One of my favourite things about Pathfinder 2e is its Alternative Initiative Skills rule. Itās a simple and intuitive guideline for making character skills more valuable and pulling in āexplorationā/non-combat mode activities and behaviours into combat initialization.
For those who havenāt played the game before, while thereās a default initiative roll that everyone can use at the start of combat based off of your Perception modifier, you can also use whatever skill modifier maps onto the task you were doing at the time of initiative if you, or your GM, chooses. So, if youāre a Barbarian busting down a door, you can roll Athlethics for initiative, or if youāre a Cleric pre-casting Shield, you can roll Religion.
This is all pretty simple, straight-forward, and elegant until you get to someone who is sneaking at initiative, because Avoid Notice ā PF2ās formal name for the āsneaking aroundā Action in exploration mode ā interacts with everyone elseās Perception DC (PF2ās proxy for Passive Perception). Checks, attacks, and skill rolls in PF2 are always done against a DC; the system never does contested rolls for these. This means trying to avoid being detected by someone is always done by rolling a Stealth check against the Perception DCs of anyone around who might be able to reasonably notice them. So, if you roll Stealth for initiative, and you beat all of the enemiesā Perception DCs, none of them should notice you. None of them should know you exist.
But initiative is a contested roll. Itās the only contested roll in the game, RAW. And, as mentioned, the default ability for rolling initiative in PF2 is Perception. Why? Because itās supposed to represent you noticing that the other creatures in the room are about to throw hands. And now we have a Perception roll contesting a Stealth roll.
This is where things fall apart. This opens the door to the hiding character beating their opponentās Perception DC ā and so, being unnoticed ā while the opponent rolls higher on initiative. What are you supposed to do in this case, where the hider has successfully hidden, but the perceiver succeeds in noticing?
Much to my perpetual bemusement and frustration, GM Core suggests that the opponent justā¦ knows someone is out there.
GM Core pg. 25: To determine whether someone is undetected by other participants in the encounter, you still compare their Stealth check for initiative to the Perception DC of their enemies. Theyāre undetected by anyone whose DC they meet or exceed. So what do you do if someone rolls better than everyone else on initiative, but all their foes beat their Perception DC? Well, all the enemies are undetected, but not unnoticed. That means the participant who rolled high still knows someone is around and can start moving about, Seeking, and otherwise preparing to fight.
So, why does it do this?
Well, biggest reason is probably that PF2 doesnāt have surprise rounds. Instead, it uses its regular stealth system to handle this.
The in-text reason is subtle, and likely wonāt be picked up by someone who isnāt familiar with the gameās stealth rules. Pathfinder 2e has five different awareness/perception states for creatures: Noticed, Concealed, Hidden, Undetected, and Unnoticed. These states are relative to the viewer+viewed pair. The first three are fairly straight forward and intuitive: Noticed creatures are in plain sight, unobscured, and viewed by the viewer; Concealed creatures are seen, and their location is known, but there is something obscuring the viewerās view, making their position seem a little āfuzzyā; and Hidden creatures are not seen by the viewer, but their location is known. The Undetected and Unnoticed states, though, are often a bit of a stumbling block, because, by name, they appear to be synonymous. Theyāre actually significantly different, though. An Undetected creature is one that the viewer knows to exist, but that they do not know the location of, while an Unnoticed creature is one that they donāt know exists at all.
If you review the quoted block of text above, youāll probably pick up on the fact that the authors are very careful to say that the character that succeeds on their Stealth roll is undetected, is careful about the use of unnoticed, and goes out of their way to avoid other synonyms. Beating the enemyās Perception DC on initiative rolls makes you Undetected, and not Unnoticed.
But thatās not how people use it anywhere else in the game. Outside of initiative, if you roll Stealth and beat the other creatureās Perception DC, youāre usually going to be Unnoticed. If you beat the guardās Perception DC, youāre going to be allowed to sneak on by without them paying you any attention.
So, why does it work this way with initiative? The books donāt say definitively, but Iām pretty sure itās because if you tell your players to roll initiative when you havenāt told them that thereās anything around, they will assume thereās something hiding in the shadows. Most GMs donāt just randomly throw players into initiative, and most players donāt want to be thrown into initiative with no payoff. Hidden enemies are Undetected by default, because players canāt ignore the metacontext of the encounter (nor should they).
But GM Core presents this as a symmetrical situation, and it shouldnāt be. The stealth initiative rules are set up this way for good meta reasons, but the GM should be working to a higher standard vis-a-vis metagaming. There are no in-fiction reasons why these Stealth rolls should have different outcomes from any others.
So, how should this play out?
First of all, in the majority of cases, at least one player is going to either fail their Stealth roll and be perceived, or theyāre going to opt to roll with some other skill or ability, so itāll be a moot case. The NPCs will have a reason to investigate the shadows. But if the whole party rolls Stealth for initiative, and the whole party beats the first NPCās Perception DC, but fails to beat their initiative roll, I think that NPC should pass on its turn. I will generally roleplay whatever it is that they were doing for 3 Actions, and then pass the baton off to the next character. Eventually, weāll either get to an NPC whose Perception DC was high enough to actually notice that somethingās afoot, or weāll reach a PC, who will probably make sure all of the NPCs are in the know.
This provides opportunities for the players to passively observe their targets for a moment without being in the reactive state of āOh Shit, Itās My Turnā, and also rewards players with a little extra reward for having tried something as a unit and unanimously succeeding. Plus, it side-steps the invalidating and disappointing feeling of having a āwinā stolen away, which is what succeeding on your Stealth roll but having your enemy know youāre there anyway does.
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