Could the Vigilante class be used to fool your own party?

[snowman87]

How would you go about it? What would you do with it? Obviously, any metagaming players would ruin it but think of the fun!

[W3bDragon]

The Vigilante class has awesome imagery. Unfortunately, its one of those few classes that dictates the story rather than the story or campaign dictating to the characters. Paladins and other strongly aligned or motivated classes have a similar problem, but few to the extreme of the Vigilante.

Once the class is picked, the game necessarily turns into a city campaign with superhero themes. Anything different would make the character pointless, and the rest of the PCs in the game may not appreciate the entire game being customized to the needs of just one PC.

As for keeping the identity a secret from the other PCs, that just goes further into the lines of making the Vigilante the hero of the story and everyone else being sidekicks in his/her adventure.

In my opinion, The Vigilante would be an awesome solo character.

[Serafina]

The above is NOT AT ALL true. You can take the Vigilante class in any type of adventure and group - and it's talents are pretty good, so it deserves consideration.
Just take a look at it's main class features to see what I'm talking about.

Vigilante Talents have a ton of choices that are combat feats, with some extra to it. Those are appropriate in any type of campaign where a Fighter or Rogue would be. Some others emulate common class features, such as faster movement in heavy armor or hiding in plain sight - again, that's not campaign-specific.
There are of course some that are for a more specific campaign - such as Environmental Weapon, or Chaste Master. There's no need to take them though, so this hardly forces the Vigilante into any type of campaign.

Social Talents are not an issue either.
Renown and it's improvements are of course made for a city-campaign. But again, one does not have to take those talents, and by now there is enough variety among social talents that this is not an issue:
- Social Grace is just a skill-bonus, and it only functioning in your social identity can simply be a matter of putting on the right manners.
- Mockingbird allows you to mimic sounds, which is perfectly appropriate for adventurers
- Many Guises and it's improvements just make you good at disguising yourself - which might not be useful on a dungeon crawl, but there's plenty of campaigns with social situations.
- Subjective Truth and Innocence also just increase your ability to disguise yourself.

And speaking of Disguises - what about the Dual Identity?
Nothing about it says you have to use it in a specific way. Indeed it'd be possible to just ignore the feature entirely, always count as being in your social identity, and just use your abilities from both constantly. Of course, that'd be a bit of a waste of a class feature - but you can also just use your social identity when the party hits town. It works everywhere, it isn't tied to a specific location. Nor it is a "superhero" trope - it could just be a manner of assuming the right social manners and putting on the proper clothes to appear as a noble, priest, merchant or other such character.
Heck, you can describe Aragorn as a Vigilante - Strider is his Vigilante Identity, Aragorn, Son of Elessar etc. his Social Identity. That way, evil scrying magic can't find "Aragorn", nor can he be easily recognized otherwise.
I can find a good reason for basically any other core class to have a Dual Identity:
- The Barbarian wants to appear more civilized when visiting the city
- The Bard just likes it when "someone else" sings his praises, it's so much more convincing
- The Cleric likes to move among the common folk to learn what their troubles are, instead of being a famous cleric
- The Druid is already a shapechanger, swapping humanoid identities is hardly a stretch
- The Fighter could be a noble who doesn't want to be known as an adventurer
- The Rogue is obviously good at disguises anyway
- The Sorcerer and Wizard could use it to espace restrictions on arcane magic
And that's hardly the only reasons you can have for this. Heck, basically any Adventurer would appreciate the ability to just relax without having to worry about some villain using scrying magic on them.

Either way, bottom line - Vigilante is a perfectly appropriate class to take in almost any type of Pathfinder adventure.



To answer the actual question by the OP:
Use it sparingly. Among your party, you're in your Vigilante Identity. Use your Social Identity to deliver messages to your party, or otherwise engage in short interactions with them. Work with your GM to have them describe your social identities actions to the party, and make sure it's at times where the party is split up anyway.

Alternatively, you might have to cover for yourself with Illusions, which aren't well-provided by the Vigilante class itself. Simulacrum would be perfecty obviously, and it's lesser version can work too. But when in doubt, a simple Silent Image can work well. Have your social identity show up at camp while your party is resting, while maintaining an illusion of yourself sleeping and groggily waking up if woken. Your party is more likely to interact with your real self than with your illusion. Making the swap back could be more tricky, but not impossible if you're a known spellcaster and use invisibility or other magic.

Now why you would do this entire thing is another question.