Arelith

“New disguise rules text” wrote:

Disguise, as both Bluff and Perform, represents the mundane ability to change one's appearance and behavior to appear as another person. Your character's appearance while disguised should reflect changes that a person could reasonable achieve through mundane means within the Forgotten Realms.

Rakshasa don’t disguise themselves through mundane means but use magic to polymorph/shapeshift into other things. Rakshasa on the server are forced to use the disguise system instead of being naturally talented at this. Their disguises can be seen through, just like anyone else using mundane means.

My feedback is that whilst this can be put to good use on the server, they’re otherwise so incredibly handicapped compared to what they are in dnd, and it feels bad to be forced into building/gearing for bluff or perform.

A few considerations with the current system that might help them: Maybe they get feats like SF Bluff, ESF Bluff as they level, or Hidden Persona, Secret Identity. It makes just as much sense for them to have it than for any of the classes which bestow it.

Not only that, but you are kind of forced into building bluff unless you want to give up that 8 bluff bonus they get as a race.

I think giving them Hidden Persona : Secret Identity is a good idea. It will encourage those playing Rakshasa to stick with various personas they will play and act through long-term.

Disguises on non-min-maxed characters are almost impossible to beat unless you are specifically an Eagle Totem Druid, an Inquisition Oath Paladin, or a Vigilant Cause Vigilante, who picked Gift of the Hunter at Character Creation, and is currently wearing their full spot gear which is terrible for combat. Often it takes two of these min-maxed builds to even have a chance of breaking through NORMAL, NOT MIN-MAXED builds' disguises, due to god-saves. Disguises let you bypass settlement exiles, making them mechanically very powerful, especially for villainous characters who intend to be breaking laws. Lets look at what happens when you actually min-max a Rakshasa for disguise, using the warlock's hag pact.

33 bluff skill
15 charisma modifier
5 Skill Focus
10 Epic Skill Focus
6 Gift of Gab
8 Rakshasa
9 Hag Pact

Total: 86, without gear

You have to specifically be an Eagle Totem Avariel to reach these numbers with Spot. Considering there is only one build in the whole game that can even possibly beat its current disguise capabilities, I do not think Rakshasa needs any sort of buff to the disguise mechanic. They are already basically impossible to catch unless you just start killing randoms and get lucky.

Edit: Oh and you can apparently already get Hidden Persona on this Rakshasa build by dipping 3 levels into Zhent Operative, meaning you can just sit afk in a disguise for 10 hours and it will be literally unbeatable.

Edit 2: And here's a comparison so you can see the difference between the available bluff and spot gear. Yeah, one of these skills gets treated WAY more favorably than the other....

Seconded.
Disguise is easy to build into, and it's easier to make a new disguise if lightning strikes and disguise is seen through.

Why should a Rakshasa be uncovered via spot at all? They are gated behind an award and an application, presumably preventing over/misuse. They should be brought down via deduction and actual roleplay. Their entire concept revolves around infiltrating bodies of power and sowing discord over a long period of time.

They should get significant protections from settlement exile mechanics and hall monitor spot builds. Their concept (which shouldn't necessarily revolve around disguise investment as they don't disguise themselves through mundane means, per the lore) should be viable from level 3. I doubt many Rakshasa players will see them reach those endgame disguise scores if they're constantly outed and put on kill lists.

The playing field SHOULD be weighted more heavily in the disguisers favour, the exile system is overused and a lot of settlement/guard figures take on an OOC cop mentality where it's some sort of job of theirs to kill clandestine RP in the cradle. Rakshasa exist to create !fun!, otherwise why introduce the race at all?

remember that by lore, true seeing should reveal a rakshasa for what they are

so in other words they would be easier to reveal if we were going by the book

Rakshasa trait tieflings get abilities that Rakshasa don’t get now.

Dreams wrote: Wed Dec 18, 2024 9:22 am

Rakshasa trait tieflings get abilities that Rakshasa don’t get now.

which trait? if you are talking about -head use, rakshasa have already had that

Serene Visage, Polymorph, etc

I'm strongly against making races that are ridiculously good or, in fact, the best at something, like disguises in Rakshasa's case, even better, especially when the races themselves are barred by major awards and applications.

Rakshasa should have a room they can change names in, skin color, sex, and hair color at will. They require an application to use, and thus the pool is small for necessary oversight for bad actors.

Make it an area reserved only for Rakshasa like the Sealed Tower is for deep imaskari.

I guess my main complaint about Rakshasa is that it's already been nerfed a few times. It's key features and strengths are nullified by the implementation on Arelith. People poopoo this complaint because they don't want to see OP races, yet there are other races that got a huge amount of developer attention and have in fact been made extremely powerful by comparison. The key example here being vampire. In dnd? Rakshasa are way more powerful than vampires - it's an entirely different category of monster.

Everything the Rakshasa has barring the racial polymorph can be done by other options and in most cases better.

Rakshasa on Arelith:
+2 Dex
+2 Cha
SR 26 (Achievable with classes, some classes go beyond this cap, Drow have this SR without award, nerfed from previous 32 SR - other old characters still have 32 SR gift although they're rarer these days)
5/+2 DR (absolutely meaningless after level 3 in most cases)
+8 Bluff

Rakshasa in Dnd:
+2 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +6 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom, +6 Charisma.
Darkvision
A rakshasa has a +4 racial bonus on Bluff and Disguise checks, and it can gain further bonuses by using change shape (+10 on Disguise checks) and detect thoughts (+4 on Bluff and Disguise checks).
Racial Feats: A rakshasa’s outsider levels give it three feats.
+9 natural armor bonus.
Detect Thoughts (Su): The save DC is 12 + the character’s Cha modifier.
Spells: A rakshasa character casts spells as a 7th-level sorcerer. If the character takes additional levels of sorcerer, these levels stack with the rakshasa’s base spellcasting ability for spells known, spells per day, and other effects dependent on caster level. A rakshasa character likewise uses the sum of its racial spellcasting levels and class levels to determine the abilities of its familiar.
Special Qualities (see above): Change shape, damage reduction 15/good and piercing, spell resistance equal to 27 + class levels.
+7 ECL

Obviously the dnd Rakshasa is too powerful for a character on Arelith, however the way it has been implemented could be reviewed. It was done a long time ago, has been slightly tweaked over time, and falls short of other lesser awards. e.g. Yuan-ti are effectively better at shapeshifting to hide their identity with similar bonuses +INT on top.

Anything with polymorph/shapeshift/wildshape has an unbeatable disguise method, because even if you beat the Bluff/Perform roll, you get "This is a shapechanged creature." not "This is actually John Adventurer." A rakshasa who is known as John Adventurer the Halfling, who is shapeshifted as an elf and disguised as "Sylvan Moonbowington" will have their disguise broken and they get named "You recognise this as John Adventurer." This is absolutely ridiculous! How could anyone possibly know in this most extreme circumstance that the elf they're seeing is actually the halfling they know? Let alone if they don't know the character. There should at the very least be some other message that does not disclose the true name of the character - it IS used to metagame, people DO metagame all of the time, it's almost impossible to protect against and once it's out, it's out, because metagaming enforcement is so lax. Maybe someone gets punished when some massive breach happens? But the special character, the player who spent years trying to get a Major award, put in time and effort to building identities, put in a long request that had to be verified and so on... they get screwed.

At the very least, Rakshasa SHOULD be good at the core thing they're supposed to do.

You don't think someone reading this is a shape changed character is worse?
Pretty sure if i saw john disguised as an elf id be like okay even more so if i don't know john, where as when i see a human/elf wandering about and break the disguise and it said this is a shape changed character i would instantly think monster!
So surely the current setup is better as your not outed as a monster on the first breaking of disguise.

Plus if you haven't maxed out your disguise skill you should be getting caught as has been pointed out only one build can beat rak's disguise and then you get a deity save.

chris a gogo wrote: Fri Dec 20, 2024 12:46 pm

You don't think someone reading this is a shape changed character is worse?
Pretty sure if i saw john disguised as an elf id be like okay even more so if i don't know john, where as when i see a human/elf wandering about and break the disguise and it said this is a shape changed character i would instantly think monster!
So surely the current setup is better as your not outed as a monster on the first breaking of disguise.

Plus if you haven't maxed out your disguise skill you should be getting caught as has been pointed out only one build can beat rak's disguise and then you get a deity save.

It's even worse than that.

The one build that's able to break through their disguise, is terrible at PVP. They cannot breach damage shields, they cannot dispel, and once they get dispelled they have no way to recover most of their wards. And the one build that HARD-counters them, that they cannot possibly beat no matter how they min-max or how many healing potions they carry, is WARLOCK, the build you SHOULD be picking in order to min-max a Rakshasa.

Peacewhisper wrote: Fri Dec 20, 2024 1:10 pm

chris a gogo wrote: Fri Dec 20, 2024 12:46 pm

You don't think someone reading this is a shape changed character is worse?
Pretty sure if i saw john disguised as an elf id be like okay even more so if i don't know john, where as when i see a human/elf wandering about and break the disguise and it said this is a shape changed character i would instantly think monster!
So surely the current setup is better as your not outed as a monster on the first breaking of disguise.

Plus if you haven't maxed out your disguise skill you should be getting caught as has been pointed out only one build can beat rak's disguise and then you get a deity save.

It's even worse than that.

The one build that's able to break through their disguise, is terrible at PVP. They cannot breach damage shields, they cannot dispel, and once they get dispelled they have no way to recover most of their wards. And the one build that HARD-counters them, that they cannot possibly beat no matter how they min-max or how many healing potions they carry, is WARLOCK, the build you SHOULD be picking in order to min-max a Rakshasa.

Yes that one build is bad at PvP but it’s important to remember many factions have an alt that is a spot maxer to break disguises and report this to other members of their faction for later use.

Which is against the rules?
Your not allowed multiple characters in the same faction anymore IIRC.
Plus that isn't really the point you should be able to beat everyones disguise otherwise there is no counter play to it, buffing rak's so that no one could ever beat it is pretty bad design, unless you make it so true seeing sees through it id consider that fair for an unbeatable disguise skill.

Sure you don't know it's name but you see that john the elf is really a rakshasa!

Would it be metagaming to just make it mandatory for every government employee to be shot by a blessed crossbow bolt?

chris a gogo wrote: Fri Dec 20, 2024 9:16 pm

Which is against the rules?

Yes, but the person whose disguise is getting broken will have a very difficult time proving that their identity was outed due to meta reasons, and the group doing it will very likely not face any consequences as a result. This is a key reason why this is so common.

On top of that, in the unlikely event that this kind of metagaming is reported and handled, the outing of the disguise and character is still considered IC information as the server generally does not ask players to IC retcon their knowledge of these meta issues- it's just too complicated to sift through. Those who have heard the information IC can still use it to their advantage. So the calculation for breaking the rules really tilts in favor for breaking the rules, which is very frustrating for players using disguises.

To invest a major into playing a rakshasa and then watch the RP you are attempting derailed by players who feel a need to win is a massive bummer, hence why it's important for rakshasa to have a major mechanical bluff advantage.

Right. Which is why it’s better that you have a disguise outed rather than the real name of the character. A new disguise can be made after a shapechange, but once your character name is out you’re forever a target. There’s no putting a lid on metagaming, once it’s happened you’re basically screwed.

TroubledWaters wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2024 8:06 am

Yes, but the person whose disguise is getting broken will have a very difficult time proving that their identity was outed due to meta reasons, and the group doing it will very likely not face any consequences as a result. This is a key reason why this is so common.

On top of that, in the unlikely event that this kind of metagaming is reported and handled, the outing of the disguise and character is still considered IC information as the server generally does not ask players to IC retcon their knowledge of these meta issues- it's just too complicated to sift through. Those who have heard the information IC can still use it to their advantage. So the calculation for breaking the rules really tilts in favor for breaking the rules, which is very frustrating for players using disguises.

To invest a major into playing a rakshasa and then watch the RP you are attempting derailed by players who feel a need to win is a massive bummer, hence why it's important for rakshasa to have a major mechanical bluff advantage.

Following that logic we might just as well make an argument that Rakshasas should be made immortal, because some players still engage in PvP with little to no RP on occassion (PK being another method of unmasking a characters and all that).

Point being - balancing mechanics around illegitimate counters is a poor idea as it can only ever result in something overpowered against legitimate counters & something that probably wouldn't have addressed the issue anyway.
We could have straight up unbreakable disguises & it still would not have protected the character from meta.

I can see two arguments being discussed here:

• Rakshasas not being better at disguise than other races - why should they? Award races shouldn't be mechanically superior in any aspect when compared to non-award ones - otherwise they risk becoming "grind to win".

• disguise being overtuned - It already feels like cheese (that often practically invites other players to cut corners if they want to have any hopes of ever beating it). Double down on disguise protection and players are extremely likely to double down on cutting corners. Tone down disguise and there will be less issues IMO. Taking away the god saves might be a good first step.

I'll add a third:

• disguise RP being a trap - a lot of disguise RP hinges on it never failing. "My character only works if they never fail at X" is a very poor concept IMO & Rakshasas heavily lean into their disguise never failing by design. If a character concept depends on disguise so much that it basically becomes "ruined" should the disguise ever fail, then I'd argue it's probably not something worth having in the first place.

Ork wrote: Thu Dec 19, 2024 9:20 pm

Rakshasa should have a room they can change names in, skin color, sex, and hair color at will. They require an application to use, and thus the pool is small for necessary oversight for bad actors.

Make it an area reserved only for Rakshasa like the Sealed Tower is for deep imaskari.

In favor of this idea; mostly because there’s no reason why they couldn’t be able to do that, and I think not letting rakshasa change their skin tone and hair could lead to some particularly problematic stuff.

While we are at it, maybe people as a whole (so, everybody) could be allowed to assign themselves portraits while disguised? A lack of portrait is as bad as the quotes when it comes to priming players to go “oh obviously this is a disguised PC, and up to no good”.

-XXX- wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2024 12:20 pm

Following that logic we might just as well make an argument that Rakshasas should be made immortal, because some players still engage in PvP with little to no RP on occassion (PK being another method of unmasking a characters and all that).

Point being - balancing mechanics around illegitimate counters is a poor idea as it can only ever result in something overpowered against legitimate counters & something that probably wouldn't have addressed the issue anyway.
We could have straight up unbreakable disguises & it still would not have protected the character from meta.

I don't think this analogy works- it's easy to see who no lined you and report them, while it's difficult to figure out who is the spot build and then unravel whose alt it is. That's a key reason why this way is more common.

Additionally, there is some counterplay to the combat route, even if it is a no lining. The only counterplay to the spot build is "get your bluff to 127" and then it's a roll-off.

Ork wrote: Thu Dec 19, 2024 9:20 pm

Rakshasa should have a room they can change names in, skin color, sex, and hair color at will. They require an application to use, and thus the pool is small for necessary oversight for bad actors.

Make it an area reserved only for Rakshasa like the Sealed Tower is for deep imaskari.

That's a good idea.

-XXX- wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2024 12:20 pm

Following that logic we might just as well make an argument that Rakshasas should be made immortal, because some players still engage in PvP with little to no RP on occassion (PK being another method of unmasking a characters and all that).

Point being - balancing mechanics around illegitimate counters is a poor idea as it can only ever result in something overpowered against legitimate counters & something that probably wouldn't have addressed the issue anyway.
We could have straight up unbreakable disguises & it still would not have protected the character from meta.

I don't think this analogy works- it's easy to see who no lined you and report them, while it's more difficult to figure out who is the spot build and then unravel whose alt it is. That's a key reason why this way is more common.

Additionally, there is some counterplay to the combat route, even if it is a no lining. The only counterplay to the spot build is "get your bluff to 127" and then it's a roll-off.

Ork wrote: Thu Dec 19, 2024 9:20 pm

Rakshasa should have a room they can change names in, skin color, sex, and hair color at will. They require an application to use, and thus the pool is small for necessary oversight for bad actors.

Make it an area reserved only for Rakshasa like the Sealed Tower is for deep imaskari.

That's a good idea.

So your playing a monster that wants to remain disguised and can only be spotted by a winged elf with an eagle totem if they beat your roll twice and you get a warning that it's happened once already, or you can not fully invest into bluff and get found out by none min maxed characters of other races.
Seems reasonable right now i mean it's heavily in favor of the disguised monster but means you have the one chink in your armor.
Which is how it should be.