Disguise

Probably going to receive a lot of hate for this. So let’s just get to it.

I love disguise. I love how flexible it is and how it brings an element of unpredictability to things. However, at the same time, I feel it is perhaps too flexible. With the much welcome change to farsight (can no longer farsight by race), it has kind of become unnecessary to be able to disguise as some of the more underused races (though still fun).

Disguise, however, is extremely overpowered…and a little silly to be honest. Hutts disguising as humans? T’Surr disguising as Jawas? Like I said. Silly. I think about the two times I’ve seen appearance-altering disguises used. Once was by Luke when he infiltrated some pirates and it only just barely altered his appearance, but just enough where he wouldn’t be recognizable. The other time was by a Human con man pretending to be Admiral Thrawn. Humans and Chiss share many traits outwardly save for the skin color and eyes, and imitating those required quite an elaborate setup.

What I am trying to say is that I do not feel disguise should be able to just alter your appearance to just anything whenever you want. More elaborate disguises should utilize surgical procedures to apply and remove. Simple ones would keep you at your race, but work like disguise works right now.

Maybe instead of advanced_disguise saving disguise loadouts, make it a medical skill that allows a doctor to alter their patient’s appearance for a time. When that time is up, the person MUST go see a doctor again to have it removed, or take damage to their HP every tick.

Please discuss your thoughts on this or disguise in general.

On the assumption that it wouldn’t be a code nightmare, I like the idea. Anything that drives player interaction, in this case between a smuggler and a surgeon, has to be a good thing.

I would propose that perhaps the regular Disguise allows you to alter anything except your race, and Advanced Disguise allows you to alter your race as well, but requires a Surgeon to apply the disguise.

Maybe make it so either skill can save various loadouts.

In addition to making Disguise/Adv Disguise more fleshed out, this would also give the Medical profession another ongoing task, which it rather needs.

I vote yes, pending the difficulty of the codework

It’s the PCs that disguise at all times just because they can that bug the hell out of me. They don’t do it for protection, they don’t do it for any sort of RP reason.. they just do it because they can.

I agree, Veric. Hell I’ve done it. I still do it. I still believe that disguise needs a change.

With that in mind, I feel that disguises should also have some kind of timer before they wear off. I don’t think disguise putty is so resilient that it can last until the end of time. Hell just the wind blowing wrong is enough to break your disguise.

I used disguise a lot this TL, and I agree. I usually use the same race anyway (especially as human).

Well, humans and humanoid races, and near-human (like Chiss, zabrak, etc) could probably get away with one of these races, but dressing as anything else would require either advanced_disguise or a surgeon.

A surgeon could possibly add something, like plastic surgery, which could be a more permanent disguise but would probably cost a lot to do, like 1+ million credits, and if you get dealt certain amount of damage, it’d get screwed up. Then you’d lose a bunch of CHA stat.

Nice idea there Rakun.

I think if you are a larger character disguising as something smaller you should at least make attempt in your description to portray that. A freak of nature jawa that is the result of some genetic experiment gone bad if it’s actually a trandoshan or something underneath. If you’re a hutt and you disguise as a twi’lek that is of regular build instead of insanely fat I think that’s kinda weak. I don’t really like the timer idea because disguises can be broken really easily but could live with it if implemented.

I have to agree there should be a check of some sort involved when trying to disguise yourself as a species more than 1 size step different than yours. It’s believable that something only one size step (within reason) can be disguised as but something more than that gets a little unbelievable. A Jawa wouldn’t be able to successfully disguise himself as a Hutt (unless a child or sonething) or vice versa.
As for the more advanced disguises, like horns, extra limbs, etc, I think medical implants are a reasonable way to go.

This is just a suggestion, as I’m not sure how easy it would be to code, but it could help to make disguise more realistic, and make the whole concept of disguise more cohesive. It would involve modifying races, as well as modifying makearmor and disguise. Essentially I am proposing that it armor have three different sizes, them being small, medium, and large. Small being Jawas, Toydarians, Dugs, etc. Medium for human-sized sentients, large for Hutts, Whiphids, Abyssin, etc.

Each race would have an assigned size, listed under showrace, and would only be able to wear amor that is made to be their size (I understand that this sounds like a nightmare for arming soldiers and such, but it isn’t too bad if you think about it, not to mention it adds a bit of flavor to makearmor and makes armor a bit more unique and special, but I digress). What I’m proposing is that disguise would require both a headpiece and a bodypiece of armor, and you would only be able to disguise as a race that is the same size-class as your character.

I know this sounds restrictive, but this is a RP game, and I find the fact that a Jawa can disguise as a human is ridiculous. I feel like if this change can be made, not only will it add a bit of fun to the whole idea of disguising, but it will make investigations more realistic for those looking into crimes where the assailant was disguised (if a Jawa was seen stealing credits, even if he was disguised the assailant would have a similar stature). If you think about it, it just makes sense.

Anyways, those are my thoughts! Et tu Brute?

Silly Paco. Whenever you see a Jawa disguised as a human it is because 2-3 Jawa have decided to stand on each other so they are tall enough for the big robe disguise to work!

I know that since I’ve started playing here, there has been a discussion that races needed to have size classes. Last TL there was a Hutt that disguised as a human female daily. Her desc was completely normal. That’s terrible. Having size restrictions would make disguise more realistic. Add the armor sizing on there, and I’m all for it.