[3.5] DM: "I'm just not letting you do it"

[Pika...]

To sum up our last session, my character invested heavily in the disguise skill. He eve wasted a feat in Skill Focus. He made a high roll, and should have easily gone past head Orc guard/lieutenant. I as a player thought it out well, and if he had not DM fudged a few moments later that NPC might have killed my PC.

Basically, I find what he did outrages. Just because he felt it was too easy or something he completely nerfed my character and destroyed my fun.


Thoughts on this situation?

[Tyndmyr]

This is the ultimate sign of a bad DM. Run, run now.

[Sillycomic]

Personally I don't think we have any information.

All I get from this is what an orc guard saw through your disguise. There could be numerous in and out of game situations why this is... other than the GM is out to get you.

[super dark33]

maybe the orc rolled a 20?

[Pika...]

Personally I don't think we have any information.

All I get from this is what an orc guard saw through your disguise. There could be numerous in and out of game situations why this is... other than the GM is out to get you.

To justify it he jokingly threw in that it was the orc guard's twin brother who's uniform and weapon I just happened to be using, hence impersonating (we killed another lieutenant earlier and I looted his stuff to get around the base).



maybe the orc rolled a 20?


The DM did not even bother rolling. By making it his "twin" :smallconfused:, even with the +10 for Intimate modifier and the other modifiers I was at like 29 or 30 DC to spot the disguise.

[Shademan]

well what if it actually was his twin?

[Telonius]

Just in general: failure on any opposed skill check - even with a high roll - is always possible. Depending on what you were disguised as, the target might get bonuses (+6 or better if they're at least co-workers). It's reasonable for people hired as guards to have good Spot and Sense Motive. Also, there are times when just a disguise check might not help you. If you need to give a password, or produce a permit, or give the secret handshake, just a disguise won't let you get through. The target might think you really are an orc guard, but he'll think you're an orc guard who doesn't have the proper credentials to pass. It's Bluff from there on out.

That said, it doesn't seem like the DM much cared about the actual numbers in this particular situation. As DM, that is within his rights. He can give the orc lieutenant a +500 circumstance bonus to his Spot check if he wants to. But that doesn't make it fun for the players, and fun is what he should be trying for.

I'd suggest telling the DM that you'd built the character specifically around being excellent at disguise, and that you would have appreciated knowing ahead of time that disguise would be impossible in his game. Find out if there are any other skills he doesn't want the players using. See if he's willing to work with you and let you redesign your character build - maybe retrain the wasted feat and skillpoints, or put them into something else suitably sneaky that won't wreck his plot. If he isn't willing to work with you on it, he isn't worth your time.

[valadil]

That kind of thing pisses me off. If the GM doesn't want a certain ability to work he needs to tell you that before letting you play that character. I'm fine with a GM saying he wants to run combats instead of letting you bypass them. In that case I'll play a combat happy character.

Several games ago I was playing a racist gunslinger with one arm and a penchant for violence. The GM was a pacifist and thought all characters should be pacifists. He didn't tell us this until we started playing though. We actually got shouted at and lectured for picking a fight with NPCs who broke into our inn room at night.

In another game with another GM I was playing a cult leader. It was the sort of character you could build plots around. But the GM couldn't figure out how to involve him in the plot that was already written. So my character spent 75% of the game in jail, with me sitting around watching everyone else roleplay.

There's nothing wrong with telling a player their idea doesn't fit in a game, even if it's a really good idea. There is plenty wrong with a GM letting a player play the wrong character in a game. Your GM needs to understand this.

[Sillycomic]

Well, while the GM saying that it's a twin brother might be funny, it's also a pretty legit reason. Most people in a closely knit unit know what their close allies gear looks like.

Aside from that typical orc bands usually consists of family members. Brothers, cousins, uncles and the like. So they would all know each other pretty well. (unless you are in some orc army base with thousands of orcs... in which case I would ask you again to go back and CLARIFY the situation, because otherwise we have no clue what you're talking about)

And if it was just a single orc why didn't you kill him like you killed the other one?

It seems like you think just because some people portray orcs as dumb means you should automatically succeed at your disguise just because you put a skill focus feat into it.

Aside from that, the Disguise skill states:


The effectiveness of your disguise depends in part on how much you’re attempting to change your appearance.

Is your character an orc? If not you are asking that little make up kit of yours to peform some sort of a miracle trying to disguise yourself as a full on orc. You trying to make yourself look older or younger? Were you even trying to make yourself look like a specific orc (the one you killed) or a generic orc guard that no one would even notice.

Hmm, and didn't you say you killed an orc guard to take his clothes and stuff? He's an orc guard. His job would be to stand around in one place and guard stuff, not wander aimlessly trying to find out more about the base he is on. That in itself would be suspicious.

Maybe your GM was just being nice when he didn't tell you how many problems your clever plan was up against.

[Tyndmyr]

See, you gave away certain clues in the first post. The first was "head guard". IE, planned boss fight. The second was the fudge to keep you alive.

Your class abilities are fairly useless for anything that's not on the rails. And, since you'll be travelling down those rails anyway, you don't really need them at all. Choo choo.

[Gaius Marius]

That kind of thing pisses me off. If the GM doesn't want a certain ability to work he needs to tell you that before letting you play that character. I'm fine with a GM saying he wants to run combats instead of letting you bypass them. In that case I'll play a combat happy character.

What if the GM wants you to use that ability in the game, but it happens that right here, right now, it's gonna ruin what he planned? Isn't he allowed to have one-timer fiats?

As a GM, I'd have found a way to reward the player for a good improvisation/use of skill, but still have him failed in the end. It's the kind of tricky move that your players need for you to understand. It's not because you built your character around uber-stealth that you are NEVER going to get caught. I'll give you bonus points on the long-run for fiatting you out, but the fiat still occurs. Deal with it, and don't be such a 1-trick pony.

[Comet]

Yeah, it does sound like a bit of a failure on the DM's part, if you feel disappointed with how he handled the situation.

But hey, stuff like that can happen. Failure and success can lead to equally exciting situations and sometimes it's cool to have your character try to survive without their best tricks on hand.

[Killer Angel]

To justify it he jokingly threw in that it was the orc guard's twin brother who's uniform and weapon I just happened to be using, hence impersonating (we killed another lieutenant earlier and I looted his stuff to get around the base).


This seems a poor excuse from your DM, but anyway, Sillycomic is right:


Most people in a closely knit unit know what their close allies gear looks like.

Aside from that typical orc bands usually consists of family members. Brothers, cousins, uncles and the like. So they would all know each other pretty well. (unless you are in some orc army base with thousands of orcs...)

Is your character an orc? If not you are asking that little make up kit of yours to peform some sort of a miracle trying to disguise yourself as a full on orc. You trying to make yourself look older or younger? Were you even trying to make yourself look like a specific orc (the one you killed) or a generic orc guard that no one would even notice.

Hmm, and didn't you say you killed an orc guard to take his clothes and stuff? He's an orc guard. His job would be to stand around in one place and guard stuff, not wander aimlessly trying to find out more about the base he is on. That in itself would be suspicious.


And the orc guard was, well, guarding something. Even if the pc seems an orc, he cannot freely pass a blockade. In the army, when I was on duty guard, certainly i didn't let wandering soldiers, enter in the armory.

[Erom]

I agree that's it a full on DM fail, and I agree that a normal, human DM should be allowed a full fail every now and then. Nobody's perfect. If he makes a habit of it maybe think about a new campaign, but give him another chance first.

[Timeras]

As in many other threads the advice is "talk to the GM".
Maybe he really just didn't like your plan. In that case he should either have let you succeed anyway or he should have told you that it wouldn't work.

But maybe when he wrote the adventure he decided that the officers in the camp were actually members of the same family so they would know each other very well. And if someone tried to disguise himself as another person (especially a member of another race) and fool someone who knew that person very well, as GM I wouldn't let that work either. And I don't care if the rules would only apply a small malus.

[Ungvar]

What if the GM wants you to use that ability in the game, but it happens that right here, right now, it's gonna ruin what he planned? Isn't he allowed to have one-timer fiats?

As a GM, I'd have found a way to reward the player for a good improvisation/use of skill, but still have him failed in the end. It's the kind of tricky move that your players need for you to understand. It's not because you built your character around uber-stealth that you are NEVER going to get caught. I'll give you bonus points on the long-run for fiatting you out, but the fiat still occurs. Deal with it, and don't be such a 1-trick pony.

Alternatively, maybe you as a DM should realize that one of your players is built for espionage, and maybe you shouldn't create a scenario that is ruined unless you screw over your Disguise-focused player. Of if you do create that scenario, maybe you should roll with it instead of arbitrarily deciding to suspend the rules because you got caught w/ your pants down.

DMs need to realize that even if it might mean a bad/boring session, this kind of casual, ad hoc rules suspension is really frustrating, creates bad blood between players and DMs, and in the long run will hurt the enjoyment of all.

[Tyndmyr]

What if the GM wants you to use that ability in the game, but it happens that right here, right now, it's gonna ruin what he planned? Isn't he allowed to have one-timer fiats?

...no.

Look, if a player builds a character specifically around disguise, he's gonna use disguise. You should assume that in planning. Because if you build situations that logically are solvable by this, and this doesn't actually happen, it stretches credibility. Also, it's not fun at all.

The "I'll fiat in your favor later" worsens this situation, not compensates for it. It just strips away even more player agency.


Incidentally, by RAW, there are indeed penalties associated with things such as differing races, differing heights/weights, etc. Had your failure been a legitimate one of these, I woulda told you to suck it up. Things like that are quite reasonable, and do happen. It would also have been reasonable to have been denied access even if successful if the individual you were disguised at did not have access.

[Quietus]

What if the GM wants you to use that ability in the game, but it happens that right here, right now, it's gonna ruin what he planned? Isn't he allowed to have one-timer fiats?

As a GM, I'd have found a way to reward the player for a good improvisation/use of skill, but still have him failed in the end. It's the kind of tricky move that your players need for you to understand. It's not because you built your character around uber-stealth that you are NEVER going to get caught. I'll give you bonus points on the long-run for fiatting you out, but the fiat still occurs. Deal with it, and don't be such a 1-trick pony.

Why? What's wrong with someone wanting to build a character around something? If your plot involves "They get spotted and captured", and the character is built around not getting spotted, do you just give a handwave and say "Oh, well you just fail" without rolling? Would you do the same thing if you had a character built around fighting, but you needed him to lose a fight?

As a player, being in a situation where the DM just handwaves the situation and says "you pass" or "you fail" it drives me crazy - particularly if they don't roll for it when I have a legitimate chance of doing whatever it is they don't want me to do. If I build my character to be good at something, and the DM is going to decree it doesn't work, I'd like to know that ahead of time so that I can either accept that that's just how this DM rolls, or walk away from the game.

[Hawriel]

Ok so you have a great disguise skill. Hows your bluff and or diplomacy? What about knowledge local? You can dress yourself up perfectly like the queens personal guard but still get instantly spotted as a fake when confronted with one of the real guard or the queen.

Skills are not always absolute. Especialy skills like disguise or bluff. To impersonate a specific person takes alot of effort. You have to know how they talk, walk, react, and have a good understanding of their knowledge. The more a person knows the real subject of your disguise the greater chance they have of seeing you as a fake.

No matter how good your character is at disguise he cant always get every thing right. Maybe you got the color of the day wrong. Or you are wearing it in the wrong place. Left arm instead of right. Maybe your sword is on the wrong side. The guard your impersonating is left handed wile you are right handed. What if the guard speeks with a lisp? You may have never heard the guard speak. Showing up with his uniform and his ID is great untill you say very crisply 'yes sir!' when the guard would have said 'yeshs shsir'.

The guy your tyring to get past is an officer. They are generaly smart peaple. Maybe this orc LT knows every one of his guard's names, faces, work ethic, strenghs, weaknesses, and birthdays. Any good officer would. Just becuase he is an orc doesn't mean he is as dumb as moose poop.

Role playing like any other story needs conflict. Not just good guys vs bad guys. There needs to be tention. If what you are doing is easy there is no tention. Even if your skill is high enough to weigh success in your favor doesnt mean the difficutly cant be high enough to ware you have a good margen for failier. Conflict comes in when you mess up as well. Or somthing does not go as planned. It's how you as a player and a character handle unforseen events. How do you react when your cover slips just a bit to make the NPC question your validity? The DM can always through a monky wrench into your plans. Hell it's his job to do so.

edit: forgot to mention the guard you killed and now are disquised as. Killing some one is a very messy thing. Even of its a quick stab to the heart. I would assume as apart of your disguise you put on the dead guards uniform. The one with the damaged armor and blood on it.

[Sillycomic]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0766.html

I hope this helps for next time.

Specifically the guard's cheat sheet complete with Tarquin's tips.

[Tyndmyr]

Even if your skill is high enough to weigh success in your favor doesnt mean the difficutly cant be high enough to ware you have a good margen for failier.

Spellcheck is awesome. Get firefox.

I feel you're missing the point. It's not a case of "due to situational penalties x, y and z, you didn't pull it off". That happens. Situational penalties are a modifier in D&D.

His DM didn't bother to roll Sense Motive at all, is the thing. He just invalidated the investment entirely by ignoring it since he hadn't planned for it.



At a bare minimum, you should talk to the DM. If that doesn't work, I'd suggest leaving. A hilarious but non-constructive alternative is to just ignore everything the DM does you don't like. Great if other players are on board.

[Sipex]

I guess my first question would be: How often have you tried disguise and actually have it work? If the DM usually lets it work then I don't see too much of a problem, sure it's shoddy DMing but overall he'd be considered a good DM who just slipped up once (we all make mistakes).

If he's never let it work, that's a different situation.

If this is your first session it's difficult to tell.

[Hawriel]

Spellcheck is awesome. Get firefox.

.

Thanks for the back handed insult.

[Tyndmyr]

Thanks for the back handed insult.

No need to take it as an insult. Your post was littered with typos. I'd rather not run through the usual excuses of how long it takes to spell things correctly, or English not being a first language or whatever it is. See, no matter what the reason, at a certain density, they make the post pretty hard to read.

This can be be fixed very easily with automated tools. Thus, I suggested one.

[Ungvar]

Ok so you have a great disguise skill. Hows your bluff and or diplomacy? What about knowledge local? You can dress yourself up perfectly like the queens personal guard but still get instantly spotted as a fake when confronted with one of the real guard or the queen.

The DM didn't call for a bluff check, apparently. Just a Disguise check, which was either opposed by the orc guard's taking 10 on spot for non-suspicious people, or if he was suspicious, the DM should have rolled a spot for a suspicious person. The DM didn't do any rolls, so apparently it wouldn't have mattered anyway how good the character's bluff/diplomacy/knowledge local was.


Skills are not always absolute. Especialy skills like disguise or bluff. To impersonate a specific person takes alot of effort. You have to know how they talk, walk, react, and have a good understanding of their knowledge. The more a person knows the real subject of your disguise the greater chance they have of seeing you as a fake.

All of that stuff is contained w/in the skills, rolls and modifiers. None of which came into play, apparently.


No matter how good your character is at disguise he cant always get every thing right. Maybe you got the color of the day wrong. Or you are wearing it in the wrong place. Left arm instead of right. Maybe your sword is on the wrong side. The guard your impersonating is left handed wile you are right handed. What if the guard speeks with a lisp? You may have never heard the guard speak. Showing up with his uniform and his ID is great untill you say very crisply 'yes sir!' when the guard would have said 'yeshs shsir'.

If the character had a good disguise check, then he DID get all that stuff right. That's what the check is for.


The guy your tyring to get past is an officer. They are generaly smart peaple. Maybe this orc LT knows every one of his guard's names, faces, work ethic, strenghs, weaknesses, and birthdays. Any good officer would. Just becuase he is an orc doesn't mean he is as dumb as moose poop.

Then he gets a +10 bonus to his spot check at most for being "Intimate". Not a +100.


Role playing like any other story needs conflict. Not just good guys vs bad guys. There needs to be tention. If what you are doing is easy there is no tention. Even if your skill is high enough to weigh success in your favor doesnt mean the difficutly cant be high enough to ware you have a good margen for failier. Conflict comes in when you mess up as well. Or somthing does not go as planned. It's how you as a player and a character handle unforseen events. How do you react when your cover slips just a bit to make the NPC question your validity? The DM can always through a monky wrench into your plans. Hell it's his job to do so.

Role playing games do indeed need conflict, but only in the imaginary world the game occupies. This kind of hand-waving creates DM/Player conflict, which is not good, and which kills campaigns. You aren't creating narrative tension when you do this stuff as a DM, you are creating real-world resentment.

[Sillycomic]

I feel you're missing the point. It's not a case of "due to situational penalties x, y and z, you didn't pull it off". That happens. Situational penalties are a modifier in D&D.

His DM didn't bother to roll Sense Motive at all, is the thing. He just invalidated the investment entirely by ignoring it since he hadn't planned for it.

I think we understand that, but at the same time if those situational penalties are off the charts (such as trying to disguise yourself as someone's twin brother) a roll sometimes isn't even made.

I have had times when I've tried to bluff, disguise my way out of situations where the GM doesn't even bother rolling. I tried to convince a king that I was a time travelling dwarf from the future here to help protect him... did the GM even let him roll a sense motive? Nope.

You might say that's funny or ridiculous so of course the GM wouldn't roll, but isn't the OP's situation similar?

Guy wants to disguise his way passed the Head Lieutenant by pretending to be his brother who has no reason for walking around in the first place and honestly should be guarding something on the other side of the compound.

As a GM, if you look at this situation do you even need to roll to tell the player that he failed?

[Mastikator]

This is the ultimate sign of a bad DM. Run, run now.

What this guy said.
Don't play in games with this DM, let someone else DM.

Alternatively you can actively try to derail the campaign as bad as you can. You will taste bittersweet revenge when the train goes off the cliff.

[Engine]

Maybe I'm playing a Fighter (or a Warblade, or another warrior-type class). I've builded my character to be extremely proficient with his attacks. So when I use an attack-action I'm expecting most of the times to hit.
Of course I could fail. Part of the game, and I would never whine about it. But I'll never accept a "You miss" just because the DM thinks I should miss.

Same for a character builded around Disguise. Like the BAB is a Fighter strength, the high Disguise is the OP's character strength. He invested heavily on it, so the character is less proficient in other areas. As a DM you should, at least in my opinion, never block the character strength in this way. Never say "You fail in what your character does best because I say so".

[Tyndmyr]

I think we understand that, but at the same time if those situational penalties are off the charts (such as trying to disguise yourself as someone's twin brother) a roll sometimes isn't even made.

So, we give him the "intimate" modifier. Highest one on the table. We also apply the "different race" modifier.

A whopping 12. Significant, and it's possible that he would have seen through it. However, it's absolutely not a guarantee against a PC optimized for it, and with a good roll. Odds are, the PC still has it.

Nah, this sounds like a post-hoc justification for why he shut the PC down, when the real reason was "I didn't plan for this".

[Ungvar]

I think we understand that, but at the same time if those situational penalties are off the charts (such as trying to disguise yourself as someone's twin brother) a roll sometimes isn't even made.

Because when you don't roll, and you just throw out there that "Oh, yeah, you, like, stole that uniform off this guy's twin brother, so you fail and he sees through your disguise," that sounds a hell of a lot like you as DM just made that up on the fly to keep the PC train chugging down the rails.


I have had times when I've tried to bluff, disguise my way out of situations where the GM doesn't even bother rolling. I tried to convince a king that I was a time travelling dwarf from the future here to help protect him... did the GM even let him roll a sense motive? Nope.

You might say that's funny or ridiculous so of course the GM wouldn't roll, but isn't the OP's situation similar?

Not similar at all. You tried to do something ridiculous and were thwarted by an arguably reasonable adjudication that your story was so preposterous that you couldn't overcome the negative circumstance modifier. The OP tried to do something eminently reasonable, and was thwarted by a preposterous explanation (probably created on the spur of the moment) that the other orc was actually this orc's twin.

You had no reason to expect to succeed, but OP had no reasonable cause to expect his disguise to fail.


Guy wants to disguise his way passed the Head Lieutenant by pretending to be his brother who has no reason for walking around in the first place and honestly should be guarding something on the other side of the compound.

Where did you get the idea that the orc OP was disguised as had no reason for being where OP was?


As a GM, if you look at this situation do you even need to roll to tell the player that he failed?

Yes, you do. Because now there is no way the player will ever believe that the DM didn't screw him over. If you as a DM want to pull stuff like this, you need to either write this out ahead of time on the NPC character notes, and show your players, or you need to accept that your players will feel (justifiably) that you have given them a raw deal.

[Sillycomic]

Per Srd on Disguise Check:


If you come to the attention of people who are suspicious (such as a guard who is watching commoners walking through a city gate), it can be assumed that such observers are taking 10 on their Spot checks.

Tthe GM doesn't have to roll to tell the player that he failed.

[Pigkappa]

"I'm just not letting you do it" is a bad line, but it's also true that there are many abuseable things in D&D (and Disguise is one of those).

In real life, it would be really, really difficult to disguise oneself as an ape (too bad there are no real orcs in RL so you can't really disguise as one of them and fool anyone).


In D&D it makes sense that this is easier because of magic, but this is already considered in the (likely +10) bonus your spells gave you. It doesn't make sense that this is just an opposed skill check against his Spot with just a -2 modifier for the different race; this means that an untrained commoner with no items can Disguise himself as an Orc with (more or less) 40% chance versus another untrained commoner.


Since the way Disguise work is totally unrealistic, maybe you should have asked your DM about this.

[Sipex]

I'm appauled at some of the knee jerk reactions here, so far we have one (ONE) post with limited information and some of you are acting like this is the worst offence ever.

edit: Sorry, there are two posts but we're still low on info.

I'm sure many of you have been DMs and if this was a one time thing (or maybe not as bad as it was made out to be) you'd want people to be more understanding instead of mobbing up as soon as they hear one side of the story.

[TurtleKing]

How about the skill tricks from Complete Scoundrel? The social ones could work for this case. Assume Quirk makes it so ones who know the person don't get a spot check to know your not who you are. Basically put you mimic a "tick" they have so something doesn't seem wrong or off about the person. The other skill tricks could also work here as well.

Another thing is try to learn the language they speak normally. If talking to orcs then speak in Orc instead of goblin. Plus outrageous bluffs are not going to work. The more off the wall it is the less chance it will work. Disguise works so long as you don't interact with other people. You can disguise your appearance not the way you act. So trying to bluff that you have been cursed is a little out there.

[Warsmurf]

I don't think your DM is terrible, I think he just is a wee bit scared of improvising.

That being said he still should have at minimum rolled a die. Even if my players are doing something they have no chance of successfully doing in my game I always roll the dice. Granted if its a skill that even a 1 will pass its just to make them feel better.

Truth be told as a DM you have to be prepared that your PC's will find a way around or a new way to complete every task you set them that isn't down a linear dungeon path.

I had this happen almost every single night when I gamed with my players and they either ignored threats and went around them entirely or used their social and monetary resources to set others to the task so they could focus on what they wanted too. And me being the kind of guy I am adored my PC's for making my night more fun then reading a script.

Example: PC's were set in a town where a Gnoll champion had been bothering the people and threatening to enslave the population. Needles to say the players sent the townspeople packing and came up with a plan. They had the saliva of a beast that could raise zombies, not control them but raise them. They made it look like the caster in the party had already killed/eaten the townspeople and raised them as zombies.
She then offered said Gnoll champion a meal to discuss future business deals.
One fight with Half-fiend Gnoll soulknife in a small room (without his dire hyena mount) later they were victorious.
If some crazy rolls had not happened that gnoll would have never walked into that town, but I'll be damned if I wasn't impressed with a plan other than "Lets just attack him all at once when we see him!"

[Ungvar]

Per Srd on Disguise Check:



Tthe GM doesn't have to roll to tell the player that he failed.

No, he just has to expect the player to believe the Orc had a +20 or +21 modifier to Spot.

Base orc (alertness feat factored in): +1
Intimate Circumstance modifier: +10

That's 11, at least 9 short of what's needed when taking 10.

So maybe this orc has fighter/barbarian levels? Reasonable for a lieutenant. Let's give him Skill Focus: Spot for another 3. Where do the other 6 come from? Ranks? Only if you want to blow a whopping 12 skill points to get 6 ranks, due to it being cross-class.

This simply stretches credulity to the breaking point.

[mangosta71]

Even Assume Quirk should require at least a little bit of study of the mark. How would your character know what quirks a person has if your only observation of that person was during the surprise round before you killed him? And the OP implied that he killed some random guard - not someone that he had watched long enough to have any idea what his personal eccentricities were.

No, he just has to expect the player to believe the Orc had a +20 or +21 modifier to Spot.

Base orc (alertness feat factored in): +1
Intimate Circumstance modifier: +10

That's 11, at least 9 short of what's needed when taking 10.

So maybe this orc has fighter/barbarian levels? Reasonable for a lieutenant. Let's give him Skill Focus: Spot for another 3. Where do the other 6 come from? Ranks? Only if you want to blow a whopping 12 skill points to get 6 ranks, due to it being cross-class.

This simply stretches credulity to the breaking point.
What else would a fighter spend his skill points on? Also, the base orc should be +2 with alertness - they take penalties to INT and CHA, and spot runs off WIS.

[Ungvar]

"I'm just not letting you do it" is a bad line, but it's also true that there are many abuseable things in D&D (and Disguise is one of those).

In real life, it would be really, really difficult to disguise oneself as an ape (too bad there are no real orcs in RL so you can't really disguise as one of them and fool anyone).


In D&D it makes sense that this is easier because of magic, but this is already considered in the (likely +10) bonus your spells gave you. It doesn't make sense that this is just an opposed skill check against his Spot with just a -2 modifier for the different race; this means that an untrained commoner with no items can Disguise himself as an Orc with (more or less) 40% chance versus another untrained commoner.


Since the way Disguise work is totally unrealistic, maybe you should have asked your DM about this.

You have it backward. If the DM was going to change how Disguise worked, then he should have informed the player of this before he let the player create a Disguise-focused character.

[Sillycomic]

I am on the same page with needing more information. I asked for more from the OP originally, but only got the twin brother joke.

I want to know more!

The size of this base that you are running around. Why are you running around this base in the first place? Is this an invading army? Or are you the invading force? Number of orcs in this army base? Is this an orc army or is it an army that just has orcs in it?

Level of your character. Bonus to Disguise. What did you roll on your disguise check?

Are you saying the orc lieutenant is an actual orc lieutenant? That's a 5th level character. If he even had 2 levels in ranger that's a pretty good reason why your disguise failed.

Did you have to say anything as you passed the head orc guard? Did the gm make you roll anything to spot?

Did the orc let you pass and then attacked you. Did he attack you the moment he saw you? Perhaps the orc guard did some secret sign that you're supposed to do to orc guards whenever you think something suspicious is going on and you failed to give the right counter sign.

Does your character even speak orc?

I hope so. I honestly hope you're smart enough that you didn't think just dressing up as an orc would get you through an entire orc base scott free simply because you have a skill focus feat in it.

Knowledge (local or nature depending on how feral or civil these orcs are) for how orcs act in a band together is not only helpful but vital in this situation. Plus Knowing orc language so that whenever someone says hi you can say hi back.


No, he just has to expect the player to believe the Orc had a +20 or +21 modifier to Spot.

Base orc (alertness feat factored in): +1
Intimate Circumstance modifier: +10

That's 11, at least 9 short of what's needed when taking 10.

So maybe this orc has fighter/barbarian levels? Reasonable for a lieutenant. Let's give him Skill Focus: Spot for another 3. Where do the other 6 come from? Ranks? Only if you want to blow a whopping 12 skill points to get 6 ranks, due to it being cross-class.

This simply stretches credulity to the breaking point.

2 levels in warrior and 3 levels in ranger, even without a skill focus feat, and this leiutenant should be able to take 10 on his spot and get 21 without breaking a sweat.

Taking 10:
10 for a roll
10 for intimate
2 for disguising oneself as another race.
8 ranks in Spot (it's a class skill as a ranger, he would put max ranks in it)
2 for Alertness feat.

and we're just hoping the OP isn't playing the favored race for this particular ranger, otherwise it's another +2.

My level 5 orc lieutenant beat a 30 disguise check by taking 10.

[Ungvar]

What else would a fighter spend his skill points on? Also, the base orc should be +2 with alertness - they take penalties to INT and CHA, and spot runs off WIS.

Full-blooded Orcs also take a -2 to WIS per the SRD. You may be thinking of half-orcs. Fighters would also want to spend skill points on Listen, if you want to do cross-class stuff. Officers certainly want to spend skill points on Intimidate and maybe Ride. Handle Animal, Sense Motive, Survival, Speak Language (non-orc)... there are tons of skills fighters or barbarians would want to take, particularly if they want to move up the ranks.

[Apophis775]

To sum up our last session, my character invested heavily in the disguise skill. He eve wasted a feat in Skill Focus. He made a high roll, and should have easily gone past head Orc guard/lieutenant. I as a player thought it out well, and if he had not DM fudged a few moments later that NPC might have killed my PC.

Basically, I find what he did outrages. Just because he felt it was too easy or something he completely nerfed my character and destroyed my fun.


Thoughts on this situation?

So your saying that you tried to disguise yourself as an orc to get past someone, and because you *think* that you were successful, your angry?

I run into similar issues with my players. They think a 20 is an auto-success with skills. It isn't.

Plus, he can make more than one spot check which opposes your disguise check. There is a VERY good chance that if he rolled a 15, had maybe a 5 from skill/modifiers (being a lieutenant or head guard), and a +10 circumstance bonus from the face that your wearing a uniform trying to pass where he is guarding, that it was a 30. If he's an orc and your wearing his clan or unit colors, there's defiantly a chance he would discover you.

When i was in the army, if I saw someone wearing our patch i didn't recognize, I'd assume he was new, until he tried to pass where i was guarding, then i'd stop him.

Guards, guard. It's what they do. The DM just tossed some humor in.

[Ungvar]

I am on the same page with needing more information. I asked for more from the OP originally, but only got the twin brother joke.

I want to know more!

The size of this base that you are running around. Why are you running around this base in the first place? Is this an invading army? Or are you the invading force? Number of orcs in this army base? Is this an orc army or is it an army that just has orcs in it?

Level of your character. Bonus to Disguise. What did you roll on your disguise check?

Are you saying the orc lieutenant is an actual orc lieutenant? That's a 5th level character. If he even had 2 levels in ranger that's a pretty good reason why your disguise failed.

Did you have to say anything as you passed the head orc guard? Did the gm make you roll anything to spot?

Did the orc let you pass and then attacked you. Did he attack you the moment he saw you? Perhaps the orc guard did some secret sign that you're supposed to do to orc guards whenever you think something suspicious is going on and you failed to give the right counter sign.

Does your character even speak orc?

I hope so. I honestly hope you're smart enough that you didn't think just dressing up as an orc would get you through an entire orc base scott free simply because you have a skill focus feat in it.

Knowledge (local or nature depending on how feral or civil these orcs are) for how orcs act in a band together is not only helpful but vital in this situation. Plus Knowing orc language so that whenever someone says hi you can say hi back.


2 levels in warrior and 3 levels in ranger, even without a skill focus feat, and this leiutenant should be able to take 10 on his spot and get 21 without breaking a sweat.

Taking 10:
10 for a roll
10 for intimate
2 for disguising oneself as another race.
8 ranks in Spot (it's a class skill as a ranger, he would put max ranks in it)
2 for Alertness feat.

and we're just hoping the OP isn't playing the favored race for this particular ranger, otherwise it's another +2.

My level 5 orc lieutenant beat a 30 disguise check by taking 10.

-1 for the WIS penalty for being a full-blooded Orc. Total 31, not 32. But yeah, you can optimize your way to beating that Disguise check, but you'd better be ready to be called on it. You're asking your player to believe, #1, that out of all the orcs he could have waylaid, it just happened to be the one who would give the highest circumstance bonus to #2, the one Ranger orc who is optimized for spotting.

If you did all that, then the most you as a DM are guilty of is meta-gaming to defeat your player's build. Which is fair in limited doses; creating optimized NPCs and circumstances to challenge optimized PCs. If that's the case, you show the player the NPC notes and you move on.

But it is far, far more likely that the DM in question just ruled OP failed.

[Tyndmyr]

I would be curious to know what the total bonus to disguise was with the roll.

That said, a solid roll with max ranks and a skill focus should be fairly decent. At least 25ish, quite probably much higher.


Sometimes players do face checks they absolutely cannot pass, this is true. However, this is generally not the case for people who have specialized extensively in one area. If it is...I question your encounter design, as it starts to sound like a case of screwing the player. When it's the exception, you can make it clear to the player that in this instance, he just doesn't have the requisite oomph to do so. I often do the math verbally in this instance. It only takes a second, and it helps them understand the game better. I definitely do not say "I'm just not letting you do it". Those words are not used outside of character creation.

[Sillycomic]

But it is far, far more likely that the DM in question just ruled OP failed.

I don't know. I mean that's your guess, but I personally want a lot more information before I make that conclusion.

Because, like I and others have said, what happened is entirely possible without ruling GM fiat.

However, I'm perfectly willing to change my mind the moment I get more information on the matter. Just at the moment it seems like the OP is complaining because the thing he's good at didn't work one time. Well, it's not supposed to work all the time, what makes you think it was supposed to work this time?

Besides, if you are the head guard for an elite unit inside of an army... you should be optimized for spotting. Your number 1 job is to watch over the troops and make sure nothing happens while the barbarians and fighters get well deserved rest.

Any good GM would put the optimized spotters on watch, and would know that the most optimized spot/listen orc of them all would be the head of those guards.

[Apophis775]

Thats why when players start to complain in my game, I'll usually tell them the DC i was using and they are like "Ah, well,... ****"

[Sipex]

This makes me think of another thing as well, did the DM request what you needed to disguise? IE: Did you need the proper make up to be an orc?

I mean, if you were infiltrating a camp full of orcs while looking like a fair skinned elf in an orc uniform or (even worse) you're a halfling disguised as an orc, meaning you're only like...3 feet tall, then I can see the reaction of "I'm not letting you do it." although it should've been explained after the fact of WHY he wasn't letting you do it.

I've had players try to make bluff checks with the worst lies imaginable (The better the lie, the lower the bluff check required basically) and there are a few lies where my response has been "There aren't enough dice in the world."

[Tyndmyr]

Any good GM would put the optimized spotters on watch, and would know that the most optimized spot/listen orc of them all would be the head of those guards.

Yes. Just like the leader of the world's most powerful military has his position because he can crush everyone else's skulls in his bare hands.

No. In the real world, leaders are not like that.

[Erom]

Yes. Just like the leader of the world's most powerful military has his position because he can crush everyone else's skulls in his bare hands.

No. In the real world, leaders are not like that.
Gotta call you on this one: brute strength versus situational awareness is not really a fair comparison there. Having the soldier with good SA be the head of the watch is pretty entirely reasonable and realistic.

[Tyndmyr]

Gotta call you on this one: brute strength versus situational awareness is not really a fair comparison there. Having the soldier with good SA be the head of the watch is pretty entirely reasonable and realistic.

In my military experience, leaders are chosen for their ability to lead. Well, if everything worked as advertised, anyway, but let's not get too far off topic.

If you're fortunate, this leader may also be competent in the field he's currently leading. He is not at all guaranteed to be the best in the unit at it. Usually it's just a dude who happens to have been stuck at the same job for forever and has gotten pretty good at it.

I would assume that guards were at least somewhat decent at spot/listen, yes. I would not assume that the leader of the guard is optimized for it, has a few extra levels, and happens to be the brother of the guy I just killed. That's stretching credibility a bit.

[Sipex]

Gotta call you on this one: brute strength versus situational awareness is not really a fair comparison there. Having the soldier with good SA be the head of the watch is pretty entirely reasonable and realistic.

To add on, we're talking about Orcs which are usually known for basing their ranking system on who the best at X is.

Therefore the leader is usually the strongest.

[Ungvar]

I don't know. I mean that's your guess, but I personally want a lot more information before I make that conclusion.

Because, like I and others have said, what happened is entirely possible without ruling GM fiat.

Besides, if you are the head guard for an elite unit inside of an army... you should be optimized for spotting. Your number 1 job is to watch over the troops and make sure nothing happens while the barbarians and fighters get well deserved rest.

Any good GM would put the optimized spotters on watch, and would know that the most optimized spot/listen orc of them all would be the head of those guards.

Actually, I would say that if you were a lieutenant, you have other duties related to command that would require you to broaden your skills beyond just spotting/listening. The fact that the twin brother relationship was revealed jokingly leads me to believe this was all ad hoc, but let's give OP's DM the benefit of the doubt. Let's say he really did rule ahead of time that the orc OP killed was this lieutenant's twin brother AND also gave this orc the class and skills package to the point where the combination would defeat a 30 Disguise check using just a take-10.

If you do this as a DM, you are asking for trouble. You are asking for your players to think you're dirty-dealing. If you don't show the NPC notes at the table right then and there, your player will lose faith in you and the game you're running. In their mind, you will be a Rail-Roader.

[Tvtyrant]

In their mind, you will be a Rail-Roader.

Le Gasp! Surly a fate worse then death :P

The major objection I would have to your DMs actions is that he took away your characters specific focus; its like AMF a wizard or opening a giant pit so the Barbarian stands there yelling while everyone else gets attacked. If you had tried to bullrush your way in while built to bullrush I would expect your DM to at least give you a fair chance, not fudge.

[Sipex]

I would like to interject and state that as a player, one has the responsiblity to give the DM the benefit of a doubt as well unless you're paying him for the priviledge.

DMs aren't necessarily professionals, they're usually just players who have some creative ideas or got stuck in the DM role because it's their turn. They already have a lot of responsiblities so you have to give them some leeway when they screw up.

Now, if you talk to him about it (in a calm, understanding manner) and he's uncompromising then feel free to throw out the insults and judgement.

[Tyndmyr]

Right. I *can* design, entirely within the rules, all sorts of horrors for my players. I could throw pun-pun against them at level one. Doing so would not be fun, however.

The fact that you can stack a giant pile of modifiers to make something work does not mean that it's good for the game.

The way the post is written sounds like the DM just pulled out the first excuse he could think of to make it not work. He probably didn't even run the numbers, he just didn't want it to work. That's bad. It's also bad if he spent twenty minutes pondering in advance how to make his abilities not work, but it's a different type of bad.

[Ungvar]

Le Gasp! Surly a fate worse then death :P


Nah, just a leading cause of death. Campaign death, that is.

[Sipex]

Indeed, it does sound that way, but the tone of Pika's post shows that things might seem a lot worse then they are because Pika is outraged.

A simple add on joke "Sure, why not? He's the guy's twin brother" could be taken as snide fiat if in the wrong mood.

Which pretty much brings us back to "More information plz."

[Ungvar]

I would like to interject and state that as a player, one has the responsiblity to give the DM the benefit of a doubt as well unless you're paying him for the priviledge.

DMs aren't necessarily professionals, they're usually just players who have some creative ideas or got stuck in the DM role because it's their turn. They already have a lot of responsiblities so you have to give them some leeway when they screw up.

Now, if you talk to him about it (in a calm, understanding manner) and he's uncompromising then feel free to throw out the insults and judgement.

I would agree that OP should talk to the DM about his concerns, and if DM owns up, then that should be the end of it. Everybody makes mistakes.

[Sillycomic]

I guess it depends on how you run your game. I have never been in a game where I saw the GM do something and said, "WAIT. you must show me your notes on why that happened!"

But I usually trust my GM's a little more.

Although, I have never really made a one-trick pony like a Disguisomancer before.

I would much rather play the game with my skills knowing that sometimes they would work well and sometimes they wouldn't. And for my character to be prepared for the times when my disguise (or whatever it is I happen to have optimized) fails.

Stopping the game and asking the GM for notes because 1 thing went wrong?

That's what I don't get. The OP said this happened 1 time. He never made mention that this was a pattern, or that the GM was shutting down his disguises whenever he tried anything.

Technically there's nothing in the OP's notes that even said this particular disguise didn't work on other guards or mooks BEFORE he even got to the Head Guard.

This was a single incident of a failed disguise check. Until the OP gives more information, that's all I'm treating it as.

[Ungvar]

I guess it depends on how you run your game. I have never been in a game where I saw the GM do something and said, "WAIT. you must show me your notes on why that happened!"

But I usually trust my GM's a little more.

Maybe your GMs don't do stuff to reasonably induce distrust.


Although, I have never really made a one-trick pony like a Disguisomancer before.

Why do you think OP's character is a "one-trick pony"? OP just says he's invested heavily in the Disguise skill, which is reasonable for some character concepts, but does not preclude the possibility that OPs character was competent in other areas.


I would much rather play the game with my skills knowing that sometimes they would work well and sometimes they wouldn't. And for my character to be prepared for the times when my disguise (or whatever it is I happen to have optimized) fails.

How do you know OP wasn't prepared for his disguise to fail, but those preparations just weren't adequate? That happens all the time in games, where plans A and B both fail. It doesn't mean at all that OP didn't have a plan B.


Stopping the game and asking the GM for notes because 1 thing went wrong?

That's what I don't get. The OP said this happened 1 time. He never made mention that this was a pattern, or that the GM was shutting down his disguises whenever he tried anything.

Technically there's nothing in the OP's notes that even said this particular disguise didn't work on other guards or mooks BEFORE he even got to the Head Guard.

There's nothing to say it DID work, either. Nothing to indicate that OP was fooling a bunch of guards who were failing their spots. Hell, for all we know this was the first time in the whole campaign that OP got to use his Disguise skill


This was a single incident of a failed disguise check. Until the OP gives more information, that's all I'm treating it as.

From assuming OP made a "one-trick pony", to assuming that OP didn't have a back up plan should that one trick fail, you seem to be giving OP's DM substantially more benefit of the doubt than you're giving OP.

[Sipex]

To be fair, the DM isn't here ranting about the OP, otherwise tables would be turned. In this case the DM can't defend himself so some of us (probably other DMs) feel the need to defend him.

Again, this just boils down "Need more information." because with what you describe it makes perfect sense for the OP to be disgruntled.

[Sillycomic]

my character invested heavily in the disguise skill.

I'm assuming he's a one trick pony because this is what he said. He never made mention of any other skills, tricks or spells that were important to his character.

If his character was anything more than a one trick pony, I would think the OP would consider it important to tell us. But he didn't.

So, he's a one trick pony. He's a disguisomancer.

When his disguise didn't work the NPC head guard nearly killed him, and only GM fudge stopped it from being an actual PC death.

Since the OP never gave us any indication of a back up plan, or anything else, why am I to assume that there was one?

He said his disguise check failed and he nearly died.

I'm suppose to assume there was a plan B and plan C and plan D that failed, but it just wasn't as important?

I'm giving the OP the benefit of... what he told us. When he gives me more information about the situation, then I'll be able to make better assumptions.

[shadow_archmagi]

Possible Correct courses of action:


Player: I disguise and waltz on through. I'm going on 36.
DM: I uh... no. I'm sorry, that's going to make everything weird if you're inside at the time.
Player: Oh.
DM: Sorry! I'll make it up to you later. Good thought though, I don't know why I wasn't prepared for this.

---

Player: I disguise and waltz on through. I'm going on 36.
DM: Wait you- oh god. Oh jeez.
Player: ?
DM: Hang on a sec, I'm going to go use the bathroom while I rethink the entire encounter. Just let me burn this 20 page binder I had written up, it's improv time.

[Tyndmyr]

Feh, I'm a DM and a player. Plenty o' time on both sides. There are bad players and bad DMs. Like I said, the two things that I cued off of to make my judgment of the situation thus far(pending more info, which is always nice) were small things. Things the OP didn't focus on. I think the OP just posted out of frustration and didn't get into the details. I do hope he returns to the thread, though.

I'd also be cool with the DM popping in. Always fun to hear both sides.


Oh, and Shadow, if one skill check makes you burn your binder of notes because they are now worthless, it's for the best. You clearly planned that out poorly anyhow. Hopefully the next binder will be less worthless.

[shadow_archmagi]

Oh, and Shadow, if one skill check makes you burn your binder of notes because they are now worthless, it's for the best. You clearly planned that out poorly anyhow. Hopefully the next binder will be less worthless.

Oh, I know, I always go with the improv. I just like the players to feel like they're being unusually creative. That's why the binder is mostly full of firecrackers.

[valadil]

Another idea for GMs in this situation is to let the player succeed too well. In this case the guard recognizes his brother or best friend or whatever. Instead of letting him by, he occupies the PC. Now they're going to catch up on old times. Or they had plans to get a beer after their shifts. Or anything else that builds on the disguise but forces the player to improvise a little.

[Comet]

I agree with shadow_archmagi on both posts. Always load your notes with firecrackers.

I also agree with everyone else that there isn't enough information to brand anyone a villain. Please, OP, give us more insight so that we can direct all this rage and fury towards the right target!
Or not. That could be better, actually. Just keep on playing and hope these situations don't come up every time in the future.

[Tyndmyr]

That's a hilarious response, and yes, I've used the "everything works FANTASTIC" route before. It's fun to throw them off, especially when nothing else has been working yet. You can practically taste the fear.

[Ungvar]

I'm assuming he's a one trick pony because this is what he said. He never made mention of any other skills, tricks or spells that were important to his character.

If his character was anything more than a one trick pony, I would think the OP would consider it important to tell us. But he didn't.

So, he's a one trick pony. He's a disguisomancer.

When his disguise didn't work the NPC head guard nearly killed him, and only GM fudge stopped it from being an actual PC death.

Since the OP never gave us any indication of a back up plan, or anything else, why am I to assume that there was one?

He said his disguise check failed and he nearly died.

I'm suppose to assume there was a plan B and plan C and plan D that failed, but it just wasn't as important?

I'm giving the OP the benefit of... what he told us. When he gives me more information about the situation, then I'll be able to make better assumptions.

So you feel justified in assuming that the orc had levels in Ranger which allowed him to take ranks in Spot at full value, when nothing of the sort is even hinted at by OP, but at the same time you comfortably assume that since OP didn't specifically mention that his character has other skills and/or means to deal w/ nasty situations, that it must mean he didn't possess any?

Ok, dude...

[Crow]

I don't know, I think the DM was within his rights. It sounds like the player in this instance basically said "Um, here's my class, my feats, my skills, and here's a number."

As a DM, I can't stand that. Especially if it trivializes a possible encounter. Now if the player in question tells me something like;

"I'm taking a few moments to adjust the armor so it doesn't look obviously mis-fit. After that, I'm going to mix up and apply some of the facepaint we made using those rare flowers to get the color just right so it mimics their skin color. I'll finish it off by wiping the blood from his axe so as not to raise any eyebrows, and then I'm going to smear some of this dung on me to hopefully stop the worgs from sniffing me out when I walk in.

Oh yeah, and I rolled a 39"

Yes, as a DM, I'm going to give him that one.

[Tyndmyr]

Personally, I'd assume that the character is most likely a rogue or bard since they'll want disguise to be a class skill. Even with a skill focus feat and blowing funds on mw skill tools, magic items, or whatever, there's no easy way to trade off all your class abilities to disguise that I'm aware of. Probably bard, since Disguise Self is so helpful.

He will also certainly have more skill points than he can spend on disguise alone, as both are high skill point classes.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that he has at least some class abilities and other skills that will be of some help. He can't plausibly NOT have them.

[Ungvar]

I don't know, I think the DM was within his rights. It sounds like the player in this instance basically said "Um, here's my class, my feats, my skills, and here's a number."

As a DM, I can't stand that. Especially if it trivializes a possible encounter. Now if the player in question tells me something like;

"I'm taking a few moments to adjust the armor so it doesn't look obviously mis-fit. After that, I'm going to mix up and apply some of the facepaint we made using those rare flowers to get the color just right so it mimics their skin color. I'll finish it off by wiping the blood from his axe so as not to raise any eyebrows, and then I'm going to smear some of this dung on me to hopefully stop the worgs from sniffing me out when I walk in.

Oh yeah, and I rolled a 39"

Yes, as a DM, I'm going to give him that one.

And you can play that way, but if that's how you're going to rule as a DM, you need to make your players aware of that fact before they create their character. It's your job as a DM to tell your player that class/feats/skills/rolls aren't going to cut it in your game, because in the default D&D rules, they do.

[Sillycomic]

So you feel justified in assuming that the orc had levels in Ranger which allowed him to take ranks in Spot at full value, when nothing of the sort is even hinted at by OP, but at the same time you comfortably assume that since OP didn't specifically mention that his character has other skills and/or means to deal w/ nasty situations, that it must mean he didn't possess any?


Go back and read. Please! I want you to go back and read all of my stuff!! I am begging you.

I'm not assuming the orc had levels in ranger. I'm just saying that there's an in game possibility for what happened at the table.

The OP is saying the only way for this to happen was GM fiat. I proved it wrong by building a character that wasn't even optimized, just a 5th level orc ranger that would be reasonably seen within an army of orcs.

I didn't assume this is what DID happen, I just said this is what COULD HAVE happened.

And then I said, "Give us more information about the situation."

It seems like you glossed over all of that though. Well, I'm sorry. Perhaps going back and reading all of what I said will help you consolidate my argument better next time.

Just for the record, until we get more information I feel confident in all of these assumptions:

The head guard could have been a kick butt ranger.

The Op's character was a one trick pony.

The Op's character had no other plan for when his disguise failed.

[TurtleKing]

Guess I will have to provide the extra information. I play with Pika and he got his disguise as high as possible. He killed the guy in one round then try to pass off as him on his disguise. Granted he may look like him, but he does not sound like him. No two voices are the same so you can imitate as close as possible, but not actually just like another person. He does not in fact know Orcish...yet.

Pika has the unrealistic expectations that the disguise skill works on all senses were it only works on sight. Against a Troll earlier the Troll was confused by the armor having the Orcs smell mixed in with another smell. He also thought that heal checks to identify would not work. Wrong. My character had seen the bunny (disguise at the time) shoot lasers out of his eyes. Being a Killoren knowing that is not normal did a heal check. Heal checks require touching so when disguise skill being used amounts to nothing. A disguise auto fails in the wake of someone touching. As for Scent you may smell both the imposter and the person the imposter is trying to impersonate. Better hope taste is not used for negating a disguise.... As for hearing if you don't sound like the person they will see through the disguise. If he doesn't act like the person you get a serious penalty to the disguise.

Fellow players verdict is the DM made the right call. The time he used it was when he not only met the twin brother who is an Orc leader, but 10 other orcs as well. They were confused by the disguise due to not acting like the other twin. The best he can hope for with a disguise on the fly with no research is to merely walk from one place to another without being interacted with.

Edit: Pika's character is not actually a one trick pony. He just uses that trick a lot. He does have a good Bluff so he could if he the character spent the time watching other people could pass himself off as another person. In this instance that is just not possible due to killing the guy as soon as you met him.

[BRC]

Guess I will have to provide the extra information. I play with Pika and he got his disguise as high as possible. He killed the guy in one round then try to pass off as him on his disguise. Granted he may look like him, but he does not sound like him. No two voices are the same so you can imitate as close as possible, but not actually just like another person. He does not in fact know Orcish...yet.


This bit is very important.

Yeah, I don't care how good your disguise check is, no amount of makeup is going to convince them that a fellow Orc forgot his native tongue.

[Sillycomic]

Thank you Turtle.

That helps clear up a lot.

Yeah, I was pretty sure it wasn't the GM's fault. I knew we just needed some more information.

[Ungvar]

Go back and read. Please! I want you to go back and read all of my stuff!! I am begging you.

I'm not assuming the orc had levels in ranger. I'm just saying that there's an in game possibility for what happened at the table.

The OP is saying the only way for this to happen was GM fiat. I proved it wrong by building a character that wasn't even optimized, just a 5th level orc ranger that would be reasonably seen within an army of orcs.

I didn't assume this is WHAT happened, I just said this is what COULD HAVE happened.

And then I said, "Give us more information about the situation."

It seems like you glossed over all of that though. Well, I'm sorry. Perhaps going back and reading all of what I said will help you consolidate my argument better next time.

Just for the record, until we get more information I'm feel confident in all of these assumptions:

The head guard could have been a kick butt ranger.

The Op's character was a one trick pony.

The Op's character had no other plan for when his disguise failed.

The problem is that you have assign different burdens of proof to OP and OP's DM. You say it's possible that the orc was a kick butt ranger, so DM's actions are OK. But you are saying it is IMPOSSIBLE that OP's character had back-up means/plans for dealing with encounters. The only evidence you offer for this reasoning is that OP didn't mention them. Why should he? The whole focus of the post is the issue of whether DM was justified in his handling of the opposed Disguise/Spot check. Whether OP was able to deal w/ the ensuing fight was immaterial.

Do you really think that there is no possible character build which would enable a +30 Disguise check (which includes a good roll), but that would also have other game-relevant skills? Because that's what your posts say.

[mangosta71]

Because the OP is the one posting, the burden of proof is upon him. He's pretty obviously letting steam off - a lot of people do that here. He's upset because he's a roll-player and he feels like he wasted a good one on that disguise check. Helpful hint - disguise is never enough by itself - it has to be supported by a host of other things.

Besides, taking TK's information into account, it was perfectly reasonable for the guards to not believe the disguise without a roll. Trying to pass as an orc without at least knowing the language?

[Sillycomic]

I'm applying different burdens of proof because the OP is making assumptions on the GM and what happened.

The Op is telling us about his character and his actions, so I think there are no assumptions or bias in what he tells us about his character.

Then the OP is trying to assume things about what the GM did. This is where I take offense and say, "but wait a minute. I'm a decent GM too and here are a few ways about why that couldn't/didn't happen the way you think it did."



Do you really think that there is no possible character build which would enable a +30 Disguise check (which includes a good roll), but that would also have other game-relevant skills? Because that's what your posts say.

But, we've already learned... thanks to getting more information, that he
does have a lot of class skills. Thanks again Turtle King.

Still didn't really save his butt, but I guess that's something he'll learn over time.

And hopefully trust his GM a little more when things like this happen.

[TurtleKing]

@Ungvar: I do see what you mean by the other skills being important as well. The problem is he did use bluff and that is what ruined his disguise for the twin. He bluffed that he had been cursed in forgetting his native tongue. Outrageous bluffs are harder to believe. This was done without the character studying the person he was impersonating. Pika's character is able to get his disguise into the mid forties and his bluff into the mid thirties.

Edit: Just so all are clear on the uses of the two skills. Disguise is great for looking like someone else. The moment you talk though is the moment the disguise can be seen through. Bluff is now what as to be used so not only do look like someone else, but also act like that person as well.

Pika's character is actually a necromancer as his means of fighting. The disguises are just his way of getting around socially and having fun.

[Ungvar]

Because the OP is the one posting, the burden of proof is upon him. He's pretty obviously letting steam off - a lot of people do that here. He's upset because he's a roll-player and he feels like he wasted a good one on that disguise check. Helpful hint - disguise is never enough by itself - it has to be supported by a host of other things.

Besides, taking TK's information into account, it was perfectly reasonable for the guards to not believe the disguise without a roll. Trying to pass as an orc without at least knowing the language?

I agree that in light of the new info, Pika was trying something unreasonable that maybe didn't deserve a roll. That's assuming he didn't use his Bluff skill at all, to say, pretend that the orc he was impersonating was sick, and so wracked w/ coughing that the other orcs didn't notice that he wasn't speaking orcish or acting "normal".

But yeah, if he was just standing there mouthing non-orcish gibberish, that won't fly.

[Ungvar]

@Ungvar: I do see what you mean by the other skills being important as well. The problem is he did use bluff and that is what ruined his disguise for the twin. He bluffed that he had been cursed in forgetting his native tongue. Outrageous bluffs are harder to believe. This was done without the character studying the person he was impersonating. Pika's character is able to get his disguise into the mid forties and his bluff into the mid thirties.

Answer-ninja'd!

Yeah, that's tough. How did he even communicate that he was cursed to forgetting his native tongue?!

[TurtleKing]

He was speaking in goblin.

[Starbuck_II]

Well, Goblins and Orc do work together often.

[Tyndmyr]

Ok, the not knowing orcish is a significant hindrance, but his plan was reasonable.

I see no reason why it's impossible, provided he passed both his disguise and bluff checks. Did he fail one, or did that just not get rolled?

[Apophis775]

Yes. Just like the leader of the world's most powerful military has his position because he can crush everyone else's skulls in his bare hands.

No. In the real world, leaders are not like that.

bull. You always put people where they work best.

Got someone with really good vision? Give them binocs and put them in an OP. Got someone who's good at shooting? Send them to sniper-school.

Someone guarding the entrance to an area will usually be overwatched by an NCO.

Not to mention the fact that because it's not always set by rank who is where, when your on guard you are allowed to stop ANYONE for ANY reason.

[Timeras]

Ok, the not knowing orcish is a significant hindrance, but his plan was reasonable. No, it wasn't.


I see no reason why it's impossible, provided he passed both his disguise and bluff checks. Did he fail one, or did that just not get rolled?

Some things simply must fail without a check. You cannot bluff someone to believe you are a specific individual, if you don't know anything about that person, so you can't even try to mimic his voice, don't know that person's habbits of movement and speech and have to speak in the wrong language.

[Starbuck_II]

bull. You always put people where they work best.

Got someone with really good vision? Give them binocs and put them in an OP. Got someone who's good at shooting? Send them to sniper-school.

Someone guarding the entrance to an area will usually be overwatched by an NCO.

Not to mention the fact that because it's not always set by rank who is where, when your on guard you are allowed to stop ANYONE for ANY reason.

But warriors are more common than PC classes. Warriors lack spot/listen/sense motive.



Some things simply must fail without a check. You cannot bluff someone to believe you are a specific individual, if you don't know anything about that person, so you can't even try to mimic his voice, don't know that person's habbits of movement and speech and have to speak in the wrong language.
That isn't how D&D works.
You always get a chance (even than).

Same reason you get a reflex save when tied up and bound.

That specific bluff woulkd only add +20 DC because "The bluff is way out there, almost too incredible to consider".

[TurtleKing]

He did roll both Disguise and Bluff with results being quite well for both. The problem is the bluff was outlandish. According to the SRD if the bluff is way out there the opposing Sense Motive gets a +20. So all in all the bluff is the problem.

[Sillycomic]

I am with Timeras on this one. Some incredible bluffs don't even get a check.

[MrRigger]

With the additional information, I'm inclined to side with the DM in this case. Even the best Orc Disguise in the world won't help if you don't speak Orc as a language, to an Orc, and then try to Bluff it as being cursed to forget the language, to not only your Disguise's twin brother, but nearly a dozen of his comrades. At that point, in my opinion, the DM is justified in ruling that it goes beyond "The bluff is way out there, it's almost too incredible to consider" +20 Sense Motive Modifier given in the PHB, and into the "This is just stupid, no one, not even those dumb as a bag of rocks orcs, will believe it" no roll failure ruling/+1000 Sense Motive Modifier. Because some things are too incredible to believe. Because otherwise you have situations like the recent OotS strips with Haley's Glibness potion and using the most outlandish lies in the world and having them pass muster. And if you're playing a comedy game or playing it for laughs like in OotS, that's fine, but if you're playing a serious game, you need to put some thought into your Bluffs, so that they aren't completely impossible.

MrRigger

[MeeposFire]

bull. You always put people where they work best.

Got someone with really good vision? Give them binocs and put them in an OP. Got someone who's good at shooting? Send them to sniper-school.

Someone guarding the entrance to an area will usually be overwatched by an NCO.

Not to mention the fact that because it's not always set by rank who is where, when your on guard you are allowed to stop ANYONE for ANY reason.

Obviously you do not work in management, are not observant of whats around you, or your boss is super awesome at picking people. People that are not the best get put into positions all the time. All you need to do is know the right people or have a great PR personality or person and you can go farther than your skill can indicate. There are terms for that like cronyism.

[137beth]

Or, you could say that they do get a check, but have an outlandish circumstance penalty, which seems to be what the OP's DM did.

If he was a one-trick pony, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. And if he had other skills, why didn't he use them?

[Echoes]

I am confused. Isn't it the case that uniforms tend to be rather... uniform, between units? Why would wearing the outfit of a single dead orc automatically force the character to try to disguise himself as that specific soldier? Honestly, unless he is trying to gain access to something which requires the specific clearance of the man he killed, he should be able to get by disguising himself as "nameless orc drone #437". That being said, I agree that bluffing that a curse took away his language capability could be a bit too farfetched, depending on the setting. However, if he instead pantomimed a sore throat and held up a canteen pointing toward the mess tent, I see no reason the orcs would get automatic success for an outlandish lie.

[Mystral]

@ Echoes

Well, we're talking about orks here, so what they considered uniform might amount to whatever they could scrounge together on the battlefield or crudely forge themselves with the symbol of their clan painted on it.

[Comet]

And even in more civilized armies, it's not unheard of for career soldiers to modify their uniforms, either as a sort of reminder of past battles or as a mark of pride and a signal of "been there, done that" for the rest of the gang.
When you're out in the field and warfare is second nature to you, uniform regulations can come with a bit more room to express personality.

[Echoes]

@Mystral

In that case, I could see him just scuffing up some of his own gear and using some pigments from the disguise kit to temporarily paint the clan symbol onto something he's wearing. There are very few cases I can think of where it's reasonable to assume that the subject of a disguise must match the source of its inspiration.

I would say part of getting the good roll on the check is the character correctly guessing which parts of their target's outfit are personal, and which are symbols of rank/affiliation. Really... it's a messy situation that I think could've gone either way, depending on the exact wording of the people around the table.

[Crow]

@Mystral

In that case, I could see him just scuffing up some of his own gear and using some pigments from the disguise kit to temporarily paint the clan symbol onto something he's wearing.

Well I have a feeling I was right earlier when I said the guy basically built a character and spit out a number. From what we heard, there wasn't nearly this much thought put into the attempt.

[Tyndmyr]

bull. You always put people where they work best.

Got someone with really good vision? Give them binocs and put them in an OP. Got someone who's good at shooting? Send them to sniper-school.

Someone guarding the entrance to an area will usually be overwatched by an NCO.

Not to mention the fact that because it's not always set by rank who is where, when your on guard you are allowed to stop ANYONE for ANY reason.

Aright, I've done a coupla career fields in the military. Yknow how you get assigned in the air force? Well, #1 is what you signed up for. What box you selected on the contract. What boxes you can sign up for are limited by two things, a general aptitude test that is ridiculously easy, and a basic weight lifting test. I fell asleep twice in the test and aced it. IIRC, 90 lbs maxed out the weight issue. At any rate, it was not terribly hard at all.

Way #2 is what happens if you ever go into a career field without being contractually obligated a position. They shuffle you into whatever they need at the time.

Yes, you have tons and tons of people that end up in things they are not ideally equipped for. This is not at all limited to the military, mind you, but this example seems fairly apt. Hell, my first assignment was as a software engineer. My second was a heavy equipment operator. I guarantee I'm not ideally skilled for both of those jobs.


You cannot bluff someone to believe you are a specific individual, if you don't know anything about that person, so you can't even try to mimic his voice, don't know that person's habbits of movement and speech and have to speak in the wrong language.

In D&D, that's not how things work. Those are all modifiers. Yes, they are extremely hard. However, if you watch movies, you'll see examples of this all the time. Skill is a factor. Just getting lucky is a big factor.

Yeah, you get modifiers, but if you beat it even with the modifiers, that's the way the cookie crumbles. And a bluff of "I was cursed" is not as crazy as bluffs get. No, I think "you are a potato" is far worse. It's still worthy of a bad modifier, sure, but it's not "nobody would ever fall for that". In D&D land, people do get cursed, it can happen. It would be reasonable to ask for the story of *how* he got cursed, though.

Also, keep in mind that the disguise DID pass. If a party member comes up to you, looking exactly like he normally does, complaining about a curse, you'd be suspicious sure....but most people wouldn't automatically assume that it HAD to be a disguised infiltrator. Hell, a reasonable interpretation of the failed bluff check with a successful disguise is something like "Glork, stop screwing around with us, this is no time for jokes" or "Dammit, Glork, you've been drinking again". Remember, he looks just like him, they just don't buy his story. They don't automatically know the right one.




Thurbane, ask him "whose character did you say it was?" When he says yours, ask him "then who knows what he would do better, me or you?". If he answers....poorly, start telling him what his characters would do. I'd wait on this until after he's properly annoyed the other players, but that'll happen in short order if he tells them what they want.

[prufock]

The DM did not even bother rolling. By making it his "twin" :smallconfused:, even with the +10 for Intimate modifier and the other modifiers I was at like 29 or 30 DC to spot the disguise.

THIS is what makes it a bad DM move. As a DM, he should know that even if he is going to ignore the roll, he should still roll the die. THEN his baloney reasoning at least appears genuine.

[Crow]

Aright, I've done a coupla career fields in the military. Yknow how you get assigned in the air force? Well, #1 is what you signed up for. What box you selected on the contract. What boxes you can sign up for are limited by two things, a general aptitude test that is ridiculously easy, and a basic weight lifting test. I fell asleep twice in the test and aced it. IIRC, 90 lbs maxed out the weight issue. At any rate, it was not terribly hard at all.

Way #2 is what happens if you ever go into a career field without being contractually obligated a position. They shuffle you into whatever they need at the time.

Yes, you have tons and tons of people that end up in things they are not ideally equipped for. This is not at all limited to the military, mind you, but this example seems fairly apt. Hell, my first assignment was as a software engineer. My second was a heavy equipment operator. I guarantee I'm not ideally skilled for both of those jobs.

I think he was referring to smaller units operating in the field. Not so much where "this is your profession, go do it", but "we're all the same profession, but there are different jobs that need done".

Jones is a great shot, so he's the designated marksman. Miller is strong as hell, so he's gonna lug around that SAW. Ramirez is the best at setting up an IV so he stays in the back....etc...

[TurtleKing]

To help clarify further the size of the place was just a keep. The amount of orcs we came across number around 20 to 30. Being that small of a number means the orcs probably knew each other well. Plus a disguise is good if you don't interact with anyone else. Once you have to interact with another then the deciding skill becomes bluff. What some may not realize the bonuses for the opposed spot check also translate over to sense motive opposing the bluff. Such as if you intimately know the person then you will be able to get a bonus to your sense motive as well for knowing the person. You know what to look for as in the quirks. A disguise works so long as it remains believable. Once people start to question what they see from the actions then the disguise is no longer valid.

Here is the mechanics part:
He rolled a 45 on his disguise before the penalties were added. After the penalties have been added for familiarity and race plus any more came down to a 33 for the twin and 37 for the rest of the orcs. His bluff was only between 34 and 36. Throw in the penalties for familiarity plus the rest increase the Sense Motive. Now throw in that the bluff is at least a little hard to believe resulting a +5 if not more to Sense Motive. For the twin the DC was probably at the most a 20.

So frankly even if he had rolled the twin would have a good chance of passing it anyway on his sense motive.

[classy one]

I've played a changeling spymaster before who specialized in disguise so I have a feel for a PC like this. While I don't think the OP's DM handled the situation correctly, the OP clearly underestimates how much is involved in disguise.

What the DM should have done:
As the DM he should have listed all the penalties and bonuses on both sides, why they were there etc. If there was a chance you made your opposed check, he should let it slide and reroll again when you mess up, which he can freely do since he made all the NPCs and their knowledge quirks etc. So he could let you into the base, but then deny you the knowledge you sought ("shouldn't you know this?") and have in a base full suspicious orca who ALL get a sense motive check on you.

What you did wrong:
Disguising as a specific person is really hard. My spymaster made up personas from scratch and even that required some investment in other skills like craft, profession, bluff and forgery. If I wanted to disguise myself as a specific person with intent of extracting knowledge, I would stalk the hell out of them for at least one week, know their routines, their favorite foods, pet name for his family, quirks, any jewelry that he wears etc. I will cap off all my research with a read minds if I can or befriend/seduce them and dig for more info. Then and only then, will I ven attempt to pass myself off as an already existing person.
Oh and there are just some things I don't disguise as. As a halfling, I might get away with disguising as a gnome and vice versa, a dwarf would be cutting it close. A Kalashtar could easily pass as a human but never a goblin. I just would not even try it. I assume your PC wasn't an Orc (they make terrible rogues) so it begs the question: Why? If you were a changeling or some race with alter form I would forgive you but a human disguised as an Orc is laughable.
It's part of the fun, it's the reason I played a changeling in the first place. You just seemed to pick some orc's outfit and roll a disguise check and expect that to work? That isn't a disguise specialized PC at all. It isn't that easy and you should not blame your DM for auto-failing you, what you described has auto-fail written all over it, and would be easy to defend his position. The only reason we are discussing this is because he did not tell you how ill thought out your plan was.

[TurtleKing]

@classy one: Thank you for reminding me. His character is a kobold using stilts for the height adjustment. To also help with the size issue he is using the spell Disguise Self. He being a gestalt Dread Necromancer/Cloistered Cleric worshiping the main kobold deity. He found a way to use Disguise Self or something similar more often than his spell alotment will allow. But even with using Disguise Self and other things he may not be getting it right for the height issues. Orcs tend to average around 6ft while a kobold even using stilts may not reach that close in height.

[Tyndmyr]

I think he was referring to smaller units operating in the field. Not so much where "this is your profession, go do it", but "we're all the same profession, but there are different jobs that need done".

Jones is a great shot, so he's the designated marksman. Miller is strong as hell, so he's gonna lug around that SAW. Ramirez is the best at setting up an IV so he stays in the back....etc...

That still isn't how things work except in movies. People in real life are not assorted into neat little groups containing specialists for everything you need. Once there, they are not assigned everywhere perfectly.

Real life is sadly short on optimization.


Turtle, with those DCs, the DM should have rolled. Adding the negative modifiers is legit, but if it's "he might pass, he might not", the roll should be made. That's what rolls are for. If that's not going to happen, he did indeed waste his resources on those skills.


What some may not realize the bonuses for the opposed spot check also translate over to sense motive opposing the bluff.

I was not at all aware of this. In fact, after looking over the SRD again, I'm still not aware of it. I don't suppose you can direct me to the rule that states this?

[TurtleKing]

Maybe I should point out what the alternative could have been if he passed. The other two characters would have most likely died fighting a blinded troll with a Ring of Fire Resistance 10 and 10 Orcs. Pika is known as being backstabbing. So while he was using his bluff with the orcs I was talking about metagaming his characters death from my backup character. Before you say anything my backup character is me as I see him being. While the DM may not have made the best call it was also the best one to keep the group together since Pika does not tend to play well with others. He has jumped the gun with assumptions, and attacked the party when he meets them for the first time before. Here is one example in a spoiler.

Playing in a pirate campaign. His character-elf- is stuck in a tree looking for Giant Eagle eggs as his new character not being with the group the day before. My character is a baby black dragon using the racial progression from Dragon Magazine #332. We came across the mated pair the day before and killed them. We then took the eggs with us seeing a profit. The dryads we met later that day let us keep one or two out of the three due to having a druid in the party. When we met my character-the dragon- made the comment that they tasted good. He threw a dagger at me and I breathed some acid at him as an eye for an eye. After that he proceeded to summon a Huge Monstrous Scorpion to continue the battle focusing on the pregnate captain. If things had not been retconned he was going to fire-bombed by my entire Necklace of Fireballs Type IV.

/rant

Sorry that this post turned into my little rant, but the DM was probably trying to not have the backstabbing. What the result was the other player used ghost sound to taunt the blind troll toward the door as his backstab. The orcs went after that same door from the other side to get at us. Result being they took each other out. So while Pika may be a little mad that one of his main tricks didn't work it did keep him from being on thin ice with the group.

@Tyndmyr: That is actually more of my interpretation than it being a rule.:smallredface:

[faceroll]

What if the GM wants you to use that ability in the game, but it happens that right here, right now, it's gonna ruin what he planned? Isn't he allowed to have one-timer fiats?

As a GM, I'd have found a way to reward the player for a good improvisation/use of skill, but still have him failed in the end. It's the kind of tricky move that your players need for you to understand. It's not because you built your character around uber-stealth that you are NEVER going to get caught. I'll give you bonus points on the long-run for fiatting you out, but the fiat still occurs. Deal with it, and don't be such a 1-trick pony.

Unless that one trick is killing stuff. :smallsigh:

[Sillycomic]

That still isn't how things work except in movies

What's wrong with a Gm using movies as a base for this sort of stuff?

Wouldn't an average GM know more about movies than actual military operation?

Thank you for your expert opinion on the military and how it delegates its troops, Tynd. It's very insightful.

But aren't we talking about an imaginary game with an imaginary group of orcs? And the argument, if I'm not mistaken, is how many imaginary ranks one of these imaginary orc's has?

Most Gm's would probably have movies, books and television as sources of background information rather than military ranks and operation.

Is it accurate? Nope. Not at all. And probably never will be. Meh. It honestly doesn't bother me any. It seems to bother you some though.


People in real life are not assorted into neat little groups containing specialists for everything you need.

Isn't this the basis of a party? You need a skillmonkey, heal-bot, tank and Batman. That's just a decent party balance, the kind most players use when they come up with characters. Not always, but most often this is how it goes.

So, wouldn't it make as much sense for the GM to do this kind of balance in the opposing forces? The good guys are allowed to optimize and delegate this kinda stuff, shouldn't the bad guys as well?

[Mando Knight]

Isn't this the basis of a party? You need a skillmonkey, heal-bot, tank and Batman. That's just a decent party balance, the kind most players use when they come up with characters.

Actually, if you've got Batman, you don't need the rest of the party, unless they're invincible supersonic strongmen with laser eyes. That's part of where the Batman-Wizard gets his moniker, after all.

[Sillycomic]

Some batman builds, like buffers and debuffers, require other party members in order to be useful.


Besides, we're talking about players getting around a table and figuring out what to build. I doubt anyone says, "Well I'm going to be a wizard so I don't need any of your silly characters. GM, can you tell me how awesome my catgirls are on my newly created demiplane?"

Yeah... so much for that game.

[faceroll]

Actually, if you've got Batman, you don't need the rest of the party, unless they're invincible supersonic strongmen with laser eyes. That's part of where the Batman-Wizard gets his moniker, after all.

Ugh, Batman totally needs the rest of the party. Most of the Batman spell list is rounds/level lock down spells that don't actually do anything but make targets easier to kill. Glitterdust is only useful if you can kill whatever's blind in a minute. Otherwise, it's coming after you. The rest of the list are lame save-or-dies that don't work on anything worth its CR and also have a disturbingly large s.d. for their failure rate.

There are certainly wizard builds that don't require the rest of the party, but both the GOD and batman builds, as presented, can't actually replace an entire party until quite high level, and even then, you're just abusing shapechange and gate. The best route is a mailman build, if you want to be your own party. But both treantmonk and TLN poo-poo direct damage.

[sambo.]

i'd give a MONUMENTAL bonus to see through someone's disguise as their twin, especially if it's only a mundane skill check being made rather than using major magic.

like, +25 or +30, or even higher. they would be so innatly intimate with the mannerisms and speech patterns of the person being imitated.

it's perhaps a little sub-par of the DM, but i don't thinkit's 'bad' dm'ing. not unless every person you try and imitate, you wind up trying to convince their twin.....

[Silus]

I play with Pika and Turtleking as well, and I find it a little amusing that his post contains so little information that it makes him look like the injured party.

The situation is as follows (Warning, blunt, snarky rant):

As Turtle said, we were in a keep full of Orcs and a pair of Trolls (This is a WotC Module BTW). We had just taken out a Troll and Pika had disguised himself as an Orc and trying to bluff past that we (Myself and Turtle) were prisoners. Of course, he didn't speak Orc or Giant. So he tries (and fails) to bluff past the Troll. So fight starts, he blinds the Troll then runs out like a little b****, leaving myself (Warlock/Sorcerer Gestalt) and Turtle (Shujinja/Warmage Gestalt) to take on a fully healed Troll with a Fire Resist ring. He runs into the next room which is the Garrison and whips out his one trick again. Now, had he succeeded in what he was trying to do, which was send the garrison of Orcs into the room with the Troll to have them help said Troll kill his fellow party members, then, well, there would be pain. Like IRL pain. As in I'd beat the SOB over the head with something large, heavy and blunt.

Anywho, the DM decided (I assume) that he didn't want the players all killed by the actions of one greedy, backstabbing little munchkin. So in come the modifiers, and he starts whining and rules lawyering. "Blah blah blah, Modifiers this, I can't play my character whine whine." So the DM eventually compromised (IMO, he shouldn't have as a way of telling Pika to cut the crap) and sent the grunts off to be mauled by the Troll (That I had tricked via Ghost Sound into charging off towards the Garrison) while the commander duked it out with Pika (The guy had like 1 HP for some reason). Now, I can't speak for Turtle, but I was pissed both in and out of character. This isn't a one time occurrence either, the whole backstabbing thing, and he somehow rationalizes it by clinging to his Chaotic Neutral alignment (I don't want to start an Alignment debate or anything, but if I was DMing, I'd punt his little Kobald butt towards Evil for backstabbing his buddies so he could go off and be a loot whore).

[TurtleKing]

Thank you Silus for presenting the entire situation. Also how can you not tell that I was mad by me saying I would metagame his character's death. Do I really seem that cool and level headed? Only reason I seem that way is due to me being able to go into a blind frothing at the mouth rage that I keep in check.

[Sillycomic]

Wow.

That's really what happened?

Wow.

Umm, under the circumstances I would say this is the most lenient GM ever. He let Pika get away with a lot more than I would have.

This story has nothing to do with GM fiat. There is no quoting of spot or sense motive modifiers that can justify someone doing this in the game.

Apart from knowing and interpreting the rules a GM's job is to also make sure everyone is having a good time. One player using high ranks in bluff and disguise in order to back stab others is beyond ridiculous.


Do you have to play with him? If this is a pattern for him, perhaps you should find another player.

[Jarian]

It sounds like a group meeting is in order to discuss priorities and expectations. I choose not to believe everything presented by either side, as it's obvious there's a lot of bias floating around, but even so it's clear that things aren't working as anyone wants them to right now.

[TurtleKing]

Well we might be getting three new players with no experience to play with us this Friday. The only sad part is we are starting to run low on good DMs or DMs who want to DM.

Which brings up if any DMs are looking for a group in Orlando area PM me. If need be I'll put a thread out in the appropiate Forum than this one.

[Silus]

Wow.

That's really what happened?

Wow.

Umm, under the circumstances I would say this is the most lenient GM ever. He let Pika get away with a lot more than I would have.

This story has nothing to do with GM fiat. There is no quoting of spot or sense motive modifiers that can justify someone doing this in the game.

Apart from knowing and interpreting the rules a GM's job is to also make sure everyone is having a good time. One player using high ranks in bluff and disguise in order to back stab others is beyond ridiculous.


Do you have to play with him? If this is a pattern for him, perhaps you should find another player.

Personally, I want him to change around. He almost ALWAYS plays either a Hide/Move Silently or Bluff munchkin, and almost ALWAYS plays a Rogue in some form or another. I try to get him to branch out to casters, as I think he might like it (At least a Spellthief or something), but thus far, no luck.

We have to tiptoe through the fething tulips with Pika, for whatever reason. We gimp his munchkined skills, he throws a ****fit about it and has, on more than one occasion, threatened to leave the game because we nerfed his character. Not sure WHY we keep him around with this sort of behavior, but we do. I suppose it's cause he's a decent DM (His worlds are fantastic, if a little limiting).

But yeah, the behavior is pretty constant whenever he plays. First session I played with him, he tried to Coup de grâce my character 'cause he had thought I had smacked his character upside the head. Guy is NOT a team player from what I have seen (Backstabbing, looting treasure in combat, loot whoring, ect.), and if he's reading this (I hope so) he needs to chickity-check himself before someone wrecks his world.

Edit: Also, I figure I should apologize for coming off so...er, I suppose merciless? There's only a few things I don't tolerate, and Pika tends to hit on a few of them (Like looting treasure in the middle of combat. 4 years of WoW Raiding will drive that little bit home).

[Silus]

It sounds like a group meeting is in order to discuss priorities and expectations. I choose not to believe everything presented by either side, as it's obvious there's a lot of bias floating around, but even so it's clear that things aren't working as anyone wants them to right now.

Well, the non-biased facts are:

1. Pika had a Disguise optimized character.
2. At the time of this, myself and Turtle were fighting against a Troll by ourselves.
3. Pika had just walked into the Orc garrison after leaving us in the room with the Troll.
4. While in the garrison, he attempted a Bluff and Disguise check to try and convince the Orcs that prisoners had escaped and were fighting the Troll.

[classy one]

@classy one: Thank you for reminding me. His character is a kobold using stilts for the height adjustment. To also help with the size issue he is using the spell Disguise Self. He being a gestalt Dread Necromancer/Cloistered Cleric worshiping the main kobold deity. He found a way to use Disguise Self or something similar more often than his spell alotment will allow. But even with using Disguise Self and other things he may not be getting it right for the height issues. Orcs tend to average around 6ft while a kobold even using stilts may not reach that close in height.

Disguise self only changes visual appearances, so his silts are clanging away? It also allows a will save to see throughout it, hardly the most fool proof plan. His class choices don't indicate a spy either.
From what I can tell, he just killed this Orc and decided to assume his identity. But it takes a lot more than just clothing, height and a good disguise roll to impersonate a specific person. It would be a different issue if he was just impersonating some random mook, but he's trying for a semi-big shot. Other than combat tactics, what does he really know about the person he is trying to imitate? Did he even bother asking if he had a twin brother? Or any family for that matter? Did he know that the Orc in question like to eat jerky really loudly and kick his underlings?
He's complaining about the DM not making his PC fun when the fact is HE himself has simplified the his PC into just a roll. How could anyone have fun with that?

Okay cloistered cleric is a start but dread neromancer? A dedicated master of disguise would have levels in classes that give loads of skills, pick up interaction skill tricks, go into a PrC like spymaster or cabinet trickster, use a changeling, take racial feats (persona immersion, master linguist, etc) find a way to read thoughts.

"I even wasted a feat on skill focus for this" is not what I usually hear from someone who's whole point of being is disguise. In the end, it seems he was the one who misunderstood what it took to really play a master of disguise. It's role playing galore, the skill check is just a start. If heavy role playing his PC isn't his cup of tea then maybe he was the one that was mistaken. Blaming the DM is counterproductive since he's not the real issue.

[Silus]

Okay cloistered cleric is a start but dread neromancer? A dedicated master of disguise would have levels in classes that give loads of skills, pick up interaction skill tricks, go into a PrC like spymaster or cabinet trickster, use a changeling, take racial feats (persona immersion, master linguist, etc) find a way to read thoughts.

"I even wasted a feat on skill focus for this" is not what I usually hear from someone who's whole point of being is disguise. In the end, it seems he was the one who misunderstood what it took to really play a master of disguise. It's role playing galore, the skill check is just a start. If heavy role playing his PC isn't his cup of tea then maybe he was the one that was mistaken. Blaming the DM is counterproductive since he's not the real issue.

As previously stated, the guy is a one-trick munchkin. He somehow got a roll of 40 Disguise at lvl 4. As a Cleric/Necromancer.

[Amnestic]

As previously stated, the guy is a one-trick munchkin. He somehow got a roll of 40 Disguise at lvl 4. As a Cleric/Necromancer.

I'm guessing...high roll+10 (Skillranks+feat)+variable ability modifier+Divine Insight(SpC)?

That is pretty excessive.

[senrath]

As previously stated, the guy is a one-trick munchkin. He somehow got a roll of 40 Disguise at lvl 4. As a Cleric/Necromancer.

That's not all that hard to do. Disguise Self is automatically a +10. Level 4 means you can have 7 ranks of Disguise, although a Cleric base gets that kinda expensive, since you have to make up for lost ground with your DN levels. I'm assuming at least a +3 from Charisma, since DNs get a lot of use out of it. Skill Focus is another +3. A disguise kit is another +2. Divine Insight grants a +7. That's a +32.

Edit: Oh, and I'm not saying this means he's not a munchkin. I'm just saying that it's not hard to get a Disguise check in the low 40s at level 4 as a Cleric/Dread Necromancer.

[TurtleKing]

@classy one: Basically the one he tried to impersonate is some random mook. The problem for Pika was he came across the other twin.

Frankly with two of the players/ DMs possibly leaving within a month Pika thinks the group is falling apart. My opinion is...good. As in the members of the group can choose who to game with and not game with. Would I choose to continue playing with as a player and under Pika as a DM...don't know. I have been giving him multiple chances with my personality being I'll put up with quite a bit, but once that last straw is pulled it is over. No ifs ands or buts about it. He as not pulled the last straw yet. However I must say that I have some fun times with him. He is also the DM that I grew up under as a player.

Time will tell.

Edit: Pika has a 22 for Charisma.

[Silus]

@classy one: Basically the one he tried to impersonate is some random mook. The problem for Pika was he came across the other twin.

Frankly with two of the players/ DMs possibly leaving within a month Pika thinks the group is falling apart. My opinion is...good. As in the members of the group can choose who to game with and not game with. Would I choose to continue playing with as a player and under Pika as a DM...don't know. I have been giving him multiple chances with my personality being I'll put up with quite a bit, but once that last straw is pulled it is over. No ifs ands or buts about it. He as not pulled the last straw yet. However I must say that I have some fun times with him. He is also the DM that I grew up under as a player.

Time will tell.

Edit: Pika has a 22 for Charisma.

Muuuuuuuunchkiiiiiiiiiin.

Also, Turtle, as a "going away present", I'm gonna give Pika a little talking to. It will be blunt. It will be honest. And God almighty, it will be brutal.

Edit: Also, as previously stated, he's a great DM (if somewhat inflexible). It's as a player is where he is lacking.

[senrath]

A 22 in a primary stat automatically makes you a munchkin?

...wait, 22 Charisma at level 4. He's a Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold, isn't he? Okay, I'll agree on the munchkin part.

[Silus]

A 22 in a primary stat automatically makes you a munchkin?

...wait, 22 Charisma at level 4. He's a Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold, isn't he? Okay, I'll agree on the munchkin part.

I don't think he is. As far as I am aware, he's a regular Kobold. He somehow munchkins all his characters to have crazy stats and I've never once looked at his sheets to figure out how he does it.

[TurtleKing]

If you say that the talking is blunt and honest he be glad you did it until you chew his head right off. I approve.

Edit: As for the stats he rolled a lot of high rolls. The DM thinking to give us a cushion since the main campaign will be brutal had us also roll 2d4 as bonus points to our stats upto 22 in any one stat.

[senrath]

The only easy way I know of to get a 22 Charisma by level 4 on a Kobold is to be venerable. Dragonwrought just removes the penalty to physical scores, so it's not technically necessary.

I suppose he could've stacked some templates or something, but that's even more munchkiny, in my opinion.

Unless you're using some stat generating method that allows for stats to start higher than 18, in which case all bets are off.

Edit: Ah, so you're using some stat generating method that allows for stats to start higher than 18. So all bets are off :smalltongue:

[Silus]

If you say that the talking is blunt and honest he be glad you did it until you chew his head right off. I approve.

Edit: As for the stats he rolled a lot of high rolls. The DM thinking to give us a cushion since the main campaign will be brutal had us also roll 2d4 as bonus points to our stats upto 22 in any one stat.

There's a reason I do most of my complaining/arguing/b*tching online.

[classy one]

Wow after reading the full account I have to say the DM was a saint.

I don't personally believe in kicking a player out. I do believe that I can try to work something out with the player, even if it means making the problem player an adversary to the main party. Still that is hardly optimal, the best thing a DM can do is just enforce the rules. Do stupid thing and bad things happen to you.

He might only have one skill (doubtful since he is a cleric) so maybe he decided he would just be a liability to the remaining PCs so he decided to bluff in order to trick others into helping out. This is a perfectly sound tactic if that was what he was going for . But as we know now, it wasn't.

How would handle this as a DM? First his crappy disguise would fail (doesn't speak orcish!!?) and he would get mauled.
If by some miracle he passed his opposed check, and decided to wipe his own party, I'd try my best to let the PCs fighting the trolls escape, looking at their sheets for anything that could help them (or Deja ex machina) and leave the kobold with his new friends. One of them will make a successful sense motive check or will save or his spell just runs out and he's screwed.

BTW he isn't a munchkin. He might think he is but he sucks at it and the game should reflect that. Disguising as someone and you don't even know their language? That's so basic that I can't even wrap my mind around how he can consider himself a disguise artist.

[TurtleKing]

In regards for the other members escaping I can spontaneously cast Obscuring Mist and Expeditious Retreat for both of us.

I should also mention being able to cast at least four more Lesser Orb of Acid.

[Silus]

@ classy one

With this one character, I'll hesitantly agree that he is not a munchkin. However, with mostly all of his characters, he tweaks the skills out to absurd levels, and 9/10, it's the same ones.

lvl 7-9 Owlbear Rogue with a 30+ mod to Hide and Move Silently + Hide in Plain Sight and (I think) something that lets him shadowmeld like once a day. Like every character. The only thing that ever changes is the race and the name.

[sambo.]

I play with Pika and Turtleking as well, and I find it a little amusing that his post contains so little information that it makes him look like the injured party.

The situation is as follows (Warning, blunt, snarky rant):

As Turtle said, we were in a keep full of Orcs and a pair of Trolls (This is a WotC Module BTW). We had just taken out a Troll and Pika had disguised himself as an Orc and trying to bluff past that we (Myself and Turtle) were prisoners. Of course, he didn't speak Orc or Giant. So he tries (and fails) to bluff past the Troll. So fight starts, he blinds the Troll then runs out like a little b****, leaving myself (Warlock/Sorcerer Gestalt) and Turtle (Shujinja/Warmage Gestalt) to take on a fully healed Troll with a Fire Resist ring. He runs into the next room which is the Garrison and whips out his one trick again. Now, had he succeeded in what he was trying to do, which was send the garrison of Orcs into the room with the Troll to have them help said Troll kill his fellow party members, then, well, there would be pain. Like IRL pain. As in I'd beat the SOB over the head with something large, heavy and blunt.

Anywho, the DM decided (I assume) that he didn't want the players all killed by the actions of one greedy, backstabbing little munchkin. So in come the modifiers, and he starts whining and rules lawyering. "Blah blah blah, Modifiers this, I can't play my character whine whine." So the DM eventually compromised (IMO, he shouldn't have as a way of telling Pika to cut the crap) and sent the grunts off to be mauled by the Troll (That I had tricked via Ghost Sound into charging off towards the Garrison) while the commander duked it out with Pika (The guy had like 1 HP for some reason). Now, I can't speak for Turtle, but I was pissed both in and out of character. This isn't a one time occurrence either, the whole backstabbing thing, and he somehow rationalizes it by clinging to his Chaotic Neutral alignment (I don't want to start an Alignment debate or anything, but if I was DMing, I'd punt his little Kobald butt towards Evil for backstabbing his buddies so he could go off and be a loot whore).

right. now i know this....

if I'D been the DM, i'd have done a LOT worse to you than simply nuking your disguise check.

[Mystral]

Maybe you should take your interpersonal conflict to a more private spot of the Internet.

[Bobikus]

Not going to comment on the situation since I'm not sure if any bias is involved either way, but regarding all the talk about what he has to to do for the disguise to work, that's why there's circumstantial modifiers. Having an idea of what the character has to actually do does help the immersion, but the player doesn't need to know everything that goes into going into the disguise, because the characters skills indicate that the character knows what he needs to do. If the DM requires the player to know those thing, then that needs to be stated up front with the players.

[Jinn Master]

If I were the Dm, I would have had the Orcs speak in orcish about killing him, making a plan to trick him into death, then pretend to buy the lie, escorting all three people inside, so they'd be surrounded. I'd then let the fight get hard enough for the party to want to book it, but keep Pika from leaving.


You want to kill a player in my campaign without them being cool with it? You're either rerolling or you're out of the game. Unless of course the game was an evil game, but when everyone is more on the good axis of things... that isn't going to fly.

[Killer Angel]

Guess I will have to provide the extra information.

This explains a lot. I tend to agree with the DM.


Maybe I should point out what the alternative could have been if he passed.

I decisely tend to agree with the DM.



bull. You should always put people where they work best.


Fixed for you. :smalltongue:

[classy one]

Not going to comment on the situation since I'm not sure if any bias is involved either way, but regarding all the talk about what he has to to do for the disguise to work, that's why there's circumstantial modifiers. Having an idea of what the character has to actually do does help the immersion, but the player doesn't need to know everything that goes into going into the disguise, because the characters skills indicate that the character knows what he needs to do. If the DM requires the player to know those thing, then that needs to be stated up front with the players.

First of all there is a lot more to this than just a disguise roll. Disguise only allows for others to not recognize you. You need to bluff them into thinking you are really who you say are.

He was using disguise self on a group of 20-30 orcs, statistically speaking at least one of them will roll a 20 and automatically succeed his will save against it. Which makes him look like a kobold on silts maybe with make up on so automatic -10 on that disguise. Now you have a twin bother, how much of a bonus is that? A +20 spot check seems more than reasonable.

After you succeed your disguise check, you need to make them believe you. Which is a bluff check. This is the skill you want loads of circumstance bonuses in because they are allowed a sense motive check everytime you tell a lie (like "I'm an orc" or "I'm on your side") which is going to be the bulk of your interactions with others. If you are tricking to bluff someone into killing or fighting some trolls with known resistance to fire you get a big penalty as well. Now factor in the fact you don't even speak a language you impersonated persona is supposed to know from childhood. How would you even bluff when you can't even adequely interact with the person you are lying to? You might be able to feint them but telling lies implies sharing a language to convay said lie.

The fact is the player had no idea how to even play a con artist and just reduced it to numbers. Would have been very hard to put a few ranks into speak language skill? No but he was too number driven to see the simple fact that bluffing required you to even start a lie in the first place.

[senrath]

He was using disguise self on a group of 20-30 orcs, statistically speaking at least one of them will roll a 20 and automatically succeed his will save against it. Which makes him look like a kobold on silts maybe with make up on so automatic -10 on that disguise. Now you have a twin bother, how much of a bonus is that? A +20 spot check seems more than reasonable.


That's not how Disguise Self works, unless you define "interacting with" as "looking at". Second, being someone's twin brother, by the rules grants +10, not +20.

[_Zoot_]

I have to say, there are instances that I would auto fail a player, but they would only come up if it WAS something that I had planed for. I think the fact that I let my players use any clever plans and try to improvise what happens if it isn't something planed for is one of my strengths as a DM. However, (one of my many) weaknesses is that if I have taken the care to give personalities to soldiers in a base and they try to bluff past them by trying to pretend they are someone they knew (For example) they would be stuffed.

I might take a roll if they role played it well, but if not...

[stainboy]

Eh, the fact that the Disguise skill doesn't have any size or creature type restrictions should imply that its rules aren't exhaustive. The rules don't stop you from disguising a pixie as a colossal centipede, but that doesn't mean you *should* be able to do it. Minmaxing Disguise on a kobold shows an intent to use the rules in immersion-breaking and disruptive ways.

Skill Focus (Disguise) should have been a red flag too. Every experienced player knows it's a wasted feat slot. The only reason to take it is to twist the DM's arm - "but I spent a feat, if Disguise doesn't work I can't play my character!" Note that Pika does exactly this in the OP.

Ideally this character would have been banned at creation, but the DM was still in the right.

[Tyndmyr]

Muuuuuuuunchkiiiiiiiiiin.

I wouldn't judge someone a munchkin based on a single high stat. 22 is quite achievable through legal means. If it's literally just that the character creation system is extremely generous...then I don't know how you'd call him a munchkin for rolling well.

If it bothers you, use point buy. You get much more equal stats with point buy. Unequal stats is the entire point of rolling them.

22 cha on a level 4 is stupid easy, for all the naysayers. Start w an 18. Any race with a cha bonus. Age bonuses. Templates(half dragon is core, and grants +2 cha). Class bonuses(look, a dragon racial class in ROTD. +2 cha at level 2). A level two core spell that provides a +4 enhancement bonus is sufficient by itself. Thats stupid simple.



Now, how he acts to the rest of the party is entirely a separate issue from if disguise should work. If you don't want interparty conflict, sort that out OOC. It's a reasonable desire, but it has little to do with the disguise skill.


Personally, I want him to change around. He almost ALWAYS plays either a Hide/Move Silently or Bluff munchkin, and almost ALWAYS plays a Rogue in some form or another. I try to get him to branch out to casters, as I think he might like it (At least a Spellthief or something), but thus far, no luck.

Yeah, that happens. Some people play the same things all the time. That isn't inherently wrong.


We have to tiptoe through the fething tulips with Pika, for whatever reason. We gimp his munchkined skills, he throws a sh*tfit about it and has, on more than one occasion, threatened to leave the game because we nerfed his character. Not sure WHY we keep him around with this sort of behavior, but we do. I suppose it's cause he's a decent DM (His worlds are fantastic, if a little limiting).

That's extremely understandable. Having a character in play suddenly get nerfed is really annoying. If you really don't want him to play x, ban x at character creation, don't do passive aggressive post-hoc nerfs.


But yeah, the behavior is pretty constant whenever he plays. First session I played with him, he tried to Coup de grâce my character 'cause he had thought I had smacked his character upside the head. Guy is NOT a team player from what I have seen (Backstabbing, looting treasure in combat, loot whoring, ect.), and if he's reading this (I hope so) he needs to chickity-check himself before someone wrecks his world.

Then the problem is not the character, but the player. Nerfing the character doesn't fix any of this. Talk to the player.


Edit: Also, I figure I should apologize for coming off so...er, I suppose merciless? There's only a few things I don't tolerate, and Pika tends to hit on a few of them (Like looting treasure in the middle of combat. 4 years of WoW Raiding will drive that little bit home).

Eh, D&D ain't WoW. If you want this to be a rule, make it explicit. That said, sometimes this is a wise tactical move. If a combat suddenly goes south, having the loot when you run can be nice.

Your real problem ain't the disguise/bluff checks. Ignore that, use the skills in accordance w the rules, or make house rules clear in advance. The problem is apparently a bunch of ya'll don't get along.

[Bobikus]

It sounds like your group just needs to sit down and talk directly about any issues you have with each other's playstyles. How he builds his character is up to him, and many players stick to a build they enjoy, even when making multiple characters. The actual issue is that his play-style seems to go against the dynamic of the group, at least in the types of campaigns you're playing (in something like Paranoia or a Scorpion heavy L5R group, those backstabbing tactics would fit right in), which is something you guys need to settle as players, not in-game.

I don't even really want to comment much on the actual in-game situation being discussed too much though, since I wasn't at the table to see what actually happened, and there's likely to be bias in both sides here, considering that the OPs post sounded like he was mostly venting at the time, and the one of the other players even attempted to indirectly call him out in another topic over the same one-build issue.

[mangosta71]

Knowing the full story? As a DM, I would follow a three-step plan to correct him.
I wouldn't have fudged the dice to let his character live. More likely I would have fudged to make sure he didn't if necessary.

Let him roll up a new character - the party can rescue a prisoner from the keep to let everyone meet up. Of course, he'd start with no cash or gear of any sort, but those are the breaks.

Very carefully go over his character sheet, and explicitly forbid him from playing anything with "chaotic" in the alignment.

[Sipex]

While I am siding with the DM a bit here, using a neutral view this is really something that needs to be discussed and decided amongst the group.

And I don't mean the disguise check, the issues are a lot deeper than that.



Today's Lesson: Don't judge a situation based on limited information, you could be wrong!

[stainboy]

That's extremely understandable. Having a character in play suddenly get nerfed is really annoying. If you really don't want him to play x, ban x at character creation, don't do passive aggressive post-hoc nerfs.


I'd agree if we were talking about something well defined in the rules. If the DM lets you make an acid flask rogue or whatever it's his responsibility to know that acid flask rogues do tons of damage.

Disguise, Diplomacy, and Hide/Move Silently basically have no rules, at least not functional ones. You can't know what the player thinks they do until you see them in actual play. If the player can't accept it when the DM arbitrarily rules that they don't work, then the player shouldn't minmax skills that rely on arbitrary rulings.

[Sipex]

I'd agree if we were talking about something well defined in the rules. If the DM lets you make an acid flask rogue or whatever it's his responsibility to know that acid flask rogues do tons of damage.

Disguise, Diplomacy, and Hide/Move Silently basically have no rules, at least not functional ones. You can't know what the player thinks they do until you see them in actual play. If the player can't accept it when the DM arbitrarily rules that they don't work, then the player shouldn't minmax skills that rely on arbitrary rulings.

I'd like to add that since Pika allegedly uses this trick "All the time" and he hasn't posted rants about this before that it most likely works most of the time. So it's not actually a nerf if it usually works.

[classy one]

That's not how Disguise Self works, unless you define "interacting with" as "looking at". Second, being someone's twin brother, by the rules grants +10, not +20.
If he was just trying to blend into the crowd as a faceless mook no one would be the wiser, but he was trying to get them to fight his former teammates which is an interaction leaving his disguise self open to will saves.

The rules for disguise and are not exhaustive. Given that there are several ways for people to interact a different factors, this hardly a surprise. Which leaves a lot of room for a DM to make a ruling.

There is no language ruling in bluff, this is true but common sense should be considered. Use magical device implies you have a magical device to use and not "I'll use UMD to fire a magic missile even when I don't have the wand in my hand, because my UMD roll was just awesome!!". I can't forge documents without a writing instrument and paper, I need limbs to dance n

Let's look at the OP...
At best, he would be considered a lunatic who looked like an orc.

At worst, the fact that he could not even the language and trying to tell them something would raise suspciousions resulting in a one or more Orc seeing through his disguise or bluffs.

Neither involves Pika getting his way via bluffs.

[Tyndmyr]

I'd agree if we were talking about something well defined in the rules. If the DM lets you make an acid flask rogue or whatever it's his responsibility to know that acid flask rogues do tons of damage.

Disguise, Diplomacy, and Hide/Move Silently basically have no rules, at least not functional ones. You can't know what the player thinks they do until you see them in actual play. If the player can't accept it when the DM arbitrarily rules that they don't work, then the player shouldn't minmax skills that rely on arbitrary rulings.

They...do have rules. They are reasonably functional, with the exception of diplomacy, and even that one isn't horrifically terrible. Bluff and disguise are quite functional.

Yes, YOU think they require arbitrary rulings. Other people think other things require arbitrary rulings. It's pretty much impossible to guess what sort of rulings a DM will make in advance unless you have info to work with. It's the DMs responsibility to say "oh, I see you made a diplomancer here. I should tell you that in my world, your actual roll is irrelevant compared to what you say".

Just because someone doesn't rant about it doesn't tell you much about how it works. We've already heard directly from the same people that he also failed vs the troll. Note that the troll is not the brother of the orc. That's not how genetics work.

[Crow]

That still isn't how things work except in movies. People in real life are not assorted into neat little groups containing specialists for everything you need. Once there, they are not assigned everywhere perfectly.

No, not perfectly. But when you're in charge of organizing a group of Afgan farmers into a fighting force, that's what you do. Same goes for training up Congolese militia. Nobody's a specialist, but some guys are going to be better at certain things than others, and effective leaders put people into positions where they will succeed.

Just because some organizations do not have effective leaders, doesn't mean that it is universal accross the board. There will always be cases of people being promoted above their level of competence, and I have even been stung by the less-qualified kiss-ass being promoted before the more competent quiet guy (albeit in a corporate environment, where kissing ass seems to work).

[stainboy]

They...do have rules. They are reasonably functional, with the exception of diplomacy, and even that one isn't horrifically terrible. Bluff and disguise are quite functional.

Yes, YOU think they require arbitrary rulings. Other people think other things require arbitrary rulings...

The Disguise skill as listed in the SRD says nothing about size or creature type. See previous example of a pixie disguised as a Colossal centipede, which is only a -2 penalty (different race).

Even if you wanted to play this by strict RAW, you can't. It produces undefined behavior. You disguise yourself as a creature with a space bigger or smaller than your normal space, and an enemy tries to move adjacent to you and attack you. What happens?

So either way there's no way to play Disguise that doesn't eventually come down to common sense. (I'll concede Hide/Move Silently does have defined rules that you can use by RAW, they're just dumb and most people don't.)

[Cartigan]

Guess I will have to provide the extra information. I play with Pika and he got his disguise as high as possible. He killed the guy in one round then try to pass off as him on his disguise. Granted he may look like him, but he does not sound like him. No two voices are the same so you can imitate as close as possible, but not actually just like another person. He does not in fact know Orcish...yet.

Pika has the unrealistic expectations that the disguise skill works on all senses were it only works on sight. Against a Troll earlier the Troll was confused by the armor having the Orcs smell mixed in with another smell. He also thought that heal checks to identify would not work. Wrong. My character had seen the bunny (disguise at the time) shoot lasers out of his eyes. Being a Killoren knowing that is not normal did a heal check. Heal checks require touching so when disguise skill being used amounts to nothing. A disguise auto fails in the wake of someone touching. As for Scent you may smell both the imposter and the person the imposter is trying to impersonate. Better hope taste is not used for negating a disguise.... As for hearing if you don't sound like the person they will see through the disguise. If he doesn't act like the person you get a serious penalty to the disguise.

Fellow players verdict is the DM made the right call. The time he used it was when he not only met the twin brother who is an Orc leader, but 10 other orcs as well. They were confused by the disguise due to not acting like the other twin. The best he can hope for with a disguise on the fly with no research is to merely walk from one place to another without being interacted with.

Edit: Pika's character is not actually a one trick pony. He just uses that trick a lot. He does have a good Bluff so he could if he the character spent the time watching other people could pass himself off as another person. In this instance that is just not possible due to killing the guy as soon as you met him.

I read all this as "Mundane disguise never works." That is completely ignoring the "I disguise myself as the twin brother of some orc chieftain [I don't even know]" details.

[Bobikus]

There's also still the concern over whether the orc being a twin of the dead orc was actually planned, or just a retconned justification for auto-failing a check.

[Tyndmyr]

Just because some organizations do not have effective leaders, doesn't mean that it is universal accross the board.

You still don't understand. It isn't even a case of ineffective leaders. Sometimes people get put in jobs they are not good at because that job is, right now, more important than the job they are good at. Or for any number of other reasons. It *can* be bad leadership, but it isn't always.

For a D&D example involving guards, consider the practice of parties taking shifts on guard throughout the night. This means that, the majority of the time, the guard on duty is not the optimal choice. Thing is, he's gotta sleep too. That's how things work in the real world.


Stainboy: By strict RAW, disguise lets you pass as someone. It does not grant you their abilities. You do not gain size or reach benefits from it. Oh sure, you might be wearing stilts or what not...but those don't boost your run speed. I don't know why you'd think that they would. It's not common sense that it would. And the modifiers you claim do not exist in the SRD can be found in the epic skills section.

Oh no, you don't have a pixie impersonate a dragon by RAW without some magic first.


Apparently a lot of people don't read how skills work much.

[Bobikus]

There's a limit to how much larger or smaller your disguise can be to your actual size. The reason the Kobold needs stilts to be an orc is because he's not within that limit at his natural height without using the stilts to be within that limit by changing his effective height. A Pixie would need some way of manipulating and moving a dragon costume that's actually colossal size to be able to disguise as a dragon.

[Tyndmyr]

Honestly, if that's not a good example of common sense in rules form, I'm not sure what is.

[Bobikus]

Even Disguise Self can't change body type or significantly alter size, so just starter level magic isn't enough either.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, there's enlarge and reduce person. But those are fairly logically doing what is advertised on the tin, and mechanical changes as a result are addressed in there.

Playing by RAW is much, much less impossible than people make it out to be. Diplomacy is really the toughest one.

[Bobikus]

I'd consider use of enlarge/reduce person to help a disguise to just be a smart use of the tools at hand anyway.

Even then though, they're only changes of one size category, and certainly wouldn't allow a pixie or even an orc to disguise itself as something colossal without additional magic, or a size-appropriate costume, which would logically either need mechanical components or multiple people to get the costume to move in a natural looking manner.

[Tyndmyr]

Right. Offhand, I can't think of anything short of polymorph/shapechange/etc. At that point, you're not disguising yourself as a dragon, you're changing to BE a dragon. Which, at that level, is perfectly normal for a caster, and is not really a disguise thing at all.

You could probably stack size bonuses, but I doubt would be at all synergistic with optimizing for disguise.

[Sillycomic]

Well, personally I've spent a good day combing over the SRD and books such as the Epic Handbook to figure out the ins and outs of bluff, disguise, sense motive and spot in order to figure out what did happen and what could happen.

But, I don't think the GM had as much time as that. I think he was in the middle of a game, in the middle of the battle with the party split and while he knows generally how the skills works, he doesn't know the specifics. He just made a call based on his gut and kept the game going, rather then get bogged down in a rule for half an hour trying to make sure the particular disguise bluff that seems ludicrous in the first place had been pulled off or not.

And it is ludicrous! A kobold on stilts running into a room full of orcs claiming to be a chieftan's twin brother pretending to be cursed into speaking goblin is telling them that random prisoners are escaping? That is beyond insane. I wish I saw this in a movie, it would be the funniest thing ever!

I personally don't think the Gm made a bad call here. Apart from the in-game fighting the bluff/disguise was obviously used for one player's enjoyment of the game at the expense of others.

I would say the group needs to sit down and have a frank discussion about PVP fighting. Because I really don't see much difference between bluffing orcs to run in and kill your party members and pulling out a weapon to do it yourself. So once they establish that part better than things like this won't be a problem. The group can just say there's no PVP, and an extension of that is suggesting/convcincing NPC's to do the dirty work for you.

Once the group has that figured out, I'm thinking these kinds of misunderstandings shouldn't happen anymore.

We can Monday Night Quarterback all we want, but it doesn't change anything. I think the GM was wrong according to RAW, but I also think he made a good call. If I were a GM I would have made this same call.

[stainboy]

Stainboy: By strict RAW, disguise lets you pass as someone. It does not grant you their abilities. You do not gain size or reach benefits from it. Oh sure, you might be wearing stilts or what not...but those don't boost your run speed. I don't know why you'd think that they would. It's not common sense that it would. And the modifiers you claim do not exist in the SRD can be found in the epic skills section.

Oh no, you don't have a pixie impersonate a dragon by RAW without some magic first.


Apparently a lot of people don't read how skills work much.

The Epic Level Handbook implies a constraint of +/- 10% of height and weight for non-epic disguise, but that constraint never appears in the text. PHB predates Epic Level Handbook. It's up to the DM to decide whether to treat epic disguise as errata or part of an optional ruleset.

Note that Pika's kobold disguising itself as an orc is not legal if using ELH disguise, as the kobold cannot increase its height or weight by enough to appear to be an orc. In the case we're actually talking about, the group ignores ELH.


Also the reach / run speed thing is a strawman. I never said a word about reach or run speed. That's the second time you've tried that (first was Bluff, which I never used as an example of a skill that couldn't be played by RAW). Please try to argue in good faith.

[Cartigan]

OK, a Kobold can't disguise itself as an Orc, that's obvious, let's move on (and why is it speaking Goblin?)

Why does a Heal check negate Disguise? Why was anyone using a Heal check? Do Sense Motive rules suddenly consist of a very thorough pat-down? Why does scent overcome disguise? Talking? I mean, given what the [TurtleKing] posted, the only way disguise works is if you stand very quietly behind museum ropes and hope no one has scent.

[Zherog]

Well, personally I've spent a good day combing over the SRD and books such as the Epic Handbook to figure out the ins and outs of bluff, disguise, sense motive and spot in order to figure out what did happen and what could happen.

But, I don't think the GM had as much time as that. I think he was in the middle of a game...

Except that the DM knew (or, should've known) that the character is playing a disguisomancer. Maybe I'm just strange, but when one of my players decides to build a character around a part of the rules I'm not overly familiar with, I do everything I can to become familiar with them. Off-the-top-of-my-head example: A few years ago, one of my players wanted to focus on mounted combat. I'm vaguely familiar with the rules, but I made darn sure that I reviewed the rules and that I talked to the player after I was done, to make sure he and I were on the same page.

Don't get me wrong. There's a whole host of problems here, on both sides. A lot of those issues seem to start with the "I'm chaotic neutral, so I can do anything I want" mentality displayed by Pika. And I'm not saying the DM didn't know the rules; I'm just saying that' a cop out, in this instance.

[Sillycomic]

You think it's a cop out that the GM didn't have as much time as us to analyze the situation?

I think that's pretty obvious, but to each his own opinion.

Is it a cop out that he didn't know the rules as much as we did? Meh. Again, I would say your opinion. Being familiar with the rules and going through them with a fine tooth comb are 2 different things. The GM could have known the rules but not have been as exhaustive as we are in the analysis of them.

Which was my point. We're looking at it from a RAW perspective of hours and hours going through SRD and other books before we can say what should or shouldn't have happened. The GM didn't have such a luxury.

[Sipex]

Well, we know that the check failed and that Pika argued about it so the cop out might have been a last ditch. From the sounds of things the DM had a reasonable explanation at first (representing from his list of circumstance modifiers which have been mentioned) so the cop out which is indisputable (the orc's twin brother) might have had to be brought forward instead.

ie: Stop arguing with me, this is my final ruling.

[Zherog]

But the GM did have that luxury. He knew -- or, again, should've known -- that the character was going to use and abuse disguise as much as possible. That's the focus of the build. It is then up to the GM to become familiar with those rules, including writing up a quick "cheat sheet" of all possible modifiers if necessary, to make it easily referenced.

I'm not saying the GM should've had every single one of those bonuses/penalties memorized. Some people can do that, some can't. But in my opinion there's no reason for the GM to be unprepared for the player to pull this stunt -- it's the focus of the character -- and so if the DM is among the many, many people incapable of rote memorization of bonuses/penalties, it is incumbent upon the DM to have some other easy access, such as a post-it note.

edit: I agree with you, Sipex. It's entirely possible the DM did in fact have all those rules ready, knew the reason for the failure, and tossed out the "twin brother" argument to shut the player up.

Again, to be clear, I'm not saying the DM was unprepared. I'm saying there's no good reason for him to be unprepared.

[Bobikus]

Hell, not only was that character a disguisomancer, but it sounds like the group has played multiple campaigns with each other, and that player has always played characters based on such skills.

[Sillycomic]

Not sure about all of that. Unless you have some extensive knowledge about the GM and how much he actually did prepare for this eventuality, I think it's all just speculation.

You do make a good argument on what a GM should do when his players bring these kinds of characters to the table.

[TurtleKing]

@Cartigan: My character had seen a bunny shoot lasers out of his eyes. That was his disguise earlier. Being a Killoren Warmage/Shugenja gestalt with a maxed out Know:Nature and ranks in Heal knew that wasn't normal. So I did a heal check on to identify him. Heal checks require touching the person so I could feel the disguise. You could even go so far as to say I also had to take some of the disguise off just like an EMT would have to partially strip a patient as needed to provide care. The disguise skill only talks about Spot as the opposed skill meaning visual. When someone however uses an alternate senses as in touching the disguise is pretty much ruined.

Example: Basically put a guy in a gorilla suit done really well may fool a person's eyes, but when the person touches the guy they will feel that it is a suit.

Even if you had a really great disguise it is bluff that is used that you are who you pretend to be. You use bluff to convince them. So if you can't bluff them then they will know somethings wrong and see right through your disguise.

Based on what I have seen I think backstabbing is how he gets his "kicks". Each time he is smiling, giggling, laughing with a mischievious look on his face when he is backstabbing. He actively tries to go on a conquering spree to gain domination. Once in power it is his way or death. I think that he is of the opinion to have fun in D&D is to compete with the fellow players.

[Tyndmyr]

Hell, not only was that character a disguisomancer, but it sounds like the group has played multiple campaigns with each other, and that player has always played characters based on such skills.

Yes. You'd expect that at some point, people would at least bother to search for "disguise" in the SRD, which is about as much effort as I put into it. I assure you, reading the skills did not take hours. The DM could memorize the bonuses. Or write them down on a notecard if memorization isn't his thing. Whichever. I've done both before. The point is, preparation should be done for things you *know* will come up.

And honestly, trying to bluff your way past someone's own brother could be a fantastic roleplaying opportunity. Possibly hilarious.

IMO, the GM was just really trying to stop the interparty conflict. That goal is fine, mind you...I just don't agree with how he went about it. It solves nothing.

[Zherog]

You do make a good argument on what a GM should do when his players bring these kinds of characters to the table.

That's all I'm saying. Sorry that I'm not clear. A few posts before my first one, you said, "But, I don't think the GM had as much time as that." And I was really just replying to that thought. You said we've spent a couple of days combing through the SRD and such gathering up all the rules. And my only point is that the GM should do the same thing, because he/she knew going in that the player was going to focus on this. I'm not saying he/she didn't do it - we have no way of knowing either way.

It was just a general comment, really, that any GM who knows a player is going to focus on a part of the rules he/she isn't super-familiar with should take time to review, and even write up a cheat sheet if needed. My apologies for being unclear.

[Bobikus]

Yes. You'd expect that at some point, people would at least bother to search for "disguise" in the SRD, which is about as much effort as I put into it. I assure you, reading the skills did not take hours. The DM could memorize the bonuses. Or write them down on a notecard if memorization isn't his thing. Whichever. I've done both before. The point is, preparation should be done for things you *know* will come up.

And honestly, trying to bluff your way past someone's own brother could be a fantastic roleplaying opportunity. Possibly hilarious.

IMO, the GM was just really trying to stop the interparty conflict. That goal is fine, mind you...I just don't agree with how he went about it. It solves nothing.

The only real way to solve inter-party conflict is to just talk it out OOC anyway. DM Fiat in-game in either direction at best just delays the problem a little longer and even then can easily make one of the sides feel alienated or mistreated.

[Sillycomic]

Actually, I said I spent a day combing through the SRD and other books, not we.

I imagine some people can pull this stuff off the top of their head. Some people can come into a thread like this and already know the modifiers and what's going on. Not me, I need something like the SRD just to make some of my rants sound more comprehensible.

[Tyndmyr]

The only real way to solve inter-party conflict is to just talk it out OOC anyway. DM Fiat in-game in either direction at best just delays the problem a little longer and even then can easily make one of the sides feel alienated or mistreated.

Pretty much. Ruling either way on a disguise check is not gonna make the players like each other suddenly.

You need to either make a pro or anti-pvp determination. If you are the sort of group that likes pvp, make sure everyone is on board. If not, ditto. I find either solution is superior to endless conflict and backstabbing. At least with pro-pvp, the party will probably join up and kill him off quickly.

[Bobikus]

Even aside from just the in-game situations, it sounds like this group has a fair amount of bitterness and passive-aggressiveness spilling into the group OOC as well anyway, so an actual group discussion probably needs to happen regardless.

[Tengu_temp]

I've only skimmed through this thread, so I'll just say this: A kobold trying to pass off as an orc with the help of stilts and actually managing to fool anyone is something that belongs in Toon, not in any campaign that wants to be at least partially serious. I agree with the DM making this fail automatically.

[Jayabalard]

Yes. You'd expect that at some point, people would at least bother to search for "disguise" in the SRD, which is about as much effort as I put into it. I assure you, reading the skills did not take hours. The DM could memorize the bonuses. Or write them down on a notecard if memorization isn't his thing. Whichever. I've done both before. The point is, preparation should be done for things you *know* will come up.Meh, I've got better things to do with my time than trying to out rules lawyer a problem player. I'd expect most GMs do as well, so if someone tries some that that just doesn't make sense, they should just make a ruling... exactly like the DM did in this example.

[Fri]

I guess this is kinda unrelated since pika's problem had been discussed to death, but as a DM, I hate, hate, hate, hate it when players assume I'm railroading them. I might railroad once in a while, but players shouldn't just assume it because there might be tons of thing they can't see from their player's pov. bbeg escaping? well, maybe since he's a overlord, he already prepared escape chutes from his throne rooms before the players were ever born. Got ambushed by bounty hunters? Maybe you're actually been followed since last session, when did you last actively check for people following you or people watching you in taverns? things like that. It's kinda my pet peeve as DM.

[Tyndmyr]

Meh, I've got better things to do with my time than trying to out rules lawyer a problem player. I'd expect most GMs do as well, so if someone tries some that that just doesn't make sense, they should just make a ruling... exactly like the DM did in this example.

There is a huge gap between "knowing the rules" and rules lawyering.

And while this player may be a problem player, it is not because of his following the rules, but because of his gleeful tendancy to stab the party in the back. That ain't a rules thing.

If it comes down to a GM saying "Meh, I've got better things to do with my time than learning the rules", I submit that they should not be a GM for a rules-heavy system. It clearly does not fit them.

[Echoes]

I guess this is kinda unrelated since pika's problem had been discussed to death, but as a DM, I hate, hate, hate, hate it when players assume I'm railroading them. I might railroad once in a while, but players shouldn't just assume it because there might be tons of thing they can't see from their player's pov. bbeg escaping? well, maybe since he's a overlord, he already prepared escape chutes from his throne rooms before the players were ever born. Got ambushed by bounty hunters? Maybe you're actually been followed since last session, when did you last actively check for people following you or people watching you in taverns? things like that. It's kinda my pet peeve as DM.

See, I feel like this is a dangerous philosophy to embrace as a DM. While it might be a bias on my part toward sandboxy campaigns, I feel like 'well, you just didn't ask the right questions' will breed paranoia in your players. For me, the logical response to a DM who puts me in situations like that would be for me to take 20s on search checks of every single wall and doorway I pass, sense motive on every single NPC the party meets, and make random spot checks every 5 minutes for suspicious people, good roleplay be damned. In fact, a game I'm in right now has a player (not me) who is doing just this; he's played with the DM before, and from what I gather he's been screwed over pretty badly with the excuse that there were things he could've done to avoid it.

Honestly, I think DMs should be hypersensitive to the perspective of their players. While sure, it might seem perfectly logical to you that the NPCs you've had secretly following the party for the past two sessions might attack now, but remember that your party doesn't know that, and that they will see it just as an ambush they couldn't prepare for. A DMs world need have no more persistence than maintaining that which has already been shared with the players; if they've been having a bad session, it's probably better to just pretend that that ambush party never existed and rewrite your adventure accordingly.

[Fri]

I actually perfectly understand you. I do mold my adventures according to what the players do, I think I never actively screw them. What I hate is when people assume I'm railroading them when I actually don't, when there are things that the players can't see. I just put that example as extreme example.

[Tyndmyr]

To avoid that, I suggest being a fairly open DM. For instance, I roll almost everything in the open(there's a coupla rolls that explicitly need to be secret, those are the exception). I also don't mind explaining the "why" behind something after it's been completed. My players will now sometimes curiously ask me why such and such happened...sometimes it's a minor detail, sometimes it's a subplot they didn't explore. Sometimes they don't ask. *shrug*

Keep in mind that I don't railroad at all, though. If you all decide to entirely ignore the clues about the goblins swarming in an area and start a shop selling rat-burgers, you can. This may not be a wise or healthy decision, since events have repercussions, but if you don't mind goblins, well...such is life.

It's much harder to claim you don't railroad when sometimes you do.

[mangosta71]

But the GM did have that luxury. He knew -- or, again, should've known -- that the character was going to use and abuse disguise as much as possible. That's the focus of the build. It is then up to the GM to become familiar with those rules, including writing up a quick "cheat sheet" of all possible modifiers if necessary, to make it easily referenced.
That depends. Was this the first session of the adventure? If the group just rolled up sheets and wanted to start playing right away, the DM wouldn't have had time to study up. Sure, the player has used social skills as his primary trick before, but maybe last time he did it with diplomacy so the DM studied those rules and just had something else thrown in his face this time around.

Also, it makes sense to me that a high disguise roll isn't proof against scent. K-9 units can find people even if they shave/put on fake mustaches/whatever because the person still smells the same. A troll (or anything else, really) sniffing at him and saying "You smell funny" is not beyond the realm of possibility unless the character prepared for that eventuality.

[Cartigan]

That depends. Was this the first session of the adventure? If the group just rolled up sheets and wanted to start playing right away, the DM wouldn't have had time to study up. Sure, the player has used social skills as his primary trick before, but maybe last time he did it with diplomacy so the DM studied those rules and just had something else thrown in his face this time around.

Also, it makes sense to me that a high disguise roll isn't proof against scent. K-9 units can find people even if they shave/put on fake mustaches/whatever because the person still smells the same. A troll (or anything else, really) sniffing at him and saying "You smell funny" is not beyond the realm of possibility unless the character prepared for that eventuality.

Of course Trolls are also giant dimwits.

[Amnestic]

Of course Trolls are also giant dimwits.

You're a Troll Racist, you are.

[Pika...]

Well, I will need to finish reading this thread. But either way, my fellow players should not be spying on my threads when they know my username and know I come here for personal help/advice on gaming (and more). I am done with that group.

[Severus]

This is the ultimate sign of a bad DM. Run, run now.

This.

GMs who do this sort of thing don't understand their role at the table.

[Tyndmyr]

Dude, it isn't spying unless you ask them to stay out. I know people on this forum in RL too. I don't avoid them.

[Pika...]

Dude, it isn't spying unless you ask them to stay out. I know people on this forum in RL too. I don't avoid them.

This issue has been addressed multiple times. They know not to unless I tell them look at a particular one. :smallconfused:

[Sillycomic]

Trolls might be dimwits, but honestly the troll would have been the only thing to see through the disguise.

With Scent it wouldn't have needed to make any sort of spot roll for the disguise, and only speaking giant it wouldn't understand any sort of goblin bluff.

In fact with a room full of orcs, the chieftan being the twin brother, this kobold on stilts could have easily fooled them all. But the stupid troll in the corner would have taken one whiff and charged!

Troll power!

[Pika...]

Eh, the guy is talking about "peril" and such to put if I don't drop the subject. I had considered the subject (and him) dropped, but now I am PO'd because I do not care much for threats and such. The guy can take a hike.

[Silus]

Dude, I saw no sign anywhere telling players to stay out. If you wanted us to stay out, you should have slapped a notice saying so in the first post.

Also, good job giving half the story in the OP :smallannoyed:

Edit: And who, might I ask, is threatening you?

[Pika...]

Trolls might be dimwits, but honestly the troll would have been the only thing to see through the disguise.

With Scent it wouldn't have needed to make any sort of spot roll for the disguise, and only speaking giant it wouldn't understand any sort of goblin bluff.

In fact with a room full of orcs, the chieftan being the twin brother, this kobold on stilts could have easily fooled them all. But the stupid troll in the corner would have taken one whiff and charged!

Troll power!

Yes, which is why my character blinded him and ran. Not arguing the troll.

[Tyndmyr]

I don't think dropping the subject is gonna fix things.

I suggest sitting down with him and having a talk about things. Things like how people feel about pvp, and how they feel about using the rules as written.

[Tengu_temp]

This.

GMs who do this sort of thing don't understand their role at the table.

Wrong. Sometimes a DM has to put his foot down and say "no, you'll never be able to do that". Not "okay, you can try but at a -20 modifier" or "it will work only on a natural 20". Just completely veto the act. Because if you let the players try to do something you'd rather not have in the game, for whatever reason, then they will try it again in the future. And again.

[Douglas]

"Spying on your threads"? Dude, it's a public forum and you said precisely nothing to let them know they weren't welcome in this thread.

I can understand you're not happy about the additional perspective and viewpoints they gave on the situation given how unfavorable a light they paint you in, but unless they are outright lying or there is a great deal more information we're not privy to I can't honestly say I don't think you deserve it. The account you gave is heavily slanted with many important details omitted, and it appears you posted in an attempt to get a load of near-automatic support rather than an honest informed assessment of the situation by third parties.

I would suggest taking a good hard look at your own behavior and play style and talking it over very frankly with your fellow players. My impression so far is that if you continue as is your group is more likely to say "good riddance" than to miss you, and any new group you find is likely to reach the same conclusion eventually.

[Pika...]

Wrong. Sometimes a DM has to put his foot down and say "no, you'll never be able to do that". Not "okay, you can try but at a -20 modifier" or "it will work only on a natural 20". Just completely veto the act. Because if you let the players try to do something you'd rather not have in the game, for whatever reason, then they will try it again in the future. And again.

So tell me that, so I do not waste time (making the character), feats, gear, etc doing technically legal stuff in the game/mechanics. Would that have been too much to ask? I could have made a simple melee character or something without focus on anything else.

[Tyndmyr]

Wrong. Sometimes a DM has to put his foot down and say "no, you'll never be able to do that".

There are two excellent ways to do that.

1. Oh look, it's not in the rules. "No, you cannot roll slight of hand to steal the secret of life, the universe and everything." Bam, shut down. No problems, because the player was trying to do something that by the rules, he couldn't.

2. At character creation. "Yeah, in my world, slight of hand actually determines how small your hands are. The more ranks, the teenier your ring size". No matter how good or bad the house rules, if told in advance, a player has the choice to invest in them or not.

Edit: And yeah, Pika, you're painting yourself in a pretty bad light. You pretty much look like you're trying to cause drama, not merely get opinions on something.

[Pika...]

"Spying on your threads"? Dude, it's a public forum and you said precisely nothing to let them know they weren't welcome in this thread.

I can understand you're not happy about the additional perspective and viewpoints they gave on the situation

Actually, no. I like when I am shown to be in the wrong, so I can learn. Hence why I made the thread. In the end I got a lesson for future groups, but they KNOW not to. I have had this issue with them before. Geez.

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: Thread locked for review.