Concealment is Worth Far More Than We Think (in Pathfinder)

There are dozens of different tactical considerations to keep in mind when it comes to an average combat in Pathfinder. From the effective range of an attack, to battlefield positioning, to which options an enemy is more likely to be resilient to, there are so many factors that it's easy to overlook one or two in the heat of the moment. For those looking to exploit an edge, though, concealment is something that doesn't get anywhere near as much love as it should.

As such, I figured I'd talk about it today.

Shhh... did you hear that?

What is Concealment?

The short version is that concealment is any effect that blocks line of sight, though not line of effect, to a target. It might be an enemy lurking in deep shadows away from party members who don't have darkvision, the blinding rain of a storm that hampers your ability to see, illusions that confuse where someone is or isn't standing, or something as simple as billowing smoke. Even heavy underbrush provides concealment to those lurking within it.

Which is particularly handy if people are throwing axes at you.

Mechanically speaking, concealment grants a 20 percent miss chance on attacks against a target (in melee their square has to be within an effect that provides concealment, and at range the attack simply has to pass through a square that provides concealment). And if you have line of effect to a target, but not line of sight, then they have total concealment, which creates a 50 percent miss chance.

If someone is standing on the edge of a fog bank so they're obscured but you can see them, that's 20 percent. If they're deep in the fog and you can't see them at all, that's 50 percent. Make sense?

Concealment does more than grant you a miss chance to attacks targeting you, however. An enemy cannot take an attack of opportunity against you if you have total concealment, for instance, and precision damage like sneak attack doesn't apply when total concealment is present. So even if you drop down among a team of human rogues, all it takes is a billowing cloud of smoke, or a blur effect, and their most potent weapon is immediately stripped from them. When you add in that concealment allows you to make Stealth checks, thus vanishing from an enemy's view and allowing you to surprise them on a subsequent round, concealment can be a potent weapon.

Getting The Most Out of Concealment

Concealment isn't exactly new to most players. After all, it's why so many of us play PCs who have darkvision; you don't want every single monster in the dungeon to get concealment from your archer when you go down into the underground tomb, after all.

Well, somebody's shooting at us. No I can't see who!

However, most of us only think of concealment as something we gain from a magic item like a cloak of displacement, or from temporary spells we activate in combat. Some of the most common methods of gaining concealment include:

- Smokesticks: A simple alchemical item, tossing one of these into a hallway, or in front of a door you just breached, can seriously impede enemy archers and spellcasters from picking out targets as you and your allies make your way inside.

- Eversmoking Bottle: A magic item that billows smoke until it covers an entire battlefield, this magic item is ideal for creating a literal fog of war to obscure your actions and deny the enemy the ability to accurately focus fire. Perfect when combined with abilities like Cinder Sight, or with magic items like a goz mask or fogcutting lenses.

- Darkness: A basic spell or spell-like ability, a single use of darkness is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you can move freely while your enemies without darkvision aren't so lucky. This doesn't often work against monsters and other creatures, but in settings where your primary foes are humans and other surface dwellers, it can be a life saver.

- Invisibility: Whether it's with vanish, invisibility, or other spells, rendering yourself unseen is perhaps the most common way to gain concealment.

There are two primary difficulties in creating concealment. The first is that not every method of concealment will work against every foe, so you need to be sure your strategy is going to function. The second is that you need to make sure your strategy will impede the enemy without hampering your allies.

And if you want to add a third difficulty in, creating concealment often takes your entire turn, meaning that you need to take your action to change the battlefield for the benefit of yourself and your allies.

Tactics, and Denying The Enemy Options

I've said it before, but too often players each want to be the point man. We all want to be the sword that strikes the death blow, or the arrow that brings down the enemy. However, denying the enemy the ability to harm you and your allies is just as useful, while often being far more important.

Now you see me, now you don't.

Take the scenario where a group of rogues have all ganged up on one party member. That party members doesn't have the actions to extricate themselves, and they'll draw several attacks of opportunity if they try. To make matters worse, there are precision archers focusing fire as well. Thinking quickly, an ally tosses out a smokestick. It fills the area with smoke, denying the rogues their sneak attack, but also allowing the ally to retreat without drawing attacks of opportunity. That automatically denies the enemy several d6 of potential damage, as well as other crippling effects that may go with the sneak attack damage. It cost the ally their action to provide that aid, but it provided a timely shield to a party member who may not have survived otherwise.

Alternatively, say the party cleric casts obscuring mist to grant their allies concealment against an enemy force while in a courtyard. An enemy spellcaster might summon up a wind to blow that concealment away, but doing so also ate up that enemy spellcaster's action, buying the party time they wouldn't otherwise have had.

These defensive measures aren't meant to be permanent... they're meant to waste the enemy's time and resources, while providing short-term protection to you and your allies.

Concealment will not solve all your issues, as there will be enemies with blindsight, tremorsense, true seeing, and no one trick is going to automatically work against every foe. The key is to make sure you have enough different strategies that no matter what you're facing you've got something you can pull out to help you and your allies snatch victory.

Lastly, at time of writing it's the 3rd Saturday of the month, which means that my new release from Azukail Games just dropped! So if you haven't had a chance to check out 100 Superstitions For a Fantasy Setting, take a moment to give it a look.

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MORE Rules Pathfinder Players Keep Forgetting

In late June I published a list of 5 Rules Pathfinder Players Keep Forgetting, and the response to it was amazing. Forums were exploding with a buzz, and everyone was clamoring about other rules that got left off of the list. I took careful notes, and I decided there were so many that I had to come back and write a continuation to the original list. In fact, this series has been going on so long I now need to include the full list of entries on rules players have been overlooking, forgetting, or just plain don't know.

- Playing By The Book: Some Pathfinder Rules That Players Keep Forgetting
- MORE Rules Pathfinder Players Keep Forgetting
- Even MORE Rules Pathfinder Players Keep Forgetting
- Still More Rules Pathfinder Players Keep Forgetting
- 5 More Rules Pathfinder Players Keep Forgetting

So, that said, here's some more rules you likely forgot all about...

You Need Cover or Concealment to Use Stealth

You're going to need to do a little better than that...

I've lost track of the number of games I've played where a character is so specialized in stealth that a pin drop would seem like a gunshot compared to his footsteps. Hell, I've written a character build article for how to do this very thing right here on this blog. But even if you are silent as death and stealthy as a shadow, that doesn't change that you can't just roll a stealth check and become invisible.

Page 106 of the Core Rule Book outlines how the stealth skill works. Basically if anyone is observing you with any sense (sight, smell, hearing, etc.) then you cannot make a stealth check. Period. If you want to try and pull a Batman then you first need to make a bluff check, and then you can move to a place where you have cover and attempt a stealth check at a -10.

Short version; stealth is a skill, not a spell. Unless you have some class ability like hide in plain sight, or a feat like hellcat stealth (Cheliax, Empire of Devils) then you had better be able to move from rock to rock like a special ops soldier if you want to sneak up unseen.

Anyone Can Find Magic Traps

One of the strangest arguments I've come across from storytellers is that, in their games, rogues can't find or disable magical traps unless they have levels of some kind of spellcasting class. Despite the very clear language of the trapfinding ability these storytellers refuse to allow one of the signature abilities of the rogue class to come into play if they haven't dipped at least one level in wizard or sorcerer.

It must hurt to know they're double wrong.

Everybody chill out... I got this.

Page 417 of the Core Rule Book makes no bones about the fact that anyone can find traps both mechanical and magical. The basic DC for finding and disabling a mechanical trap is 20, and raising or lowering that DC changes the CR of the trap in question. When it comes to magical traps the base DC for both spotting and disabling the trap is a DC 25 + the level of the highest spell used in the trap. Only those with the trapfinding class feature can attempt to disable these traps using the disable device skill, but there's no word on whether or not wizards can disable these traps or not. Anyone, from the eagle-eyed barbarian to the overly-observant bard can perceive them, though.

Yes, You Can Take Multiple Archetypes For The Same Class

One of the best things that Pathfinder introduced starting with the Advanced Player's Guide was the idea of class archetypes. Rather than re-inventing the wheel by creating dozens of new base classes, or stuffing the world with prestige classes (a big complaint toward the end of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5), Pathfinder introduced archetypes that replace some of a class's old abilities with shiny new ones that allow them to be better at certain things. The Titan Mauler is good at fighting big enemies, and loses some signature barbarian abilities, the Holy Gun creates a black powder paladin, but strips away some of the raiment of a knight in shining armor... you get the idea.

Yes you can take more than one archetype for the same class.

It's the only way to explain this, really.

The caveat for this rule, found in the Advanced Player's Guide is that you cannot take two archetypes that replace the same ability. So you could take Thug and Bandit, two rogue archetypes, because they replace different abilities entirely. On the other hand you can't take an armor master and a brawler (the fighter variant, not the Advanced Class Guide class), because both of these archetypes replace weapon training 1.

Yes you can double dip. No you can't do it with the chip you've already finished eating.

Activating A Magic Item is a Standard Action

This is one of those sticky rules that players think they know, but often forget key pieces of. For instance, we all know that using a scroll or activating a wand is a standard action. But what about activating your flaming sword? Or sheathing your frost mace in arctic chill?

Yep, still a standard action.

Terrifying the locals remains, however, a free action.

Lots of players tend to forget that everything takes time. Yes it's cinematic for a fighter to growl a word in ancient celestial to light his burning sword, but it's good tactics to go into the stronghold of evil with your big guns cocked and locked. It also cuts down on grousing about wasted turns if you take care of all your command-word activations before the DM calls for initiative.

Combat Maneuvers

Combat maneuvers are those tricky things that most players eschew until they come up against a situation where they would be really useful (sundering the enemy's nearly impenetrable armor, hammering the poisoned knife out of the assassin's hand, grappling the escaped prisoner you want to take alive, etc.). While any character can attempt these maneuvers (though they draw attacks of opportunity if you don't have the improved name of combat maneuver feat), there's a lot of confusion about them.

So I make an opposed strength check now... right?

Firstly it's important to remember that some combat maneuvers can be done as a standard action, and some combat maneuvers simply replace an attack. Disarm, sunder, and trip can replace attacks (including those in a flurry of blows, or those being used by a two-weapon fighter), whereas bull rush, overrun, grapple, dirty trick, steal, and reposition all take a standard action. Of these standard actions, only a bull rush or an overrun may be used as part of a charge. You will roll a 20 and add your CMB (combat maneuver bonus), and if you beat the CMD (combat maneuver defense) of the enemy then congratulations you have successfully pulled off the maneuver.

Secondly you don't need to charge to use the bull rush combat maneuver. You can charge (Core Rule Book 198), and if you do you get a +2 to your bull rush maneuver, but you can perform the maneuver while standing entirely still.

Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate Are Not Mind Control

The bonus 6th rule of this set, at the risk of repeating myself, is that lots of players tend to forget skills are not more powerful than spells. Any character can have a skill and build it up to a robust number; only certain classes get spells. It's for that reason that yes a bard can talk a mean game with her silver tongue to try and sweeten up a guard to let the party past, but if he she really wants to make the guard do something then it's going to take a command spell or a similar effect to force the guard's hand.

Why? Because you can have the most reasoned, appealing argument in the world, but some people won't care because they're bigoted, prejudiced, distrustful, or they just don't like you.

Sorry honey, I only listen when men are talking.

According to the descriptions of these skills (all of which are found in the skills chapter of the Core Rule Book) bluff can be used to convince people of the truth of a believable lie, diplomacy can be used to increase a creature's attitude toward you by up to two steps, and intimidate can be used to force a character to act as if it were friendly toward you for a few minutes before reverting to unfriendly.

What can't you do with these skills? You can't convince the goblin that he's actually an ogre, you can't suddenly persuade the paladin that his oaths don't matter, and you can't intimidate someone into betraying a sworn ruler if that person has ironclad loyalty. You most certainly cannot just get into someone's pants because you rolled a really high number on a social check. Basically you can't just roll a die and then take control of another character's decisions and responses, no matter how many levels you beat the DC by.

For those who have rules that are constantly forgotten at your table please leave them in the comments, or email them! Thanks again for dropping by Improved Initiative, and if you'd like to follow me then type your email into the box on the right, or stop by my Facebook and Tumblr pages. If you'd like to support this blog, and by extension me, then like this post on FB by clicking the box on the upper right, leave a tip in my "Bribe the DM" button on the right hand side, or stop by my Patreon page and become a patron today!

Seen, Not Heard: Tips and Tricks for Stealth-Based Pathfinder Characters

One of the glorious things about roleplaying games is that players have a slew of options for solving problems. Do they approach the villains under a flag of truce and attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the problem at hand? Do they kick in the doors with steel swinging and magic blasting? Or do they sneak in, take what they need, and vanish like a shadow in the night?

I was never here.

For players who prefer the last option on the list for getting past plot and reaching the goal ahead of the curve, it's important to be as stealthy as you can be. This week on Improved Initiative we lay out a course for players who want to make sure the DM never sees them coming.

Race and Traits

For true stealth experts, you have to begin at the beginning. For those who want to play medium-sized characters the best stalkers are half elves and humans. The former because they receive Skill Focus (Core Rulebook 134) as a bonus feat, and the latter because they can take any sort of stealth-related feat as a bonus feat. For players who are all right playing a small-sized character such as a halfling, gnome, or even a goblin, all of them receive an inherent bonus to stealth because of their size.

Lastly, take at least one trait that offers a +1 stealth bonus, and which makes stealth a class skill for your character from that point onward. Conspiracy Hunter (Council of Thieves) is one example of an ideal trait for a stealth-based character.

Class

Technically speaking any class that offers stealth as a class skill can be quite stealthy. However, it's wise to choose a class that gives you additional, stealth-based abilities that will make you that much harder to find when enemies start rolling dice.

Ranger

There are four rangers in this picture. One is the tree.

Perhaps the ultimate camouflage expert, the ranger is the master of vanishing into the wilderness and never being seen again. In addition to all of the ranger's shiny feats and tasty tracking abilities, she gains camouflage at 12th level, granting the ability to hide in any favored terrain, and at 17th level the ranger gains hide in plain sight in any favored terrain, allowing her to hide even while being observed.

Rogue

'Nuff said.

The king of undetected entrances and unseen exits, the rogue is typically the first choice for a stealth-based character. A rogue's power comes from the rogue tricks these characters know. Tricks like fast stealth which allows a rogue to move at full speed without penalty, are useful, but pale compared to the advanced rogue tricks such as hide in plain sight, which duplicates the ranger's ability.

Inquisitor

Didn't expect that, did you?

While not typically what one thinks of when it comes to stealth, the inquisitor can move unseen with the best adventurers. While the class has no inherent stealth-based powers, inquisitors do gain invisibility spells, and they can gain additional concealment abilities based on their domain or inquisition. The darkness domain and ambush domain in particular can make moving around stealthily much easier on the individual adventurer. When battle is joined though, the inquisitor won't be left wanting.

Ninja

There are 27 ninja in this picture.

Arguably the heavy-hitters of the hide-and-don't-seek game, ninja are some of the hardest characters to find when they don't want to be found. With access to rogue tricks like fast stealth, and class abilities like no trace (which makes a ninja harder to track) as well as light steps at 6th level (where a ninja can move while barely touching a supporting surface) they're a cinch for the forerunner. Clinching the victory are the ninja tricks like vanishing trick which grants invisibility, and the advanced trick ghost step which turns the ninja incorporeal for a single turn.

Shadowdancer

Don't ask... just don't ask.

The end game of characters who like to play in the dark, the shadowdancer prestige class requires nothing more than 5 ranks of stealth, 2 ranks of perform (dance), and the feats Combat Reflexes, Dodge, and Mobility. These characters can vanish in an empty room with hide in plain sight active as long as they're within 10 feet of an area of dim light (excluding their own shadows), and it gets even more ridiculous with abilities like shadow jump, which allow the shadowdancer to turn any area of dim light into a dimension door. No lock picking or guard knock-outs required.

Feats

As with so many other areas of Pathfinder, feats are what transform a competent character into a paragon of ability. Stealth-based characters are no different, and it could be argued they need feats even more than some other builds in order to achieve peak performance.

Two more levels, and they'll never find me.

Skill Focus and Stealthy

Skill Focus (Core Rulebook 134) provides a +3 to the skill selected for it, which in this case is stealth. Stealthy (Core Rulebook 135) provides a +2 bonus on all stealth and escape artist checks. When the character has 10 ranks in stealth the bonus provided by Skill Focus goes up to +6, and the bonus provided by Stealthy goes up to +4. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Hellcat Stealth

Hellcat Stealth (Cheliax: Empire of Devils) allows players to make stealth checks in bright or normal light, even when observed, at a -10. This feat requires Skill Focus (Stealth), as well as 6 ranks of stealth, but it's a game changer for those who find they're always moving about in broad daylight.

Magic and Alchemical Items

Natural ability will only take you so far. That's why it's a good idea to stack the deck just a little bit in your favor by getting your hands on just the right tools for the job.

No I don't know what it is. Don't put it on your head.

Shadow Armor

Whether it's Shadow, Improved Shadow, or Greater Shadow armor (with a +5, +10, or +15 respectively), this armor helps make it that much harder to see and hear the wearer. This armor provides a solid bonus that makes previously impossible burglaries and sneak thievery quite possible.

Cloak of Elvenkind

A go-to item inspired by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, this cloak (Core Rulebook 507) provides a +5 competence bonus on Stealth checks. It's important to remember that competence bonuses don't stack though, so pick the one that provides the biggest boost to your sneak score.

Dust of Disappearance

Rarely carried except for extreme circumstances, this dust is pricey for 2d6 rounds of greater invisibility. However, it renders the dusted creature completely undetectable by magical means, which is something that players should keep in mind when spending cash on backup items.

Scent Cloak

The only alchemical item to make the list (a more complete list of useful alchemical items may be found here), scent cloak makes someone harder to track by scent. They receive a +10 to avoid being tracked by scent, and if a creature does pinpoint the character in person the scenting creature can't determine an individual, unique smell. They know something is there, but not what or whom.

Closing Notes

This doesn't cover all a player's options for creating stealthy adventurers; but there's plenty of material here for a solid base. That said, players need to know what they plan to do with their obscenely high stealth scores in order to actually get anything out of these build suggestions.

Being able to sneak into an archmage's bedchamber undetected, or to vanish without a trace from a prison cell is a useful ability to have. Not every situation calls for such extreme stealth though, and the silent stalker will still have to figure out how to coordinate with the rest of the party. Make sure, before dumping so much time and effort into building a ghost, that your concept is going to fit into the game and that you'll get to do the things you've built your character to do. Just because you can, it doesn't mean you should.


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