Living the Lie: The Philosophical Illusionist

[Trench]

One thing to consider about this is the character's motivations for acting the way he does. Even though the movie presented this as a philosophy, each of the characters which lived this way had definite, concrete reasons for doing so. For the Chinese magician, it was part of his act- he was constantly supporting the one trick for which he was famous. And the two main characters both had personal and family reasons for keeping their secrets hidden.

The skills etc listed above are good starting points. The next question should be what it is that your character needs to hide from those around him, and that should give a fairly good idea of how he needs to act and what tricks he needs to pull.

Actually, Whiz can probably explain it better than I, but as he explained to me (I'm his DM) this guy comes from a culture of gnome's who are basically "Orthodox- Glittergold Illusionists" Gnomes who just hide their city behind illusions to avoid invasion and then live life as normal? AMATEURS. The entire culture keeps up a certain image to portray helplessness and make them appear non-threatening... and they're very very not.

 

[Stormborn]

Not by choice, I used to watch Dharma and Greg (when you live in a foreign country you will watch whatever someone sends you from home) and in it Dharma and her friend Jane would periodicially go out shopping while putting on a disguise, accent, or mannerisms. I dont think they actually intended to fool anyone, just having fun.

Your PC, on the other hand, can do this regularlly and for real. Everytime he goes out to do ordinary mundane things have him do so as a different persona. In a big city he can even walk to a new neighborhood to make it easier at first. As his skills improve he can test himself by going back to the same places as different people, seeing if he can fool people who have been exposed to him before.

I imagine he would have special clothes, all reversable and in neutral colors, with dozens of secret pockets where he can hide various items to aid his disguises. Various holy symbols, artisans tools, other trade specifc items, scarfs, feathers, fake jewelry, ribbons, etc. that would draw attention and with which he could reinforce a certain perception of himself.

He should know as many languages as possible, so as that he can throw in words into conversation to reflect that he grew up in different regions.

 

[DJCupboard]

For a character like this I'd try to load up on all kinds of esoteric knowledge skills about proffessions (rather than the actual proffesion skills) (with no more than 5 ranks in each) and see if the DM would give me a synergy bonus to disguise, etc, when it pertains to masquerading as someone of those proffessions I'd researched.

This isn't from a powergame standpoint, but rather to represent tip-of-the-iceburg type research into a plethora of different personas. The character would know just enough to get by convincingly in his disguise without being a genuine scholar on the matter.

 

[kelson]

that's a great idea but, make it so that he takes a negative on that disguise if he trys to use it against a real expert. A master blacksmith would see through the holes that he wouldn't know enough to understand. maybe figure out a DC for different levels of competance. A journyman would be easier to fool than a blacksmith after all.

 

[DJCupboard]

that's a great idea but, make it so that he takes a negative on that disguise if he trys to use it against a real expert. A master blacksmith would see through the holes that he wouldn't know enough to understand. maybe figure out a DC for different levels of competance. A journyman would be easier to fool than a blacksmith after all.

That's a great point.

 

[Stormrunner]

Be always in disguise. It's probably too late for this - but no-one, not even your fellow PCs, should ever see your real face. What they think is the "real you" is just another disguise.

The biggest advantage of this is, that if you ever need a new disguise right now and have only a few minutes, it's far faster to rip off a fake beard, etc. than it is to carefully apply one. Best of all, no amount of poking/x-raying/TrueSeeing/etc. will penetrate the new disguise - because you're no longer in disguise!

Also, if you ever need to disguise someone else as "yourself", you have all the necessary diguise components right there...

 

[DarkKestral]

Might I suggest even going so far as to use an alter self to look like your normal self post-disguise at all times? That way, even if the enemy pops true seeing, they see only the non-magical disguise and must then use perception to penetrate it...