Yes, next week is Thanksgiving and it’s on a Thursday. That being said, I could still play starting around 9pm EST next Thursday because I think my family is going up north for Thanksgiving and I can’t go so I’ll be sitting around home by myself with no Thanksgiving dinner this year.
I can probably still do it as well, But I will still have a hard stop at 11 pm.
Mith
Well, lets pass on next Thursday then. After tomorrow y’all should get a better idea of how your characters function, and if you don’t like something specific you can change it or you don’t like the character in general you could switch characters. With the week off you’ll have plenty of time to come up with ideas!
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Sounds good!
I think I am set with my character. Can’t think of anything I really want or need to change at this point.
Sorry I didn’t show up tonight. I had issues with my Step father that caused the game to go right out of my head. It didn’t come back into my mind until I just sat down and looked at the time and date on my PC just now.
Let me know what happened.
Mith
Hi Mith, no worries. Hope your step father is okay!
We finished the town hall encounter (which awarded 125 xp each) and then traveled to Hell Knight Hill to pursue the suspected arsonist - a book seller and local wizard’s apprentice. We sneaked around the perimeter of the castle looking for monsters and such. So far, we’ve discovered
- An entrance room with three “dogs”
- A side entrance with a pool of water inhabited by two intelligent turtle like monsters.
- A rear entrance with 3 oversized rats.
We are currently fighting the rats. One is dead and a second is wounded. We left the other monsters alone for now, but it looked like the 2 turtle monsters had treasure - a suit of silvery armor.
Oh, there were promises of gold made by Miss Warbal. I think it was 20 gold each or something like that for information about the bumblebrashers’ well being and safety.
Also have to say that I had a lot of fun last night. Thanks @Rando for GM’ing and thanks @Cortillaen and @Ryuken for putting up with my sneaking obsession.
In hindsight, that encounter with the giant turtle things felt like it could’ve been potentially career and/or life ending for Shine so I will have to be more careful 
.
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Nah, just have to make sure the tankier sorts are able to get between you and monsters quickly. When possible, you will want to scout the enemies, report back, and then let the rest of us get in position to start the battle. Attacking those dog/rats would have been a good way to get mobbed before the rest of us could get over there. 
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I did some googling and found some videos about perception, stealth, and initiative which were all highly enlightening. This one is about perception but there are two more in the same series about stealth and initiative.
So it sounds like the answer to the perennial question about stealth checks for initiative is that, if the status of the person rolling stealth was already unnoticed, then the stealth roll for initiative is exactly that. It is a roll for initiative and not to remain unnoticed/undetected. If the person/monster rolling perception for initiative wins the initative, it’s presumably up to the GM to decide whether that person is blissfully unware of danger or can instead decide to seek/delay/etc.
One other interesting tid bit that’s especially apparent to me in the example from the stealth video (Merisiel in the wizard’s academy) is that Assurance: Stealth might be valuable skill feat for a rogue. Having to make consecutive stealth checks against multiple perception DC’s, the likelihood of getting discovered increases dramatically. But keeping the roll to 10 gives you pretty good odds of staying hidden unless one of the enemies has a flat out higher perception DC than your own stealth DC.
EDIT: Heh I forgot that Assurance doesn’t include the dexterity bonus. Rats 
. Anyway, I think I might want to take the Quiet Allies skill feat at level 2 to (hopefully) enable a bit of group sneaking 
EDIT 2: Reading the entry for Avoid Notice again, I don’t think what I said above is right but I like it better so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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Yeah, Avoid Notice is pretty clear about the roll being for both initiative and your detection level when an encounter starts. It’s whether there is supposed to be another roll when you start using Avoid Notice that isn’t completely clear (and some understandable debate on whether you use one roll for both initiative and detection or make one roll for each). My read on Avoid Notice is that we just shouldn’t even bother with a Stealth roll until you hit a place where there is a chance of something seeing you. At that point you roll Stealth, and that roll is A) checked against the Perception DCs of any creatures that might be able to detect you and B) becomes your initiative score (after adding any bonuses to initiative you might have).
From there, we can just use Encounter mode (so everything else rolls initiative as well), but you might not be noticed yet and can still sneak around on your turns. I think it will work fine to use Encounter mode for sneaking like this. Creatures that haven’t noticed you still take their turns, but they just wander around or do whatever they would normally be doing until they notice you or one of us; they don’t get some sixth sense that tells them “Look out! You’re in Encounter mode!”
Terrain Stalker would just mean you could sneak near and past creatures without needing to enter Encounter mode, as long as you stay in the selected terrain and they aren’t on guard.
Also, I’m kinda against Assurance in general. I generally just dislike getting a flat value without any restrictions on its use. It feels like a replacement for 1e’s Take 10 and Take 20, but it doesn’t have the restrictions (time and no penalties for failures) that those had. I can understand the uses for Medicine and Crafting (for repairs), but a lot of uses just don’t feel right to me, and I’d be just as happy if it didn’t exist.
Further, the numbers just don’t make it useful for your purposes. A quick scan through Perception scores for 20-ish lv5 creatures shows an average DC of about 21.5, most creatures falling in the 20-23 range, only two below 20 (an 18 and a 17), and a high of 25 with a couple 24s as well. Assurance at 5th level will give you 10 + 5 + 4 (Expert) = 19, so you would fail against all but 2 creatures at that level.
The good news is that A) adding your Dex +4 onto that means you beat most creatures DCs with an 8, B) there are multiple sources of stacking bonuses for Stealth (my lv11 Rogue has an extra +4, for instance), and C) there are some amazing skill and Rogue feats for Stealth.
I will always support the sneaker with the stealthing to scout, but as Cortillaen touched on, never shoot at something on a whim hehe.
Regarding Assurance, I think it would be worth it if you could include your dex bonus, or maybe even half of the dex bonus. Any scenario that requires more than 1 or 2 stealth rolls to accomplish a task will be pretty unlikely of succeeding no matter how good one’s stealth skill is due to multiplying fractions. So I feel like something like an assurance feat for stealth is needed (in the ruleset, if not necessarily on my character sheet), but I can understand why one might feel differently.
It will be interesting to see whether/how often such situations arise.
I will try to be careful and not start combat prematurely 
.
Most of the time, you should only need a single Stealth roll for something. The main thing that requires multiple Stealth rolls is when you are trying to Sneak in combat (capitalized because that’s the actual action name). Each Sneak needs a roll, so the odds are pretty good of exposing yourself in the process, though a failure only makes you Hidden, not Observed. Enter Sneak Savant. Yes, it’s 10th level, but look at it! It’s absolutely insane. Combine that, Swift Sneak, and Legendary Sneak (15th level), and Rogues can literally always be sneaking. Always. And I love it. 
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You know, I don’t wear armor and I can train up Stealth. I could sneak around with Ocelot and use my monk wisdom if he goes to shoot something and like put my hand on his arm and say something monk-ish like “I don’t think that would be a wise move, my friend.”
The more the merrier @Ryuken!
Can’t wait for Thursday night!
I might be slightly late tomorrow. I’ll try to make it, but I’m changing locks on my new house and it’ll be tight if it runs long.
I might be late as well. I have a meeting with a company about VA help for my stepfather. It starts late afternoon but I am not sure how long it will run for. Just wanted to give a heads up this time.
Mith
Lookin’ forward to getting back to the campaign and showing that Monk patience when I correct someone on the ole name pronunciation
Do we have a rough start time tonight or show up a bit before 8 and see what happens?