Pathfinder 1E A practical guide to Stealth

In the case of someone on the other side of a wall, one gives a potential observer a hearing* based Per check. Simple really. The GM might decide the wall muffles sound enough to give a penalty to that check.

In the case of Invisibility and an otherwise clear line-of-sight I would also allow a hearing* based Per check at the normal rates (ie: no modifier for the invisibility) OR a sight based one that used the Invisibility modifiers. This sight based Per roll would basically be a chance to notice scuff marks on the floor, dust swirling in the air, that sort of thing.

* or smell in the right circumstances.

I think the problem comes that they took the rules for 3E's Spot but forgot they were rolling into with what had been Listen (and Scent ability). So, we have the wording (copy/paste) for Spot, when Perception is actually more.

DrunkonDuty said:

In the case of someone on the other side of a wall, one gives a potential observer a hearing* based Per check. Simple really. The GM might decide the wall muffles sound enough to give a penalty to that check.

In the case of Invisibility and an otherwise clear line-of-sight I would also allow a hearing* based Per check at the normal rates (ie: no modifier for the invisibility) OR a sight based one that used the Invisibility modifiers. This sight based Per roll would basically be a chance to notice scuff marks on the floor, dust swirling in the air, that sort of thing.

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I was also thinking about this way to resolve invisibility. Problem is, it makes invisibility close to worthless, and also has very little support in Raw. If a PC is invisible and this rule is made to apply, that PC justifiably feel disappointed. Sure, in special circumstance (a very quiet room), but not in the general case.

Stormonu said:

I think the problem comes that they took the rules for 3E's Spot but forgot they were rolling into with what had been Listen (and Scent ability). So, we have the wording (copy/paste) for Spot, when Perception is actually more.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

If you re-read my last few posts, you'll see that I've specifically only been addressing being stationary behind Total C/C. But if you want to discuss moving...

It seems a bit funnier that you want to give the guy moving behind Total C/C a +20/+40 bonus to his Stealth because he's "invisible" to the other guy, who now can only detect him by sound. How does treating Total C/C as "invisibility" justify giving him a bonus to a sound-based check? If you want to give him a bonus because the wall is muffling his sound somewhat that's fine (altho I think even +20 is a bit much, because sound does travel around objects and corners very well), but don't try to justify it by calling Total C/C invisibility. I'm sorry, but I still can't see that treating Total C/C as invisibility is a good idea, for many reasons.

More than one person in other threads discussing Stealth has said that you have to decide what makes sense to you. I'm not saying that what you're suggesting is absolutely wrong, but it doesn't make any sense to me, and I've explained why. If that's what you still want to do, go ahead and house-rule it, it is your world!

Cheers!

Conclusion stands: RAW sucks.

[MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION]: I agree, doing it the way I suggested makes Invisibility much less effective. But it's only a 2nd level spell.

Look at it this way: a paladin in full plate with a Dex of 8 is invisible and trying to sneak past a guard. The pally is going to be noisy as hell. The guard lives in a world where invisible people sneak around all the time. For me, a spell that specifically effects the sense of sight gives no penalty to other senses, including the NPC's Common Sense. ( See what I did there?) Therefore, if the guard hears odd noises from a seemingly empty space they should get very suspicious and at the least give the space some very fine scrutiny (look for foot prints in the dust et.al.) Yeah I'd give penalties to Per rolls for noisy rooms, high winds, whatever. But the guard still gets a roll. As an aside it occurs to me that this would make guard dogs very useful: Scent and superior hearing for the win.

And having just read the Pathfinder SRD on Perception I will agree the RAW is pretty vague. I say do it in the way that makes sense to you.

cheers.

With a secondary sense (hearing), it would be not-so-hard to notice that someone is near, but actually locating them would be very hard. Applying that to invisibility, one could say that the +20 DC applies to sensing the actual position, but not to merely detecting the presence of someone nearby. Of course, hearing is generally much easier to distract than sight is, so even a few people moving around nearby is a pretty good aural cover.

So the +20 is to locate the square to attack. Yeah, I can work with that.

I'm coming to the conclusion that there is a real dissonance between skills and the spell system. Spells have been carried over from 1E/2E without regard of how they should be incorporated properly into the skill system, so we have these messes where spells trump skill usage. 3E/Pathfinder has a skill system, but when it comes to spells it really seems tacks on, instead of fully incorporated.

I really think spells ought to be modified so that in cases where it currently "replaces" a skill check (such as invisibility) that it instead grants around a +5 bonus per spell level (Thus 2nd level Invisibility would add a +10 bonus to Stealth, 4th level Improved Invisibility would add +20. Something like Charm Person would add +5 to Persuasion checks, etc.). Of course, that'd be so radical I'll bet most folks wouldn't want that.

[MENTION=52734]Stormonu[/MENTION]. Oh no doubt about it, spells trump skills. There was a 3rd party publication that put forward a more balanced magic system along the lines of what you've suggested.

Ah! Found it. The Practical Enchanter by Distant Horizon games. To sum it up: Level caps for everything. I've never read it completely nor tried to apply it but seems to be pretty logical and even.

But then again I try to play using HERO system whenever I can so as to avoid all these problems.