Is the role of Stealthy Dude a viable role in a party of non-stealthers?

[JaronK]

Yes, he knows that there is an Undead, with Int 18 there. He doesn't know more than that. As stated, this is still more than what the undead knows, namely that there is "something there" and that's it.

Wrong, you decided he has spells up, which means at this level Arcane Sight locates him instantly.  Furthermore, the scout would also have Mindsight (why not?) so he knows far more.  So, at 120 feet out, scout knows "living thing that's clearly hiding in the snow bank, who currently has at least one high level spell on him."  At that range, devil knows nothing at all.  If scout acts on this information, devil is screwed.  Only when the scout gets even closer does this change... the devil then knows "Int 18 undead" while the scout adds in the intelligence and type of the outsider.  The scout definitely knows a great deal more at any point.  

The thought of a Vampire walking around in the daylight, or a random level 20 anything just walking around in Eberron is of course completely laughable - even if you ignore the fact that Vampires, being as shitty a template as they are are likely to be slaughtered by a goddamn CR 13 encounter even with 20 class levels. That however is not the point. The point is, with the cursory knowledge stated, it knows to suspect a "sneaky, highly intelligent undead". And then it does in fact sense a sneaky, and highly intelligent undead. Now there's some infinitesimally small chance that some other sneaky highly intelligent undead happened to wander by at the time at which the Ice Devil was expecting the PCs to show up, but assuming it was a mistake, some random wandering enemy is unlikely to be stronger than the fucking Ice Devil, so it kills some passing undead, shrugs, and continues on.

And yes, the fact it is hiding in the snow in the first place would indicate it expected the group.

Why does it expect the group?  This group is scouting properly, why is their route so obvious that burying yourself in snow guarantees you're even on their route?  Why is it more likely to find an entire group of enemies (who are still stronger than it as a group) than a single higher level undead?  For all it knows this was a lich (not a Wizard lich, as that would be higher Int, but it could be another kind of lich) or a vampire (you didn't say this was daylight, and my group prefers to travel at night where rings of darkhidden make the party much harder to deal with and lifesight characters see enemies instantly) or some other necropolitan (Warblades, Factotums, Rogues and a bunch of other options could all have such an int score).  He certainly doesn't know level.  Furthermore, any half decent character of this type is smart enough to hide the fact that he's a necropolitan (usually with disguse) so if the Ice Devil was expecting this group, and instead saw "high Int undead" he would have no idea what's out there.  Surely a paranoid devil isn't dumb enough to just blow his ambush on everything that gets close.  If he did, what happens if the party just throws a summoned creature near him?  He'd charge it, blowing his surprised, and then get jumped by everyone and everything.

At this point you're giving the Ice Devil a ton of information it shouldn't have, and denying the scout a ton of information it should.  That's why the ambush worked at all.  If it weren't for you working against the player, this would be easy.  Heck, even if the player had seen the bright shiny neon lights in the snowbank and seen the magic auras and still gone "doom de doom, gonna walk in" he can still notify the party so they're all standing by with actions and then rapidly cross the 100 feet line while the party prepares their attack actions based on the scouts mental command.  Once the scout notices it's a high int outsider with glowing magical auras hiding in a snowbank, he says attack... that's a surprise round.  Party instant ganks this idiotic demon with everything they can long range fire with, while it's still buried in the snow.  Because you see, that's what scouts do... they get information and report back.  

This is not about scouts running off half a mile in front of the party.  This is about a single superheroic character with ablative defenses and excellent recon abilities staying forward of the party but well within their attack range while maintaining full contact with said party, so as to make sure the party gets the surprise round, not the enemy.  And that's useful and important at every optimization level, though obviously for any given level you have to make sure you have better detection than the enemy.  And of course since stealth doesn't take THAT much of the character resources, there's all sorts of abilities you can have other than stealth which keeps you very useful in general.  You are NOT separating the party.  

And in a game where there actually are encounters you shouldn't blunder into blindly, scouting saves your life, while failing to scout kills you.  Divinations are blocked easily at higher levels, and are in fact blocked wholesale (Nondetection, Mindsight) so relying on them is a recipee for disaster.  A decent scout has far too many detection abilities for any one spell to hide from him entirely like that.

JaronK

[BeholderSlayer]

Wrong, you decided he has spells up, which means at this level Arcane Sight locates him instantly.  Furthermore, the scout would also have Mindsight (why not?) so he knows far more.  So, at 120 feet out, scout knows "living thing that's clearly hiding in the snow bank, who currently has at least one high level spell on him."  At that range, devil knows nothing at all.  If scout acts on this information, devil is screwed.  Only when the scout gets even closer does this change... the devil then knows "Int 18 undead" while the scout adds in the intelligence and type of the outsider.  The scout definitely knows a great deal more at any point.  

I thought you had given up on Arcane Sight a while ago. Where did it come from, again? Probably a permanent spell, since those are obviously readily available in campaigns where there's something like 4 level 10 characters of any type in an entire country. Your "well I have permanent Arcane Sight despite not being able to do it myself" argument is retarded.

Short and sweet: your scout doesn't have permanent arcane sight. Get over it.

Why does it expect the group?  This group is scouting properly, why is their route so obvious that burying yourself in snow guarantees you're even on their route?  Why is it more likely to find an entire group of enemies (who are still stronger than it as a group) than a single higher level undead?  For all it knows this was a lich (not a Wizard lich, as that would be higher Int, but it could be another kind of lich) or a vampire (you didn't say this was daylight, and my group prefers to travel at night where rings of darkhidden make the party much harder to deal with and lifesight characters see enemies instantly) or some other necropolitan (Warblades, Factotums, Rogues and a bunch of other options could all have such an int score).  He certainly doesn't know level.  Furthermore, any have decent character of this type is smart enough to hide the fact that he's a necropolitan (usually with disguse) so if the Ice Devil was expecting this group, and instead saw "high Int undead" he would have no idea what's out there.  Surely a paranoid devil isn't dumb enough to just blow his ambush on everything that gets close.  If he did, what happens if the party just throws a summoned creature near him?  He'd charge it, blowing his surprised, and then get jumped by everyone and everything.

Apparently enemies in your campaigns are just plain fucking stupid. This whole paragraph is so fucking retarded that it's mind boggling. Have you not been paying attention at all? Oh, of course not, you never do.

Apparently enemies in your campaigns never take any sort of initiative or do anything at all, they just sit around waiting for adventurers to come slaughter them.

We are talking about level 10 D&D here, not an X-Men video game. Enemies can do everything the players can. This means they can conduct divination, and organize. You don't think an Ice Devil was waiting to ambush a group of adventurers just because he is bored, do you? Of course you do. Retarded.

At this point you're giving the Ice Devil a ton of information it shouldn't have, and denying the scout a ton of information it should.  

Right, since enemies should never have information because they never do anything. You never grew out of the "I can't see it, therefore it doesn't exist" mindset that most people leave by the age of 5, did you?

That's why the ambush worked at all.  If it weren't for you working against the player, this would be easy.  Heck, even if the player had seen the bright shiny neon lights in the snowbank and seen the magic auras and still gone "doom de doom, gonna walk in" he can still notify the party so they're all standing by with actions and then rapidly cross the 100 feet line while the party prepares their attack actions based on the scouts mental command.  Once the scout notices it's a high int outsider with glowing magical auras hiding in a snowbank, he says attack... that's a surprise round.  Party instant ganks this idiotic demon with everything they can long range fire with, while it's still buried in the snow.  Because you see, that's what scouts do... they get information and report back.  

and this can be done by this fictional scout better than a full caster...how again?

This is not about scouts running off half a mile in front of the party.  This is about a single superheroic character with ablative defenses and excellent recon abilities staying forward of the party but well within their attack range while maintaining full contact with said party, so as to make sure the party gets the surprise round, not the enemy.  And that's useful and important at every optimization level, though obviously for any given level you have to make sure you have better detection than the enemy.  And of course since stealth doesn't take THAT much of the character resources, there's all sorts of abilities you can have other than stealth which keeps you very useful in general.  You are NOT separating the party.  

or, you could do the same thing without being a waste of space.

And in a game where there actually are encounters you shouldn't blunder into blindly, scouting saves your life, while failing to scout kills you.  Divinations are blocked easily at higher levels, and are in fact blocked wholesale (Nondetection, Mindsight) so relying on them is a recipee for disaster.  A decent scout has far too many detection abilities for any one spell to hide from him entirely like that.

JaronK

Meh, get a herd of donkeys and they are accomplishing the same thing your "decent scout" does, except they don't suck up XP, loot, and annoy everybody else by slowing down the party. The point is, wizards and clerics can perform scouting. Scouting is useful. Dedicated Scouts, though, are not, they suck a barrel of cocks and take up space that could be otherwise occupied by a party member that's worth having around.

[Brainpiercing]

Technically, it was spotted a long time ago. I don't see what your point is, though. The only difference is that in one case the guy doing the spotting sucks, and in the other he is a cleric full caster.

Oh, but he kept going on about how the two spotted each other simultaneously.

Look, we've made clear that in this case, scouting is IMPOSSIBLE, because there IS NO STEALTH that works on a flat plane of ice. It's a singular case. So any Lifesenser would have detected that devil and called in the F16s. Who cares?

So the question is: What do you replace the "scout" with? Another persistent GCF DMM cleric? Another Incantatrix? Another fracking dragonwrought loredrake cheatbold? Guess what, it's BORING.

I'd rather have that Factotum, even if he dies, occasionally. Factotums are borderline useful in games that require a lot of cheese, and a good load of fun in games that don't. They are not perfect, which is what keeps them interesting. The only other not-Tier-1 character who might take his place is a Beguiler. (And for games like these I consider a DN Tier 1, because he can do all sorts of shit, when everything is allowed.)

[snakeman830]

That's what I've been getting at.  People are taking a shit all over the scout-type in this situation when the situation was set up to not allow stealth in the first place.  Yes, in this particular situation, anyone with Life Sense would do as well as anyone else.  This does not mean having a dedicated scout (who is incredibly rarely dedicated to purely that role) is a bad idea, just that it has no real advantage in this situation.  Likewise, having a Druid is no real advantage when you have to convince (not coerce) the king to sign a treaty.  Having one situation where a scout doesn't help the party is nothing to draw conclusions on.

[JaronK]

I thought you had given up on Arcane Sight a while ago. Where did it come from, again? Probably a permanent spell, since those are obviously readily available in campaigns where there's something like 4 level 10 characters of any type in an entire country. Your "well I have permanent Arcane Sight despite not being able to do it myself" argument is retarded.

Short and sweet: your scout doesn't have permanent arcane sight. Get over it.

In a high optimization game like Sunic's where you have CRs well over standard ambushing you, something like Permanent Arcane Sight is standard.  Claiming that there's only 4 level 10 characters of any type in an entire country in a game where everything's a caster and able to challenge the party is stupid.  Sunic's own game world dictates otherwise.  If you're the only level 10 types out there, you don't need to all be casters or be useless.  If there's plenty of things with magic so lots of magic is out there as Sunic suggests, then either you can buy it or that civilization that has no such characters is already wiped out.

And by RAW, any metropolis has what you need, as do many smaller towns.  Check out the DMG on the topic of demographics... there's not THAT many casters out there, not enough to provide the threats Sunic claims are everywhere, but there are enough to buy a few permanent spells once in a while.  And can we stop this whole back and forth of "casters are everywhere, they're the only ones who can survive, but there's no other casters out there"?  It's silly.

Apparently enemies in your campaigns are just plain fucking stupid. This whole paragraph is so fucking retarded that it's mind boggling. Have you not been paying attention at all? Oh, of course not, you never do.

Apparently enemies in your campaigns never take any sort of initiative or do anything at all, they just sit around waiting for adventurers to come slaughter them.

The situation here is, according to Sunic "Ice Devil has buried himself in snow wiating to see if he spots anyone, then mindlessly attacks the first thing that pops into his mindsight range."  That's Sunic's scenario, not mine.  In his game, the thing just sat there until a Cleric somehow spotted him (Not sure how that happened) and got instant killed.  So yes, in Sunic's campaign, that's exactly what monsters do... they set up perfect ambushes and then sit there.  

We are talking about level 10 D&D here, not an X-Men video game. Enemies can do everything the players can. This means they can conduct divination, and organize. You don't think an Ice Devil was waiting to ambush a group of adventurers just because he is bored, do you? Of course you do. Retarded.

Look at Sunic's scenario.  That's EXACTLY what this idiot devil did.  In fact, this devil was so stupid that he didn't even know the Cleric could easily see him... and it doesn't sound like the Cleric was actually hiding himself at all.  

Right, since enemies should never have information because they never do anything. You never grew out of the "I can't see it, therefore it doesn't exist" mindset that most people leave by the age of 5, did you?

You fail reading comprehension forever.  The Ice Devil didn't even know the Cleric would auto detect him (which, in the real campaign, happened).  Heck, the Cleric evidently wasn't even hiding and the Ice Devil STILL didn't get his ambush off.  The Ice Devil didn't realize his whole plan from the outset was stupid.  I'm working within Sunic's scenario here, where enemies are really stupid.

and this can be done by this fictional scout better than a full caster...how again?

First off, because the hide skill is generally higher on a scout than a full caster.  Few full casters have hide.  Second, full casters rarely want to spend their feats on stuff like Darkstalker and Lifesight and Mindsight... better for them to get decent metamagics and such.  Remember, the idea here is for the scout to see the enemy first.  Blundering around in heavy armor (Cleric) means enemies see you first.

or, you could do the same thing without being a waste of space.

Not everyone plays T1 optimized TO style games.  A character who can deal significant damage, scout for the party, handle social situations, and has a variety of utility spells is not a waste of space except in the most optimized of games.  What is this, a party of Shadowcraft Mages, Runesmiths, and Dwoemerkeepers?

Meh, get a herd of donkeys and they are accomplishing the same thing your "decent scout" does, except they don't suck up XP, loot, and annoy everybody else by slowing down the party.

A herd of donkeys?  What?

The point is, wizards and clerics can perform scouting. Scouting is useful. Dedicated Scouts, though, are not, they suck a barrel of cocks and take up space that could be otherwise occupied by a party member that's worth having around.

Neither of those classes can hide.  The first thing with Blindsense or Blindsight autodetects them.  Scent autodetects them.  Tremorsense autodetects them.  Divinations are easily blocked by magical defenses, and many are even stumped by something as simple as a foot of stone.  Casting divinations takes up spell slots and they're unreliable because they're binary... either they worked, or they were blocked, and if they're blocked you don't know if they failed to find anything or nothing was there.  Invisibility is trumped by a wide range of spells and abilities (many of which fail to work on hide).  Teleportation requires knowing where you're going.  Sure, T1 classes CAN do these things with effort and resources.  They're T1, doing everything is what they do... maybe they could find a dead stealther of old and reanimate him as a Dread Warrior or something.  But now you're just saying "T1 classes are stronger than lower tier classes!"  Yes, congratulations, go get yourself a cookie, you're the first to figure that out.    But they're not actually very good at it, and scouts ARE completely functional if you know what you're doing.  I know, I've played them, others in this thread have played them.  Just because YOU play games where there's no other casters above level 10 but the entire party is nothing but T1 casters doesn't mean everyone else plays that way, or that the game is actually designed to be played that way at all.

JaronK

[Sunic_Flames]

Likewise, having a Druid is no real advantage when you have to convince (not coerce) the king to sign a treaty.  Having one situation where a scout doesn't help the party is nothing to draw conclusions on.

Druids have Diplomacy as a class skill.

Wrong, you decided he has spells up, which means at this level Arcane Sight locates him instantly.  Furthermore, the scout would also have Mindsight (why not?) so he knows far more.  So, at 120 feet out, scout knows "living thing that's clearly hiding in the snow bank, who currently has at least one high level spell on him."  At that range, devil knows nothing at all.  If scout acts on this information, devil is screwed.  Only when the scout gets even closer does this change... the devil then knows "Int 18 undead" while the scout adds in the intelligence and type of the outsider.  The scout definitely knows a great deal more at any point.  

Except that as stated and proven, you do not have Arcane Sight, you cannot get Arcane Sight, and even if you did somehow get it that 8,160 gold (which by the way, is more than 10% of your total wealth ever) is liable to get randomly destroyed by pure accident, just because enemies cast Dispels.

Why does it expect the group?  This group is scouting properly, why is their route so obvious that burying yourself in snow guarantees you're even on their route?  Why is it more likely to find an entire group of enemies (who are still stronger than it as a group) than a single higher level undead?  For all it knows this was a lich (not a Wizard lich, as that would be higher Int, but it could be another kind of lich) or a vampire (you didn't say this was daylight, and my group prefers to travel at night where rings of darkhidden make the party much harder to deal with and lifesight characters see enemies instantly) or some other necropolitan (Warblades, Factotums, Rogues and a bunch of other options could all have such an int score).  He certainly doesn't know level.  Furthermore, any half decent character of this type is smart enough to hide the fact that he's a necropolitan (usually with disguse) so if the Ice Devil was expecting this group, and instead saw "high Int undead" he would have no idea what's out there.  Surely a paranoid devil isn't dumb enough to just blow his ambush on everything that gets close.  If he did, what happens if the party just throws a summoned creature near him?  He'd charge it, blowing his surprised, and then get jumped by everyone and everything.

Because enemies are remotely competent, and not MMO mobs. If they are "scouting properly" (read: going slow as fuck, and divide and conquering themselves) they make it easier for themselves to follow. The Ice Devil, meanwhile can be anywhere within 1,300 miles 3 seconds from now, whenever it wants and as often as it wants. It finds the PCs because it has means of determining where the hell they're going and how they are getting there. It does not find random, high level undead both because that's fucking retarded, and you should feel retarded for thinking it and that the only "high level undead" of the levels you are talking about IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD is hidden away somewhere, as she has been for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. This is not some shitty Forgettable Realms campaign where you can't fuck ten people without banging five epic level NPCs, two goddesses, one god in female form, and a donkey PAOed into a woman. If it were such a shitty world, then the problem wouldn't be "herp derp Ice Devil attacks random undead, who has over 9,000 levels and kills him". The problem would be "herp derp, scout runs into random highly level inappropriate encounter, and gets automatically annihilated".

Meanwhile, I've said several times it was daylight. I even said an exact time of day - 15:15. You fail at reading comprehension yet again, as is par for the course. By the way Jaron, how long did you have to go hide in snow to cool off after being blasted hard for being an imbecile?

At this point you're giving the Ice Devil a ton of information it shouldn't have, and denying the scout a ton of information it should.  That's why the ambush worked at all.  If it weren't for you working against the player, this would be easy.  Heck, even if the player had seen the bright shiny neon lights in the snowbank and seen the magic auras and still gone "doom de doom, gonna walk in" he can still notify the party so they're all standing by with actions and then rapidly cross the 100 feet line while the party prepares their attack actions based on the scouts mental command.  Once the scout notices it's a high int outsider with glowing magical auras hiding in a snowbank, he says attack... that's a surprise round.  Party instant ganks this idiotic demon with everything they can long range fire with, while it's still buried in the snow.  Because you see, that's what scouts do... they get information and report back.  

Translation: Herp derp, the 22 Int devil should act like a big dumb MOB, while I constantly lie and pretend I have abilities I don't. In addition to being worse than Faelryinth, you are also the worst kind of optimizer - the kind that shows up to the table with some TO fail build, and then whines and flails if the enemies are even slightly competent, much less optimized.

This is not about scouts running off half a mile in front of the party.  This is about a single superheroic character with ablative defenses and excellent recon abilities staying forward of the party but well within their attack range while maintaining full contact with said party, so as to make sure the party gets the surprise round, not the enemy.  And that's useful and important at every optimization level, though obviously for any given level you have to make sure you have better detection than the enemy.  And of course since stealth doesn't take THAT much of the character resources, there's all sorts of abilities you can have other than stealth which keeps you very useful in general.  You are NOT separating the party.  

No, it's about one super squishy gimp getting 200 feet ahead of everyone else, by your own words. The superheroes, meanwhile are trying to convince you to not commit suicide, or failing this rolling on your loot. But by all means, keep shifting those goalposts.

And in a game where there actually are encounters you shouldn't blunder into blindly, scouting saves your life, while failing to scout kills you.  Divinations are blocked easily at higher levels, and are in fact blocked wholesale (Nondetection, Mindsight) so relying on them is a recipee for disaster.  A decent scout has far too many detection abilities for any one spell to hide from him entirely like that.

In a game where there are encounters you shouldn't blunder into blindly, the scout gets found and annihilated, because level improves everything, particularly gimp annihilation skills.

[Dictum Mortuum]

I think greater teleport has no range limit.

[Sunic_Flames]

So, continuing with the smiting of imbeciles.

In a high optimization game like Sunic's where you have CRs well over standard ambushing you, something like Permanent Arcane Sight is standard.  Claiming that there's only 4 level 10 characters of any type in an entire country in a game where everything's a caster and able to challenge the party is stupid.  Sunic's own game world dictates otherwise.  If you're the only level 10 types out there, you don't need to all be casters or be useless.  If there's plenty of things with magic so lots of magic is out there as Sunic suggests, then either you can buy it or that civilization that has no such characters is already wiped out.

Standard range from encounters goes up to CR +4. Ice Devils, incidentally are CR + 3. They are well within standard range. Hi Welcome

Just because you and your gimp toons would get slaughtered by something actually meant to be a bit difficult does not mean such encounters are unfair. It just means you fail at life, and should delete and reroll as a public service to us all.

Skipping past lies and fail.

The situation here is, according to Sunic "Ice Devil has buried himself in snow wiating to see if he spots anyone, then mindlessly attacks the first thing that pops into his mindsight range."  That's Sunic's scenario, not mine.  In his game, the thing just sat there until a Cleric somehow spotted him (Not sure how that happened) and got instant killed.  So yes, in Sunic's campaign, that's exactly what monsters do... they set up perfect ambushes and then sit there.  

Stop humping the strawman or I'll spay you.

Look at Sunic's scenario.  That's EXACTLY what this idiot devil did.  In fact, this devil was so stupid that he didn't even know the Cleric could easily see him... and it doesn't sound like the Cleric was actually hiding himself at all.  

I'm serious. Time to control the vermin population.

Skipping past more fail.

First off, because the hide skill is generally higher on a scout than a full caster.  Few full casters have hide.  Second, full casters rarely want to spend their feats on stuff like Darkstalker and Lifesight and Mindsight... better for them to get decent metamagics and such.  Remember, the idea here is for the scout to see the enemy first.  Blundering around in heavy armor (Cleric) means enemies see you first.

The undead Cleric does not have heavy armor. He does not have any armor. Incidentally, the living Cleric does have heavy armor, but has negated most every disadvantage of it. Amusingly, the undead Cleric has a better AC.

Not everyone plays T1 optimized TO style games.  A character who can deal significant damage, scout for the party, handle social situations, and has a variety of utility spells is not a waste of space except in the most optimized of games.  What is this, a party of Shadowcraft Mages, Runesmiths, and Dwoemerkeepers?

Nah, just Clerics, Druids, and Wizards. But even a lower tier party wouldn't bother with a waste of space gimp.

Skipping past yet more fail.

[JaronK]

Except that as stated and proven, you do not have Arcane Sight, you cannot get Arcane Sight, and even if you did somehow get it that 8,160 gold (which by the way, is more than 10% of your total wealth ever) is liable to get randomly destroyed by pure accident, just because enemies cast Dispels.

So now we have to add even more limits to this whole thing.  Fine.

Because enemies are remotely competent, and not MMO mobs. If they are "scouting properly" (read: going slow as fuck, and divide and conquering themselves) they make it easier for themselves to follow.

Ah, so others are scouting the party better than the party is scouting, and that's the problem.  Got it.  It's too bad the entire party wasn't able to be stealthy so they would be hard to follow, instead of clanking along in heavy armor or whatever.  Then they'd be just fine.

The Ice Devil, meanwhile can be anywhere within 1,300 miles 3 seconds from now, whenever it wants and as often as it wants. It finds the PCs because it has means of determining where the hell they're going and how they are getting there.

And what was this means?  The party is following a strict route?  Why didn't the party teleport?  Why is the party walking into obvious ambushes?  Why didn't the party use abilities like nondetection?  Heck, I've even had a party travel around in a lead lined carriage (horseless, since Haunt Shift makes speedy carriages easily, and then you can give the thing flight too) specifically to screw various divination abilities.  You're stating clearly that the party got out scouted.

It does not find random, high level undead both because that's fucking retarded, and you should feel retarded for thinking it and that the only "high level undead" of the levels you are talking about IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD is hidden away somewhere, as she has been for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. This is not some shitty Forgettable Realms campaign where you can't fuck ten people without banging five epic level NPCs, two goddesses, one god in female form, and a donkey PAOed into a woman. If it were such a shitty world, then the problem wouldn't be "herp derp Ice Devil attacks random undead, who has over 9,000 levels and kills him". The problem would be "herp derp, scout runs into random highly level inappropriate encounter, and gets automatically annihilated".

Sunic, you get to pick one of two options.  Option A)  There's lots of high level stuff that could be out and about, requiring high level power from the PCs.  As such, the PCs tend to need to be closer to T1 to deal with it.  Option B)  There's very VERY few high level critters out there, so few that there's only one ("she")  undead in the entire world who would be high enough level to be a bad idea for an Ice Devil to jump and she's hiding away somewhere, so the PCs could be Fighters or something and they'd still be kings of the hill.  Pick one.  Your world where you absolutely need to be a caster just to survive, where casters are so common that boosting initiative is worthless because casters have better initiative than you and they're all that matters, where high level threats lurk in the snow to destroy you and this sort of thing is common... but there's no high level things out there that could be wandering around... that makes no sense at all.  Is this a high optimization game, or low?  Are these things commonplace as all heck, or rare?  PICK ONE.

In a game where there are encounters you shouldn't blunder into blindly, the scout gets found and annihilated, because level improves everything, particularly gimp annihilation skills.

Scouts don't get found as easily as parties, unless you fail at making scouts.  Scouts don't blunder blindly... parties without scouts blunder blindly, trusting divinations (oh no, my clever defenses have been destroyed by a lead sheet!) instead of eyes on the target.  Seriously, even a lead lined cloak blocks many divinations.  Nondetection can stop them all... Mindblank definitely stops them all.  Trusting Divination to avoid ambush, especially in a rocket tag game where a single round will kill you and surprise rounds mean everything, is just foolish.

And Sunic, I know you don't get this part, but try reading the CR rules again.  If you optimize the monsters (yes, swapping useless feats for really strong ones counts) that raises their CR.  Ambushes also raise the CR.  READ THE CR RULES.  Your encounter was at the very least CR 15.  Possibly higher, since the Ice Devil evidently knew all about the party (but was too stupid to realize the Cleric could auto-detect him).

As an interesting note, Mindsight is not in fact stopped by objects or line of effect.  As such, a proper scout would have found the earlier "guards behind a wall" ambush easily, which your party failed to notice (evidently).  Furthermore, had this Ice Devil been smart, it would have completely buried itself in snow.  Having done so, your party would have been ambushed entirely since they couldn't have detected it.  However, a scout with Mindsight would have detected the devil as soon as it stepped in range, and while the devil would have seen the scout (or at least, seen there was some highish int undead there) it couldn't have instant ambushed (it was underground, after all).  This would put the party and devil on equal footing.

So basically, the only reason this devil didn't tear your party apart was because it was stupid.  If the party had a decent scout, it wouldn't have been an issue (the revealed devil would have been easy to avoid or ambush, while the hidden devil would have been noticed).

JaronK

[Sunic_Flames]

ITT: Jaron whines, flails, lies some more, pretends enemies who use the most basic of tactics and have even a little info about the party are twice as hard as dumb MOBs (which is likely true, but the default for 22 Int is FUCKING SMART, and not dumb MOB), whines and flails some more, and generally tries to defend his super optimized, but still utter fail build by claiming the world should suck a bigger barrel of cocks than he does.

[JaronK]

ITT: Jaron whines, flails, lies some more, pretends enemies who use the most basic of tactics and have even a little info about the party are twice as hard as dumb MOBs (which is likely true, but the default for 22 Int is FUCKING SMART, and not dumb MOB), whines and flails some more, and generally tries to defend his super optimized, but still utter fail build by claiming the world should suck a bigger barrel of cocks than he does.

Then why did you play your devil as a dumb mob?  Why was it in a position where it could be spotted, when burying itself a few more inches down would have completely ambushed the party?  And to be clear, I'm using the actual CR rules as written.  It's not my rules, its the game's rules.

JaronK

[snakeman830]

Then why did you play your devil as a dumb mob?  Why was it in a position where it could be spotted, when burying itself a few more inches down would have completely ambushed the party?  And to be clear, I'm using the actual CR rules as written.  It's not my rules, its the game's rules.

JaronK

It needed to breathe, that's why

[BeholderSlayer]

I must say, Jaron, you're beating your own record for stupid posts in a 2 hour period.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I must say, Jaron, you're beating your own record for stupid posts in a 2 hour period.

I think you misspelled Sunic there.

[BeholderSlayer]

I must say, Jaron, you're beating your own record for stupid posts in a 2 hour period.

I think you misspelled Sunic there.

hiicantcomeupwithacharacterthatisntaghostwhyisthatamijustretardedorsomething

[Dictum Mortuum]

Who would thought that stealth could make people act like crazy

[spoiler]
*Insert random rogue help thread*

"OH HAI YOU CAN ACT STEALT-"

*NOW THIS THREAD IS ABOUT AN UNDEAD FACTOTUM AND A MINDSIGHT GELUCON* 
[/spoiler]

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I must say, Jaron, you're beating your own record for stupid posts in a 2 hour period.

I think you misspelled Sunic there.

hiicantcomeupwithacharacterthatisntaghostwhyisthatamijustretardedorsomething

Well, duh.  I'm a fungus.  I don't got no brains.

At least I'm not an orphan.

[Bozwevial]

I must say, Jaron, you're beating your own record for stupid posts in a 2 hour period.

I think you misspelled Sunic there.

hiicantcomeupwithacharacterthatisntaghostwhyisthatamijustretardedorsomething

Why would you even do this? It hurts my eyes and looks like you ate your keyboard before suffering an attack of explosive diarrhea.

[snakeman830]

Why would you even do this? It hurts my eyes and looks like you ate your keyboard before suffering an attack of explosive diarrhea.

Permission to sig?  This is too great.

[PhaedrusXY]

I'm not reading this whole clusterfuck, but anything "without magic" is pretty much doomed to fail hard in D&D. So let's just ignore that stupidity. As demonstrated in the first few replies however, you can make a decent "scout" with just a few magic items and feats (Ring of Darkhidden, Darkstalker feat, and a Wand of Message).

Due to the insanely high penalties to Spot and Listen checks over even moderate distances, you don't actually have to be that far ahead of your party to give them useful info. 150 feet ahead will effectively give the rest of your party a +15 to their Hide and MS checks (compared to you), making it possible for even non-optimized characters to hide from most enemies, but leaving them close enough to the scout to get there within a round if he gets caught. And the Message spell will let you whisper info back to them at around that distance (110 ft minimum).

So in summary, if you only scout ahead a short distance, you can relay info back to them via a Message spell or some kind of telepathy (raven familiar, psicrystal, Telepathic Bond, etc) and still remain close enough to the rest of them to not be completely up shit creek if you get spotted yourself.

And I haven't found cover or concealment to be a problem in a lot of settings. Most things only have 60' darkvision. So you can still hide in the dark from them, even without the Ring of Darkhidden, as long as you stay further away than that (so only the "scout" has to have that Ring of Darkhidden). And if you're outdoors then there are usually trees, shrubs or tall grass or something to hide behind. In a dungeon, you only need to peek around the next corner anyway.



Now... is that actually a "viable role" by itself? Maybe not. You also need to be able to stab shit really hard or something else, because in D&D it basically always comes down to combat, unless you can end fights before they begin (Diplomacy, etc). So no, just being a guy who is only good at being sneaky is not that useful in and of itself. But it can be useful if added onto a character who can also do other useful stuff, like perforate internal organs.