I don't want to use my feat!

[FreeTheSlaves]

However I believe that the actual roll & all the modifiers are actually visible to all, so using power attack & combat expertise will appear as if you are toying with the enemy - and thus your real skill is apparent.

Imc, I do have a subplot swordsman on the run incognito who is 4 levels higher than the best local. If he is discovered his pursuers will hunt him again but all he knows is fighting and thus he needs to appear as a much less accomplished mercenary to earn his crust. He has volunteerily lowered his bab & base skill ranks, won't use feats, tucked away most of his magical kit in a bag of holding & lowered his hps. Only if seriously threatened will he fight at full capacity.

(If you watch Japanese anime you will be able to visualize him slowly revealing his skill as his foe earns his respect. Again, this all springs from my pov that higher level characters have more control over themselves and can act within their capabilities if they wish.)

There is no game balance reason for this not to be the case, even if it is not the RAW; if I am wrong then present me with reason & I'll reconsider.

 

[werk]

Imc, I do have a subplot swordsman on the run incognito who is 4 levels higher than the best local...he needs to appear as a much less accomplished mercenary to earn his crust.

He can easily choose not to use his feats, like PA, that are elective, but I would not allow him to drop his WS.
That being said, I allow 'player fiat' that they can choose to lose a roll (not roll) or apply a negative modifier to their rolls.
The amount that you win an opposed roll by is usually not applied to anything, so the amount of loss doesn't matter, just the loss.

Sounds to me like your swordsman is bluffing. I'd only have him roll bluff when I thought that it was noticeable.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

He can easily choose not to use his feats, like PA, that are elective, but I would not allow him to drop his WS.

Is that for aesthetic reason or game balance concern?

That being said, I allow 'player fiat' that they can choose to lose a roll (not roll) or apply a negative modifier to their rolls.

Well we both are going beyond the RAW to accomplish the same thing; I'm modifying the bonus before the die roll, yourself after.

Sounds to me like your swordsman is bluffing. I'd only have him roll bluff when I thought that it was noticeable.

A bit of yes and no.

He is a 14th level knight that needs to flee his homeland for fear of his life & has developed as a standard fighter all this time, i.e. no bluff ranks. He needs to make a living while he regathers his contacts with allies & all he is good at doing is fighting; so being a mercenary is the natural solution. He needs to fit within a mercenary company and not draw attention to himself because if he draws attention to himself he is near certain to fail any bluff check vs anyone skilled in sense motive.

To best fit in he is only using his skills that he had when he was 5th level - he actually has the current abilities of a 5th level fighter & my houserule is that he can restore his prowess to anywhere within his capability at the beginning of his initiative. It is too bad for him if he gets caught flatfooted but his need outweigh the risk.

 

[KarinsDad]

I think RAW actually covers this indirectly.

DMG page 6:

When you come across a situation that the rules don't seem to cover, consider the following courses of action.

Look to a similar situation that is covered by the rulebook. Try to extrapolate from what you see presented there and apply it to the current circumstance.

PHB page 171:

You can cast a spell at a lower caster level than normal, but the caster level you choose must be high enough for you to cast the spell in question, and all level-dependent features must be based on the same caster level.

There is no rule to allow a fighter to fight less effective, but there is a rule for a caster to cast spells less effective. Hence, extrapolate.


PS. I think the bluff answer is stupid. The fact is that most characters do not have the vast majority of skills and going to skills that do not explicitly state that they cover a given situation directly is a problem because that means that most characters cannot do something that common sense tells us should be fairly simple to do.

A Fighter should be capable of remembering the days when he swung this sword more haphazardly. That knowledge did not leave him just because he learned a better way.

 

[Egres]

A Fighter should be capable of remembering the days when he swung this sword more haphazardly. That knowledge did not leave him just because he learned a better way.

By your reasoning Mike Tyson could boxe like a rookie without being suspect...

I don't believe it's so easy to mentally erase all the years of training and all the inconsciuous and automatic movement you have gained troughout experience.

 

[Scion]

Of course, it should be easier for a skilled combatant to appear unskilled than an unskilled combatant to appear skilled

 

[Egres]

Of course, it should be easier for a skilled combatant to appear unskilled than an unskilled combatant to appear skilled

Easier, but not easy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think the bluff answer is stupid.

Then you're not thinking this through very well. The rules allow you to use the Bluff skill to make a feint, a combat maneuver that makes your opponent think you're striking one place before striking someplace else. It is combat subterfuge.

Disguising your level of skill is nothing if not a sophisticated feint maneuver, a meta-feint.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Well, there's no rule that says you have to make all your attacks. The disguised fighter 20 could mask his skill by just not taking the first three attacks available to him--he'd look an awful lot like a fighter 5.

However, there's something to be said for limiting the amount of disguising that can be done. Combat skills will often become second nature for a person and the kind of conscious effort it takes to go back to doing things wrong could easily look utterly unconvincing. I know that I've done enough martial arts that even now (8 years after I stopped training) it would be hard for me to make some of the basic errors like punching with my elbows out, away from the body. If I tried, I'm not sure it would look natural.

So then the answer for the fighter travelling through hostile lands is twofold:
1. Don't get into fights. Intimidate, cower, whatever, but don't fight because you're obviously too good to be what you appear to be.
2. If you do get into fights, leave no survivors. Dead men tell no tales--at least if you ensure that speak with dead won't work.

Actually, I choose a feat like WF because it's hard to find a good reason to not use its benefit, but you could think to a disguised fighter that wants to mask his real fighting level.

Just remember that he can't lower his bab.

 

[DM_Matt]

I agree with the skill check method, having seen this in real life.

I was in a high school fencing tournament and this guy who was waaay too good for the field was there because he happened to go to the high school it was being held at. He was in the top handful in the country in his age category and weapon. I was in the same pool as him for determining rank, and he apparently wanted to make things interesting, so he let everyone get ahead of him 4-0 and then scored the next 5 points. During his second bout, I turned to the guy next to me, and said "Is it my imagination, or is he intentionally getting hit," and the other guy agreed and as we watched it was very easy to point out individual very bad decisions that he couldn't have made with the intention to win.

In this case, he had the ABILITY to fight badly (i.e. lower than his BAB), but he lacked the separate ability (i.e. a bluff or perform skill, although due to dnd quirks a high-level fencer-type would in fact have lots of ranks in bluff) to convince onlookers that he was trying.