A successful check to Hide makes you Hidden, but doesn't allow you to move.
A successful check to Sneak makes you Undetected and gives you the option of moving.
Both are one action and require you to have cover or concealment.
Why ever bother taking the Hide action?
Because there may be feats which modify Hide but not Sneak. It opens up specific design space.
The reverse is also true. Feats like Sneak Adept further incentivises me to Sneak rather than Hide, as it means I can never fail, short of critically failing. That's quite nearly equivalent to a +10 bonus on all Stealth checks to Sneak.
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Why Hide? Because Sneak doesn't work if you are observed.
At the end of your movement, the GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you were hidden from or undetected by at the start of your movement.
If you don't Hide or otherwise become hidden before Sneaking, you won't become undetected.
I... think I completely agree with RD on this one.
Splitting up a skill action into two like that makes it way harder to use/build for either of them because of the dilution as to each getting separate bonuses / abilities.
In theory, items/effects could all say "to Hide or Sneak" but that's not going to happen.
Splitting up one action into two is literally a known design method to nerf an option that's too strong.
I doubt this was an intentional nerf, but it very much has the effect of that.
I'm going to asspull guess that, in practice, any Stealth PC I make would be improved from pretending that Hide does not exist, including any Hide-only feats, and to instead only enhance Sneak.
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My guess is that there used to be more differences between the two actions during early development, but they found a mechanical wording that worked for both, and never thought to actually delete Hide and swap to a "You |can| move" wording inside Sneak. That, or it may have been simple historical inertia, but I cannot really imagine that any system being created ex-nihilo would have such a redundant action on purpose (they are too close for an intentional nerf-split to be possible/probable, IMO).
Why Hide? Because Sneak doesn't work if you are observed.
At the end of your movement, the GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you were hidden from or undetected by at the start of your movement.If you don't Hide or otherwise become hidden before Sneaking, you won't become undetected.
Well, this might be another "majority running the dying rules wrong" situation.
SuperParkourio is right, and it's 0% ambiguous.
Hide is how PCs go from observed to hidden.
Sneak is how PCs go from hidden to undetected.
This is absolutely brutal on the action economy, but it's clear that the RaI 100% matches the RaW, so long as you triple-read all the key words.
You are not supposed to be able to Sneak when observed at all. Doing so has no effect on foes.
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What really kinda sucks is that this kinda causes incentive issues, twice over.
Not only is it generally better to pop effects that give the Stealth PC hidden automatically, but now there is a 1A tax if you only have concealment to work with.
It basically means that Stealth PCs *really* want to spend gp on getting auto-hidden, such as Bottled Nights, etc, so that they can avoid needing to spend the 1A Hide tax.
Considering the other thread on this forum right now (this one) this has made me think it would've helped quite a bit if Sneak had the Prerequisite "You are hidden or undetected to one or more creatures" (although given how this is all Secret checks, that probably wouldn't work either).
But yeah, as has been pointed out, Sneak doesn't do anything if you're Observed to everybody. The loop is meant to be Hide->Sneak, at it's base.
Though it does work better if you can negate the action tax. I played a Halfling Gunslinger (Sniper) w/ Assassin Archetype and thanks to Covered Reload + Ceaseless Shadows I was extremely effective.
As has been pointed out, there is no such prerequisite in the Sneak action. The first sentence even indicates that you can perform the action whether or not you are Undetected.
Can you please more clearly explain how you guys are coming to the conclusion that you must be Hidden first?
Ah, I see my issue. There's a sidebar. Easy enough to miss if you're reading the Stealth skill options in Pathbuilder (which doesn't include the clarifying sidebar information like AoN or Player Core).
So being really stealthy is really a two action activity that requires not one, but two successful checks then? Until you get high level feats or abilities, or are opposing lower level enemies, that seems unnecessarily difficult to pull off! I don't know of very many other abilities in this game that require two successes to work well.
Alright, so you can Sneak without using the Hide action first if you are approaching characters or creatures that didn't know you were there (how you would be aware of their cognizance is anybody's guess, but whatever).
Presumably, you can take the Sneak action even if there was, say, a third party observing you from hiding. The Sneak action says that on a Success, you’re Undetected by the creature(s) during your movement and remain Undetected by the creature at the end of it.
Per that statement, how would you still be observed? A Success makes you Undetected!
(Mostly playing Devil's Advocate at this point.)
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Alright, so you can Sneak without using the Hide action first if you are approaching characters or creatures that didn't know you were there (how you would be aware of their cognizance is anybody's guess, but whatever).
Exploration mode with feats like Terrain Stalker that then transition to encounter mode (probably combat).
Presumably, you can take the Sneak action even if there was, say, a third party observing you from hiding. The Sneak action says that on a Success, you’re Undetected by the creature(s) during your movement and remain Undetected by the creature at the end of it.
Per that statement, how would you still be observed? A Success makes you Undetected!
(Mostly playing Devil's Advocate at this point.)
Detecting Creatures: The conditions are relative to each viewer. So it is perfectly valid to be hide and sneak away from one enemy while still being observed by another one. If successful, you would be Undetected to the one creature and still Observed to the other.
lol don't lie. Even in Pathbuilder - even the phone app version - the sentence SP quoted at you upthread is right there in the Sneak action. It's the first sentence of the second paragraph and begins with, "At the end of your movement"
You really shouldn't hack apps and change things just to make a point. :P
Seriously though... *LOLs in disbelief.* Wow. I'm really blind apparently.
So if I have Legendary Sneak, does starting as Observed matter when attempting to Hide or Sneak? It says I no longer need cover or concealment, but that's not the same thing as being observed.
Legendary Sneak doesn't mean that you are unable to become Observed or don't become Observed when you do something in combat.
You always have the benefits of Avoid Notice in exploration mode, so you can always roll a Stealth check while hammering an ally's shield back into shape. Most combats are going to start with you being Undetected to most, if not all of the enemies.
You can Sneak up to one of them and stab them in the face without worrying about cover or concealment, no matter how many Sneak actions it takes you to get there - though you do still have to succeed at your skill checks.
Once you stab them though, you have done an action that is not Step, Sneak, or Hide, and definitely isn't something that the GM should rule as being unobtrusive enough to go unnoticed. So you will become Observed by that enemy (and probably the enemy's allies that have line of sight to you) once you stab them in the face.
You can Hide again immediately afterwards though. So the enemy will know which square you are in, but will have a DC 11 flat check to target you successfully. You can then stab them in the throat this time while they are off-guard to your attacks, or Sneak away to a different square.
But if you don't use Hide after stabbing them in the face or the throat, you will end up Observed by that enemy during their turn. And if you don't Hide first, Sneak won't be nearly as effective as you would hope it would be.
The enemies can also use Seek to find you even with Legendary Sneak allowing you to be Unobserved in the middle of the room. You would still have to Hide and then Sneak in order to become Unobserved again.
The Sneak action is necessarily a very complex beast with ball thr moving parts (relative degrees of awareness, tracking different creatures' awareness, relative cover/concealment), which unfortunately leads to the description being not particularly straightforward to read.
Since you can technically attempt a Sneak in an open hallway surrounded by guards, there's no prerequisite, even if the results Won't be favorable unless you bring your own means of concealment (ie invisibility).
Since Finoan already answered for the question I was going to, let me try the next: Legendary Sneak indeed only removes the cover/concealment requirements. It otherwise functions as before regarding levels of awareness; you have to be at least hidden to become undetected when you sneak, even though you can now attempt to hide yourself in the middle of that open hall from before.
Edit: damn, too slow twice. This is what I get for trying to sleep in