For reference, this is the battlemap in question:
Basically it's a huge size PC vs a medium sized chained spirit.
However, that PC has some special things about it. First they went invisible and stealthed to that location. They do not have hide in plain sight. But they do have Dampen Presence, which says that it ruins blindsight & blindsense.
The chained spirit has spiritsense, which works like blindsight but is not blindsight. My impression is that it... senses spirits.
The PC says these things:
- 1. Even if spiritsense ruins invisibility, she is behind cover (the column) and stealthed for a 40 on the check. So the stealth should save it from being seen.
- 2. Even if the stealth doesn't save it, Dampen Presence ruins blindsight, and since spiritsense is like blindsight, it's ruined too.
I'd love to know what an actual by-the-rules verdict might be here. My thought is "wow that column is small compared to your massive size, does it really let you hide?" And also, does Dampen Presence just ruin everything that works "like blindsight" including lifesense, spiritsense, etc?
Dampen Presence can bypass the blindsight, but this creature has darkvision as well. It also has spirit sense which could let it see around cover if the anchors were in the right places.
If they had both dampen presence and invisibility, they could stealth pretty easily. And that’s how dampen presence is most often used.
Spiritsense (Su): A psychopomp notices, locates, and can distinguish between living and undead creatures within 60 feet, just as if it had the blindsight ability. This sense does not allow it to detect objects, but it does allow it to notice living things that are not creatures.
Some creatures possess blindsight, the extraordinary ability to use a non-visual sense (or a combination senses) to operate effectively without vision. Such senses may include sensitivity to vibrations, acute scent, keen hearing, or echolocation. This makes invisibility and concealment (even magical darkness) irrelevant to the creature (though it still can’t see ethereal creatures). This ability operates out to a range specified in the creature description.
Spirtsense is not Blindsight. First of all, Spiritsense only works on living and undead targets and can tell the difference between the two. Bindsense does not allow you to tell something is undead. Spiritsense does not state it function like blindsense, what it says is that that it allows you to notice, locate and distinguish the target as if you had blindsight. It also does not work on object that are not living or undead. That means you cannot navigate using spritsense like you can with blindsense. Spiritsense will not even “see” the column at all. Finally spirit sense is a supernatural ability, where blindsense is an extraordinary ability.
Dampen Presence
Your habitual stillness makes you difficult to perceive for creatures that use blindsight or blindsense.
Prerequisites: Skill Focus (Stealth), Stealth 5 ranks.
Benefit: You may use the Stealth skill to hide from any creature attempting to perceive you using blindsight or blindsense, even if you are clearly in that creature’s perceptual field. This feat does not confer any advantages against other forms of perception, such as scent, vision, or tremorsense.
Dampen Presence also states it does not confer any advantage against other forms of perception. Why would a habit of remaining still allow you to hide from a supernatural ability that has nothing to do with normal perception?
This feat does not confer any advantages against other forms of perception, such as scent, vision, or tremorsense.
None of those abilities work as blindsight or blindsense. They are independent abilities. Spirit sense confusingly works as blindsight so should be affected by the feat.
Thank you all so much. So reviewing, I think I have this as a final summary:
- 1. happykj quoted the "Big Creatures and Cover" rule, which if I follow should mean that I have at least 1 square that is NOT under cover, and that I should treat that square as plainly visible, no stealth. This seems uncontested.
- 2. Multiple people have pointed out mechanical reasons why spiritsense functions differently than blindsight (for example, how spiritsense allows you to determine living vs. undead, something blindsight doesn't do), and because of this, they believe Dampen Presence will not stop spiritsense.
- 3. Melkiador thinks it does stop spiritsense -- with that logic lifesense & echolocation are also useless, as they too use the phrase "works like blindsight" or similar.
So, not sure if going with #2 or #3, but glad that #1 is uncontested. Thanks everyone!
The PC used invisibility, so to me it seems like the issue of cover is not really important. The PC can use stealth against vision based senses.
The real question is, will Dampen Presence work against Spiritsense.
Honestly...it's not clear to me.
One argument for yes, is that Spiritsense says it works like Blindsense.
The argument against it though, is that it can distinguish some things that blindsense can't.
Really the problem here is that "blidnsense" became a catchall for "other" forms of precise senses. As it can encompass many different senses including things like echolocation, very acute hearing or scent, or vibrations (but more accurate than tremorsense). What's worse is many creatures are given blindsense without a description of how it works.
So while a GM might be able to make a call that silence would stop blindsense (echolocation) or at least only tell the creature where they stopped being able to sense things when there's no explanation...the GM has a harder time making a decision.
I think in PF2 they mostly did away with this catchall, and started calling out more kinds of precise senses.
As a GM, I'd probably just let the player have it. Obviously they're putting thought into this because they have the feat and they cast invisibility.
This feat does not confer any advantages against other forms of perception, such as scent, vision, or tremorsense.None of those abilities work as blindsight or blindsense. They are independent abilities. Spirit sense confusingly works as blindsight so should be affected by the feat.
The list is only examples, the phrase any other forms of perception is what is important.
Also, Spirit Sense does not work like Blindsense. What it does is allow you to notice and locate creatures as if you had blindsight. It also allows you to distinguish between living and undead. it also does detect non-living objects. That is a subtle difference but is still a difference.
To be clear, I always said it works like blindsight and even pointed out that this is confusing.
Spiritsense (Su) A chained spirit can detect both the living and the undead. It can detect living creatures within 100 feet, just as if it had blindsight. It can also sense the dead, as per detect undead, to a range of 500 feet.
It stands to reason that anything that affects blindsight would affect something that works "just as if it had blindsight". The language of "just as if" is even stronger language than if it merely said "like blindsight"
We can argue 'til the cows come home about which interpretation is correct under RAW, since the language, in fact, isn't entirely clear.
From an intention standpoint, though, here's my argument: A feat that allows you to hide from perfectly mundane senses using perfectly mundane means shouldn't be interpreted as allowing you to hide from supernatural senses unless it explicitly says it does.
My response to you is that dampen presence does specifically call out blindsight and blindsense, which are not "mundane" senses. Often, there's not an indication of how a creature's blindsight/sense work. Dampen presence also specifically mentions it doesn't work against, scent, tremorsense, or sight.
The real question is do "lifesense and spritsense count as blindsense/sight"?
And that depends on how your interpret lines like "just as if it had blindsight".
Since both Blindsense and Blindsight are extrodinary abilities that work in an antimagic field, I think classifying them as mundane is appropriate. As I pointed out earlier Spritsense is a supernatural ability.
You can choose to make that as a distinction, and I can't say that you're wrong, but I can't say that you're right either (in the sense of does it work differently enough).
The question is what does "works just like blindsight mean" in this context.
As an aside, we probably shouldn't use the word "mundane" because it doesn't mean anything in game terms. Extraordinary and Supernatural do mean something. Extraordinary in the context essentially means not magical, while Supernatural means magical. And in PF1, I don't know if any creature has supernatural blindsight/sense.
I think some creatures has senses that were typically Ex or Su, but were written with a version that was non-standard. For example, I think Darkvision is usually Ex but there are instances of Su. I don't personally think whether the ability is Ex Su is actually relevant.
Anyways, as a GM, if I let the player take Dampen Presence in the first place I'd probably allow it to work in this instance anyways, regardless of what the RAW might be.
Yeah, I can't say your ruling would be right or wrong.
I can only say that as a GM, especially if the kind of enemies with blindsight/sense or "adjacent abilities" are pretty rare to encounter overall, that I'd probably just let Dampen Presence work kind of as a "rule of cool" thing if it's only going to matter once or twice.
Now if the adventure was full of things with the ability I'd have to reconsider and I'm honestly not sure what I'd do.
Maybe offer a feat that worked specifically against those kinds of abilities, kind of like PF2's Foil Senses feat.