What does Underhanded Assault do?

[Ravingdork]

What does the Underhanded Assault feat supposed to do for you?

It doesn't appear to do anything you couldn't already do.

You can already Sneak and Strike for two actions, so it's not action compression. It penalizes your Stealth check to Sneak, so it's not a buff.

I suppose it does allow you to Sneak out in the open, without cover or concealment, but since you have to end your turn adjacent to the enemy, you likely don't have cover or concealment against them and so become Observed at the conclusion of your movement as normal for Sneak. Nothing in the feat explicitly changes the end condition consequences, only the starting state conditions are altered.

I've heard some say it makes the target Off-guard to your Strike, but the feat doesn't mention Sneak Attack or the Off-guard condition so that can't be it.

Even if there was cover or concealment adjacent to the enemy, I still need an ally present to use the feat at all, so what's the point of jumping through all these hoops and risking an unnecessary and penalized check against failure when I could have more easily just used my actions to Stride into flanking and then Strike with sneak attack?

I'm seriously at a loss as to what this feat was intended to do and how it means to accomplish it.

What am I missing?

[Dunwright]

Ravingdork wrote:

I suppose it does allow you to Sneak out in the open, without cover or concealment, but since you have to end your turn adjacent to the enemy, you likely don't have cover or concealment against them and so become Observed at the conclusion of your movement as normal for Sneak.

I think this conclusion is wrong. The Sneak rules say:

Player Core pg. 245 wrote:

Success You're undetected by the creature during your movement and remain undetected by the creature at the end of it. You become observed as soon as you do anything other than Hide, Sneak, or Step.

If you succeed at the Sneak check you remain undetected at the end of your Sneak action. You do not become observed until you do something other Hide, Sneak, or Step. Your lack of cover or concealment is irrelevant because the feat lets you roll as though you were hidden; without the feat you would not be able to make this roll and would be automatically observed, per the Sneak rules:

Player Core pg. 245 wrote:

You don't get to roll against a creature if, at the end of your movement, you neither are concealed from it nor have cover or greater cover against it. You automatically become observed by such a creature.

Since you have the feat, you CAN take a roll and thus are not automatically observed by such a creature:

Underhanded Assault wrote:

You can roll against the foe you’re Sneaking up on, even if it’s currently observing you, as though you were hidden.

You can not be automatically observed because your success on the Sneak roll declares that you remain undetected until you take certain actions. The reason you are automatically detected normally in such cases is because you are not allowed to take the roll normally.

Seems pretty clear to me. If you wanted to you could read this in an obnoxiously particular way and say the feat lets you take the roll to not be observed but doesn't erase the text saying you are automatically observed, but besides there being no reason to do this, it also introduces a new problem, which is that being automatically observed at the end of your movement contradicts the natural language meaning of remaining undetected at the end of your movement, so then you'd just have an ambiguity that you should obviously resolve in favor of letting the feat do something.

[Ravingdork]

Dunwright wrote:

If you succeed at the Sneak check you remain undetected at the end of your Sneak action.

Sneak may say you're undetected on a Success, but this feat doesn't. This feat changes the Success condition to "you can make a melee Strike against your foe at the end of your Sneak." Problem is, at the end of your Sneak, Sneak's rules make you observed if you don't have cover or concealment.

Furthermore, you're not making a Sneak check for Sneak. You're making a Stealth check for Underhanded Assault. You're not even technically Hidden; the feat says "as though you were Hidden."

[Dunwright]

RavingDork wrote:

Sneak may say you're undetected on a Success, but this feat doesn't. This feat changes the Success condition to "you can make a melee Strike against your foe at the end of your Sneak."

This is incorrect. The feat does not replace the success condition. It adds an effect. The normal effects is still present.

Ravingdork wrote:

Problem is, at the end of your Sneak, Sneak's rules make you observed if you don't have cover or concealment.

Sneak's rules normally make you automatically observed by a creature you do not have cover or concealment against, because Sneak's rules normally prevent you from rolling against such a creature, which would allow you to remain undetected on a success. The feat allows you to take such a roll.

RavingDork wrote:

Furthermore, you're not making a Sneak check for Sneak. You're making a Stealth check for Underhanded Assault.

Sneak has you roll a Stealth check. The penalty to your Stealth check mentioned is referring to the Stealth check you roll with Sneak.

Ravingdork wrote:

You're not even technically Hidden; the feat says "as though you were Hidden."

Yes, this is necessary to trigger the roll per the Sneak rules; it is rolled against creatures you were hidden to or undetected by at the start of your movement. The purpose of the feat is to let you take the roll mentioned in the Sneak action and referenced in the feat. After the roll, you become undetected if you succeed, per the Success description of Sneak ("You're undetected by the creature during your movement and remain undetected by the creature at the end of it) and also the general description of Sneak ("You attempt to move to another place while becoming or staying undetected").

[Ravingdork]

Dunwright wrote:

The purpose of the feat is...

...not as clear as it probably should be.

[Finoan]

Ravingdork wrote:

What does the Underhanded Assault feat supposed to do for you?

Without the feat:

You would have to start your routine by hiding. Probably on a previous turn, though if you have enough actions, you may be able to do it as the first action of your current turn. Then you can sneak towards an enemy and Strike them when you arrive.

With the feat:

Underhanded Assault wrote:

You can roll against the foe you’re Sneaking up on, even if it’s currently observing you, as though you were hidden.

You don't need to be hidden first. You can start from the middle of an open field and completely observed by all enemies, and still sneak towards the enemy and Strike them when you arrive (assuming that you succeed at the sneak check).

So it is action compression - by removing the need to spend actions moving to cover and using Hide.

-----

Regarding having the target Off-Guard to the Strike at the end of the Sneak and applying Sneak Attack, that is a ruling for Sneak itself, not something about Underhanded Assault.

Sneak states:

Sneak wrote:

You don't get to roll against a creature if, at the end of your movement, you neither are concealed from it nor have cover or greater cover against it. You automatically become observed by such a creature.

Sneak also states:

Sneak wrote:

Success: You're undetected by the creature during your movement and remain undetected by the creature at the end of it.

But you don't even get to roll against the enemy if you don't have cover or concealment. So by strict RAW, you couldn't sneak up to an enemy and Sneak Attack them unless you can manage to be concealed or have cover against that enemy at the end of your movement. And Underhanded Assault doesn't change that.

Whether you and your table are happy with that ruling, or instead want to houserule Sneak so that you can more easily Sneak Attack an enemy is something that your table can decide on.

But in either case, the problem here is with Sneak, not with Underhanded Assault doing nothing.

[Red Metal]

Ravingdork wrote:

Dunwright wrote:

The purpose of the feat is...

...not as clear as it probably should be.

It's perfectly clear if you don't insert unwarranted assumptions, like this:

Ravingdork wrote:

This feat changes the Success condition to "you can make a melee Strike against your foe at the end of your Sneak."

This is a bad assumption. If an activity has you do an action, you still get all the base effects of that action unless it says otherwise. Monster Hunter doesn't have to specify that you still get information when you critically succeed on your Recall Knowledge check, Tumble Behind doesn't have to specify that you're still able to move through the enemy on a success. Overextending Feint specifically says that you can replace the normal effects of a Feint. Nowhere in Underhanded Assault does it say that the effect of Underhanded Assault replaces the normal effect of Sneak, so it doesn't; it's in addition to the normal effect.

[Errenor]

Finoan wrote:

But you don't even get to roll against the enemy if you don't have cover or concealment. So by strict RAW, you couldn't sneak up to an enemy and Sneak Attack them unless you can manage to be concealed or have cover against that enemy at the end of your movement. And Underhanded Assault doesn't change that.

It does. You, as you said, can start sneaking from the open to an enemy with your ally next to them, then roll Stealth (Sneak):

"You can roll against the foe you’re Sneaking up on, even if it’s currently observing you, as though you were hidden"
get undetected on success, Strike them because of Underhanded Assault and get them off-guard because of undetected and so Sneak attack.
That's the point of the feat. If you think that the wording is inadequate, feel free to mentally change it to make the feat work. As you say, RAW ruling can be a troll one :)

[Trip.H]

I'm agreeing with Errenor on this one.

"as though you were Hidden" means that as far as the Sneak check "knows," that user is Hidden.
I don't think the RaW gap between the "Hidden" of U.Assault vs Sneak's check of ~"Concealed or covered" is as big as it seems at first glance.

Thanks to...

Groups of Conditions wrote:

Some conditions exist relative to one another or share a similar theme. It can be useful to look at these conditions together, rather than viewing them in isolation, to understand how they interact.

This is an odd case where the text leaves some real rules mechanics to the GM. So I can't say this claim "is RaW" the same way as other stuff, but it also means this is not really a RaW gap / hole in the normal way we'd think of that phrasing.

The open question of the "relationship" between the Conditions has mechanical significance.
The GM can rule/decide that Hidden is an outright upgrade of Concealed. If so, Hidden being Concealed+ means that it also qualifies for Sneak's isConcealed? check. No need to fudge RaW.

[Taja the Barbarian]

Strictly speaking, the feat text does not explicitly bypass the cover/concealment requirements of Sneak, but it really seems like this was the intent.

'...even if it’s currently observing you' should probably read as '...even if it’s currently observing you and/or you lack cover/concealment to it'.