
Dphin |
Newbie GM here with a question that's started bugging me. On the off-chance any of my players visit this forum, I'm wrapping the whole thing as a spoiler. If you're playing a campaign set in northern Taldor, with inspiration from French towns, run by a first-time GM, this thread isn't for you.
There is a hag in my game who is posing as a quest-giver, sending the party out on missions that sound reasonable at first but end up spreading misery when they do them. I have a moment planned in the plot when another NPC reveals the hag's identity, but the players are at least starting to think that the hag isn't good. So I started wondering about how I should reveal it if they start asking the right questions.
The monster's transformation automatically defeats Perception DCs to determine whether the creature is a member of the ancestry or creature type into which it transformed, and it gains a +4 status bonus to its Deception DC to prevent others from seeing through its disguise.
I don't understand the difference between the Perception DCs that it auto-defeats, and what it gains a +4 status to. My best understanding is that I don't have to roll secret checks in the background every time the players meet her, but if they express doubts in a specific way that leads to the check, they can roll the check and the +4 status bonus is applied. Is that right?

Finoan |
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The difference is in active and passive uses of perception and other skills.
Generally in PF2 you don't ever have both sides rolling. One side (the active side) will roll and add their bonus. The passive opposing side uses their DC value. The only exception that I know of is initiative rolls at the start of combat where everyone rolls in competition to each other.
In passive perception use, the party all uses their Perception DC. Normally a creature doing something active to try and hide or deceive the party would have to roll against the highest DC.
Active Perception use is for when a character decides to do some active looking into something. So if they specifically use Perception to Seek or Investigate the creature looking for 'something out of the ordinary'. Then the character rolls their Perception against the appropriate skill DC of their target (Stealth DC for hiding, or Deception DC for disguise).
So yes. If the party doesn't actively use something like Seek or Investigation, then the party is using passive Perception DC and the Hag auto-succeeds.
If one of the characters does use something like that (even if they don't call it by name - just doing something active) then they would roll the check, but the Hag would get their bonus.

YuriP |

This +4 bonus is vs spells and other abilities that allows to see the true form like Truesight.
Unless you make this hag act too strange from a member of the ancestry that it is transformed and actively uses Seek action like described in Impersonate to notice if it is an another creature in disguise. There isn't reason to them to notice that it is a transformed creature. Also if if they do this Seek and have a Success they only will know that the creatures doesn't seen what it is looking to be.
In legacy you could use Detect Magic to notice that the creature is under a transmutation effect. But now in remaster it only informs the spell rank and can detect illusions of a lower rank so is useless to notice this too.
As GM I may suggest you if you want to allows players that detect that she is a Hag after notice that she is a shapeshifted creature is to allow to RK her with a higher DC than its normal RK DC (probably a +5 due the very difficult) to notice that some details in her form and minor actions denounces that she is a hag.

Castilliano |
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Also she's misleading them, so even if they don't see through the disguise (w/ its bonus), they might see through her lies (if she's pretending these quests are heroic). Meaning there are two layers here and the PCs' suspicions are likely only about the first one, so they should get secret Perception rolls about that, which might or might not lead to rolls vs. her disguise. IMO most likely not unless the PCs have picked up on abnormal behavior, though extensive interaction should have allowed a roll to begin with making this whole strategy risky for a GM to rely on. It's often better to have ignorant proxy agents interact instead, ones duped essentially in place of the PCs and acting in good faith.
One's plans have to account for nat 20s. If I'd built a "super Perception PC" for example, I wouldn't want the GM's desired narrative to overcome that ability, otherwise my investment in that build loses value. It takes finesse, or better yet flexibility. If PCs "ruin" a villain's plan, that's a good thing that main characters should be doing, even if prematurely ruining the GM's plan too. That sense of agency is a major reward for RPG players, and the primary reason to play for many.

Castilliano |

Yeah, I wouldn't roll every visit, and for every PC, or that'd remove disguises in general from Golarion, and they're too important to the genre(s) for that. Same thing with lying. But I would roll whenever notable evidence or suspicion arise, or a new breed of lies.
ETA: Just remembered an instance where a player knew about a lie, but his PC didn't so he'd tried to roll every instance he could, like following each sentence. I had to nix that, reminding him his PC had already fallen for the lie as a whole, not only one false statement. That wasn't even his most egregious meta example. Oy.