States of Alertness (Apath)

Unofficial rules compendium

The reason a character usually needs cover or concealment to use Stealth is tied to the fact that characters can’t use Stealth while being observed.

Precise and Imprecise Senses: Since Perception covers all senses, it is important to distinguish which of those senses count as observing a creature that is using Stealth. Some senses are more precise than others. Imprecise senses allow a creature to pinpoint the location of another creature, but they don’t allow for the use of targeted effects, and attacks against those creatures are subject to miss chances from concealment. A few examples of imprecise senses are hearing, scent, blindsense, and tremorsense. A sense is precise if it allows the creature to use targeted effects on creatures and objects it senses, and to attack enemies without suffering a miss chance from concealment. This includes vision, touch, blindsight, and lifesense. Precise senses allow the creature to pinpoint an enemy’s location. Senses other than the listed ones count as precise or imprecise at the GM’s discretion. A creature might have a limited form of a sense that makes it too weak to count as precise, such as a beast with primitive eyes that has difficulty seeing a creature that isn’t moving.

Cover and Concealment for Stealth: When a creature uses a precise sense to observe an enemy, that enemy is unable to use Stealth against the observer unless it creates a distraction first, or has a special ability allowing it to do so. A sneaking character needs to avoid all of an opponent’s precise senses in order to use Stealth, and for most creatures, that means vision. A blur spell, shadowy area, or a curtain work nicely. The hide in plain sight class ability allows a creature to use Stealth while being observed and thus avoids this whole situation. As the Core Rulebook mentions, a sneaking character can come out of cover or concealment during her turn, as long as she doesn’t end her turn where other characters are directly observing her.

States of Awareness: In general, there are five states of awareness that a creature can have with regard to another creature using Stealth.

Relaxed: Not only does the creature not perceive the sneaker, but he does not suspect the presence of an enemy. A relaxed creature takes 10 on all perception checks, which helps a sufficiently skilled. A relaxed observer is also often distracted.

A relaxed creature temporarily becomes unaware after a single failed Stealth check. A creature that was that sees a plausible explanation for what created the disturbance that made them unaware but alert (often the result of a successful Bluff check) returns to being relaxed, otherwise it remains unaware for 10 minutes. It is easier to maintain alertness when moving; but this reduces your speed to half. Moving at normal speed and being alert is as tiring as moving at a hustle.

Unaware: A sneaking creature can succeed at Stealth well enough that the other creature isn’t even aware that the creature is present. This state allows the sneaking creature to use abilities such as the vigilante’s startling appearance. The Stealth skill description in the Core Rulebook says that perceiving creatures that fail to beat a sneaking character’s Stealth check result are not aware of the sneaking character, but that is different from being totally unaware. This is also true of a creature that has previously been made aware of the creature’s presence or location (see below) but is currently unable to observe the sneaking creature. In those cases, the sneaking creature can’t use abilities such as startling presence.

Aware of Presence: The next state is when the perceiving creature is aware of the sneaking creature’s presence, though not of anything beyond that. This is the state that happens when an invisible creature attacks some one and then successfully uses Stealth so the perceiving creature doesn’t know where the attacker moved, or when a sniper succeeds at her Stealth check to snipe. A perceiving creature that becomes aware of a hidden creature’s presence will still be aware of its presence at least until the danger of the situation continues, if not longer (though memory-altering magic can change this).

Aware of Location: The next state is awareness of location. This happens when a perceiving character uses an imprecise sense, such as hearing or tremorsense, to discover what square a hidden or invisible creature inhabits.

Observing: The final state is when the perceiving character is able to directly observe the sneaking character with a precise sense, such as vision. This is generally the result when the perceiving character rolls higher on its opposed Perception check than the sneaking character’s Stealth result while also having line of sight to the sneaking character and the ability to see through any sort of invisibility or other tricks the sneaking character might be using.

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