Move Silently

Move
Actions: 1
Required Proficiency: Trained
Requirements: None

You can attempt to move to another place while becoming or staying undetected. Stride up to half your speed. (You can move silently while burrowing, climbing, flying, or swimming instead of striding if you have the corresponding movement type. However, you must move at half that speed.)

If you’re undetected by a creature and it’s impossible for that creature to observe you (for a typical creature, this includes when you’re invisible, the observer is blinded, or you’re in darkness and the creature can’t see in darkness), for any critical failure you roll on a check to move silently, you get a failure instead. You also continue to be undetected if you lose cover or greater cover against or are no longer concealed from such a creature.

At the end of your movement, the GM rolls a perception check for each creature that you were hidden from or undetected by at the start of your movement and compares the result to your stealth skill. If you have cover or greater cover from the creature throughout your stride, you gain +1d to your stealth skill. Since you’re moving, the bonus increase from taking cover doesn’t apply. If, at the end of your movement, you neither are concealed from a creature nor have cover or greater cover against it, you automatically become observed by that creature.

Success: You’re undetected by the creature during your movement and remain undetected by the creature at the end of it.

You become observed as soon as you do anything other than hide, move silently, or step. If you attempt to strike a creature, the creature remains flat-footed against that attack and you then become observed. If you do anything else, you become observed just before you act unless the GM determines otherwise. The GM might allow you to perform a particularly unobtrusive action without being noticed, possibly requiring a stealth check. If you speak or make a deliberate loud noise, you become hidden instead of undetected.

If a creature uses seek and you become hidden to it as a result, you must move silently if you want to become undetected by that creature again.

Failure: A telltale sound or other sign gives your position away, though you still remain unseen. You’re hidden from the creature throughout your movement and remain so.

Critical Failure: You’re spotted! You’re observed by the creature throughout your movement and remain so. If you’re invisible and were hidden from the creature, instead of being observed you’re hidden throughout your movement and remain so.

Being Stealthy

If you want to sneak around when there are creatures that can see you, you can use a combination of hide and move silently to do so.

  1. Hide behind something (either by taking advantage of cover, or being concealed due to fog, a spell, or a similar effect). A successful hide check makes you hidden, though the creatures still know roughly where you are.
  2. Now that you’re hidden, you can move silently. That means you can move at half your speed and attempt another hide check. If it’s successful, you’re now undetected. That means that the creatures don’t know which square you’re in anymore.

If you were approaching creatures that didn’t know you were there, you could begin moving silently right away, since they didn’t know your location to start with. Some actions can cause you to become observed again, but they’re mostly what you’d expect: standing out in the open, attacking someone, making a bunch of noise and so forth. If you strike someone after successfully hiding or moving silently, though, they’re flat-footed to that strike.