For those of you with actual play experience using Quiet Allies, how much do you feel it impacted your games, or the fictional narrative thereof?
I'm familiar with the feat's underlying math and how its benefits are not immediately apparent at first glance.
What I'm looking for is anecdotal evidence of its efficacy. Was it fun? Impactful? Seemingly useless? Did it require GM or player buy in to work as you desired?
I have had situations where one player would ruin it for everyone because they couldn't wrap their head around the odds of success well enough to prevent them from Sneaking on their own.
Please share your experiences.
Yeah, this just sounds like the unfortunate reality that statistics and probability is not understood intuitively.
You can't fix player problems with more rules.
I have had situations where one player would ruin it for everyone because they couldn't wrap their head around the odds of success well enough to prevent them from Sneaking on their own.
Tell them that if they are so certain that they can roll for their character better than the worst character in the party at sneaking, then they should take Keen Follower so that they can roll the party's check themselves.
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Honestly, if you have a couple people in the party who are willing to invest in stealth, have one with quiet allies and one with keen follower you can probably get a very good roll for stealth as a group.
The big problem with having 4+ people roll is that you could have 1 person roll poorly, and ruin any stealth attempt for the whole party. And that is much more likely to happen when you're making 4+ rolls as opposed to 1. Sure you only have 1 chance to do really well, but you also have only 1 chance to do really poorly. And the poor roll has a lot more impact than the one good one, since it will ruin stealth for everyone.
The main issue I have with the feat Quiet Allies, is it forces everyone to use Avoid Notice, which rarely do other players who aren't focused in stealth want to do. They want to Scout, or Search, or Raise Shield (but the exploration activity version).
The party in my Ironfang Invasion campaign was almost the perfect setup for Quiet Allies, because I had forewarned them in Session Zero that they would be hiding in the Fangwood Forest. Therefore, the four characters--druid, ranger, and two rogues--invested in Dexterity and trained in Nature, Survival, and Stealth. We acquired a 5th player at 3rd level, a high-Dexterity champion.
One of the rogues chose Scoundrel Racket for high Charisma to multiclass to sorcerer, but the other rogue chose Thief Racket for high Dexterity and invested in expert Stealth and Quiet Allies at 2nd level. They understood that one Stealth check was better than four Stealth checks.
The party was scouting for a band of refugees hidden in the Fangwood Forest. They would start their scouting journeys with Cover Tracks so that Ironfang patrols could not follow their tracks back to the refugees, but then they would switch to Follow the Expert with Quiet Allies and a single Stealth roll. Because all PCs had good Dexterity, their lowest modifier for Quiet Allies was +3 Dex.
The party in my Strength of Thousands campaign does not use Avoid Notice. They wander freely around the city of Nanatambu. Maybe they will invest in stealthy skills in the 3rd module, Hurricane's Howl, when they go on their first field expedition.
That feat actually ended up paying off a decent number of times for my players in Age of Ashes. Enough that they took the extra effort to have the 10 DEX fighter who was their least stealthy party member carry a stealth boosting item to help with group stealth attempts.
They weren't Avoiding Notice at all times, but when they wanted to try to sneak up to/by/through some situation they didn't do badly.
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I think it is a really good feat, and usually somebody takes it in all groups i play or DM in.
Having a full plate wearing paladin without training in stealth getting level +2 instead of +0 is huge.
Regarding the forced exploration activity: It's usually only relevant if the group is discovered. If they decide to engage on their own, they can as well switch to another beforehand.
I think it is a really good feat, and usually somebody takes it in all groups i play in.
Having a full plate wearing paladin without training in stealth getting level +2 instead of +0 is huge.
The thing I've wondered about is if that's enough to avoid encounters you actually care about, or if it means (for my group for example) that you encounter an enemy, that you would easily defeat. With the benefit of being stealthy meaning that you maybe don't have to worry about anyone running away and altering other enemies.
I think because my group tends to not run encounters if they would be low enough challenge and instead just describes what happens that we might value it less.
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The biggest obstacle in my experience is getting the entire party to buy in to only using a single exploration activity, but that's table dependent. I think it also helps sell things if at least one party member has trap finder so it doesn't feel like you're exploring blind.
The biggest obstacle in my experience is getting the entire party to buy in to only using a single exploration activity, but that's table dependent. I think it also helps sell things if at least one party member has trap finder so it doesn't feel like you're exploring blind.
Yeah, that's my experience. People I've played with rarely want to use Avoid Notice.
If the Legendary Sneak feat said that if you also have Quiet Allies that your allies could be treated as Avoiding Notice while performing another activity that would make it more common, above level 15 at least.
But yeah, it's a very hard sell IMO.
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For those of you with actual play experience using Quiet Allies, how much do you feel it impacted your games, or the fictional narrative thereof?
I'm familiar with the feat's underlying math and how its benefits are not immediately apparent at first glance.
What I'm looking for is anecdotal evidence of its efficacy. Was it fun? Impactful? Seemingly useless? Did it require GM or player buy in to work as you desired?
I have had situations where one player would ruin it for everyone because they couldn't wrap their head around the odds of success well enough to prevent them from Sneaking on their own.
Please share your experiences.
It's bonkers how good of a feat it can be.
Our Barbarian has okay dex but no Stealth training. So following the expert gives her a reasonable modifier with the rogue's help.Dropping the requirement to a singular roll is the crazy part, though. We were already depending on following the expert, but even 5 people with decent Stealth modifiers are more likely to have one failure than just the one okay modifier.
Plus it's always amusing when the rogue player has to explain, again, how to move quietly.
Plus the Barbarian is a catfolk, so her being the worst at Stealth makes for a funny image.
The biggest obstacle in my experience is getting the entire party to buy in to only using a single exploration activity, but that's table dependent. I think it also helps sell things if at least one party member has trap finder so it doesn't feel like you're exploring blind.Yeah, that's my experience. People I've played with rarely want to use Avoid Notice.
That's also not the player problem that Ravingdork is talking about in the OP.
The problem is that a player wants to use Avoid Notice, but doesn't want to join in with the rest of the party in using Follow the Expert to follow the person who has Quiet Allies.
I have had situations where one player would ruin it for everyone because they couldn't wrap their head around the odds of success well enough to prevent them from Sneaking on their own.
They instead want to roll their own Avoid Notice Stealth check because ... reasons.
That's also not the player problem that Ravingdork is talking about in the OP.
The problem is that a player wants to use Avoid Notice, but doesn't want to join in with the rest of the party in using Follow the Expert to follow the person who has Quiet Allies.
Sometimes, it's more than one player.
They instead want to roll their own Avoid Notice Stealth check because ... reasons.
Those reasons often being little more than "because my modifier is higher!" *rolls eyes*
I feel Quiet Allies is one of those feats that in a white room environment is actually really cool, but in practice it ends up with the one player with the lowest roll screwing everyone in the party most of the time. I feel Quiet Allies would work much better if it allowed everyone to roll as normal but nobody can't take a result lower than 10 + your proficiency or something like that. Bump it to a master level skill feat if needed.
That's also not the player problem that Ravingdork is talking about in the OP.
The problem is that a player wants to use Avoid Notice, but doesn't want to join in with the rest of the party in using Follow the Expert to follow the person who has Quiet Allies.
Sometimes, it's more than one player.
They instead want to roll their own Avoid Notice Stealth check because ... reasons.Those reasons often being little more than "because my modifier is higher!" *rolls eyes*
I can't speak from experience to how that would have devalued the feat. I never encountered it, since my players understood Quiet Allies.
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I feel Quiet Allies is one of those feats that in a white room environment is actually really cool, but in practice it ends up with the one player with the lowest roll screwing everyone in the party most of the time. I feel Quiet Allies would work much better if it allowed everyone to roll as normal but nobody can't take a result lower than 10 + your proficiency or something like that. Bump it to a master level skill feat if needed.
It just requires a teamwork build. From two of the characters.
Example at level 11 (sans item bonuses):
A Sorcerer with +? DEX taking Expert proficiency in Stealth and picking up Quiet Allies.
A Rogue with +5 DEX getting Master proficiency in Stealth and Keen Follower.
A Champion with +0 DEX, Untrained in Stealth, and wearing armor with the Noisy trait.
The entire party rolls one Avoid Notice roll with the Rogue's +25 bonus (level 11, +5 DEX, +6 Master, +3 Circumstance (Keen Follower)).
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Pathfinder was all about personal character build power.
Pathfinder2e is all about party synergy. You can still get massive bonuses, it just requires teamwork things like Keen Follower and Aid.
I also had the issue of some players wanting to roll separatly... until I explained how statistics work
Exponential decrease is a beast.
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I think the fastest way to explain it to a player that doesn't understand is, "would you rather take the worst of four rolls, or the worst of one?"
If they still don't immediately understand, just ask them to roll 4d20 and 1d20 a bunch of times.
We don't have much of a use for this skill feat. Most of us invest in stealth at least to the training level. The way we scout and move, we generally send only the highest stealth scouts ahead. It's very rare where a group stealth is essential to success.
It's almost always worse for the enemy to see us than for us to be seen by them. If they had the option, the enemy would be in a Monty Python skit where they pretended they didn't see the obvious group of violent mercenaries in their midst hoping they moved on from them.
Then again that's the situation the vast majority of monsters and NPCs find themselves in when a group of PC adventurers shows up.
Has anyone had any luck using Quiet Allies against much higher level foes, or in some other situation where the party absolutely d8d not want to start an encounter (such as when already having gone through a meat grinder)? Or did PF2e's scaling math make that not end so well for your party?
IMO, the thing with Quiet Allies is knowing when it's necessary and when you can get away with having the best sneaker sneakily sneak up on their own, say for recon. That's what our group did, with my character being the sneaky sneaker in question, and it worked out well, often letting us have forewarning on what an encounter might consist of, or letting us set up to turn a combat encounter into a roleplay one.
I've been in more than one group that would respond to solo recon with "that's scouting!" before giving everyone a +1 initiative and no knowledge.
I can't speak from experience to how that would have devalued the feat. I never encountered it, since my players understood Quiet Allies.
Two or more points of failure is always worse than a single point of failure, no? I'm also not sure how one group can get caught without the other group getting caught unless you actively split the party, which is generally considered a bad move in this game.
Yeah, if you show people the math, they might understand.
If we pretend that the worst modifier in the group (using follow the expert) has a 60% chance of success. Then with quiet allies, the group has a 60% chance of success.
Without quiet allies, let's assume you have 4 people. One still has a 60% chance of success (although they probably don't actually) and the others have 90% chance of success.
You're chance of everyone succeeding is 0.9^3*0.6 = ~44%. And since it only takes one failure for everyone to fail, that's why multiple rolls is bad.
There is a break even point that one could calculate for their group.
The example I used above with a 60% chance of success (for the group) would be achievable if everyone in the group had a ~88 chance of success on their individual roll. Meaning that everyone would need to have a modifier high enough that they would all succeed on a roll of 2.
As a GM, if my players have that high a chance of success in the first place I'm probably not having them roll. I'm just telling them they succeed, although now that I do the math maybe I shouldn't, because the chance for a failure (as a group) is actually not that small.
So yeah, Quiet Allies is mathematically a great feat.
But if you can't get your fellow players to go along with the things required to use it...then it's not a worthwhile investment.
Nothing we can say in a forum can fix other players not wanting to use stealth (or not wanting to do it as a group rather than as a single individual).
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It's almost always worse for the enemy to see us than for us to be seen by them.
I am not certain how to parse this sentence.
Most people do yeah if you give them the reasoning behind the numbers too. Its all to common for me to see people conflate the math between "All rolls fail","Atleast one roll fails","Exactly one roll fails"
Yeah, these are all different calculations and thus have different results.
All rolls failing is a low chance, but at least 1 roll failing is a very high chance.
The real problem is people often lost the distinction between at least one roll fails, and Only 1 roll fails, but within the game any rolls failing has the same basic outcome for the party (you're noticed).
I can't speak from experience to how that would have devalued the feat. I never encountered it, since my players understood Quiet Allies.Two or more points of failure is always worse than a single point of failure, no? I'm also not sure how one group can get caught without the other group getting caught unless you actively split the party, which is generally considered a bad move in this game.
I mean I didn't have the problem you referred to with people wanting to add an extra roll, instead of piling their eggs into the Quiet Allies basket.
Quiet Allies is borderline required if you ever want to sneak as a group. It's come up so, SO often that a group of players, all trained in stealth, want to try to sneak and they all look around to find that no one is an Expert and no one has Quiet Allies, and suddenly that stealth training feels a whole lot less valuable.
I mean I didn't have the problem you referred to with people wanting to add an extra roll, instead of piling their eggs into the Quiet Allies basket.
I can't speak from experience to how that would have devalued the feat. I never encountered it, since my players understood Quiet Allies.Two or more points of failure is always worse than a single point of failure, no? I'm also not sure how one group can get caught without the other group getting caught unless you actively split the party, which is generally considered a bad move in this game.
Yeah, that one is a very strange problem.
Much more understandable is the problem that Squark mentioned - one or more of the players want to do something else during exploration instead of Stealth with the group.
I've only had one group really use it effectively. They tended to use it to get into position to set up an ambush or to attempt to bust up an ambush that they knew was there (due to someone with stealth scouting ahead). They also bypassed a couple of things in Extinction Curse, but nothing major.
The two biggest hurdles with I find are:
1. Someone in the group just doesn't want to be stealthy, in which case there's nothing you can do.
2. Players that need to be doing something else during Exploration, like tracking (this can eventually become an option for some activities).
The group that did use it was pretty happy with how it worked, but most groups I GM for often have someone that wants to just smash down the door, and group stealth only works if the entire party is onboard.
I haven't had a lot of "the math doesn't make sense on this" folks in my games. Some people don't understand why the math works, but they trust that I'm not steering them wrong when I explain that it does.
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I have one group that gets some decent use out of it, but the other one tends to play a lot of APs fairly straight and has mostly just decided as a group that Stealth isn't a useful skill.
In that respect I don't think you really can quantify the efficacy of the feat, because it's entirely a matter of how much the players and GM want it to matter.
It's almost always worse for the enemy to see us than for us to be seen by them.I am not certain how to parse this sentence.Option 1: Miss in parsing
Option 2: You spot a group of adventurers, They are confident enough that they don't bother with the element of suprise.Like that one monty python seen where the guy is running towards the guards in plain view.
Haha. You get it.
Quiet Allies is borderline required if you ever want to sneak as a group. It's come up so, SO often that a group of players, all trained in stealth, want to try to sneak and they all look around to find that no one is an Expert and no one has Quiet Allies, and suddenly that stealth training feels a whole lot less valuable.
It really depends.
If you have a caster, you can use multiple methods for accomplishing similar ends.
Stealth is one method and Quiet Allies is useful if you choose that method.
You can also often use AoE invisibility. Even if they hear your group moving, do they necessarily do anything? Depends on the creature. If you combine say something like Silence and Invisibility, how does the DM determine anyone detects you if they can't use any of their senses to do so?
Quiet Allies also doesn't provide the additional skill feats like Foil Senses that may be used against enemies with unusual senses that might pick up on you.
You might also allow a druid or shape-changer to sneak in using unusual movement.
Or go in an unusual way like using Magic Passage or turning ethereal.
You may also use a higher level casting of illusory disguise with a high deception or diplomacy character. They just talk their way in.
Or they are really good at social skills, they may not even need the illusory disguise.
Then there is doing something like scouting eye to scout the location then teleporting in to where you want to go.
Or fight your way in because the group likes to fight more than stealth.
Each situation is different. I'm wondering how many times Quiet Allies comes up in a given campaign. Is it often that groups are sneaking around? We do the point man scouting, but we really don't care if what is ahead knows we're coming. It's more if the scout can get advance intel and scout for traps. No one likes walking into traps. Walking into fights is not a concern.
It's almost always worse for the enemy to see us than for us to be seen by them.I am not certain how to parse this sentence.
PC parties almost always have the power advantage over what they're fighting with rare exception. Monsters bags of tricks are very narrow. PC parties bags of tricks are deep and varied and only get more so as they level.
As much as you as a DM try to make the monsters seem fearsome, the reality is in the world the PCs are more fearsome and would probably make most monsters want to hide to avoid the murderous psychotics entering their lair and area.
I have one group that gets some decent use out of it, but the other one tends to play a lot of APs fairly straight and has mostly just decided as a group that Stealth isn't a useful skill.
In that respect I don't think you really can quantify the efficacy of the feat, because it's entirely a matter of how much the players and GM want it to matter.
This. The real question is whether sneaking the whole group by encounters is useful. If so, anything which raises your odds of doing so is good. If your party treats a skipped encounter as missed XP or missed fun, then pass on the feat.
Personally I love skipping encounters when the opportunity presents itself.
Regarding it being worse for the enemy to see us, do you mean that if an enemy guard happens to notice a group of adventurers trying to sneak past, they may decide pretend they didn't see the adventurers because if the guard confronts them then they'll probably just get dismembered by the much more powerful adventurers? If so, that reminds me of a story I heard about a character who used Intimidate to sneak by walking up to guards and telling them "You never saw me" in the most terrifying tone possible...
WRT players who don't use QA, perhaps the player who wants to sneak separately does understand how QA works but they want to roll separately anyway because they consider it advantageous to split up the consequences of failure? If the PCs are using Quiet Allies then a failure on the group Stealth check would presumably make the enemy notice all of the PCs at once; conversely, if one of the PCs decides to roll separately then a failure on the group Stealth check wouldn't cause the separate PC to be noticed (unless they also failed their roll). Rolling separately obviously increases the odds of the enemy noticing at least one PC, but it might let the separate PC start combat unnoticed, which they might consider useful for one reason or another (not drawing fire, going around back of the enemy, using some specific ability that relies on being unnoticed, etc.).
Of course, if the separate player thinks that going separately actually decreases the chance of the enemy noticing at least one person, then they're very wrong and it's likely that they've misread the text of the feat. If they actually have a problem with the math, maybe you could point out that the group's attempt at Stealth will always fail if the PC with the lowest modifier fails, regardless of whether the other PCs use QA, so it's best to use QA to avoid more rolls. Alternatively, you could try an inverted argument and ask them to describe a situation where rolling separately would cause the group to succeed at Stealth where rolling with QA would cause them to fail. That might be helpful for rooting out exactly how they are getting the math wrong.
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When I was GMing Prey for Death, the party used it constantly. Of course. It was an infiltration mission.
One additional advantage that no one has mentioned is that if you use Quiet Allies and fail, you can easily use a Hero Point to reroll. If everyone is rolling Stealth separately, it might suck up many many Hero Points.
Sadly with how Avoid Notice typically is a secret check you cant use hero points with it.When I was GMing Prey for Death, the party used it constantly. Of course. It was an infiltration mission.
One additional advantage that no one has mentioned is that if you use Quiet Allies and fail, you can easily use a Hero Point to reroll. If everyone is rolling Stealth separately, it might suck up many many Hero Points.
Making the Stealth check to Avoid Notice a secret check when the exploration activity lacks the Secret trait is a house rule.
Making the Stealth check to Avoid Notice a secret check when the exploration activity lacks the Secret trait is a house rule.Sadly with how Avoid Notice typically is a secret check you cant use hero points with it.When I was GMing Prey for Death, the party used it constantly. Of course. It was an infiltration mission.
One additional advantage that no one has mentioned is that if you use Quiet Allies and fail, you can easily use a Hero Point to reroll. If everyone is rolling Stealth separately, it might suck up many many Hero Points.
I don't think that's true. Avoid Notice the exploration activity tells you to make a Stealth check. All the actions that would be Stealth checks as defined in the skill have the Secret trait.
Could it be more clear? Yes
Can you say with 100% confidence that it's a house rule? I don't think so.
Making the Stealth check to Avoid Notice a secret check when the exploration activity lacks the Secret trait is a house rule.
The rule is written.
The GM can choose to make any check secret, even if it’s not usually rolled secretly. Conversely, the GM can let you roll any check yourself, even if that check would usually be secret. Some groups find it simpler to have players roll all secret checks and just try to avoid acting on any out-of-character knowledge, while others enjoy the mystery.
By RAW, GM decides.
All the actions that would be Stealth checks as defined in the skill have the Secret trait.
Yet Avoid Notice does not. Until it gets errata to change that, it's a house rule.
The GM can choose to make any check secret...By RAW, GM decides.
Entirely moot. The GM can decide to send a level +10 dragon against the party. So what? That in no way changes the standard expectation.
The GM can choose to make any check secret...By RAW, GM decides.Entirely moot.
The rules that are printed are entirely moot when deciding what is or is not a houserule.
Brilliant.
The GM can decide to send a level +10 dragon against the party. So what? That in no way changes the standard expectation.
It becomes a self-fixing problem at that point.
New adventurers, new GM, new campaign. All good.
The GM can decide to send a level +10 dragon against the party. So what? That in no way changes the standard expectation.It becomes a self-fixing problem at that point.
New adventurers, new GM, new campaign. All good.
A broken game is a good thing?
EDIT: Ah never mind. Forgot who was speaking to. Cats love breaking things.
The GM can choose to make any check secret...By RAW, GM decides.Entirely moot.The rules that are printed are entirely moot when deciding what is or is not a houserule.
Brilliant.
It's not brilliant. It's stupid.
No, wait...agh!
Got me again, Finoan.
;P
I don't think that's true. Avoid Notice the exploration activity tells you to make a Stealth check. All the actions that would be Stealth checks as defined in the skill have the Secret trait.Making the Stealth check to Avoid Notice a secret check when the exploration activity lacks the Secret trait is a house rule.Sadly with how Avoid Notice typically is a secret check you cant use hero points with it.When I was GMing Prey for Death, the party used it constantly. Of course. It was an infiltration mission.
One additional advantage that no one has mentioned is that if you use Quiet Allies and fail, you can easily use a Hero Point to reroll. If everyone is rolling Stealth separately, it might suck up many many Hero Points.
Avoid Notice is an exploration action that is a Stealth check. It does not have the Secret tag.
You're not doing some other action here. You're doing Avoid Notice. As Avoid Notice doesn't have the Secret tag, it is not a secret check. The exploration activities that are secret checks are called out in their descriptions: Investigate and Search.
That's RAW. Rolling Avoid Notice as a secret check is a house rule. It's not the same as the encounter mode actions.
The GM can choose to make any check secret...By RAW, GM decides.Entirely moot. The GM can decide to send a level +10 dragon against the party. So what? That in no way changes the standard expectation.
Actually it does in this case. The Secret check rule itself says explicitly that the GM can make any secret check not secret, or simply not bother with secret checks at all.
It's so standard that even PFS allows it. Unlike sending a +10 encounter at the party, which is completely outside the encounter building rules and obviously not intended.