Foil Senses

[Hiltorius]

1- Does Foil Senses include all types of senses, such as Lifesense, Plantsense, Soulsense, or Infrared Vision?

2- Does Foil Senses work against Blind-Fight?

3- Can Foil Senses fool Darkvision in darkness without cover, since Darkvision is a special sense?

[NorrKnekten]

1. The intention of Foil Senses is to give a blanket statement that you ignore special senses not related to regular vision or hearing, As seen in Detecting with other Senses Sidebar which Foil Senses mention.

2. Foil Senses only comes into effect while hiding/sneaking/avoiding notice. So to say that it includes all types of senses is accurate but you would still need to do a stealth roll, its just that you cannot be automatically detected by such senses.

In that sense it has absolutely no effect or interaction with blind-fight whose effect supercedes senses.

3. Similarly, All Stealth Skills pretty much dictate that you can only do them while you are currently benefiting from some kind of concealement, Foil senses does not stop this. So against a creature with darkvision you would become detected the moment you lose concealment or cover, same for creatures with echolocation or life-sense.

If you want to hide in plain 'sight' from creatures with precise special senses you still need Legendary Sneak.

[Finoan]

Seconded.

Without Foil Senses, you can hide normally from creatures that have Vision of various types (including darkvision) as a precise sense and hearing as a precise or imprecise sense. But you would have to spend additional effort to hide from a creature with tremorsense and would have to know that the enemy that you are hiding from has such a sense.

Foil Senses upgrades that so that you don't need to know what special senses you are hiding from. You would use the Stealth skill normally to hide from a creature with tremorsense and wouldn't need to know before hand that your enemy has the sense in order to do it.

Foil Senses doesn't change any rules about what conditions are needed in order to hide or sneak.

Blind Fight works under the assumption that the creature being attacked (you with Foil Senses in this case) has successfully hidden from the attacker's senses. Foil Senses lets you hide more easily from a foe with Tremorsense, but Blind Fight applies after you have successfully done so.

[steelhead]

So with Foil Senses you are constantly working at sneaking in a variety of ways at once. For example, slowing your heart rate for foiling lifesense. I like that Paizo describes how in that particular case the GM can have the player use Wisdom instead of Dexterity for the primary attribute bonus. The key is having a good idea of how other special senses might be foiled so some players don’t metagame and figure out a monster’s special sense without a Recall Knowledge check. I’m not at my computer now, but am wondering how GMs might consider other special senses to be foiled (other than darkvision which would still be a Dexterity-based Stealth check).

[NorrKnekten]

I've seen people describe foiling breathsense by holding their breath, and bloodsense as rubbing metallic powder onto themselves, The same was also done with... uhmm... . "skinsense"...

The creature could 'taste' skin,hair, nails and so on so the character willingly poisoned himself with metallic powder.

[Ravingdork]

steelhead wrote:

I’m not at my computer now, but am wondering how GMs might consider other special senses to be foiled (other than darkvision which would still be a Dexterity-based Stealth check).

For tremorsense, it could be something like...

"The sandwalk is a dragging, irregular gait designed to imitate the natural sounds of the desert. It fools the big ones."

⠀⠀⠀⢀⣀⣀⣀
⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⡀
⣰⣿⣿⣿(◉︿◉)⣿⣿⣿⣆
⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉⠉
;)

[steelhead]

NorrKnekten wrote:

I've seen people describe foiling breathsense by holding their breath,

Nice. That would be Sneak with a Constitution modifier.

Quote:

bloodsense as rubbing metallic powder onto themselves, The same was also done with... uhmm... . "skinsense"...

Hmmm, the only problem with these is anyone could rub on some powder. You don’t have to use Foil Senses to do that.

[Ectar]

steelhead wrote:

NorrKnekten wrote:

I've seen people describe foiling breathsense by holding their breath,

Nice. That would be Sneak with a Constitution modifier.

Quote:

bloodsense as rubbing metallic powder onto themselves, The same was also done with... uhmm... . "skinsense"...

Hmmm, the only problem with these is anyone could rub on some powder. You don’t have to use Foil Senses to do that.

That's the thing: anyone can do it!

If you know you're going to try and sneak past something with bloodsense, you can already take special precautions to avoid that sense. Probably work with your GM to determine the actual method of avoidance.

Foil Senses means the game will now assume you're always doing that vs all special senses.

Edit: see this sidebar

[NorrKnekten]

steelhead wrote:

NorrKnekten wrote:

I've seen people describe foiling breathsense by holding their breath,

Nice. That would be Sneak with a Constitution modifier.

Quote:

bloodsense as rubbing metallic powder onto themselves, The same was also done with... uhmm... . "skinsense"...

Hmmm, the only problem with these is anyone could rub on some powder. You don’t have to use Foil Senses to do that.

Well if you are holding the breath you already can't be detected but have to worry about, you know, no spellcasting, talking and being on a timer. Unless the creature litterary is blind and deaf I would still use dex.

As for powder... yes anyone can do it if and only if they have the neccesary equipment and preparation. Foil senses as mentioned previously skips the preparation step. You might want to use mud to hide from someone with infrared vision predator style but thats gonna be hard to come by inside a building or desert. Just because its possible doesn't mean that you always can, but with Foil Senses you absolutely 'always' can.

[shroudb]

steelhead wrote:

NorrKnekten wrote:

I've seen people describe foiling breathsense by holding their breath,

Nice. That would be Sneak with a Constitution modifier.

Quote:

bloodsense as rubbing metallic powder onto themselves, The same was also done with... uhmm... . "skinsense"...

Hmmm, the only problem with these is anyone could rub on some powder. You don’t have to use Foil Senses to do that.

Everyone can indeed sneak past special senses, IF they know about the special sense AND they work a way to do so.

That's default Stealth.

What Foil Senses does is allowing you to bypass the Recall and the special countermeasures: You are considered to be doing all that every time you Stealth when you have Foil senses.