That said, if you had Legendary Sneak skill feat + Foil Senses you can do this, and will only have issue if you roll poorly on a the skill check.
What the player is wanting is the effects of Disappearance. I mention this as a comparison point for expected cost for that effect.
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Foil senses just means that the character does not need to say or describe precisely how they are taking precautions against special senses when they use Avoid Notice, Hide, or Sneak.
They still need to follow all of the rules for these actions.
Basically, whenever they use these actions, they always take care of avoiding triggering these special senses. It does not in any way give them visual cover or concealment.
I would adjudicate though that they indeed automatically have concealment against any special senses an enemy might have.
I am not sure if I would run it this way or not as a GM, especially as feats like foil senses only end up on custom built NPCs, but dark vision is a big enough buzz kill to me, that I would at least consider running dark vision as a special sense. At least regular dark vision has the “only black and white” restriction which actually feels a lot easier to foil to me than something like life sense or tremor sense or echo location.
If it would just super disrupt my campaign, I would probably still not allow it, but I think there is plenty of of room to interpret dark vision as something different than “vision.”
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Thank you for the responses. I actually have a few more questions about other senses than darkvision, because I'm not sure if I fully understand how Foil Senses interacts with the stealh rules in general yet.
For the stealth actions the character requires concealment or cover, right? Does Foil senses suffice as giving concealment against those senses as well, or does is only allow them to have a valid check against them after they've already met the concealment requirement for hiding? Meaning that if they have this feat, and are behind cover or something then tremorsense for example could still cause them to fail hiding, because cover alone does not conceal them from that sense?
I think reading the sidebar shroudb referenced is helpful here.
Detecting with Other Senses
Most abilities that designate “a creature you can see” or the like function just as well if the user can precisely sense the subject with a different sense. If a monster uses a sense other than vision, the GM can adapt ways of avoiding detection that work with the monster's senses. For example, a creature that has echolocation might use hearing as a primary sense. This could mean its quarry is concealed in a noisy chamber, hidden in a great enough din, or invisible under a silence spell.
Using Stealth With Other Senses
The Stealth skill is designed to use Hide for avoiding visual detection and Avoid Notice and Sneak to avoid being both seen and heard. For many special senses, a player can describe how they're avoiding detection by that special sense and use the most applicable Stealth action. For instance, a creature stepping lightly to avoid being detected via tremorsense would be using Sneak.
In some cases, rolling a Dexterity-based Stealth skill check to Sneak doesn't make the most sense. For example, a PC trying to avoid being detected by a creature that senses heartbeats might meditate to slow their heart rate, using Wisdom instead of Dexterity for their Stealth check. When a creature could detect you using multiple different senses, use your lowest applicable attribute modifier.
There's no one size fits all answer to your question because GMs are meant to handle it on a case by case basis. The default sneaking rules assume hearing and vision to be the relevant senses. Sometimes cover will make sense, like for echolocation. But cover wouldn't be relevant to tremorsense. The cited example suggests the sneaker doesn't need it-- they can just step lightly. You should work with your player to figure out what makes sense in this context.
What I think Foil Senses does is prevent "gotcha" moments. The normal special senses rules imply the PC should be proactively outlining how they are going to avoid that sense, which also requires the player have an awareness that sense might be in play. If they aren't aware of a creature having scent and haven't already rolled around in something to mask their smell, they will get detected.
Foil Senses means the PC is more knowledgeable and cautious of special senses, and are always taking appropriate precautions even if the player doesn't specify it or the character isn't aware what senses are relevant in this moment. So they are always stepping lightly, controlling their heart beat, masking their scent, etc.
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I am not sure if I would run it this way or not as a GM, especially as feats like foil senses only end up on custom built NPCs, but dark vision is a big enough buzz kill to me, that I would at least consider running dark vision as a special sense. At least regular dark vision has the “only black and white” restriction which actually feels a lot easier to foil to me than something like life sense or tremor sense or echo location.
If it would just super disrupt my campaign, I would probably still not allow it, but I think there is plenty of of room to interpret dark vision as something different than “vision.”
Don't you think that anything (darkness excluded) that hampers vision would also hamper darkvision ?
Don't you think that anything (darkness excluded) that hampers vision would also hamper darkvision ?I am not sure if I would run it this way or not as a GM, especially as feats like foil senses only end up on custom built NPCs, but dark vision is a big enough buzz kill to me, that I would at least consider running dark vision as a special sense. At least regular dark vision has the “only black and white” restriction which actually feels a lot easier to foil to me than something like life sense or tremor sense or echo location.
If it would just super disrupt my campaign, I would probably still not allow it, but I think there is plenty of of room to interpret dark vision as something different than “vision.”
Blinding light would not hamper a person with darkvision, since they can only see the dark, and not the light, like a lightvision person can.
;P
Blinding light would not hamper a person with darkvision, since they can only see the dark, and not the light, like a lightvision person can.;P
Finally a reasonable take. Paizo's failure to implement a Blinding Dark spell is just another reason why playing a Darkvision character and only adventuring at night is the ultimate meta.
Finally a reasonable take. Paizo's failure to implement a Blinding Dark spell is just another reason why playing a Darkvision character and only adventuring at night is the ultimate meta.
Blinding light would not hamper a person with darkvision, since they can only see the dark, and not the light, like a lightvision person can.;P
I realize this is a bit of a joke, but 4th level darkness spell functions a bit like the old deeper darkness did, making those with regular darkvision see anything in the area as concealed.
So part of why I’d consider it is because “dark vision” in PF2 is a made up magical sense. It isn’t low light vision. It works in absolute, complete darkness, it isn’t thermal vision, it isn’t an infrared vision that emits its own light that most can’t see, it is just seeing without light and can be blocked by greater darkness, which is a purely magical, extra planar source of darkness.
It really isn’t vision the way real vision works. It also feels like the black and white only aspect of it would be relatively easy to exploit by people trained in advanced stealth techniques. At least as easily as smell or echo location could be.
Darkvision is a sense that doesn’t actually sense anything, somehow. It is a non sense.
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Hello, I'm the player that the OP mentions, I'm gonna give my two bits with how I'm interpreting things rules wise, and I am aware my reading of these things is dense so hear me out:
The crux of what I feel is the confusion here is the sidebar, maybe I am misinterpreting it here, but this sidebar in question that the feat mentions is addressing two things:
First paragraph is how concealment is meant to be adapted to non-vision special senses, since things like smoke bombs wouldn't work for echolocation, but a noisy chamber would be the equivalent for it, ie. specifically environmental sources of concealment.
And it specifically tries to pin this down, so that other non-stealth action based foils that can be used against the special sense creature (hence something like a silence spell is compared to invisibility), that ofc COULD help later on should you choose to stealth.The second paragraph (Using Stealth With Other Senses), which I believe is the main course of what it means to foil said senses is also the main point of contention here, because yes it does mention the intended design for stealth is for visual detection, but right after it also states that for many special senses a player can describe how they circumvent it, in that part nothing states vision based special senses cannot be foiled as well (not to be confused with the first paragraphs talk about non-visual senses, which is specifically talking about adapting preexisting factors as the equivalent obstructions that vision has).
The reading here would imply that something like darkvision, which is both visual and a special sense, has to deal with non-darkness based visual foils, along it's dark sight being potentially foiled.The short of it about sidebars paragraphs are:
-First one guides the GM to adapt environmental concealment (which is typically visual based) for non-visual senses.
-Second denotes optional rules for players to use their Stealth in attempts to avoid special senses.What I consider important is how special...
PF2 isn't meant to be read like a lawbook. Your GM would be entitled to bop you with a rolled up newspaper for trying this hard to squeeze extra mileage out of an already really good feat. Especially when you know you're stretching things.
You're trying to make a master skill feat also cover a legendary skill feat, at least as long as there isn't light.
I've never considered darkvision a special sense. And yet, it's explicitly listed under Special Senses, and it needs to be spelled out in stat blocks just like other special senses.
Then again, the sidebar seems to indicate that it's for special senses other than vision.
Darkvision (as it exists in PF2) is a misnomer. What is being seen? How do even the colors of black or white exist for "the viewer" with no light involved? It is like advanced low light vision is being expanded into this thing called darkvision via magic (which is fine to me), but then being called a standard sense. There is no "vision" without light.
What is being sensed when someone uses darkvision is a purely magical abstraction, and it seems weird to me not to call that a special sense.
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Darkvision (as it exists in PF2) is a misnomer. What is being seen? How do even the colors of black or white exist for "the viewer" with no light involved? It is like advanced low light vision is being expanded into this thing called darkvision via magic (which is fine to me), but then being called a standard sense. There is no "vision" without light.
What is being sensed when someone uses darkvision is a purely magical abstraction, and it seems weird to me not to call that a special sense.
I agree with you, that darkvision as written is some kind of magical sense, as it's not using any spectrum of light that or anything like that, that we as humans can imagine. We have no idea or even basis for how it functions.
It's magic, for all intents and purposes.
But, the Foil Sense feat and the detecting with other sense sidebar draw us to the conclusion that vision based senses aren't included.
Basically, if you want to fool a vision based sense you need cover/concealment. There are plenty of ways to create that, but foil sense isn't going to let you disappear in the middle of a dark room because it would obviously be too good.
If it did, then you'd just end up with creatures with darkvision that live in caves putting up lights all around so you don't have rogues just sneaking through "broad night" stealing everything. Foil senses is only a 7th level feat. The implications to me make it clear that it's a silly idea to rule foil sense would affect darkvision.
would that include heat vision granted by the rank 3 spell?
I think sentient monsters in lairs would want lights anyway because seeing colors is useful and rewarding, and am very fine with making darkvision something more akin to a sense predator creatures tend to use while hunting rather than just a way to basically make darkness a non thing in my fantasy gaming.
a seventh level skill feat is not legendary sneaking, but sneaking through darkness is something that shouldn't be a noob fool's trap (IMO) either. And the sneaker still needs to sneak, and following an expert with foil senses doesn't over ride it, so its not like it makes stealth inherently easy.
There are already all these rules in the game around dim light and darkness that could make for interesting stories except that eventually all creatures just get darkvision and ignore all of it.
Ultimately, this isn't really an argument about rules law, it is about thinking about the table and especially the GM thinking about what they want light to mean and whether light is supposed to be only this low level issue for the players to think about or whether they want light and lighting to play a role in the entire campaign. Foil Senses as a feat is pretty intentionally open to GM interpretation as is, I think the arguement for "Darkvision" to be considerable as a special sense is worth tables considering and not just completely writing off.
I do think a player trying to force the GM to accept darkvision as a special sense is problematic and something that should be shot down quickly, especially if the GM has not thought through what that will mean and doesn't want to modify dungeons where creatures would be aware that their special darkness sensor can be foiled by especially powerful sneaks and rogues.
My understanding of RAW is that it's not as much that "Darkvision cannot be foiled" its rather than in order to begin using stealth you need to be in cover/concealment or hidden to begin with and you automatically become observed if you would lose those afterwards. Foil senses does not change that but you as a player no longer needs to know what senses a creature has or explain what precations you take.
So just going by the rules as written, You still need to atleast have something that constitutes as cover/concealment or that you just are hidden to that sense (such as imprecise senses). Even if these special senses happen to be precise they often come with restrictions, such as tremor sense only detecting creatures that move along a surface.. so you can counter it by standing still.
Many times you can gain this kind of concealment with some creative thinking through the examples in the book, Like coating yourself in mud to deal with heat-sense, or controlling your breath. But are you really able to gain concealment from vision through special precautions? Would that mean anyone can just gain concealement anywhere even without the feat. Probably not, Not without spending actions to create diversions or similar.
Kinda need to add that its also not really in good taste to compare a single use weak version of the invisibility spell which is pretty unusable in combat where as a character with Legendary Sneak has no limits put upon their sneak in terms of speed or required concealment.
The other two things are also pretty clearly and explicitly defined in the books but finding those definitions is usually another issue.
This reading of foil senses feels a little complicated to me. I agree the feat is one that you should talk to your GM about, but as a player, if I was avoiding notice as an exploration activity and the GM just decided that a creature with tremor sense, or scent, or echo location automatically detected me and thus moved the party into encounter mode denying me the ability to roll initiative with stealth and be possibly undetected or hidden based upon the success of my roll, I would be pretty disappointed and ask what the value of having foil senses is as a feat.
A character with the feat should not have to explain or describe what precautions they are taking to avoid various special senses.
So that leaves darkvision specifically. Is it a special sense or standard vision?
I think there is a lot of value, as a GM, in deciding that it is not standard vision, because it is magical in nature and doesn't make any sense. Would black grease paint make you invisible to darkvision? Dungeon dust to match the texture of background? How are you sensing depth and distance at all when there are no possible shadows? If you have ever seen a picture of something painted with vanta black, which is a paint-like substance that absorbs something like 99.7 percent of all light, the object becomes flat and impossible see details at all with...but darkvision can somehow see with 0% light or any kind of radiation to detect, so the very idea of seeing with it is always going to confound logic. Why would cover or concealment from mist even affect it? Why would mirrors work with darkvision, or is walking around with darkness also immunity to visual effects that would require you to be able to see reflections or color?
The answer of course is just "magic!" and GMs should think about whether it is worth it to let that magic just mean vision does not actually mean the ability to see light reflecting off of things or if it is better to silo that ability into a "special senses" category, which is what the game itself does by default.
If darkvision were magical, it would have the magical trait, or the rules would otherwise say so. The fact that it working without light seems impossible does not suggest that it's magical (see alchemy or the rogue feat Hidden Paragon for other examples of strange nonmagical things).
And it is definitely a special sense. In fact, it's the first special sense listed in the rules for Special Senses.
However, I think an important thing to consider that the sidebar says "For many special senses, a player can describe how they're avoiding detection by that special sense..." That suggests to me that not all special senses even have precautions that would work against them. While Foil Senses ensures that you are always considered to take those precautions, perhaps the precautions need to actually exist?
For instance, from Monster Core: "Lifesense allows a monster to sense the vital essence of living and undead creatures within the listed range. The sense can distinguish between the vitality energy animating living creatures and the void energy animating undead creatures, much as sight distinguishes colors."
Like, what? How do you guard against that? Do you just pray to your god to hide your vitality? Do you graft a zombie into your body so the energies cancel out? Hmm, on second thought, the former might make a bit of sense.
As for darkvision in particular, I'm not sure what precautions exist for that special sense that don't already thwart vision. There was an idea earlier about a camouflage that exploits the "black and white" vision. Maybe that's a potential precaution?
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Golarion tries generally to stick to real world physics as much as it can to avoid arguments and complications like this. It is a round, earth-sized planet with one moon to simplify stories to work the same as they do on earth, except where there are compelling narrative reasons (like, we want magic to work here) to veer away from earth physics. When I say we have to accept Darkvision as something that just works because “magic,” I don’t mean it has the magical tag, I mean that us humans can’t really logically understand what is happening because a sense has to sense something and Darkvision is a sense that somehow observes most of the world without actually sensing anything. Without light, nothing is white or black, so creating a reasonable counter measure, or failing to be able to employ a reasonable counter measure is a narrative/mechanical choice for the table or GM.
Personally, I find Darkvision that is just vision that ignores light to be boring narratively and make the world less interesting. I would have much preferred every creature with Darkvision have a different precise sense instead: scent, echolocation, heat vision, tremor sense, etc. Because that makes the world more interesting. Foil Senses is a feat that can flatten the world too, but I think if the GM really uses different attributes to foil different senses and maybe let anyone without the feat try with a stiff penalty, it can make for pretty interesting stories.
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I think this is being overthought. Darkvision is a simplified, catch-all game mechanic meant to represent a variety of ways creatures might perceive in low-light or darkness; things like infravision, heat vision, ultraviolet vision, and similar senses. Older editions of D&D actually used those more specific terms, but they were later streamlined to make the game easier to run.
Conceptually, those creatures still “have” whatever sensory abilities they would have had before; they’re just abstracted. This is no different from how turn-based combat abstracts an otherwise chaotic fight, or how hit points abstract serious bodily injury. Combat doesn’t literally pause every six seconds, and a grievous stab is still grievous (at least from the character’s perspective).
So if a GM wants to describe a creature tracking someone by the residual heat of their footprints, and then resolves that with a perfectly ordinary Survival check, that’s entirely reasonable. The narrative description is just window dressing layered on top of a standard mechanic, in service of the story and the table’s enjoyment.
Outside of this abstraction, darkvision doesn’t really exist in the campaign world as some distinct, named, or inherently magical ability. In most cases, it isn’t magical at all! Plenty of entirely mundane animals possess darkvision.
I agree that generic "darkvision" actually produces a less robust world, but going through and adding appropriate types of sense to replace that is not trivial. Although a lot of could probably just be "infrared vision".
Of course, if you have infrared vision, realistically you wouldn't see the cave in detail around you. You would have trouble navigating, although you could see creatures well enough to target them.
Of course that could open a new type of interesting gameplay where you have "imprecise" visual senses.
If I were to pursue such a thing, I would probably get rid of the foil senses feat though, and make more robust (and challenging rules) for remaining hidden from special senses.
Maybe you end up with a "foil senses" feat that say you're always taking precautions, but spell out that against X sense you're rolling Y skill (or maybe no skill) with Z attribute and not a standard stealth check. I'm pretty sure most GMs just run it that a character with foil senses just makes a standard stealth check to keep it simple. In some cases, foil senses might not work at all. Or you might have to cover yourself in mud, for example, to defeat infrared vision.
I dunno if exploring the whole thing is worth it. I'm certainly not going to attempt to try.
Edit: RavingDork, I don't think any of us who have said "darkvision" is magical are actually asserting that it's a magical spell like thing. But rather, as a human being, and lacking more more descriptive/specific things it functions kind of magically, with no specific method to be defeat it. What's worse is that in some cases they do describe things as heatvision (infrared), there's even a spell for it. And as such, it creates a problem that darkvision can't be that.
If using darkvision meant that you radiated a focus beam of special energy that others with the sense could see (like a hooded lantern), that would be fine with me.
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darkvision does seem like a magical form of vision but it is still considered vision and not a separate sense like smell or hearing or tremmorsense.
I would not treat it like those other senses as far as foilsenses is concerned.
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For me, it boils down to how I'd rule a player trying to bypass the sense with preparation. Tremorsense, lifesense, precise scent, all of them are things that make it so even being behind an object doesn't do you any good. Specific preparations need to be taken. For vision, there are a lot of solutions- invisibility, darkness, or most common of all, "having cover/concealment". I wouldn't generally let a player take specific precautions against darkvision seeing through darkness to allow hiding in darkness against it, and similarly, I think players of darkvision characters would be annoyed if hobgoblin commandos were able to sneak right up to them in the dark because "they're wearing darkvision-specific camouflage" or something like that.
Now that I think about it, low-light vision is also listed under Special Senses. If there's some sort of precaution against darkvision, surely there's one against its weaker sibling? But a black and white camo suit isn't working against low-light vision by any stretch of the imagination.
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I think the sidebar and foil senses are really talking about senses other than the two conventional ones: sight and hearing.
Darkvision really works very much like sight; it cares about line of sight, cover, concealment, invisibility spells etcetera. Camouflage against regular vision would still work against someone with darkvision. It just doesn't care about light. But apart from that it's just vision.
Sound is the other sense that people are pretty much always worried about when trying to be sneaky because most creatures have at least imprecise hearing. So if you weren't trying to use Sneak actions, people would hear where you were going because that's what imprecise senses do.
Other senses are "special" in that not everyone has them, and if you weren't trying to handle those specifically, your attempts to be stealthy wouldn't go well. If you didn't know about the guard dog with imprecise scent, it'd smell you and know where you were even though it couldn't see you. But if you were taking special precautions, you could try to mask your smell so you'd be able to roll to get past the dog.
The Foil Senses feat means that you're always trying to do that; you can tell them GM that yes, you're a master at stealth and always treading lightly to foil tremorsense, masking your smell, controlling your heartbeat etcetera, so you don't automatically fail at sneaking because of some special sense you hadn't thought to mention.
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Now let's come back to darkvision. I suppose you could argue that if you were in a dark room where someone with regular vision couldn't see you, you might think you're hidden. But you wouldn't be hidden from someone with darkvision, so your attempts to Sneak would be doomed from the start.
Is darkvision supposed to be one of the special senses that the sidebar on foiling those, and Foil Senses are talking about? I think exactly the same argument could then be made about low-light vision: it also changes your visibility in poor light situations. In dim light you'd normally have concealment which would allow you to Hide and then Sneak. But not against an elf. Can you take special precautions against low-light vision to allow you to treat a starry night as dark enough to Hide from an elf?
I think the rule is open to both the interpretation that yeah, that's not strictly standard vision so you can, but also you could say that that isn't what is intended in the text and that reading is too extreme.
Given that it's more common for most ancestries to have low-light or darkvision than not, I think it's a too extreme interpretation. I think foil senses is intended for "oh, but I was also taking precautions against guard dogs, of course, I'm a master thief".
If low light + foil senses allowed you to hide in plain sight from practically any kind of creature, that would mean that the master feat plus an easily available bit of darkness does the same thing as the legendary feat. Which would be too good to be true IMO.