Disguise

[Boddynock]

A re-post of mine from a different thread, edited for context:

In it's current incarnation, this feature, more or less, appears to completely disregard a characters in game appearance and provides the "appraiser" with meta-information about the target with the simple click of a button. And it does it with no role-play required. As it stands, and considering that almost no characters will have yet invested in the Disguise skill, as opposed to the vast amount of those invested in Spot, the appraise feature is heavily biased in the sense that it puts the emphasis on lop sided mechanics, and ignores the work a player puts into concealing their heritage through role-play/biographies.

As a minor aside, this feature also seems to provide the character being appraised with an indication of such, and then the combat log proceeds to, in parenthesis, attempt to dissuade us from acting on the meta-information of being appraised while offering us meta-information by informing us of the appraisers spot roll.

My biggest concern about this feature is: will players use it responsibly?

As a player of a character who often utilizes a full hood and mask/alternate wardrobe for "work", and who also does not have any disguise investment, I find the thought of another player potentially RP'ing recognizing my characters race(or what have you) by simply clicking a button to be very disconcerting. Regardless of how I may RP averting my characters hooded head, or modulating/masking their voice, or what I've written in my character description, and despite my attempt to RP away any recognizable trait, opposing players will now have been given the power to mechanically discern things about mine with, quite literally, no roleplay required.

My main question here is: how will this mechanical disguise implementation be conducive and beneficial to over-all roleplay?

This is a concern, but I RPed Liam, a character model teifling with horns, as not having horns for the longest time (he mostly wore hats to hide them, but it came off occasionally) and put something in my examine to the effect that he didn't have horns. And I never had problems. He has horns now, and wears them loud and proud, so it's a moot point.

The problem is on this server it will only take one or two bad apples to ruin everything for everyone. And I want to reiterate what I said before. Disguising is masking your identity with another. No amount of spot check can see through a simple mask designed to simply conceal your identity completely. I will want to do some more testing with disguise at some point, but I also want to add that I have noticed that when using it I am informed of my own disguise DC, which is a violation of the PNP rules. Disguise is a skill for which no information should be provided in the combat log for anyone, the spotter or the disguised, period.

[Azure]

The problem is on this server it will only take one or two bad apples to ruin everything for everyone.

Precisely. And this is where my biggest concern comes into play. As in, will players be responsible with it? The results during the previous update attempt were not encouraging.

Disguising is masking your identity with another. No amount of spot check can see through a simple mask designed to simply conceal your identity completely.

I would tend to agree with you here. Unfortunately, the mechanical aspect of the appraise feature runs roughshod over this notion. A character could be covered head to toe, wearing a set of equipment and a hood and mask that completely obscure their features(with the exception of an eye slot perhaps), and there is nothing that concealed character can do to prevent an opposing appraiser from clicking a button and alluding to their race in an IC fashion. This is risky, if not dangerous, to fair roleplay, immersion, and the rules, at best.

[Tenebrosity]

I agree with Azure. I share the very same concerns... Especially since one of my character is an Aasimar who look exactly like a human, if not for her glowing eyes in the night. That would ruin a lot of immersion if a simple right-click on me can identify my race, gender, what color are my underwears...

I just hope the next step isn't showing the character's deity!

It's nice to be able to change the nameplate for certain role play and prevent some metagame, but it's a double-edge sword.

[mrm3ntalist]

I would tend to agree with you here. Unfortunately, the mechanical aspect of the appraise feature runs roughshod over this notion. A character could be covered head to toe, wearing a set of equipment and a hood and mask that completely obscure their features(with the exception of an eye slot perhaps), and there is nothing that concealed character can do to prevent an opposing appraiser from clicking a button and alluding to their race in an IC fashion. This is risky, if not dangerous, to fair roleplay, immersion, and the rules, at best.

Thats a good point. However, you need to look at both sides. Yes, when your masked character just passes through an area, or avoids any interaction, there is no reason for someone to identify him. Most likely they wouldnt care for you character.

But how you RP when your masked character interacts with the environment ? When he talks with someone, trades, stalks etc? Do you give a chance to others for your character to be identified? What was said before, can be used here for the opposite reason.

Boddynock wrote:
The problem is on this server it will only take one or two bad apples to ruin everything for everyone.

Disguise got changed. Lets see if we can make it work. None here, especially the dms, want to ruin the RP of those using disguises.

[Azure]

Yes, when your masked character just passes through an area, or avoids any interaction, there is no reason for someone to identify him. Most likely they wouldnt care for you character.

Care or not, it's worrisome to me that anyone will be able to point-click and determine my characters race(especially given the wonkiness of stealth at times) from across the screen, and then turn that into RP without interacting with my character at all.

But how you RP when your masked character interacts with the environment ? When he talks with someone, trades, stalks etc? Do you give a chance to others for your character to be identified? What was said before, can be used here for the opposite reason.

As a career sneak, I would say that my character is habitually cautious and conservative when it comes to interacting with the environment, and with other characters. Speech alterations, mannerisms, and different equipment used are all employed in an attempt to minimalize, if not negate, the possibility of being recognized. Giving others a chance to identify Our characters(I'm referring to my guild, of course) is anathema to our profession and lifestyle. To do otherwise in our line of work would be to invite disaster. We work very hard to create our facades with our roleplay, and we try to be meticulous when it comes to maintaining these facades. Appraising players now have a means of bypassing all of this roleplay with a simple click of the mouse. No offence, but I truly struggle to see how this is beneficial to the roleplay of any player who currently employs, or wishes to employ, a disguise or conceal their identity.

What changes to disguise were made exactly?

[Steve]

In a few words, its an accepted system and there is nothing about breaking the rules with it.

And in a few words more...the New Disguise System (Mechanics Based) essentially means you need to be a level 30 maxed Disguised Skill PC in order to maintain a disguise!

Yes, as many other things. Oh, the things i have to say about similar discussions we had on these forums ...

On a more serious note, i understand what you are saying. Lets try this system and there will be plenty of time to talk about it.

I wish I could find this funny enough to be worth laughing, but I don't.

Why would anyone, at this point in their PC's history and RP, "try" to see if the new Disguise works? If it fails, and then later the system is retconned...are we going to retconn all the RP related to it?

In addition, if there IS going to be a new system where we are told to take an OOC mechanic—floating names—and start to use them as IC information (which is total BS to begin with), then there should be no Rule against walking around disguised as other PCs. Cause with that Rule, we are then being told to take an OOC mechanic, use it as IC information, but still meta game our own RP, by being disallowed the best part about being a max disguise artist: fooling others that a certain goody PC just stole the cookies from the cookie jar!

[thids]

This is a game in which a good portion of actions require a d20 roll, and disguise falls under that same mechanical side of things as well. If you disguise yourself, there should be a mechanical chance for someone to see through that disguise. Simple as that. Those who do not wish to be recognized, and who have so far roleplayed an impregnable barrier of a godlike disguise (I'm not calling anyone out, but let's face it we have had a few cases like that on this server) need to stop and ask themselves: "Is my character truly capable of such?"
The simple answer is No. If you want to be a master of disguises, make a character around it. The staff has even butchered a lore based PrC that was introduced with the last update just so that everyone could have access to it, instead of a specific faction and alignment. We all need to keep in mind that majority of those skills were designed to be used on NPC's, instead of PC's and that the large majority of your character's interactions on the server is with PC's, making them automatically less effective in a lot of cases.

I personally find it ridiculous that sneaks walk along the middle of the tradeway all day long, acting as if they are actually hiding behind something and putting it all upon a poorly described supernatural ability just to justify that fact in roleplay and back it all up with a mechanical interaction between spot/listen and hide/ms. I have never heard anyone complain about that. I can see why, the way sneaking is designed in nwn2 is horrible, ignoring the cover part of hiding completely. Thus, the server areas usually aren't built with logical sneaking patterns and we leave it all up to our roleplay imagination. If I spot a sneak in the middle of a tradeway, I usually like to imagine they walked to the side of the tradeway, jumping behind trees or rocks or SOMETHING.

So why is it an issue to allow disguises to be seen through with a good enough spot roll? How come that is an issue when that requires much less roleplay imagination to explain?

[Steve]

So why is it an issue to allow disguises to be seen through with a good enough spot roll? How come that is an issue when that requires much less roleplay imagination to explain?

Because it limits the possibilities for Role-play. Trying hard to RP being another person, in disguise? Screw you mate...my Spot Skill is awesome sauce and...I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!

Which is total BS, because Floating Name Tags are OOC...so how would you know what they say? More so, if the Disguise System goes beyond just "giving up names...," who but a DM should be the judge when it comes to what your "perceiving" Toon has "Seen?" I don't nor ever will trust the NWN2 engine, so...I'm being asked to trust the coder of this new System?

And btw...if the Engine could actually handle a Persistent World were the majority of objects (trees, rocks, etc) could actually be solid, then...your analogy for HiPS/sneaking would have no silent feet to walk on. But in general, I do agree with you: my most cringing experience with sneaks was actually having my toon sit at the open beer garden of the Elfsong, while 2 thieves came up in daylight in stealth, and spoke threats and more to my toon. I guess they were supernaturally hiding under my toon's ale mug.

[Grimdark Hitman]

I'm going to change my name to Sith Lord Invoker, Strongest of all Wizards.

[Azure]

So why is it an issue to allow disguises to be seen through with a good enough spot roll? How come that is an issue when that requires much less roleplay imagination to explain?

Because, in my experience at least, players seldom offer sufficient roleplay(and sometimes offer no roleplay at all) to accompany their skill rolls. And now we have an appraise feature that could easily exacerbate that problem.

Putting the anti "sneak" sentiment being resurrected in this thread aside(because, quite frankly, the poor form displayed by certain stealth using individuals is completely irrelevant as it pertains to the disguise/appraise features), I could easily cite numerous examples of players standing in the middle of the tradeway putting on disguises, in plain sight no less, and then trying to act as if they were unrecognizable. These types of disguise wearers are easily outed with simple observation and roleplay, no scripts required.

Those who are a little more elaborate in their approach however, be they the type to wear wigs and make up or fully cover up every inch of their body's with black attire, are more likely to encounter being appraised. Tell me then, what benefit do these types of disguise wearers gain by having a feature that enables an opposing player click appraise on them, and then possibly roleplay revealing the wig-wearing or hood and mask donning characters heritage with something as mundane as, "You're a tiefling", just because the combat log told them as much? The onus should be on the appraiser to actively discern another characters heritage through emotes and RP. In this sense, the appraise feature seems like a free pass to metagame disguised characters, and supllies both characters with meta-info about each others detection/disguise skills in the process.

[Steve]

I'm kinda assuming disguising one's self as a god, is off limits, yeah?!?

[chad878262]

nothing is off limits to anyone who ever owned a Barracuda. True story!

[thids]

So why is it an issue to allow disguises to be seen through with a good enough spot roll? How come that is an issue when that requires much less roleplay imagination to explain?

Because, in my experience at least, players seldom offer sufficient roleplay(and sometimes offer no roleplay at all) to accompany their skill rolls. And now we have an appraise feature that could easily exacerbate that problem.

Putting the anti "sneak" sentiment being resurrected in this thread aside(because, quite frankly, the poor form displayed by certain stealth using individuals is completely irrelevant as it pertains to the disguise/appraise features), I could easily cite numerous examples of players standing in the middle of the tradeway putting on disguises, in plain sight no less, and then trying to act as if they were unrecognizable. These types of disguise wearers are easily outed with simple observation and roleplay, no scripts required.

There is absolutely nothing "anti" sneak in my sentiment. It was brought up because it is a very similar problem. The only difference is, one of those problems is easier to explain and is closer to pnp rules than the other.

These are the bonuses/penalties to Disguise from pnp. The penalties are culmulative and the age one is -2 per step in the difference of your age category (young, adulthood, middle age, old, venerable... so if you were an adult tiefling and wanted to disguise as an old human it would be a -6 penalty)

Minor details only +5
Disguised as different gender -2
Disguised as different race -2
Disguised as different age category -2


As you can see just from these, creating a disguise and maintaining one (automatic checks once every hour during interactions) is a VERY difficult thing to do. Even against lowly NPC's. How do you think it should do against extraordinary folks like adventurers?

Those who are a little more elaborate in their approach however, be they the type to wear wigs and make up or fully cover up every inch of their body's with black attire, are more likely to encounter being appraised. Tell me then, what benefit do these types of disguise wearers gain by having a feature that enables an opposing player click appraise on them, and then possibly roleplay revealing the wig-wearing or hood and mask donning characters heritage with something as mundane as, "You're a tiefling", just because the combat log told them as much? The onus should be on the appraiser to actively discern another characters heritage through emotes and RP. In this sense, the appraise feature seems like a free pass to metagame disguised characters, and supllies both characters with meta-info about each others detection/disguise skills in the process.

Where did you get the idea that those who put effort into their disguises should benefit from this system? Someone buys 2 wigs, some rags at Aiellos, types a few lines in their description and suddenly they should receive an impregnable disguise? That's not how it works. Everyone trying to disguise themselves SHOULD do that. That should be obligatory, not optional, and hopefully some sort of rules in regards to disguise (or a mechanical fix if possible) will be introduced eventually.

But that and fixing some bugs/introducing improvements aside, I'm glad that the power of one's disguise is now out of the hands of players and on the character sheet. I understand perfectly where you are coming from, you feel as if an aspect of your roleplay has lessened somehow. But if you take into consideration the difficulty of actually making an effective, it's clear as day that there NEEDS to be a mechanical check for it. Especially considering the potential power of disguises as a RP tool...

@Steve Maintaining a disguise? Excuse me? When someone is disguised they try to avoid bringing ANY attention to themselves. Chatting it up with people for hours on end in such a situation would likely be a very bad idea. If a player roleplays their character putting effort into their disguises and roleplays developing that skillset, then they should also reflect that roleplay on their character sheet by putting points into the Disguise skill. One of the main rules on this server is, after all, "RP your character sheet". A rule plenty of people like to rant about on these forums... That is until a skill they like to emulate in roleplay is put on character sheets it seems.

[Steve]

@Steve Maintaining a disguise? Excuse me? When someone is disguised they try to avoid bringing ANY attention to themselves. Chatting it up with people for hours on end in such a situation would likely be a very bad idea. If a player roleplays their character putting effort into their disguises and roleplays developing that skillset, then they should also reflect that roleplay on their character sheet by putting points into the Disguise skill. One of the main rules on this server is, after all, "RP your character sheet". A rule plenty of people like to rant about on these forums... That is until a skill they like to emulate in roleplay is put on character sheets it seems.

You are excused.

Look, unless there are full rebuilds offered, so that PCs that have existed for ever get to now redistribute their Skill Points into Disguise, this addition essentially screws them over. That's a starting point.

In the old system, wearing a disguise wasn't some "I'm going to trick my friends into thinking I'm a Kobold" kind of situation. Being disguised was about creating an alternate persona, which—as you so rightly point out—would only really work if employed among others that do not have first or even second hand knowledge of your PC. It seems that you also have misinterpreted those Provisional Rules, cause really, they were pretty good (if I do say so myself! ).

The Provisional Rules required good sportsmanship. And if that isn't the basic premise of why you or I or anyone plays on BG, then...I don't know why we play here. The mechanical version of the Disguise System does away with good sportsmanship, and replaces it with a I Win Button: have high Spot, never get fooled.

What fun the game of disguise has become.

But like I said earlier, if Disguise System hinges on general Spot Skill points, and little on role-playing an attempt to see through a disguise, that is about as big of BS I could imagine. All it takes is a Druid to come along, 5o meters out of the scene, and shout across the Tradeway: "Hey, that woman...she's really a he!" And end role-play, stage right.

[not to say I even remotely advocate for gender-bending RP of any scale, but hey...Victor Victoria was a great film!!]

[thids]

@Steve Maintaining a disguise? Excuse me? When someone is disguised they try to avoid bringing ANY attention to themselves. Chatting it up with people for hours on end in such a situation would likely be a very bad idea. If a player roleplays their character putting effort into their disguises and roleplays developing that skillset, then they should also reflect that roleplay on their character sheet by putting points into the Disguise skill. One of the main rules on this server is, after all, "RP your character sheet". A rule plenty of people like to rant about on these forums... That is until a skill they like to emulate in roleplay is put on character sheets it seems.

You are excused.

Look, unless there are full rebuilds offered, so that PCs that have existed for ever get to now redistribute their Skill Points into Disguise, this addition essentially screws them over. That's a starting point.

In the old system, wearing a disguise wasn't some "I'm going to trick my friends into thinking I'm a Kobold" kind of situation. Being disguised was about creating an alternate persona, which—as you so rightly point out—would only really work if employed among others that do not have first or even second hand knowledge of your PC. It seems that you also have misinterpreted those Provisional Rules, cause really, they were pretty good (if I do say so myself! ).

The Provisional Rules required good sportsmanship. And if that isn't the basic premise of why you or I or anyone plays on BG, then...I don't know why we play here. The mechanical version of the Disguise System does away with good sportsmanship, and replaces it with a I Win Button: have high Spot, never get fooled.

What fun the game of disguise has become.

But like I said earlier, if Disguise System hinges on general Spot Skill points, and little on role-playing an attempt to see through a disguise, that is about as big of BS I could imagine. All it takes is a Druid to come along, 5o meters out of the scene, and shout across the Tradeway: "Hey, that woman...she's really a he!" And end role-play, stage right.

[not to say I even remotely advocate for gender-bending RP of any scale, but hey...Victor Victoria was a great film!!]

I was under the impression that full rebuilds were being offered? If they aren't than we truly do have a problem on our hands.

As for the sportsmanship, well... If that druid is a sport, he'll walk up to the scene and engage in roleplay. Probing the suspected character with questions to confirm their suspicions. The combat log says "you suspect..." after all, doesn't it? The sportsmanship part of the entire thing is not gone.