disguise skill on other people

[Venger]

can you do this? can you use your disguise skill to put a disguise on somebody else? I don't see any reason you wouldn't be able to. does anybody know about rules for this?

[Duke of Urrel]

I don't know what other people say, but I say yes, you can use Disguise skill to disguise other people. My house rule is that when you use Disguise skill to disguise somebody else, you add the other person's Charisma modifier to your Disguise check, rather than your own. All other Disguise check modifiers are the same, but they refer to the other person's size, age, gender, and so forth, rather than yours.

I apply the same house rule when you use either the Seeming spell or the Veil spell to create an illusory disguise for another creature. Like the Disguise Self spell (which you can cast only on yourself), these spells add +10 to your Disguise check.

[Curmudgeon]

The only option you have is to use Aid Another to boost someone else's Disguise check by +2. See the rules here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm#aidAnother).

[Zdrak]

I have to disagree with Curmudgeon. The very first sentence in the description of the Disguise skill in the PHB is:


Use this skill to change your appearance or someone else’s.

[dascarletm]

If they did a good job it should add to your disguise checks to act in character. Aid for those situations, appearance perhaps their initial roll?

[Curmudgeon]

I have to disagree with Curmudgeon. The very first sentence in the description of the Disguise skill in the PHB is:
... and I've already described (and linked to) the section of the Skills chapter which states the specific mechanism used to help change someone else's appearance: Aid Another with their skill check. All other parts of the skill description describe changing your appearance, and not anyone else's.
The effectiveness of your disguise depends in part on how much you’re attempting to change your appearance.

[sdream]

I would also have to disagree with curmudgeon.

You can use the Aid other action to help someone Use Rope to tie themselves to something, or you could tie them in yourself.

You can use Aid other to help someone apply a disguise, or you could apply it yourself.

[Duke of Urrel]

I agree with Zdrak and Sdream.

The phrase "or someone else's" should outweigh the preponderance of the pronoun "you" in the rest of the description of the Disguise skill in the Players' Handbook.

I believe the pronouns "you" and "your" are used here simply to avoid wordiness. Either pronoun can easily refer to somebody other than the addressee. For example, when I ask: "How do you get to Chicago?" I don't mean you, I mean me, or perhaps somebody else who, like me, wants to go to Chicago. I may be asking in someone else's behalf, even somebody who wants to go to Chicago without me.

If the description of Disguise skill kept referring back to that "or someone else" throughout, it would have to add a lot of extra words, including the possessive phrase "or someone else's" and the possessive pronoun "his or her." The word "you" is convenient shorthand, because it is monosyllabic and gender neutral. That accounts for its use in the descriptive text.

I will agree with a very strict interpretation of pronouns when it comes to spells, which have a lot of iron-clad restrictions that have nothing to do with the world we live in. (In such cases, I am inclined to yield to Curmudgeon's authority.) But Disguise skill isn't magical, and we can all easily imagine that it is possible for somebody to create a disguise for somebody else. (Indeed, it is easier in one respect to create a disguise for somebody else: You don't have to use a mirror.) Why, then, should this be forbidden?

The only change I would make is what I mentioned above: Always use the Charisma modifier of the creature that wears the disguise, even if another creature has created it, and modify the Disguise check according to the wearer's age, size, gender, et cetera.

[BowStreetRunner]

For that matter, you can use a disguise check to disguise an object if you like (Rules Compendium page 106). So I think that this pokes even more holes in the theory that the preponderance of uses of the word 'you' should be taken to be limiting in any way.

I agree that you can use a disguise check to put a disguise on someone else, or use an aid another check to assist them with putting a disguise on themselves. Either would be appropriate. For that matter, you could use an aid another check to assist someone putting a disguise on a third person and that would be allowable too.