feeling that some shortcuts have been taken for the Rogue to be breaking games. Even if sneaky Rogue is definitely a thing and a clearly functional one, it's not really breaking games.
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I think the big thing is "just attack the other PCs".
The way PF2 works, it's hard for any single character to tank everything. Even very sturdy classes like champions will suffer if they have to take all the hits. Because monsters have good to hit and do a lot of damage. You kinda need at least two melee PCs to have enough HP to go around.
So if one melee PC is making themselves scarce as a target, life is easier for them but harder for the rest of the party.
My experience playing a rogue that could turn invisible is they were so brutal, that trying to attack them at high level was a massive waste of actions while the rest of the party beat the person down.
The rogue is providing flanking for everyone swinging at the target.
Rogue is getting Opportune Backstab.
Rogue can sneak and move as needed with mobility and Swift Sneak with Stealth built up with items.
At 16th level 4th level invis scrolls are super cheap.
Blank Slate is straight up detection and similar spells don't work.
If they decide to do an archer or thrown weapon, then it's even worse when invisible. Full sneak attack from range. Then the target has to move to them.
Reflex saves so good that reflex AoE doesn't work great.
Generally strong will save too.
Now with Fortitude saves providing the succeed and get a crit success and that General feat that boosts Fort to master, they have all good saves with crit success.
They don't need strength, so they stack up Dex, Con, Wis, and whatever other stat they want.
They get six Legendary skills. Tons of skill feats.
This DM is going to hate it even more when they get Master Strike on top of already getting Debilitating Strike with Double Debilitation and then add in the thief feat that boosts sneak attack to 6d6 while making the target flat-footed to everyone.
Unless you want to completely screw the rogue player by making a brutal enemy specifically to kill them, just give up trying to one up them.
Rogue is easily the most powerful martial class in the game and one of the most powerful classes. You might even call them overpowered at high level within the group paradigm. They're just a brutal Pf2 class.
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We had a high level Rogue in our game too, and the issue is that the Rogue player keeps thinking that all those nifty abilities allow him to act normally but be undetectable. In other words, he simply ignores the hide and sneak rules, and takes 3 actions each round saying he can't be detected - he doesn't take any hide or sneak actions (or tries to until the GM insists he follows the sneak and hide rules).
The other very humorous issue is that if the enemy cannot figure out where the Rogue is, his allies cannot either. Our Rogue keep insisting that he was undetectable at the start of combat (actually he insisted he was undetectable during Exploration mode too, or put another way... literally AT ALL TIMES), so when we start an encounter and my Bard starts buffing the party with Haste, etc., he never got buffed since I couldn't target what I can't see. When he gets damaged and wants to be healed, cleric can't target him because he's taken his figure off the board and insists he's "hidden". And so on. At times, he'd get into trouble, but the other PCs simply avoid metagaming and roleplay that they don't know he's in trouble because they don't know where he is or what he's doing!
Conclusion being: Even if PF2 high level play is much more playable than any of its competitors, it's still possible to bring crazy builds that more or less imbalance the game. GM has to stay vigilant.
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Don't underestimate touch. "I reach my arm into the invisible rogue's square and Seek by touch," counts as using a precise sense. And a creature that has grabbed the invisible rogue knows precisely where the rogue is due to touch.
Does "I reach my arm into the invisible rogue's square and Seek by touch" count as using a precise sense? The Senses rules state that "Pathfinder's rules assume that a given creature has vision as its only precise sense and hearing as its only imprecise sense." While common sense (oops) says touching an opponent should count "as using a precise sense[,]" that directly contradicts a pretty clear statement in the rules text.
I count telling a player about their Striding character, "You cannot enter that square because an invisible creature occupies it," as finding the creature by touch, but I don't know whether that is official.
It seems pretty clearly unofficial if vision is the only precise sense and hearing the only imprecise, but I think my own practice as a GM has been to treat an invisible creature you bump into as shifting from undetected to hidden, and I'm pretty comfortable with that as a house rule.
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Don't underestimate touch. "I reach my arm into the invisible rogue's square and Seek by touch," counts as using a precise sense. And a creature that has grabbed the invisible rogue knows precisely where the rogue is due to touch.Does "I reach my arm into the invisible rogue's square and Seek by touch" count as using a precise sense? The Senses rules state that "Pathfinder's rules assume that a given creature has vision as its only precise sense and hearing as its only imprecise sense." While common sense (oops) says touching an opponent should count "as using a precise sense[,]" that directly contradicts a pretty clear statement in the rules text.
In attempting to envision how touch could be an imprecise sense, I wonder whether the rules developers were thinking of touch as an intermittent sense: "I touched my invisible opponent a second ago, but I am not touching them right now." That gives the target time to dodge elsewhere in their square. Perhaps touch has to be uninterrupted to be precise, so only grappling or being grappled by someone would count as precise touch. Bumping off of someone when trying to move into their square would be imprecise touch and leave them hidden.
Or it could be that the rules developers just assumed that everyone was alone and isolated in their squares, so they only counted senses that work at 5-foot range as workable senses. That makes sense for the sense of taste, since no-one is going to try to find an opponent by licking them. (Though a PC in my Ironfang Invasion campaign had a velociraptor animal companion named Liklik who liked to lick people.)
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I can see touch being imprecise easily enough. It's one thing to have caught hold of someone with one hand, but where exactly is the rest of their body relative to that, so that you can stick a sword in it? It's somewhat doable, but not as easy as when you can see them.
As for walking into the space of an undetected creature, I don't like the hard "you can't do that". I figure it's up to the sneaky creature to decide whether they want to block your path. Similar to how allies can pass through each others' squares. I mean, if a perfectly visible enemy wanted to walk through your square, you should also be able to let them do that. The rules just assume that you normally don't want to make things convenient for your enemies.
But what if you happen to end your move in the same space as an enemy that you don't know (undetected), strongly suspect (still undetected) or know (hidden)?
I think that's a bit similar to when you accidentally end up in an ally's square, for example when your intended movement gets disrupted by some reaction. At that point we have to remember the grid isn't real, that squares don't have hard walls. It's more like the grid is a convenient projection on the map to help us make sense of distances. You could re-draw the grid a foot to the left and now you're not in the same square anymore. (In practice we don't redraw the grid, the GM just says "okay you're in this square now".)
That said, I could imagine ending in the same square as an undetected creature helping to discover them (making them hidden), as you're very close and likely to bump a bit into them. But if you were just passing through, not ending there, and the invisible creature would rather let you pass than reveal their location - that'd be fine with me too.
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In attempting to envision how touch could be an imprecise sense, I wonder whether the rules developers were thinking of touch as an intermittent sense: "I touched my invisible opponent a second ago, but I am not touching them right now." That gives the target time to dodge elsewhere in their square.
That’s basically how vision works if an opponent goes invisible. Even if they go invisible at the very end of their turn and you’re next in initiative, they become hidden.
Perhaps touch has to be uninterrupted to be precise, so only grappling or being grappled by someone would count as precise touch. Bumping off of someone when trying to move into their square would be imprecise touch and leave them hidden.
I’m not sure touch ever officially counts as precise. I’ve certainly never treated it as precise, even when a hidden opponent is grabbed.
no-one is going to try to find an opponent by licking them.
Short of a pretty specialized feat, anyway.
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As for walking into the space of an undetected creature, I don't like the hard "you can't do that". I figure it's up to the sneaky creature to decide whether they want to block your path. Similar to how allies can pass through each others' squares. I mean, if a perfectly visible enemy wanted to walk through your square, you should also be able to let them do that. The rules just assume that you normally don't want to make things convenient for your enemies.
Well, the rules DO say that you can move through the spaces of willing creatures, not just the spaces of allies, for just that kind of situation. Not being able to walk through an invisible creature that wants to let you pass has never been a thing in PF2.
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I don't think RAW ever considers touch as a sense at all. You're off-script when touch is thrown into the mix.
Something else I'd like to note: heightened invisibility only floors you at hidden against creatures with sight as their only precise sense. Foil Senses would still let them sneak against creatures with tremorsense etc. without issue. However,, it doesn't stop them from becoming observed by creatures with tremorsense, echolocation, etc. after they attack—which in turn bars them from using sneak after the attack, because they're not hidden. You need disappearance to do this against creatures with special senses, not just greater invis.
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I don't think RAW ever considers touch as a sense at all. You're off-script when touch is thrown into the mix.
In playing computer games I sometimes get annoyed that sight and hearing are the only senses that my computer emulates. My character could be walking along and suddenly stop. I pan sight downward and see that he has bumped into a 10-inch-tall rock big enough to prevent walking (stairways have a secret incline, but not all rocks do), so I have to divert around the rock or jump over it. If the character had touch senses, then I would have been informed that the character's foot bumped into a rock without having to deliberately look.
I don't want Pathfinder to fall into this deficiency. I want my characters to make perception checks with many senses, such as, "Before you bite into that apple, make a Perception check. Okay, you rolled success. It smells strange, kind of poisonous."
Also, I talked with two of my players about precise touch in a grapple. They said it is a houserule, but they like the houserule, so we will keep it.
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I don't think RAW ever considers touch as a sense at all. You're off-script when touch is thrown into the mix.In playing computer games I sometimes get annoyed that sight and hearing are the only senses that my computer emulates. My character could be walking along and suddenly stop. I pan sight downward and see that he has bumped into a 10-inch-tall rock big enough to prevent walking (stairways have a secret incline, but not all rocks do), so I have to divert around the rock or jump over it. If the character had touch senses, then I would have been informed that the character's foot bumped into a rock without having to deliberately look.
I don't want Pathfinder to fall into this deficiency. I want my characters to make perception checks with many senses, such as, "Before you bite into that apple, make a Perception check. Okay, you rolled success. It smells strange, kind of poisonous."
Also, I talked with two of my players about precise touch in a grapple. They said it is a houserule, but they like the houserule, so we will keep it.
In case it was unclear, I don't think most GMs will be able to ignore it, and I personally hate ignoring it. You'd need an extremely gamist table for it to never come up. It's just very "here be dragons." There is no dev guidance at all, and a lot of common sense determinations can look out of line with what the system provides by RAW. (E.G., it seems like a monk that does a sweeping kick through a square for the first hit of their flurry and hits a hidden-but-invisible target could know about where their hit landed on their opponent's body by feel, and also know roughly where to aim for their second hit through touch alone. It feels like this might make them only concealed, or perhaps remove penalties entirely. But the game doesn't care about this.) FWIW, my house rule is that a grappled, invisible creature is concealed—in line with the section about invisibility that talks about throwing a net on an invisible creature making it concealed. The diegetics are that you know the points of contact for certain, and not anything else. I'm considering adding that they're completely observed on a critical success on grapple.
Weirdly, scent -is- covered; it's a just that it's vague sense, so it doesn't come up much, and isn't mechanically useful. But touch, taste, proprioperception (not that's it's relevant very often), and so on are completely ignored in the combat rules. It's kind of a shame, too. It'd be quite narratively interesting to have a creature that's invisible but releases a foul-smelling and foul-tasting gas; perhaps you could try to locate the creature by the intensity of the smell in the air, or the acridity of the air's taste, at the expense of having to make a fort save or become sickened.
We had a high level Rogue in our game too, and the issue is that the Rogue player keeps thinking that all those nifty abilities allow him to act normally but be undetectable. In other words, he simply ignores the hide and sneak rules, and takes 3 actions each round saying he can't be detected - he doesn't take any hide or sneak actions (or tries to until the GM insists he follows the sneak and hide rules).
The other very humorous issue is that if the enemy cannot figure out where the Rogue is, his allies cannot either. Our Rogue keep insisting that he was undetectable at the start of combat (actually he insisted he was undetectable during Exploration mode too, or put another way... literally AT ALL TIMES), so when we start an encounter and my Bard starts buffing the party with Haste, etc., he never got buffed since I couldn't target what I can't see. When he gets damaged and wants to be healed, cleric can't target him because he's taken his figure off the board and insists he's "hidden". And so on. At times, he'd get into trouble, but the other PCs simply avoid metagaming and roleplay that they don't know he's in trouble because they don't know where he is or what he's doing!
I had to take Sense Allies to buff the rogue in my games consistently. The human general feat. When I first looked at that feat, I went, "Why would I ever take this?" Then I played with a high level rogue and had to take it to buff and heal him in battle.
My experience playing a rogue that could turn invisible is they were so brutal, that trying to attack them at high level was a massive waste of actions while the rest of the party beat the person down.
The rogue is providing flanking for everyone swinging at the target.
Rogue is getting Opportune Backstab.
Rogue can sneak and move as needed with mobility and Swift Sneak with Stealth built up with items.
At 16th level 4th level invis scrolls are super cheap.
Blank Slate is straight up detection and similar spells don't work.
If they decide to do an archer or thrown weapon, then it's even worse when invisible. Full sneak attack from range. Then the target has to move to them.
Reflex saves so good that reflex AoE doesn't work great.
Generally strong will save too.
Now with Fortitude saves providing the succeed and get a crit success and that General feat that boosts Fort to master, they have all good saves with crit success.
They don't need strength, so they stack up Dex, Con, Wis, and whatever other stat they want.
They get six Legendary skills. Tons of skill feats.
This DM is going to hate it even more when they get Master Strike on top of already getting Debilitating Strike with Double Debilitation and then add in the thief feat that boosts sneak attack to 6d6 while making the target flat-footed to everyone.
Unless you want to completely screw the rogue player by making a brutal enemy specifically to kill them, just give up trying to one up them.
Rogue is easily the most powerful martial class in the game and one of the most powerful classes. You might even call them overpowered at high level within the group paradigm. They're just a brutal Pf2 class.
Opportune backstab doesn't play nice with a full stealth build since the moment you use it you're only hidden until the end of your next turn when you re-sneak to get undetected.
So if you go with Opportune there's no reason to go into all the hassle to become Undetected since...
What do you care as a rogue? You become hidden, then use a few actions to attack twice and move again with mobility and another stealth check. Third attacks aren't great anyway. You're still going to win that action and damage exchange with rare exception.
You don't have to be undetected all the time. The recommendations some of you are making about seeking and touching are something I would be surprised if the OP didn't try.
If you're target is spending its actions seeking, then they already lost to an PC party. They're spending actions on some activity that doesn't do damage and doesn't do anything but let them locate a hidden target they still have to make a DC 11 check to hit if they don't end up having to move to them.
My rogue mixed archer and melee combat up. I would go in hidden, blank slate you can't see me invisible, and start hitting them with arrows from range, debilitate them with flat-footed at range and extra 2d6 sneak, then keep smacking them.
So they know where I am and get to strike after I hit them and we are engaged. They still lost that exchange badly as your other group members start hammering on them.
Whenever these types of posts come out, suddenly there his narrow vision of how to target and harm the rogue rather than a "What do you do when this high level, brutal stealth rogue is in a PC party?"
That's the real question. Rogue by himself or any class by himself can be beat by a DM due to the tight PF2 math. But what do you do when the PC party is fighting a boss or even a few targets as a group, you've got this super stealthy, brutal sneak attack invisible rogue that can't be countered with any of the usual spells or items, just straight up taking seek actions or making the DC 11 check to hit them while they tear into you with their fellow party members.
Even the other players in my group started to say, "That seems overpowered and cheesy."
If you're target is spending its actions seeking, then they already lost to an PC party.
We GMs design our encounters to that the enemy has already lost to the PC party, period. For the Beyond-Extreme-Threat encounters, I give clues so that my players can either avoid the encounter, or plan a tactical or terrain advantage that negates the enemy's greater strength. My player enjoy that sometimes they have to be clever to win.
I presume that Star-Lord1532's problem is that the invisible rogue is winning too easily without having to be clever. The rogue's tactics win routinely and unimaginatively against Age of Ashes' opponents, which can become boring.
I do not own Age of Ashes, so I do not know what those opponents are like. Strangely, Broken Promises in Age of Ashes is the source of Superior Sight ranger feat, which can negate the defense of invisibility.
My PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign ended with three of seven PCs taking the Legendary Sneak feat. It is a strong feat, but rather redundant when the rogue can stay invisible.
The thief-racket archer rogue Binny relied on attacking from hiding from behind a crate or bush in order to catch her target off-guard at a distance. And at 10th level Binny learned Precise Debilitations so that her target stayed off-guard due to a debilitation. But she preferred to Hide again for defense. Legendary Sneak meant that she stayed hidden even if an opponent moved so that she was no longer concealed from that opponent by her cover.
The rogue/sorcerer usually cast spells. He had Magical Trickster feat so that he could deal sneak attack damage with attack spells, but that was hard to set up until Binny learned Precise Debiliations. Before that, the Dragon Claws bloodline focus spell enabled flaming claws Strikes with sneak attack from mere flanking. At 16th level those claws dealt 1d4 slashing damage plus 2d6 fire damage plus 3d6 precision damage and left a debilitation behind. That character eventually learned to cast Invisibilty Sphere to get the team into position before combat, but did not bother with invisibility during combat.
The ranger with Legendary Sneak also had a regular (not greater) Cloak of Elvenkind and Boots of Elvenkind. But he used the cloak for scouting rather than combat. Swift Sneak meant that he could scout stealthily at normal walking speed, and Legendary Sneak meant that he did not have to rely on the cloak or concealment.
Thus, I am accustomed to having Legendary Sneak PCs repeatedly catching opponents off-guard. They just acted less annoying Star-Lord1532's invisible rogue.
I guess my players use invisibility for scouting and ambushes rather than to become hard-to-hit because scouting and ambushing are more fun. As Deriven Firelion said, "You don't have to be undetected all the time." My players won most battles fast enough that they could heal themselves in one Treat Wounds Ward Medic session afterwards, so spending effort on more defense was unnecessary.
If you're target is spending its actions seeking, then they already lost to an PC party.We GMs design our encounters to that the enemy has already lost to the PC party, period. For the Beyond-Extreme-Threat encounters, I give clues so that my players can either avoid the encounter, or plan a tactical or terrain advantage that negates the enemy's greater strength. My player enjoy that sometimes they have to be clever to win.
I presume that Star-Lord1532's problem is that the invisible rogue is winning too easily without having to be clever. The rogue's tactics win routinely and unimaginatively against Age of Ashes' opponents, which can become boring.
I do not own Age of Ashes, so I do not know what those opponents are like. Strangely, Broken Promises in Age of Ashes is the source of Superior Sight ranger feat, which can negate the defense of invisibility.
My PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign ended with three of seven PCs taking the Legendary Sneak feat. It is a strong feat, but rather redundant when the rogue can stay invisible.
The thief-racket archer rogue Binny relied on attacking from hiding from behind a crate or bush in order to catch her target off-guard at a distance. And at 10th level Binny learned Precise Debilitations so that her target stayed off-guard due to a debilitation. But she preferred to Hide again for defense. Legendary Sneak meant that she stayed hidden even if an opponent moved so that she was no longer concealed from that opponent by her cover.
The rogue/sorcerer usually cast spells. He had Magical Trickster feat so that he could deal sneak attack damage with attack spells, but that was hard to set...
You are right. GMs are generally creating encounters the PCs will win with an occasional challenge where the percentage is likely still in the PCs favor, but still up to the random dice to create the possibility of defeat.
I think the rogue is super brutal. I stopped worrying about them. No class can be built in a fashion to be the most annoying and hard to challenge class than the rogue. They're just the best designed class in the game with great feats, great class abilities, good offense and defense, two great rackets, and just a well-rounded combat monster that gets progressively harder to challenge in the group.
I stopped focusing on them as focusing on the rogue to challenge them just made the encounters easy because the enemy was so focused on the rogue they let the rest of the PCs they had an easier time hurting beat on them with impunity. If you're chasing a ghost while the visible, easy to target other PCs are beating on you, you're going to lose worst while maybe landing a few more hits on the ghost to the point you'll notice too late the ghost doesn't care.
About the only time my rogue was hammered was Fortitude save attacks, AOE fort save attacks or just straight unlucky rolls on a save or lucky rolls by the enemy. Most of the time the rogue had an easy time hammering the enemy and staying clean of damage.
So I stopped wasting my time and I suggest the same to the OP. Rogues are going to rogue. They are one of the power classes of PF2.
What do you care as a rogue? You become hidden, then use a few actions to attack twice and move again with mobility and another stealth check. Third attacks aren't great anyway. You're still going to win that action and damage exchange with rare exception.If you Stealth away, you aren't triggering Opportune. If you're triggering Opportune you aren't Undetected. That's what I'm saying.
No one said anything about 3rd attacks.
You either play with Undetected and do your 1st+2nd (map) attack, OR you play with Opportunist and do your 2-3 full map attacks.
Opportunist is more damage, Undetected is more survivability. But you can't do both simultaneously. You have to pick your poison.
I don't care about being undetected save when I open the combat. After that opening round, then you're striking the target and adapting tactics according to how your group plays.
And that's fine, but it's different from what the OP's issue was with him being unable to find the rogue of the party constantly, which would mean that the rogue is sacrificing damage to increase his survivability.What do you care as a rogue? You become hidden, then use a few actions to attack twice and move again with mobility and another stealth check. Third attacks aren't great anyway. You're still going to win that action and damage exchange with rare exception.If you Stealth away, you aren't triggering Opportune. If you're triggering Opportune you aren't Undetected. That's what I'm saying.
No one said anything about 3rd attacks.
You either play with Undetected and do your 1st+2nd (map) attack, OR you play with Opportunist and do your 2-3 full map attacks.
Opportunist is more damage, Undetected is more survivability. But you can't do both simultaneously. You have to pick your poison.
I don't care about being undetected save when I open the combat. After that opening round, then you're striking the target and adapting tactics according to how your group plays.
I reread what he wrote. I think he may not have known that hidden isn't the same as undetected. Once an undetected target becomes hidden, the enemy can target them until they make another stealth check with the DC 11 flat check to hit them.
Now that he knows the rogue doesn't become undetected again until he moves and makes another stealth check to become undetected, which may or may not take him out of range.
So now that he understands, he probably is having an easier time, as easy as you can with a rogue at least.
But only if Star-Lord1532 ever reads our answers...
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Hello all!
I am Gming an Age of Ashes game in which the players have just hit level 16. This particular player has been above the curve for a while now, but I am unsure of how to challenge him within the rules. Any and all advice is appreciated!!!He is a level 16 rogue with:
Legendary Sneak
Foil Senses
Cloak of Elvenkind (greater)
Boots of ElvenkindHe is exclusively melee. Usually he begins combat un noticed and attacks with his weapon. At that point, he should become hidden? Then he will use his cloak and adds the greater invisibility condition to himself for 10 minutes. Between the "always sneaking" and invisibility, I don't see a way to target him aside from a big AoE attack.
Would monsters using the "seek" action be able to target? If so, would he be concealed, hidden, or observed upon a success? The multiple layers and redundancy of these conditions are confusing to me. Again any advice on how to challenge him is appreciated. Thank you all in advance!
As a quick clarification, Greater Invisibility (or rather, 4th rank Invisibility) only lasts 1 minute, not 10 minutes. In addition, because he has Legendary Sneak, him having access to 4th rank Invisibility is only helpful outside of his turn on certain situations, since making such strikes will bring you out of stealth, meaning this only saves him actions to make more strikes (at a penalty, I might add).
Also, for the record, Legendary Sneak only lets you count as "always sneaking/avoiding notice" for exploration; you must still spend actions to Hide or Sneak during an encounter, meaning if he simply goes invisible during an encounter, he must still Hide/Sneak to go back to being Undetected; the creatures will still know his square until he does so, meaning even if he simply Strides, the creatures will know where he moved to.
There are ways to overcome Invisibility, but as far as simply being Hidden is concerned, that's less likely due to Legendary Sneak being a bonkers-broken feat, especially when combined with Sneak Adept and Foil Senses, as the only way to properly find somebody simply using Stealth is to resort to the Sneak action.
Of course, there are still ways to overcome this, especially since he is simply using 4th rank Invisibility, and not Disappearance, so all is not lost to make things difficult.
1. See the Unseen/Truesight. There are numerous monsters with these constant special abilities active. This means his Invisibility becomes almost pointless and he has to waste actions using stealth instead; this means he is less mobile as well as less offensive, and if he is not using stealth, then he is a sitting duck to beat down quite easily, and since it's merely a 4th level effect, a base Truesight ability is usually more than enough to outright negate it, whereas a heightened Truesight might be enough to negate even Disappearance.
2. Tremorsight/Blindsight/Lifesight/Echolocation. Again, monsters have all kinds of crazy senses, and while this won't outright help you deal with his sneaking, it does the same as #1, in that he has to waste actions on stealth instead of attacking, moving, etc. In addition, this is great in throwing the rogue off-guard in the sense that he may think he is invincible thanks to his Invisibility, but when an enemy can precisely see him despite his Invisibility, he may be attacked for a round or two, forcing him to back off and rethink his tactics, or again, forcing him to use stealth, which likewise takes away from his offensive capabilities as well as his mobility. In addition, creatures with reactions can definitely surprise the rogue. Of course, if the rogue player wises up and manages to acquire Disappearance, these won't do any good, so take this one with a grain of salt.
3. Flight/High Mobility. If your rogue is only able to fight on the ground, using flight means he will be almost useless or be required to switch to a back-up weapon, reducing his overall effectiveness. As this is a high level group, I would suspect flight has become commonplace now, meaning lacking abilities or tactics to deal with them will be a wake-up call for the rogue if he's dealt with it enough (of course, at this level, potions of flight are dirt cheap, but at least he will waste a round or two utilizing these items instead of attacking you). In addition, it's hard to maintain both flight, sneaking, and offensive capabilities, meaning this is another way to strain action economy on the rogue, hurting his ability to decimate your enemies. Of course, if you don't want to throw flying enemies at your party all the time, there is utilizing high mobility for skirmish tactics not unlike what monks do, meaning the rogue is spending more actions chasing them down than actually fighting them. This can also be good in reducing the party's presence overall.
4. Focus on other party members. Speaking as someone who has had to deal with similar characters in our parties, having less raw hit points to spread the damage around means you are going to have far more characters going down due to the focusing of damage on the other characters, meaning when it comes time to dealing with the rogue, you will have far less hindrances affecting you. This might force the rogue into more of a supportive role by forcefeeding potions instead of attacking your creatures.
5. High damage reduction/Precision immunity. This one is an absolute dick move of a GM, but throwing around enemies with high physical resistances (thereby hurting the rogue's overall damage input) or being immune to precision damage (like oozes and plants, which absolutely decimates the rogue's damage source), are still valid and fair tactics for the GM to use. There is a high level feat that lets them ignore this, but I don't think they have access to it yet, nor do I think that these enemy types are common enough (especially at this level) to warrant taking it over another feat at that level.
6. Crazy high perception. This one is less obvious, but if you have an idea where the rogue might be, having monsters with absurd perception scores means that the Seek action becomes much more reliable. Yes, it's an action tax, but honestly, this means that the rogue can't just act unabated, and you can bring the pain on him with a two-action ability or just a couple strikes from powerful monsters.
7. Enforce Invisibility/stealth rules on both sides of the table. Remember, Invisibility/stealth does not discriminate, whether it's for monsters or party members. If your party healer cannot see invisible/stealthed creatures, that means they cannot target them with targeted effects, like a Heal or Heroism spell. This means that the rogue has to be a lot more careful with their tactics, otherwise if they are in a pinch and need support, certain activities will be reduced in effectiveness, or eliminate that from them entirely, depending on the circumstances.