On second thought, potentially wasting reactions due to being mistaken about the trigger would lead to some feel bad moments.
Hidden Paragon is another reaction with a secret trigger: you successfully Hide/Sneak against all current foes. Its frequency is once per hour. So you'd have to guess whether you succeeded against all current foes or else your level 20 reaction is wasted and you can't try again for an hour.
The conundrum is that it's not even possible to waste the reaction, because you can't spend it when the condition is not met.
That's like a player saying "I use Shield Block" and the GM responds with "OK, nothing happens, and you waste your reaction because you did not have your shield raised."
That's (again) why I'm using words like design error here. It's easy to add an extra rule to bridge the gap, but it's outright non-functional with the existing rules.
The only time the trigger allows itself to be pulled is when the player does not have the access (knowledge of the condition) required to pull the trigger.
I'm told Sneak requires you to not be Observed, even though there's no such prerequisite in the action; so how does one Sneak if you're unaware whether or not your are being observed?
Can you even take the action if, say, there is an unseen enemy in a tower watching you the entire time?
(I strongly suspect the answer, but am asking anyways to further promote discussion related to the original topic.)
I'm told Sneak requires you to not be Observed, even though there's no such prerequisite in the action; so how does one Sneak if you're unaware whether or not your are being observed?
Can you even take the action if, say, there is an unseen enemy in a tower watching you the entire time?
(I strongly suspect the answer, but am asking anyways to further promote discussion related to the original topic.)
There's no prerequisite of being Hidden, it's just that Sneak will only have an effect *if* you are Hidden. You can always use Sneak because of the lack of a required condition.
The reason it's worded like that is because there are a lot of times where you don't know if you are Hidden or not. So the Sneak action needs to let you guess incorrectly, so it's written without a conditional requirement.
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And yeah, that does provide even more support for my take on prerequisites/triggers and secret info in this thread.
The player can't use secret info for their required conditional *actions*. If its purely passive, the GM can accommodate and handle it.
Abilities like Sneak that deal with secret info instead account for both sides of the unknown, and if relevant have differing outcomes for each possibility.
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And again, being able to hero point your ??? roll, or apply purely passive abilities to help your secret checks, is not applicable this specific issue with Sense the Unseen.
Sense t U is a Reaction that gives away secret info if its condition is/is not met. Any GM prompting, without the Reaction being spent, still gives away secret info.
Hence, my example rework to change it into a pure passive with the same function.
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This is sort of like if an undetected foe triggers the condition for a PC's Reactive Retreat style ability.
Because that trigger condition is secret knowledge the PC doesn't have, they cannot use the Reaction.
Trigger conditions, when paired with Reactions, fundamentally have PC knowledge built in as requirements. It's like every single condition having a prefix phrase glued on like ~"you are aware that ___"
The sidebar strangely only refers to fortune and misfortune effects, so Sense the Unseen doesn't apply.
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The sidebar strangely only refers to fortune and misfortune effects, so Sense the Unseen doesn't apply.
It does, however, set a useful precedent when adjudicating how to apply triggered abilities to secret checks where you might not know there ever was a trigger, of which mis/fortune was likely the first in dev minds considering that everyone has hero points.
The sidebar strangely only refers to fortune and misfortune effects, so Sense the Unseen doesn't apply.
Which is a questionable design choice. Why do only fortune and misfortune trained abilities/effects get to override the relevance of secrecy in a secret check?
Hidden Paragon's trigger would be something you would have to glean from the secret check's descriptive result. If an enemy still looks at your direction after you perform an activity, then it's clear you didn't succeed, and doubly so if they react to your activity. But as far as it being a clear objective result, no, as the enemy might not look or react to you for different reasons.
If the enemy really did give such helpful and instantaneous feedback when you Hide or Sneak, the secret trait on those actions would be meaningless.
Which reminds me of the Investigator. They have many feats revolving around Recall Knowledge, and some of them actually remove the secret trait from Recall Knowledge to make other feats work.
Hidden Paragon's trigger would be something you would have to glean from the secret check's descriptive result. If an enemy still looks at your direction after you perform an activity, then it's clear you didn't succeed, and doubly so if they react to your activity. But as far as it being a clear objective result, no, as the enemy might not look or react to you for different reasons.If the enemy really did give such helpful and instantaneous feedback when you Hide or Sneak, the secret trait on those actions would be meaningless.
Which reminds me of the Investigator. They have many feats revolving around Recall Knowledge, and some of them actually remove the secret trait from Recall Knowledge to make other feats work.
They do when it illicits knowledge to the enemies (such as them noticing you making a noise or something during your Sneak). But of course, the secret check can also simply not reveal that they have a means of tracking your movement, meaning their ability to Sneak doesn't matter, and the player doesn't know why.
*elicit. Illicit means illegal.