Character Race on Death

[Yma23]

Looking for a Dev/DM answer here really.

When a character dies, you can see their race in tags by their body. (e.g. Dragon, Drow, Moon elf, Human ect)
Is this considred ic information?

So if your dragon pc who othrewise has been hiding his race, dies in combat... and someone sees the tag [dragon] by the body - is it then considered ic to know that person is a dragon?
Or an elf pretending to be a drow...
or a planar being hiding their race....
Or whatever really.

[Tyrantos]

I think its "What you see is what you get".
Similar with tracking footprints, as a rather impressive ranger.

[Flameborn]

Theres a reason I never bothered hiding my dragon. If you die once, ever, in a party, then everyone on the server instantly knows you're a dragon because gossip moves faster in arelith then a nuclear blastwave.

It doesnt matter what the ruling is, it will be metagamed if its not one.

[Mr_Rieper]

I agree with Flameborn here. Unless explicitly told otherwise by a DM, people are going to metagame this knowledge. The logic is that once they are dead, the character is unable to maintain a disguise or protect their identity.

[Black Wendigo]

Even if people don't metagame, they end up finding out about the meta stuff anyways as well. SO I would play it that if you die in disguise, expect your disguise to be broken.

[Green2Bee]

You can't maintain a shapeshifting ability upon death. You revert to your true form. This will be same for dragons as well. See this entry on Alternate Form (SU) that dragons use. This is true in IG shapeshifting abilities as well, whether you're a werewolf, polymorphing, wildshaping, or have the shifter class. I don't see why dragons are somehow exempt from the rule just because they're a special snow flake.

I imagine disguises can be broken only because you can do anything with the dead body, including robbing it (i.e., stealing all of the coin) and defiling it (e.g., bashing it). But just like when you *looks* on a chara you don't know the true identity of, just by knowing their identity doesn't tie the two together unless you have both pieces of the information.

But I would really hate to think so pessimisticly that "everything will be metagamed anyway so why does it matter"? I would like to hear an official opinion from a DM as well.

[Cihparg]

Yup. 3.5e fairly much says that if you die, you fall back to the form that you were in previously.
That is my belief, and it's how I've played it. If a Dragon, Rakshasa or a Tiefling dies, it wouldn't take too long to notice that they're not what they claimed to be.

Ofcourse, the rule of cheesing applies by all means. It's why I don't go around with True Seeing and expect to know everything.

[Ebonstar]

there was a party that went to the dragon isle and this happened, and the player asked mine not to act on it , which was fine with me.

we are all or mostly adults here, that we cant keep mechanical issues with information out of our character knowledge is poor rp imo.

if a body is burned to death, you cant tell if that elf was moon sun wood or drow, its a burned dead elf, so why should the other cause a different knowledge.

[Yma23]

Thanks - I feel it worth saying that this would be my personal interpretation too, and I honely have no issue with others using it on my characters. But I wanted to know the general 'ruling' so I can do so (or not) without feeling an idiot.

[Mithreas]

It's IC information, for the reason given by Green2Bee above.

[Sab1]

Seems a great policy. Since stands to reason if you are using magic and such to hide your race, when you die all the magic/shapeshifting etc would vanish. So you should be laying there dead in your natural form. Dragons would be no different, if a dragon disguised as a human dies, it should end up as a dead dragon laying there.

[Ferret Roll]

Though, unless one witnesses the death of the character in question, I don't think using their corpse to identify their race is cool.

For the dragon example, if you see a character die and the corpse says dragon? Whatever magic kept them looking human clearly faded and left them as a dragon.

If you see a corpse marked "dragon", but didn't see the human form the character had before dying? You don't really have any means of connecting dead dragon A to not-dragon-looking-at-all human B.

[DestroyerOTN]

Though, unless one witnesses the death of the character in question, I don't think using their corpse to identify their race is cool.

For the dragon example, if you see a character die and the corpse says dragon? Whatever magic kept them looking human clearly faded and left them as a dragon.

If you see a corpse marked "dragon", but didn't see the human form the character had before dying? You don't really have any means of connecting dead dragon A to not-dragon-looking-at-all human B.

-which, of course, also depends on wether or not they raise you; since you resume your human form upon being raised.

Kinda grey area-ish, but it does add a whole new reason for raise to be a consent only deal.

[yellowcateyes]

Sending a tell before raising a hostile character has always been a personal rule of mine, in keeping with the 'Be Nice' rule. PnP mentions raise and resurrection as requiring a willing soul anyhow, so it's really up to the player of the dead character.

On subject, it's good to know that the game mechanics concerning corpse tags are IC. It's better that way, to prevent the proliferation of metagaming accusations. I'm just glad race identification was stripped from *looks* as the behavior resulting from that feature was beyond ridiculous.

[Lorkas]

I'm just glad race identification was stripped from *looks* as the behavior resulting from that feature was beyond ridiculous.

I still think it would have been better fixed by adding a very high lore check to rakshasas and dragons, but to each their own.

It's frustrating not to be able to tell the difference between an orog and a half-orc, or a human and a half-elf, for example. Even drow can now wander the surface without fear of being outed as a drow rather than an elf as long as they wipe their description and put on clothes that cover all of their skin.

[yellowcateyes]

I was speaking of the days when it was impossible to play a tiefling and not be outed within 30 minutes of stepping off the boat. This was during the era of Udos Dro'xun so there wasn't exactly a place for you in the Underdark, either.

You spend your whole life struggling against the stigma of fiendish blood, filing down your horns, adding lemon to your breath and keeping your 'witch marks' well-hidden. Then Joe the Fighter takes a gander at you in front of the Nomad and goes, 'Oshi- a devilblood!'

Rakshasa? I don't think any amount of lore should let you out a polymorphed Rak just by a glance. I'm not sure how you'd justify looking really close at a suspicious elf and going 'Ah! It's a malevolent catman outsider polymorphed as a tel'quessir.'

[Lorkas]

Someone with a huge amount of lore might know some behavioral tendencies that rakshasas typically have, though, so I don't see why it's a problem if someone with both enough spot (noticing those tendencies) and lore (recognizing them for what they indicate) would be able to tell (or at least guess) that the person was a rakshasa in disguise.

The trick is getting people who will RP responsibly with that information instead of shouting through the streets. Requiring both a high lore and a high spot at least reduces the chances of it happening, and you can always boost your own bluff to prevent it (though that's hard as a low level).

I feel like the best answer isn't to completely remove the ability for any character to recognize any other race (apart from the model and description) though.

[yellowcateyes]

It's a pretty big conceptual leap from 'elf moves strangely' to 'elf is a polymorphed malevolent catman.' There are a legion of possible explanations for an individual's habits and mannerisms, ranging from personality quirks to medical conditions to stress and trauma. If an individual brushes the back of their hand against a glass before picking it up properly, the more likely explanation is a habitual tic rather than 'oh, that person must really be a disguised outsider with a reversed wrist in their native form!'

In short, you'd have to twist your own character's logic and reasoning to paranoid insanity levels to support the IC conclusion of "Race: Rakshasa" as seen by *looks*.

If a person reverts to Rakshasa form upon death - well, that's pretty evident on its own. But identifying a Rakshasa at a glance always struck me as pretty crazy, no matter how many Candlekeep encyclopedias your character has read.

In regard to identifying drow, you could always ask someone to remove their helmet if you have reason to be suspicious.

[Lorkas]

I don't think it takes as much logical twisting as you think. If I magically transformed my pet dog into a human-shaped body, I don't expect that he would suddenly drop all of his doggy habits. It would take a lot of time and training, and even with that time and training, he might never be able to hide certain instinctive tendencies that he has. It wouldn't be a stretch at all for someone who was familiar with dog behavior and knew about the existence of polymorph magic to go "That guy is doing a specifically dog-like behavior right now... he might just be a polymorphed dog"

This is especially true if the character notices something like the reversed-hand mishap that you described and starts looking more closely. There are a lot of differences between human and feline body language, like whether or not you are allowed to make eye contact (and how to act if you do accidentally make eye contact with someone), how they give attention to things (ear turning vs. head turning), the purpose of yawning, interpretation of a smile (baring teeth), and more. And these are cats that share a relatively near evolutionary relationship with humans in the real world--it would be reasonable to assume that rakshasa behavior is even more alien to our own than cat behavior is.

If the rakshasa is good at hiding those mishaps, then s/he will have a high bluff to prevent anyone from noticing them and recognizing them as a rakshasa. If the rakshasa doesn't bother to take any bluff... well, they shouldn't have neglected their training if they wanted to stay incognito.

Note that under the old system, bluff protected your race even if you weren't actively disguised.

[yellowcateyes]

Humans have a huge variation when it comes to body language - including eye contact, head turning, yawning, and even when they use their smiles. If I see a human that acts cat-like, why would I assume Rakshasa when I can assume druid, or nature deity worshipper, or simply an unusual type of person in an island known for its crazies?

Why would I assume Rakshasa when there are feline Celestials that give rise to aasimar? Or spells that manipulate and twist the mind? Or slaves that are given animal treatment by vicious monster races?

In a wide, wide universe of possibilities - including very mundane ones about how diverse humans are in their mannerisms - your character ends up selecting the possibility that correlates with available PC races that can polymorph.

Justifying the race reveal in *looks* takes some rather convoluted reasoning, especially as the circumstances behind the encounter don't necessarily give rise to mountains of evidence. ( You pass them once in the street and behold! Rakshasa ). I'm glad that function was removed from *looks* as it preempted many a contrived explanation.

[Lorkas]

There's a huge variety in cat behaviors also, but for many behaviors, the ranges don't overlap much.

I fully agree that it's cheesy for someone to point the finger at a rakshasa that they just see in passing, but that doesn't mean it should be completely impossible to ever figure out that they are a rakshasa in disguise without 1) killing them (or at least witnessing their death), 2) them telling you directly or mistakenly hitting their -polymorph hotkey, or 3) being a ranger.

It makes just as little sense for it to be impossible to deduce the truth as it does for it to be easy to spot in passing, which is why I think the combo of spot and lore is a good one. Even if it took a DC 60 lore check to put together the pieces of their odd alien behaviors, I still feel it should be possible.

Maybe the combination of a spot check to beat their bluff, a lore check to see if your character would know what those "weird" behaviors point toward, and a minimum number of times using *looks* on the same character (to emulate the fact that it would take long exposure to the person in order to determine that the specific pattern of weird behaviors they have is more likely to be explained by them being a rakshasa than just a human who has 1 or 2 weird rakshasa-like behaviors) would solve some of the cheeseball issues.

To approach it from a different angle: warlock RP is also often about keeping your warlock nature secret. Why then, would the devs add in warlock glowing eyes? Because trying to keep a secret in a game isn't fun unless there is some way for others to figure out the secret (again, short of killing you). Maybe this isn't the mechanic needed to make the rakshasa secret-keeping a fun challenge, but there should be one.

Especially since there are now no more rakshasas or dragons allowed anyway, so now we're just left with an inability to distinguish races that we should be able to distinguish. I just can't help but feel that we can find a way to respect both the logic of rakshasa identification and the logic of distinguishing humans from half-elves and orogs from half-orcs.

[yellowcateyes]

Having a gradual system of collecting information through observation, through repeated *looks* checks or otherwise, seems much more reasonable than the system before. Mind, I can't help but feel that the proposed solution leans a little too heavily on scripted mechanical resolution to a matter of character identity - something that is best explored via RP. It's a little similar to how an overpowered *detects evil* was a bad thing, and needed to be hit with the nerf bat.

Incidentally, why the pressing desire to tell humans from half-elves? Orogs and drow I can understand because of surfacer-underdark conflict rules. But is there any reason to drag out a character's half-elf identity through mechanics when the player behind that character hasn't been dropping hints in RP?

[Lorkas]

The reason I bring it up is mainly because one of my characters is a halfling who loves the elves and anything elf-related, and he will treat a half-elf differently from how he treats a human. Obviously the way RP progresses will influence how my characters acts toward them, but knowing someone to be a half-elf or human would determine my character's initial attitude toward them (I started the character before the *looks* change).

I could also see it being important for the RP of some elves. If a human learns elven, then they can disguise flawlessly as a half-elf, even if another character has enough bluff that they would see through the deception. This strikes me as odd.

[Green2Bee]

I'm ... a little confused why this tangent has gone on this long in a completely unrelated thread, but I will just sneakily endorse Lorkas's points. I as an elf player would love to be able to tell humans and half-elves apart. Often times though, people can't even be bothered to give the vaguest of description, and I have no idea other than "I see some hideous polygons from technology 20 years ago".

Granted, we elves have the option of attributing our inability to distinguish the two to unabashed and blatant racism. But... Would be nice for those of us who aren't, when everything about them is showing and visible.

I also have 0 points in Spot but my chara have been able to see through disguise of about 90% of players who are in disguise with *looks*. Maybe this would give an incentive for people to spend points in something that aren't just discipline, spellcraft, and tumble. If a drow really wants to try to convince me with their face visible that they're a wild elf, they better be a pretty good darn liar or a make up artist.

[dirza]

Well if dragon named Pete (The Dragon) dies, you cannot get his name from corpse.

But you can clearly see that the previous disguised guy is dragon. You can disguise yourself as elf, but when you die there is no doubt its a drow...that would make no sense really. In disguise you cover your facial/speech habits, you adjust your hair/skin, cloths...but when your dead, your skill maintain the fake identity is gone, the body is lifeless, and when poke the body, they will reveal you are a drow. Why? Because disguise is not polymorhp. It does not -change- you into elf. It makes you -look- like an elf.

And as people stated above, upon death your shapeshifting spells and abilities fade and you change back.

And you can identify someone by body...just carry it into city and maybe someone in city knows the real face of the dead body (but you will not accomplish this prolly, as the player will meanwhile respawn).

Big question is on how to use skulls to identify. Because you dont gain "heads" ig but skulls...and all skulls of given race are mostly same.

This is my oppinion anyway.