Perception and stealth rules

[RogueWizard]

I'm playing a pathfinder campaign and I play a very stealthy sniper. Now, two problems consistently come up with no clear ruling.

Problem 1: Stealthing without cover
Can I be stealthed without cover? For example, I go into a well lit room with no furniture, but I enter it as sneakily as I can and nobody is staring straight at the entrance. Can I stealth and go into the room unseen without any actual cover?

Problem 2: Perceiving a target to snipe
Clearly in order to spot someone I need to make a perception check vs their stealth with a penalty of -1/10ft. What if they are not stealthed? What is the base check to see someone making no attempt to hide that I am looking for. More specifically, let's say someone is running away and I intend to take them at a distance. I see them running away, but do I need to make perception checks to be able to aim, or is it all in the range increment penalty? What if they ran through fog? It seems unclear what to do when an opponent is completely unstealthed but simply at a distance.

Any insight would be great, thanks.

[Kraken]

I'm playing a pathfinder campaign and I play a very stealthy sniper. Now, two problems consistently come up with no clear ruling.

Problem 1: Stealthing without cover
Can I be stealthed without cover? For example, I go into a well lit room with no furniture, but I enter it as sneakily as I can and nobody is staring straight at the entrance. Can I stealth and go into the room unseen without any actual cover?

Problem 2: Perceiving a target to snipe
Clearly in order to spot someone I need to make a perception check vs their stealth with a penalty of -1/10ft. What if they are not stealthed? What is the base check to see someone making no attempt to hide that I am looking for. More specifically, let's say someone is running away and I intend to take them at a distance. I see them running away, but do I need to make perception checks to be able to aim, or is it all in the range increment penalty? What if they ran through fog? It seems unclear what to do when an opponent is completely unstealthed but simply at a distance.

Any insight would be great, thanks.

Pathfinder and D&D don't have facing rules, except in a few specific instances (turning while flying is all that comes to mind). Functionally, you're looking in all directions at all times, so there isn't really much rules support for what you want to do in problem 1. There's also no rules support for problem 2, the rules assume you automatically see anything which you have line of sight with, without setting restrictions based on distance.

[Runeclaw]

1) You typically need either Cover or Concealment to use Stealth.

2) If your target is not using Stealth, you should be able to attack them automatically. As you suggest, the range penalties represent the increased difficulty of hitting far-away targets. If they are running through fog, your DM may grant them partial (or total) Concealment.

[Zilzmaer]

I'm playing a pathfinder campaign and I play a very stealthy sniper. Now, two problems consistently come up with no clear ruling.

Problem 1: Stealthing without cover
Can I be stealthed without cover? For example, I go into a well lit room with no furniture, but I enter it as sneakily as I can and nobody is staring straight at the entrance. Can I stealth and go into the room unseen without any actual cover?

Problem 2: Perceiving a target to snipe
Clearly in order to spot someone I need to make a perception check vs their stealth with a penalty of -1/10ft. What if they are not stealthed? What is the base check to see someone making no attempt to hide that I am looking for. More specifically, let's say someone is running away and I intend to take them at a distance. I see them running away, but do I need to make perception checks to be able to aim, or is it all in the range increment penalty? What if they ran through fog? It seems unclear what to do when an opponent is completely unstealthed but simply at a distance.

Any insight would be great, thanks.

For the first, not by default. You can make a bluff check to distract them, and sneak to cover in the room (if there is any) at a -10 penalty, according to the SRD.

For the second, the DC for a "visible creature" is 0, which would then be modified for distance, as normal. Again, according to the SRD.

[Kelb_Panthera]

1) If there's no concealment in a room then you're out of luck unless you have the hide in plain sight feature. You can however, move across an area with no concealment by making a hide check with a -5 penalty per 5ft of open ground covered as long as there's a point of concealment at both the start and end point of the move, per the skill expansion in complete adventurer (I think).

2) If the target isn't trying to hide, you automatically spot a medium creature as soon as it enters the maximum encounter range the DM rolled for the area. Larger creatures can be spotted from further away, smaller creatures from closer. I -think- the rate was X2 for each size larger and 1/2 for each size smaller.

[Psyren]

1) Hellcat Stealth (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/hellcat-stealth) will get you into the room but you'll have a pretty steep penalty to overcome. Your best bet is going to be some form of invisibility or turning out the lights.

2) If they're not trying to hide you don't need a Perception check to spot them.