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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5491115" data-attributes="member: 78116">You've actually missed the key point that makes the power actually extremely poor for almost anyone. You need to use your standard just to be *able* to make the stealth check. The standard action does not in any way let you make a stealth check - you need to spend a second action, which will probably be a move action to actually become hidden. So the standard action power lets you make a check with any cover or concealment, including from allies and THEN you need ANOTHER action to become hidden. If you need to move away, you provoke an OA and thus accomplish nothing - especially if you were using it to try to leave combat to heal (this likely leaves you unconscious). Additionally it's primary claim to fame - using allies as cover - assumes monsters can't just take a shift action. If a monster can shift, it can break your cover quite trivially in many cases (by no longer having the ally placed between yourself and it). So the huge action sink - combined with how ineffectual it is unless you are in the land of perpetual night and enemies lack low-light or darkvision - makes it worthless for controllers (who frankly, have better options than this that won't take their most important actions in a round to do), leaders and most defenders. They're just not classes who can afford to throw away two vital actions to gain some CA. Especially given the total concealment being worth anything in the first place is conditional on monsters not having a burst or blast attack (or blindsight, tremorsense or truesight). The racial power becomes useful in only an incredibly limited number of niche scenarios that it is never worth using.To be honest though, in general I am worried about the mechanical crunch in the book. What I've seen has been... less than impressive to put it nicely. The shadow hound for example, which relies on charging and fails to have any melee basic attack - so hence cannot charge - is another mechanic that seems to have been poorly thought out. I really hope many of these things are fixed in the final book.</blockquote>

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