[5E] Disguise Self - Scope and RAW

iserith · May 28, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
Let me be clear. I agree with you completely. I can see a certain kind of GM sticking to the straight INT check though, and I was sort of wondering how many guys like that were out there.

If I had to guess, there's probably more of them than either of us would find desirable. That's especially true of DMs who consider this sort of character build and associated tasks to be problematic for their event-based adventure prep. There's a lot of incentive in such a scenario for the DM to treat the ability check like a saving throw.

Fenris-77 · May 28, 2019

iserith said:
If I had to guess, there's probably more of them than either of us would find desirable. That's especially true of DMs who consider this sort of character build and associated tasks to be problematic for their event-based adventure prep. There's a lot of incentive in such a scenario for the DM to treat the ability check like a saving throw.

Yeah, again i agree with you, sadly. I wasn't approaching this as a "surprise, your whole plan for the night is effed" sort of character build idea. I'm more interested in finding ways to pad the social interaction pillar and create some different and interesting ways to interact with a primarily intrigue-based campaign. The whole idea is kind of limp in a dungeon crawl, although creativity does go a long way.

iserith · May 28, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
Yeah, again i agree with you, sadly. I wasn't approaching this as a "surprise, your whole plan for the night is effed" sort of character build idea. I'm more interested in finding ways to pad the social interaction pillar and create some different and interesting ways to interact with a primarily intrigue-based campaign. The whole idea is kind of limp in a dungeon crawl, although creativity does go a long way.

It seemed like in your initial post you were considering a character for a specific campaign. If so, I'd be curious to know how your DM typically runs social interaction challenges and how you'd think this character's effectiveness would rate in that context.

Fenris-77 · May 28, 2019

Actually, I'm the GM. My next campaign for my current group could be a lot of things, but I would really like to run an intrigue heavy social interaction kind of thing. To that end, I'm exploring a bunch of ways my life could be made unexpectedly difficult. I'd like to flesh out that side of the game in advance and do some proactive problem solving. I get that I can do what I like in my own game (obviously), but I'm also interested in broad based consensus approaches to that sort of thing, in a way that would, for example, lead to an intrigue campaign guide. Rules are always better with input.

MarkB · May 28, 2019

In terms of checking whether a creature suspects you of being disguised, I'd play it as a Charisma (Deception) check opposed by other peoples' passive Wisdom (Insight) checks. Anyone who doesn't know the person you're disguised as doesn't get a check. If a person has specific reason to doubt you, they may make an active check as an action.

As the Intelligence (Investigation) check requires an action, I'd only have someone make the check if their Insight check had given them reason to doubt your identity, or if a physical interaction had made the illusion somewhat apparent, or if they were actively inspecting all passers-by (such as at a guard checkpoint).

Li Shenron · May 28, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
I have a question for the group. Disguise Self allows the caster to change his appearance to "look different". This would seem to include all general humanoid possibilities based on the rest of the spell text, but I'm not sure about the scope for the spell to make you look like specific people. From a RAW perspective this would seem to be included inside "look different" but it would change the scope of the spell considerably, especially in intrigue/social pillar campaigns.

The specific reason I'm curious about the range of opinion is I've been looking hard at the utility of a 2 level warlock dip for Mask of Many Faces (disguise self at will) maybe combined with the mimicry ability that's part of the Actor feat, as part of a Bard-based Spy/Infiltrator skill monkey build. If Disguise Self lets you look like specific people, and Actor lets you perfectly mimic their voice, the possibilities are pretty sexy.

Personally, I think this might be more DMs discretion than straight RAW, but I'd like to know what people think.

I definitely think Disguise Self allows to try and look like a specific individual. What are the chances of success are another matter, and it's impossible to pin them down because of too many variables, so the DM has to make some judgement.

You can use the spell for a variety of purposes, in vague order of difficulty:

- you can look different enough from yourself (so that someone looking for you would fail to recognize you)
- you can look like another race
- you can look like another specific individual

The difficulty is circumstantial, for example if you're trying to look like an orc, it should be very different whether you then show yourself to a human who perhaps hasn't even seen an orc personally, or an actual orc who should have an easy time spotting gross mistakes in your disguise.

Similarly, you might be able to fall for someone disguised as a famous individual you've seen only in pictures, but the disguise may not easily fool their mums.

In addition, as a DM I'd like to decide the difficulty also based on how much the caster herself knows about the look of the race/individual she's trying to pass for.

iserith · May 28, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
Actually, I'm the GM. My next campaign for my current group could be a lot of things, but I would really like to run an intrigue heavy social interaction kind of thing. To that end, I'm exploring a bunch of ways my life could be made unexpectedly difficult. I'd like to flesh out that side of the game in advance and do some proactive problem solving. I get that I can do what I like in my own game (obviously), but I'm also interested in broad based consensus approaches to that sort of thing, in a way that would, for example, lead to an intrigue campaign guide. Rules are always better with input.

I recommend taking a look at the social interaction rules in the DMG. It provides a useful structure for creating a challenge as opposed to just social interaction for the sake of exposition. An "intrigue heavy social interaction kind of thing" is going to lack a lot of exciting stakes, unlike combat, so that's another thing I'd look at and the challenge structure in the DMG will help.

5ekyu · May 28, 2019

General response... based on my read and how it plays st my table...

The illusion changes your looks, that's it. Give someone a chance to touch you or an interaction which can reveal you acting differently than it seems, and you open the door

Looking like someone else- that's the spell.
Seeming to be another person especially a specific person to folks who may know them or know of them - that's deception, though I tend to give advantage due to the disguise unless they touch you or you say something.

"Witnesses say a heavy set dwarf in the uniform of the Serpent Guard" - spell.

"Witnesses saw the barkeep Harley Foster and gave chase" - deception plays into that.

Oofta · May 28, 2019

The way I run it depends on the interaction. Impersonating a random guard? Okay until you don't know the password, don't respond like a guard would or someone bumps into you and realizes you aren't really wearing armor.

However, it does nothing to disguise your voice or mannerisms so impersonating a specific individual if you interact with anyone that has actually met that person is likely to fail. It is, after all, only a first level spell. So impersonate someone that people have only seen a picture of? Only briefly seen or at a distance? You have a decent chance. Need to interact with someone who knows the individual? The gig is up as soon as you open your mouth if not sooner. Need to interact with someone that only has passing knowledge? Disguise time.