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Not sure if this is too close to super hero, but my build that I've done so far is a antiques dealer by day and a vigilante by night. Specifically an antiques dealer because he goes after grave robbers, and other people that acquire their antiques through less than reputable means.

Sort of superheroish, if your average super hero only cared about a very narrow brand of criminal.

There are feats and/or spells to make pretty much all the negatives of sleeping in armor go away. I don't recall ever experiencing a king balking at Paladins coming to events in their armor, it's just accepted. Wizards also rarely have an actual issue because they default to having combat-useful things prepared and only rarely aren't prepared for combat. And nobody can look at them and tell what they've prepared.

Basically, these other classes have ways around their problems. Where's the Vigilante Bed of Iron?

Vrog, that might be, but people are assuming that the phrase "unaware of his presence" is taken literally. That is, once your Vigilante has hit once, there's next to no way to get Hidden Strike a second time in that combat.

If that's not true, and it really means that they can't know the exact square that you're in, and dodging from shadow to shadow is good enough, a lot of peoples complaints are going to go away.

To make this more about the Avenger, he did a LOT of damage this play test. He basically felt like a fighter. When things are immune to fear (which has happened only once so far) he is basically a weaker fighter. But he's still a valuable member of the party, most of which don't do that much damage. This slight rebuild works a lot better for sure.

I haven't had much opportunity to use anything approaching a social side, but this is a very combat-heavy AP apparently. I had it sitting on a shelf and didn't really think through which one to use for this.

We have made it out of the tunnels. With four members it wasn't difficult, but one of the characters got ganged up on (it was in the description) and is hurt. The wife unknowingly decided to skip going into the room that would have had healing potions because she didn't want to stay in the dungeon any longer than she needed to. Oops! But that's why I let her make all the decisions, because I would have known the right answer and it wouldn't have been fun.

After going into the cathedral, we managed to survive, though my Magus was hiding in the corner near the end because he ran out of spell slots and after DR did 1 point per attack. After that fight, the wife wanted to go back and see what we had missed because she didn't believe that there was so few healing things around. A bit metagamey, but she wasn't wrong and we found the quasi-unlimited healing device and managed to heal up.

We're calling the session now, with the wife asking to sleep in the healing area because it was untainted and she believes that the demons don't want to come in there.

We'll see eventually if she's right about that...

We are level 12 and the AP is for level 11. But it's also for 3.5, not Pathfinder, so the numbers might be all kinds of screwy. We're doing MUCH better with four characters. DR 10 is problematic for this round of characters, but even with DR 10 it just takes longer, still not really in danger of dying. We need to get out of this dungeon and go shopping too -- nobody considered healing powers OR buying healing potions. Oops.

The wife and I have been binge creating characters and are going to continue this campaign, but with four characters (two each). I'm still playing the Avenger, though I took the opportunity to tweak some things -- mostly gear. My second is a Magus. The wife is playing a Bloodrager and Spell-less Ranger (Third Party). We aren't going for the optimum team, just trying to not die due to being short personed since that's not really a fair test if we do that.

Will make little microposts once we get started. The wife is currently finishing up a companion character sheet.

I fully agree, Salafax. In a perfect world, what you can and can't use in social mode should depend on exactly what thing you're talking about, and your exact character. Batman and Iron Man might be mechanically very similar, but their social aspect are worlds apart. Iron Man is open about who he is, and is mostly powerless in social mode, Batman is secret but still has his muscles and his brain, which is most of his powers.

The problem is that the Pathfinder system doesn't allow for that level of granularity. For a perfect character build sometimes you *should* lose access to your feat that you obtained at level 5, but you won't because that feat has nothing to do with the Avenger class. And sometimes your social identity should be mechanically identical to your Avenger identity (think Superman).

They can't and won't get it perfect. What perfect means is just too dependent on your character. I strongly believe that the default though should be to give access. I'm fully for an option you can take to give up access in social mode in exchange for some benefit (not sure what).

Yeah, it can be about protecting yourself. I'm mostly trying to cover the most common/popular super heroes in order to have this class able to work for how most people are going to want to ues it. Ideally, of course, it'll be flexible enough to support more than JUST that. So let's look at the options from a super high stand point:

* Full Dual Identity, Costume - You have your Vigilante self and your Ordinary self. You could be trying to protect yourself or your loved ones. You likely have your full powers as Ordinary Person, but have some strong incentive not to use them when in that mode. Your Ordinary Self should provide some benefit (connections, ability to gather information your Vigilante self would find it hard to obtain, etc.). This variation doesn't want to actually lose their powers, but should be incentivized not to use them in Social.

* Non-Dual Identity. This is a Vigilante who is open about their alternate identity. The main one of course being Tony Stark/Iron Man. This variation should get no real benefit in social mode. Tony Stark's loved ones aren't protected from repurcussions innately, only because Iron Man would mess them up if anyone were that foolish. I want to say that they should have their powers in social mode, too, but the use of Iron Man as an iconic for this is awkward because he's actually just a normal human without his suit. Honestly though, this character is likely better built with another class and fluff about your non-super identity.

* Full Dual Identity, Separate - Shazam! The two identities are actually full on different people. This is the one case that works perfectly with the current system minus the switching speeds.

Are there other super-big-picture modes I'm missing?

I found it on a youtube video trying to remember what was and wasn't in the animated series. It was animated in a style pretty close to the animated series, but wasn't credited. [Edit: Yes it was, I'm just blind. It was from a movie Batman vs Robin.] I'm still convinced that Bruce Wayne has showed great stealth and inventiveness in every iteration, and would be shocked if Bruce Wayne literally never got into a fist fight and kicked butt in the animated series.

If you missed it while replying, see my second post. To give you a reason to be in social mode you MUST be in a certain type of campaign that we rarely/never see in APs or PFS. Your origin story has to matter and it has to contain people worth protecting. This isn't a class meant for power gamers who take it for mechanical bonuses. It's for people that want to play an <Insert Hero Here> who has a reason to protect their back story built into their character.

Even with my saying that it's not for power gamers, there are still power-related issues that deserve discussion that have been brought up in other threads. I'm definitely not saying that the class is perfect or anything. But I honestly believe that the social identity is the most interesting part of the class as it stands, and the social identity needs access to super powers *at a cost* to actually be usable.

The social talents may be in addition to what we get as non-social talents. Let's hope so anyway, otherwise nobody's going to realistically take social talents and we're back to discussing why anyone would ever switch into social mode.

But if the Social/Daytime/Secret identity can use the Vigilante talents, then what is really the difference between the two?

In your average AP, probably nothing. And that's a problem. APs are supposed to be about the BBEG and if the BBEG goes after the friends and family of the players, then the AP is more about them than the BBEG, and every game turns out way differently, and there's a lot of questions that you can't answer in an AP.

But for some context, I'm currently GMing a custom game. The players got access to a two-way journal that could let them write messages to the BBEG, who they still hadn't come in direct contact with. One of the players decided to write something akin to "screw you." The BBEG, who previously was mostly ignoring them because they weren't a big enough deal to be on his radar, is now hunting down their friends and family. The campaign has turned into the players desperately trying to protect everyone they know. [Thankfully all the players are from the same starter town. It would have been much harder to take the plot this direction otherwise.]

THAT is the sort of stuff the DM has to be willing to do to make the social identity matter. You CAN'T put that stuff into an AP, it has to be designed for the players in question. So it's not that it's completely never relevant. It just can't (easily? at all?) be relevant in APs, including PFS. If you can't attack the players at their backstories... then yeah, it basically doesn't mean anything.

Re: Batman

In that same animated series there are tons of examples of Bruce Wayne doing cool stuff as himself. When he was kidnapped by the court of owls, he showed no fear despite their generally menacing demeanor and even planted a tracking device in their hideout, all with no costume. Bruce Wayne is a specially crafted mostly-false personality that appears to be timid and weak. He's not actually timid and weak. If push comes to shove, *especially* if the situation is life or death, he isn't going to let himself or anyone he cares about die just because he's not in a costume.

Not to mention that Batman specifically is a metric ton of different characters. There's campy batman, who just can't get rid of a bomb, there's the animated series who is mostly serious, but rarely dark, there's the batman with inexplicable bat nipples, there's super dark and serious batman. The Bruce Waynes in these different series are similarly varied and the Vigilante can't just choose to be one of these and not the others. It's a class we're intended to build a huge variety of characters with, and it can't even get the incarnations of Batman right (let alone the bajillion other Vigilantes in media) without having the mild-mannered alter ego being *capable* of doing most things that the super hero can do.

I would love an option to literally not have access to your super hero persona as social mode. Some people want to play Shazam! and that's cool, too. But we don't have the option to be Shazam OR Batman, we have only the option to be one of those, and it's the least common arrangement, to boot.

The Avenger combat feats. Hard to make a global call since feats do many things, but defaulting to available to social makes more sense to me than not.

I think if the party were bigger, it would have helped a lot. Really there's a lot of suboptimal things with this testing, but it's probably better than nothing and there aren't that many people posting actual play tests yet.

For one thing, I managed to frighten the demon. Who ran away, provoking basically no attacks of opportunity because I was the only front-liner. The spell caster wasn't designed to do damage (a character build issue, the character wasn't built to be part of a two-person party, it was just one that was already built when our plans suddenly included a one-shot campaign test) and her one damaging spell was fire based. And the demon has resistance to fire.

Both me and the wife found some things we want to change about the characters, and since this is what it is and not a serious session or anything, we likely will before we continue. She should be more able to deal damage, and I should be better at ranged. When that demon ran way, it basically just bought us a round where he couldn't full-round attack. I wasn't really able to take pot shots at him.

This is a game with magic users abundant. Why could the vigilante not be a magic user and a "normal member of society" too?

Okay so the masked thing running around uses magic -- that's not surprising lots of people do.

I hadn't really thought of this purely in the context of magic user. Really it depends on what exactly your alter ego IS, and thus should be something up to DM caveat, not in the rules. If you're a Cleric casting cure light wounds all day to cure the poor, nobody's going to look at your funny if you cast a non-healing spell every once in a while. But if your alter ego claims to not be able to cast at all, even a cantrip is going to raise eyebrows.

For martials, you probably shouldn't carry the exact same weapon in both personas. And unless your social persona can explain it, you probably shouldn't appear to have a 24 strength.

But that's not what the rules do right now. They leave only 1st level spells with spellcasters, which is wrong quite often, and they don't do much to reduce martial powers in social persona, depending on what the ruling on bonus feats winds up being (and even then, as long as you're smart about what you choose when, your social persona would still be quite functional in a fight).

My daughter is sick and we can't join our normal game. Time for me and the wife to do a strange play test where I play and am DM (less than ideal I know) and the wife is a legit player. I'm playing a variant of a Intimidate-based Fighter I made a while ago, this time with 12 levels of Avenger.

We're doing however much of The Demon Within we can get through. The first thing I noticed is that invisiblity + Frightning Appearance is somewhat ambiguous. Do the enemies "witness the attack" if I'm greater invisibilitied? I'm ruling yes for now. We need the help.

I decide that I expect that the main dude being inaugurated is going to be assassinated, so I can't afford a FIVE MINUTE change time. I have to be here in Vigilante form. I'm hiding in the rafters. My wife has managed to snag an invitation proper and thus is in the bleachers. I'm already nervous because the party is split.

The fight my wife chose (she's making all the choices because I have more info than I should have) is a tough one. I'm moving at a 20 because I needed the AC and Vigilante doesn't have the Armor Training I had been relying on. That might be just a build issue, though it's the biggest thing I've noticed so far. I've intimidated the demon -- my build design is working, he's just very slow to move around the battlefield.

I died. [Edited to add: But the demon was at 3HP when I died and the wife finished him off.] Full attacks from the demon were brutal, and it was my job to soak them all. Luckily, we're literally in a temple full of clerics. We were very ill prepared for demons. That was almost definitely part of character design, but so far everything except intimidate and reasonable but not insane amounts of damage, I suck at.

I'll continue if we continue the campaign, but we're stoping for now because the sick daughter woke back up.

VM, your solution is kinda what I expect Paizo to do. It doesn't really fix the problem of Bruce Wayne technically being able to kick serious butt if he wishes, but it's definitely better than what we have visible to us now (I say visible to us because I expect the social talents have been in the works for a while, but wasn't ready for the play test.)

As I understand it, RAW, yes. Not sure if that's intentional or not, though.

Which begs the question, if I only qualify for this feat in Vigilante mode, can I even take it for an odd-level feat? If so, does that also go away in mild-mannered mode since I don't technically have the prerequisite?

It could be extra fast to go from mundane -> super hero. Think of the iconic scene of Superman ripping Clark Kent's shirt and the super outfit was underneath all along. Going from mundane -> super hero is when you want to be fast about it. If it takes longer to button up your shirt and find where you threw your glasses, who cares, the world isn't in jeopardy any more.

I do get what VRMH is saying though, and I'm totally for making the player hesitate with their actions as the social persona. They shouldn't be running around doing all their superhero things in public unless they are okay with suffering the consequences (AND I believe they should be allowed to realistically play as an "out" super hero -- those exist, too).

It's entirely possible that the parts we don't know will fix some of the issues, but I don't see how it will fix the inherent awkwardness of skills being literally unusable in the social persona, no matter the situation.

If nothing else, look at the combat feats you can get as the Avenger. RAW, those feats go away when you're in your social persona, despite the fact that some of them would be *ridiculously* flavorful to allow in that persona.

How many times have we seen Clark Kent have to secretly use his powers without changing outfits and running the risk of being caught? Same for Bruce Wayne. Peter Parker. I'm not actually that big of a superhero fan. I mostly just know the "big" ones, but I can immediately think of times in media where they've all used their powers without their costume.

You may choose not to use your powers in your social identity. I really want to keep that dynamic in tact, and try to make it almost never the right choice to run that risk, but there is no tension or dynamic at all if you don't have the choice of whether to risk blowing your cover. The choice was made for you by the game mechanics just shutting that role playing aspect down.

"This could be the entire community or a smaller neighborhood in a larger settlement."

I guess those words are technically up to interpretation, but yeah, I just assumed that districts of a large city is what this sentence was intended to mean.

Sure sure, Bruce Wayne is the disguise. But my point still mostly stands. Bruce Wayne is able to do anything that Batman is, physically. Batman still has access to Bruce Wayne's money when he puts on the cowl. It's not that the two personalities suddenly stop being ABLE to do the things the other can, they just have to be careful about it.

I'm most familiar with Batman, admittedly, but I can't think of a single thing that Peter Parker and Clark Kent can do that their super hero counterparts aren't *capable* of doing. There would be repercussions, sure, but life or death, they could do it because they are, in actuality, the same person.

First, I agree that having the talents do NOTHING in social mode is a problem. That said, I don't like the idea of them giving you a substantially different benefit in social mode. It still becomes odd that Bruce Wayne can't do all the things that Batman can do if he has a good reason to do so. And why can Bruce Wayne do things that Batman can't? (The one exception to this is probably Intimidate/Diplomacy.)

The best solution I can think of is to make some mechanic where you CAN use the Vigilante Talents in social mode, but anyone that can observe you doing so gets a check to see through your disguise. Give it a real cost that's flavorful and works with just about every vigilante build. The only builds I can really think of where this doesn't work is a Mr. Hyde type build where the two identities are actually somehow mechanically separate, but that's probably less common than the reverse.

By Day: Antiquities dealer. Small time fence for the bad guys, in order to learn about the bad guys.

By Night: Hooded robin-hood type.

The most fun part for me so far has been the entirely flavorful decision of what equipment/weapons each persona has. I mean, mechanically there's no reason why Mr. Antiquities can't cary around a +3 Warhammer. But I've decided to stick to flavor more fully and refuse to wield that thing in public, it's too noticeable. Mr. Antiquities has a sap and blade boots in case the worst happens and he needs to use them.

I haven't played with the character yet, but honestly the dual identity thing is the main thing that made me immediately want to build a character. It's actually kinda fun if you embrace it. My social side doesn't wear the Belt of Mighty Strength, for instance, or several of my AC items. My vigilante wields a warhammer, but that's to bulky and obvious for my social side -- my social side only has a blade boot and a sap.

Granted, I'm using the Avenger specialization. It seems from reading that a lot of the complaints come from people looking at the spellcasting options. Maybe it's just one or two of the specializations that are really that off?