Remove the option to 'Appraise' other characters

[RoseFrost]

Given that discussions on Discord tend to vanish into the past, forever forgotten, I'm reposting this here so that it might exist in some less ephemeral form.

There are currently two main problems with the Appraise feat. To be clear, this is completely unrelated to the Appraise skill, which is used to value items and to haggle with NPC merchants.

1) Appraise is inherently meta-gamey
Currently when you right click on another character and appraise them, it reports their race and sex in the combat log. Unfortunately it doesn't take into account any circumstances where this information isn't conceivably available to the appraising character. That fully enclosed suit of armor? That's obviously an elf. That human with no odd and distinguishing features? Clearly a tiefling. The appraise skill does nothing but supply meta information.

But more to the point, the better way to approach identifying characteristics like race and sex is just to look at the character. Can you see elf ears, or just a face? Are they wearing a fully-enclosed helmet, or walking around fully revealed? We also have two different descriptions, Examine and Conditional Examine, which players can use to make clear what features are easily identifiable to other characters.

So it isn't just that Appraise is a trade-off: "it has the potential to be meta, but has some beneficial use case." Instead, the appraise function provides no useful function, and it has the potential to be metad. It is purely a negative.

2) Appraise interacts game-breakingly with disguise
The other ostensible use for Appraise is identifying characters who are disguised. There may be a potential future for this feature, but only if it is completely reworked from the ground up. Currently, if you successfully detect that a character is disguised, it doesn't just reveal this information to you, but it also completely removes that character's disguise and reveals them to everyone in the area.

The current Appraise vs. disguise system has no subtlety or step-wise identification. For example, a character who is disguising themselves by hiding in a full suit of armor to become unidentifiable is a very different circumstance from a character who is disguising themselves as a different person using make-up, fake moustache, etc. There also needs to be a distinction between realizing "hey, that person is disguised," which should be easier, and "hey, I know exactly who it is under that disguise," which should be more difficult.

Conclusion
The Appraise system is something that might, some day, after a complete from-the-ground rework, be useful. But in its current implementation it is such a negative that it should simply be disabled.

[renshouj]

it already has been! As of 44 minutes from this post

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Hidden: show

Given that discussions on Discord tend to vanish into the past, forever forgotten, I'm reposting this here so that it might exist in some less ephemeral form.

There are currently two main problems with the Appraise feat. To be clear, this is completely unrelated to the Appraise skill, which is used to value items and to haggle with NPC merchants.

1) Appraise is inherently meta-gamey
Currently when you right click on another character and appraise them, it reports their race and sex in the combat log. Unfortunately it doesn't take into account any circumstances where this information isn't conceivably available to the appraising character. That fully enclosed suit of armor? That's obviously an elf. That human with no odd and distinguishing features? Clearly a tiefling. The appraise skill does nothing but supply meta information.

But more to the point, the better way to approach identifying characteristics like race and sex is just to look at the character. Can you see elf ears, or just a face? Are they wearing a fully-enclosed helmet, or walking around fully revealed? We also have two different descriptions, Examine and Conditional Examine, which players can use to make clear what features are easily identifiable to other characters.

So it isn't just that Appraise is a trade-off: "it has the potential to be meta, but has some beneficial use case." Instead, the appraise function provides no useful function, and it has the potential to be metad. It is purely a negative.

2) Appraise interacts game-breakingly with disguise
The other ostensible use for Appraise is identifying characters who are disguised. There may be a potential future for this feature, but only if it is completely reworked from the ground up. Currently, if you successfully detect that a character is disguised, it doesn't just reveal this information to you, but it also completely removes that character's disguise and reveals them to everyone in the area.

The current Appraise vs. disguise system has no subtlety or step-wise identification. For example, a character who is disguising themselves by hiding in a full suit of armor to become unidentifiable is a very different circumstance from a character who is disguising themselves as a different person using make-up, fake moustache, etc. There also needs to be a distinction between realizing "hey, that person is disguised," which should be easier, and "hey, I know exactly who it is under that disguise," which should be more difficult.

Conclusion
The Appraise system is something that might, some day, after a complete from-the-ground rework, be useful. But in its current implementation it is such a negative that it should simply be disabled.

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AoS
Campaign: r118
Player creature appraisal suppressed until system is reworked.
Changed Files
gui_comeliness_script.NSS