We have a new feature we would like to add soon but its technically difficult to test it on the PGCC first so I would like to hear your thoughts here before we go live, here goes:
Fully Covered PCs, Examine and Disguise
PCs who are fully covered by clothes and armor will now be able to hide several details in their description when examined.
Update
- The cover functionality must be enabled using the -cover command every time you login
- The DC for the spot check to pierce the cover now changes with distance, the closer the examiner and examinee are the easier it gets to pierce it.
Update 2
- When -cover is enabled and you are fully covered by clothes and armor, your original / disguised description will no longer be shown.
- It makes it simpler to hide your identity because you don't have to worry about changing your description.
- It further differentiates bluff-disguises and cover, while under a regular disguise you can look however you like, under cover no one sees anything but the cover itself and you are purposely hiding revealing features, so no description is needed beyond the PCs external appearance and the details that are automatically added to the description (mostly just parent race)
How do you cover yourself?
- Fully covered means all visible armor slots (neck, hands, biceps) + a visible helm or hood, you don't need to wear actual gear in all slots, its enough you look covered.
- Currently all hood types are treated as full cover even if the face is seen, we are working on adding deeper hoods for all races and once we do only the hoods that are deep will be counted as covering. For now please treat someone who is fully covered and wearing any hood as if his face is also covered by the hood.
- Some races without dynamic appearance (Gnolls, Minautors, ...) cannot currently be covered, we are working on a solution for that.
- The cover can be broken by a spot check, we will adjust how hard it is as we go.
I would like to emphasize this after reading some of the responses that missed it, a strong spotter will break the cover way more easily than he would a strong disguise, this feature will not make strong bluffers stronger or strong spotters weaker. (see next paragraphs for how this works with disguise) - We are looking into adding a listen check in case a covered individual that you are familiar with speaks next to you, but its more complicated so it won't be added initially
- It will be very visible in the PCs description that they are fully covered and they can be treated as suspicious.
- The following properties are hidden on a covered PC:
- Specific Race
(You will always be able to tell someone's Parent Race, for example that he is an Elf, but you won't be able to tell if he is a Drow or a Wood Elf if you didn't see through the cover, same for dwarves, gnomes, etc.) - Abilities approximation
- Harper Pin / Zhentarim Embelm
- Slave Collar / Outcast status
- Pirate Tattoos
- Specific Race
- The items in the list above are hidden only when you are fully covered. We may change it in the future so that covering your neck covers the slave collar, covering your hands covers the pirate tattoos, etc. But its not going to be in the initial release.
- Covered PCs cannot have their disguise broken: (Experimental)
- The rational is that the disguise is below the cover, and therefore cannot be seen while a PC is covered.
- The precise process is this, first we check if a person is covered, if he isn't - proceed as usual, if he is there is a spot check for penetrating that cover, if the spotter succeeded - proceed as usual, if you failed that check than the cover was not penetrated, and there will be no check to try and bypass disguise, whatever disguise you had will remain unbroken.
- This will allow players with no bluff to hide their identity using the bluff system as long as the observer doesn't break their cover, but doing so requires covering themselves entirely which is suspicious and will cause an alert in their description.
- Players with high bluff will still have the advantage of being able to remain disguised without being covered and therefore staying un-suspicious.
- This is experimental and may change depending on how covered individuals are treated and how this affects the attractiveness of the bluff skill.
- Just to clarify, there is currently no change in the (Disguised) tag when disguised, with or without cover.
Alright, now a few more notes for when this goes live:
- You can now examine yourselves and see what someone of the same race, spot, lore as you would see when they look at you, this has some rolls involved so every time you examine yourself you will reroll (unlike when you examine someone else, then that roll happens only once in a while)
- This update required changing a large amount of code and there may be some edge cases we missed, Once this goes live I would appreciate if you can post if you find any of the following issues:
- Armor slots that appear covered but are not treated as such
- Armor slots that appear uncovered but are treated as covered
- Issues with wrong race (wild elf) or parent race (elf) with or without cover.
(note, that if you see parent race instead of race when without cover, it may be because you didn't pass the lore check for identifying the race, that logic hasn't changed) - Rakasasha and Yuan-Ti - I think we got you covered ( Pun Intended
), but to be extra cautious please test out how your race is displayed as much as possible when you first login, you can PM me privately if you find issues so you don't out yourselves. - Rakasasha and Yuan-Ti - On the bright side, this refactor will allow us to have you treated by NPCs as the race you appear to be, those fixes will hopefully be coming your way in the coming weeks.
And that's its, please let us know what you think, especially on the interaction between cover and disguise, suggestions for improvements and additional features are welcome
