Hello - I am learning how to GM pathfinder slowly and I have been wondering how to resolve the hide action. I'm coming from DND where my players really hate it when things don't go their way, or are somehow surprised by the rules - so I like to be as clear as possible. (which, I think is their own problem, it's entirely a game with dice and chance!)
Example, the Rogue hides behind greater cover at the beginning of their turn.
Because they hid, I roll a stealth check in secret and they roll a 10 (creature perception DC is 17, in this example) - the creature is not off-guard to the attack, and therefor does not trigger sneak attack.
They then do one of the following - Sneak or Step out into the open to go to attack an enemy with their dagger.
What is the best way for players to avoid this "gotcha" - in that they are putting several actions into hiding and building up to sneak attack? Is it simply just leveling up will prevent this? Or is it more on the DM side to be like "ehhh that's risky" by the time I roll the hidden check?
Stealth in general has been difficult to rule in the moment, I understand the basics but it does feel very strong to Avoid Notice all the time if you are the rogue - as it's basically a free "hide" at the start of combat and a boost to your initiative. What are the best practices to prevent players from always choosing to hide and sneak and play very defensively? AOE?
You cease being hidden if you do anything except Hide, Sneak, or Step. If you attempt to Strike a creature, the creature remains off-guard against that attack, and you then become observed.
This part is what is tripping us up. My understanding was that you could hide, sneak, strike before anything was "checked" again. If what you are saying is how it works, then hiding seems more balanced, only good for not getting hit or shooting at range. It seems you'd only get to melee if you were hiding and an enemy walked past you.
As for the other part:
Avoiding Notice seems to be not that much of an opportunity cost if the rest of the party is doing similar activities where everyone is moving half speed. I'm not exactly sure how you'd even track this sort of thing if you "split the party" - the best I can think of is putting the rogue way in the back (at least enough to spend one stride more than the other players?) if initiative is rolled?
This is always something I have struggled with as a dm/GM as 4 players make things way less of a challenge when you basically get 4 times the chances of success / all weaknesses get shored up by having a party. One thing I like about pf2e over 5e is that reckless or low stat characters can critically fail and be more of a hindrance than simply another chance at success.
I have 11 years as a GM and have been playing Pathfinder 2nd Edition since its public playtest in 2018. But my GMing style has added many house rules to prevent awkwardness in gameplay. For example, I don't bother with secret rolls. I let the players always roll of their characters, and I tell them when they succeeded at a Stealth check to hide so that I do not have to track their hidden condition all by myself.
Because they hid, I roll a stealth check in secret and they roll a 10 (creature perception DC is 17, in this example) - the creature is not off-guard to the attack, and therefor does not trigger sneak attack.
The rogue might still catch the creature off-guard due to their Surprise Attack ability.
They then do one of the following - Sneak or Step out into the open to go to attack an enemy with their dagger.
What is the best way for players to avoid this "gotcha" - in that they are putting several actions into hiding and building up to sneak attack? Is it simply just leveling up will prevent this? Or is it more on the DM side to be like "ehhh that's risky" by the time I roll the hidden check?
Narration is the best warning, "As you Sneak out from your cover, the creature's head turns and it looks directly at you. You are not hidden from it."
Stealth in general has been difficult to rule in the moment, I understand the basics but it does feel very strong to Avoid Notice all the time if you are the rogue - as it's basically a free "hide" at the start of combat and a boost to your initiative. What are the best practices to prevent players from always choosing to hide and sneak and play very defensively? AOE?
My first campaign under PF2 rules was converting the PF1 Ironfang Invasion adventure path to PF2 rules. (The only PF2 adventure path available at that time was Age of Ashes and that adventure did not fit my players' tastes.) The campaign had two rogues, the gnome thief-racket rogue Binny and the halfling scoundrel-racket rogue Sam. I got a lot of practice judging hidden and concealed condition.
Binny's player was new and she played defensively. She was a sniper, an unusual style. She would Hide behind a crate or a bush and make one shortbow ranged Strike from hiding. That shot caught the target off-guard, but it also revealed her position so that she became observed. (It says that in the Hide action.) Binny's 3rd action was typically to attempt to Hide again. The enemies knew her location and could circle around the crate to observe her, but if they stayed in front of the crate, then Binny counted as hidden and required a DC 11 flat check to target her. The party worked with Binny and made sure that the enemy was busy with them and did not have time to close in on Binny's hiding spot. Without the party's aid, some enemies would have treated Binny as a sitting duck.
For Binny to deal damage, she had to expose herself every turn. A character (does not have to be a rogue) who stays hidden all combat would not make Strikes nor Cast Spells, so they would be useless in combat and might as well wait in the previous room.
Sam, in contrast, was played by my wife, who has decades of experience with over a dozen tabletop roleplaying systems. At 1st level, Sam fought as a sniper like Binny; in fact, Binny learned that style from Sam. At 2nd level, Sam took Sorcerer Multiclass Dedication and learned two attack cantrips. He cast ranged cantrips without hiding or flanking. At 4th level, Sam learned Magical Trickster and would use Surprise Attack to gain one sneak attack per encounter with his cantrips. At 6th level, Sam learned Dragon Claws and would flank for both sneak attach and draconic fire damage with his claws. At 10th level, Binny (not Sam) learned Precise Debilitations and almost every turn she made one enemy off-guard to everyone, so Sam had one easy opportunity to deal sneak attack damage at range with spells. My wife likes characters who change and develop.
The exploration activity Avoid Notice is not a guarantee that the character using it will be able to roll Stealth as initiative. The party could have rounded a bend on the road through the forest and stepped into fields in plain sight of the city wall. Or the Stealth check for the Avoid Notice was a failure, so the enemy has already spotted the character and the GM can rule that Stealth for initiative does not fit the situation.
I typically give my players a choice of initiative rolls, "You see a strange animal in front of you. You could roll Perception for initiative, or roll Nature if you plan to try to identify the animal with Recall Knowledge, or Stealth if you want to immediately hide from the animal." The creatures from the Bestiaries have higher Perception than PCs of the same level (monsters get a higher stats to make up for having fewer abilities), so letting a player roll their favorite skill occasionally levels the odds.
This part is what is tripping us up. My understanding was that you could hide, sneak, strike before anything was "checked" again. If what you are saying is how it works, then hiding seems more balanced, only good for not getting hit or shooting at range. It seems you'd only get to melee if you were hiding and an enemy walked past you.
Not quite right. Hide has a Stealth check. Sneak has its own Stealth check and failure means the character is not hidden anymore. Step does not have a Stealth check, so the character stays hidden, but Step is only 5 feet. The Strike immediately reveals the character to everyone. Ordinarily that would make Hide and Sneak useless for Striking an opponent off-guard, so those two abilities have a special clause that even though the Striking character is observed, the character still catches the opponent off-guard.
And a successful Stealth check while Sneaking upgrades the character from hidden to undetected. Opponents can know where a hidden creature is, "He ducked behind that pillar. Fireball that area!" Undetected means hidden and the opponent doesn't know the location. The Point Out action lets one character who spotted the location share the location with everyone else, but the formerly undetected creature is still hidden.
Avoiding Notice seems to be not that much of an opportunity cost if the rest of the party is doing similar activities where everyone is moving half speed. I'm not exactly sure how you'd even track this sort of thing if you "split the party" - the best I can think of is putting the rogue way in the back (at least enough to spend one stride more than the other players?) if initiative is rolled?
Exploration Mode is for travel where time is tracked in hours or situations where time is tracked in minutes such as social conversation or Treat Wounds. Individual locations usually don't matter on that time scale, so no-one has their character token in the precisely correct spot. They might even not be on the maps yet. When I say to roll initiative for Encounter Mode, I also ask my players to move their tokens to a plausible square, such as "You entered the clearing from the west, so your characters should be near the left edge of the battlemap," or "You are about to be surprised while Treating Wounds. Put your characters in their places before I reveal what appeared." A character wanting to roll Stealth for initiative will place their token behind some cover or concealment, such as a tree, because otherwise their Stealth check for Hiding will fail.
As for splitting the party, one piece of the party goes into Encounter Mode on a battlemap and the other piece of the party is elsewhere and still in Exploration Mode. If they are close enough, I might say, "You hear a fight where you had left the other half of the party. You can roll initiative, too, to rush back, but it will take you two rounds to return to the room."
What is the best way for players to avoid this "gotcha" - in that they are putting several actions into hiding and building up to sneak attack? Is it simply just leveling up will prevent this?
Not so much leveling up by itself, but some of the Rogue feats are pretty specifically designed to allow this type of playstyle by bypassing the somewhat harsh risks of sneaking with the base rules.
Underhanded Assault lets them not need to hide first. They can just roll to sneak up to an enemy that one of their allies is already attacking.
Gang Up lets them and their ally get the benefits of flanking pretty much constantly. So they don't need to roll to sneak any more.
So basically, sneaking and attacking works. But attacking alongside your allies works a lot more reliably.
Example, the Rogue hides behind greater cover at the beginning of their turn.
Because they hid, I roll a stealth check in secret and they roll a 10 (creature perception DC is 17, in this example) - the creature is not off-guard to the attack, and therefor does not trigger sneak attack.
They then do one of the following - Sneak or Step out into the open to go to attack an enemy with their dagger.
What is the best way for players to avoid this "gotcha" - in that they are putting several actions into hiding and building up to sneak attack? Is it simply just leveling up will prevent this? Or is it more on the DM side to be like "ehhh that's risky" by the time I roll the hidden check?
Levels do help, because if you invest in a skill, your bonus rises faster than DCs do and your success rate goes up.
But I guess it depends on what the "gotcha" is. Is the issue that the tactic can fail, or the issue that they don't know they didn't successfully hide in the first place until they attempt the attack, and only learn it failed when its too late to do something about it?
Because if the issue is the latter, there are a couple of potential fixes:
1. Narratively point it out by telling them "they're looking right at you" or some other way to indicate that the they're still observed.
2. Don't use Secret checks. If the player knows their total was 10, they 'll figure out pretty quickly that they didn't hide successfully.
Secret checks are entirely optional RAW. GMs are encouraged to waive them whenever they're not contributing to the game (even PFS allows GMs to ignore Secret checks entirely).
I tend to prefer #1 because the narration method is more immersive and also works in cases where the creature has an extra sense. By default you're not hiding from things like Scent or Temorsense without taking extra precautions, and narration is a way to convey that something is going on without actually saying what it is (Recall Knowledge reveals that). Otherwise they will just fail a lot and in the case of a secret check won't know if its due to a special sense or if its just because you're rolling badly on their behalf.
Stealth in general has been difficult to rule in the moment, I understand the basics but it does feel very strong to Avoid Notice all the time if you are the rogue - as it's basically a free "hide" at the start of combat and a boost to your initiative. What are the best practices to prevent players from always choosing to hide and sneak and play very defensively? AOE?
Avoid Notice is an Exploration Activity and it often makes sense for a stealth based player to do it. It is good at what it does, but it also means they're not doing something else, such as searching. So they don't get perception checks to find things like traps. You need to hope someone else can find them in this situation, but the Perception gating on those makes Rogues better at finding them than a lot of other classes so there is a cost to this tactic.
In encounter mode, being hidden requires terrain that allows it until they get Hide in Plain Sight (or things like Invisibility), and it consumes actions, so it's not generally a huge problem.
At high level a lot of these problems go away if they invest in skill feats and boosts, but at that point they've focused a lot of their character on being good at this so they should get to enjoy that.
That is, you can Sneak from cover through open ground to cover, and remain hidden; but if you Sneak from cover, out of cover, and do not return to cover at the end of the Sneak, you are no longer hidden.These will significantly limit the ability to stealth-melee enemies that are not adjacent to cover.
This particular detail is important when you can get feats like Very Sneaky, which let you work around it. Also it leads to Very, Very Sneaky, which is just one of my favorite names for a feat in the game. :D
She would Hide behind a crate or a bush and make one shortbow ranged Strike from hiding. That shot caught the target off-guard, but it also revealed her position so that she became observed. (It says that in the Hide action.) Binny's 3rd action was typically to attempt to Hide again.
This opens the cover can of worms as well - my interpretation has been if you hide behind a below chest-high box you'd be able to shoot from behind it without a penalty (as you position yourself to strike it reveals your position allowing you to see above it). Obviously, pathfinder on a grid is "two dimensional" which doesn't always translate to the full fantasy of it.
The way I have been ruling boxes - works as you describe if you hide, strike, hide - but you wouldn't be exposing yourself in that you are away from cover (striking revealing your position excluded). At that point, would you give the opposing creatures cover as you are behind cover obscuring your shot?
If you do have to step away from cover, then it's too many actions to re-hide in one turn on a low level character, which is fine - I think it makes more sense to do your turn and then hide at the end to setup for next turn. It would make most sense to me if we had to step away from cover is if there was a column in your way and you wanted to hit someone directly in front of the column you'd need to spend a step to be able to see the target.
the issue that they don't know they didn't successfully hide in the first place until they attempt the attack, and only learn it failed when its too late to do something about it?Because if the issue is the latter, there are a couple of potential fixes:
1. Narratively point it out by telling them "they're looking right at you" or some other way to indicate that the they're still observed.
2. Don't use Secret checks. If the player knows their total was 10, they 'll figure out pretty quickly that they didn't hide successfully.Secret checks are entirely optional RAW. GMs are encouraged to waive them whenever they're not contributing to the game (even PFS allows GMs to ignore Secret checks entirely)
The issue is that by the time you figure out if your roll was bad, you committed and it in a way doesn't make sense - I think the middle-ground is having them roll but they only find out if they have succeeded. That way, they know if the number was low or high but it doesn't always mean they will have succeeded and might lead to more plan pivoting. The example that is coming to my head is if you rolled low - perhaps you accidentally stepped in glass. This reveals your position before you went to attack - so in theory you should be able to react to that during your turn if you have more actions. I try to be forgiving with details while playing because it's basically impossible to describe every scenario with exact detail in a timely manner.