Cave Stalker.

[tankteddy]

Underdark Affinity
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Cavestalker 2nd level,
Specifics: Your adaptation to the Underdark allows you to use your nature-themed class abilities in natural subterranean surroundings as well. These include the druid and ranger abilities of camouflage, hide in plain sight, trackless step, and woodland stride. If you already have wild empathy, you can now use it to affect vermin. If you have the wild shape ability, add vermin to the types of creatures you can become (subject to all the size and frequency limitations provided by that ability). If you do not already have these underlying abilities, Underdark affinity does not grant them to you; it only augments those you already have.
Use: Automatic

Camouflage
At 13th level the ranger does not suffer a movement penalty for using stealth mode when in outdoor areas.

Hide in Plain Sight (Outdoors)
When outdoors, a 17th level ranger has the ability to use the Hide skill even when being watched and in combat. This ability is similar to that of the Shadowdancer, except that it functions only while outdoors.

Hide in Plain Sight
At 1st level, a shadowdancer may attempt to enter stealth mode even while being observed. If the attempt fails, the shadowdancer may try again in 6 seconds (1 round).


Per the discription, Hips From shadowdancer should work both In and outside of caves, As HIPS It just the act/ability to hide while being observed this should not effect movement.
Camouflage, Being a nature themed Ability allows you to run outside. ((Even if HIPS is provided by Shadow Dancer/Assassin and not Ranger))
However Underdark affinity does not let you run in stealth using Camouflage unless you have Ranger HIPS? If I was already in stealth and did not have HIPS at all would I not be allowed to run in caves while Hiding?
Is this Intended or a bug?
How does this interact with Assassin HIPS?
Does Underdark affinity take in account Rouges Hide behind Cover?
How about Wilderness Stalker (Nature themed) abilities?

[Rinzler]

It’s a known bug and has been for some time. To be honest I’m not sure it’s ever going to get fixed at this point.

[Shea731977]

Underdark Affinity

Camouflage, Being a nature themed Ability allows you to run outside. ((Even if HIPS is provided by Shadow Dancer/Assassin and not Ranger))

Look at Ranger's class description. The ranger gains HiPS (outdoors) at 17th level.

[tankteddy]

Underdark Affinity

Camouflage, Being a nature themed Ability allows you to run outside. ((Even if HIPS is provided by Shadow Dancer/Assassin and not Ranger))

Look at Ranger's class description. The ranger gains HiPS (outdoors) at 17th level.

The issue is not the HIPS. Shadow dancer provides the ability to "Hide" but once hidden, Cavestalker should still be able to run as long as they have Camoflouge as this ability allows you to run. Outside caves, this works as intended. Inside of caves you can not run even though you hold the same abilites. If this is intended then should be clearified.

[BloodRiot]

Camouflage, Being a nature themed Ability allows you to run outside. ((Even if HIPS is provided by Shadow Dancer/Assassin and not Ranger))

The text of Underdark affinity is a really poor description. Very misleading.

Two important things:
1- Camouflage acts on your movement speed while using stealth. It doesn't matter if you are using stealth from HIPS(any source or type), or not.
2- HIPS' only funcion and effect is allowing you to hide while being observed, but once you are hidden, it's purpose and effect is over. After you Hide in plain sight, you are using otherwise normal stealth.

With this in mind, Camouflage:
Camouflage doesn't care about HIPS. It cares about whether you are in a valid terrain (natural outdoors area), and if you are using stealth. If both those conditions are met, regardless if you have or used HIPS, camouflage negates the movement penalties of stealth and allows you to move at normal speed.

So a 13th level ranger (no other class levels), can make perfect use of camouflage, despite not having HIPS of any sort.

As for Cavestalker camouflage in caverns.... it's broken. Doesn't work. Whoever created the Cavestalker, tried to use a feat deleted from the vanilla game that was supposed to reduce the speed penalty of sneaking to -25%, instead of -50%. That feat was nor available because it didn't work, possibly because obsidian never got around to finish it. I WAS gonna fix it, the whole thing was actually not far from finished, but circumstances at the time caused me to quit the team before I completed this and a couple other projects.

I think now there is a plugin available by Septirage that makes things even easier, but you gotta get a dev to be interested in making the fix to begin with.

[tankteddy]

Yeah though I have had it work a few times in some caves, but when the server gives a notice that says "Cavestalker abilities will now be applied" but does not work seams more like an issue with the Area building itself, Perhaps lacking the (Cave) tag or something defining the area to allow Cave stalker abilities to apply accordingly. This could be due to the location being a fairly old (and rather less traveled) Map. Depends on the coding of the Feat, abilities and how they interact with generated maps. If a map is tagged at Indoor cave, vs Outdoor cave I guess.
Cave can be read as if Indoor always, where as be defining Indoor vs Outdoor cave effects what feats and talants apply at the time.

[BloodRiot]

There is no such thing as an "Outdoor Cave". The game has 3 flags to an area:
1 - NATURAL - marks if an area is to be considered a natural environment vs being artificial/civilized.
2 - INTERIOR - marks if an area is to be considered as either interior or underground.
3 - ABOVE GROUND - marks if an area is to be considered above ground (whether interior or outdoors)

Any ability that requires you the ranger to be in an outdoors area, needs the area to be set as both NOT interior, and Above ground. If the area is set as either interior or below/under ground, the ability won't work.

Woodland Stride requires you to be both Outdoors and in a Natural environment.
Camouflage and HiPS(outdoors) require you to be Outdoors. Natural environment not required.
Trackless Step and Nature Sense I can't be sure but I believe from the wording they only require natural environment.

Let's get the easy ones out of the way. Trackless Step and Nature sense, thus both work in caves and underdark as long as they are marked as Natural. Cavestalker not needed for them to work.

Woodland stride with cave stalker means you could force a speed boost equivalent to woodland stride while in areas that are marked as Natural, exterior and below/underground. So a custom feat could indeed make use of a flag combo that would denote an "Outdoors Cave". This is probably one of the speed buffs you do notice, however, it should be noted that the custom cavestalker stride, unlike the real woodland stride, counts towards the game's built in speed limit, meaning if your combined speed buffs exceed 150% base speed, they are capped to 150% max.

Camouflage does nothing because the feat it uses does nothing, if you felt some speed increase it was from the fake woodland stride above, not this. Stealth speed = (normal speed + buffs) / 2. so if you are normally speedier, you will also stealth speedier, and noticeably so, but you'll not be anywhere near as speedy as ranger camouflage fast.

HiPS, the cavestalker here simply gives you the shadowdancer HiPS everywhere and this one is the only one that does work as advertised.

The issue is NOT with the area tags. Some areas have nonsense combo of tags, but that would mean that you either gain cavestalker abilities in places you shouldn't, or fail to gain them where you should. Telling you that abilities are activating and then not work is 100% class issue, not area tags.

[tankteddy]

To put it simply, my build is currently shadow dancer 1, cavestalker 2 and ranger 13. All of this per the description should, in theory, allow me to run in caves when stealthed. Just as I can outdoors like a ranger.

If not then I can drop shadow dancer and go 10class/3cavestalker/17ranger the only reason for shadow dancer is to get HIPS a few levels early to allow survival.

[Rinzler]

To put it simply, my build is currently shadow dancer 1, cavestalker 2 and ranger 13. All of this per the description should, in theory, allow me to run in caves when stealthed. Just as I can outdoors like a ranger.

If not then I can drop shadow dancer and go 10class/3cavestalker/17ranger the only reason for shadow dancer is to get HIPS a few levels early to allow survival.

Cavestalker is broken with no fix on the horizon.