Permanent disguise?

[Lythe Featherblade]

I'm wondering how the rules would apply for a permanent disguise. At 50gp for 10 uses it's a pretty steep price.

For example a half-elf that would want to hide his elven heritage, or someone who wants to hide their true gender. Books tend to be full of people who keep a disguise like this up for months or years, and they aren't necessarily bards or rogues, nor are they rich spending vast sums of money to keep up the disguise.

secondly, what would consider 'drawing attention' to something like this? For hiding elven hertitage, I'd assume someone watching you in twilight might notice that you aren't as nightblind as other humans, other than that (or like the example of a city guard scrutinizing travellers), what would cause a check vs your disguise?

[ShadowcatX]

Books are also full of people who get caught hiding their gender / race / what have you.

IMO what causes a check would depend on the campaign setting. If you're in a setting where elves are hated and heavily persecuted, a half elf with even slightly delicate features might be checked over every time a normal human walks by. Especially if elves are known to kidnap humans as breeding stock to make more human looking spies and to try and understand them better.

Alternatively, if you're trying to hide your heritage but no one is really looking for it and/or no one cares, then I wouldn't make checks very often at all.

[Maezer]

You disguise yourself, that is your disguise DC until you either remove it, or make another disguise attempt. Your disguise doesn't fade over time so its already effectively permanent.

And you don't need a kit to make a disguise check. It just gives you a circumstance bonus if you access to one. If you don't want to pay for one, then you don't get the circumstance bonus.

[Lythe Featherblade]

Maezer wrote:

And you don't need a kit to make a disguise check. It just gives you a circumstance bonus if you access to one. If you don't want to pay for one, then you don't get the circumstance bonus.

What I'm angling towards is that same bonus long-term for a specific disguise, because if this is a particular image you're trying to portray, having your everyday garb modified or even designed from scratch to supplement that image should be as good or better than something out of a disguise kit that takes mere minutes to apply.

[Tuboo]

I agree with your assertion here. One should be able to "assume an identity" by using a longterm disguise. Unfortunately, there is no given mechanic for this, so you must re-roll (or presumably take 10/20) each time you don your disguise anew. If you're looking for something longterm, then you'd have to add deterioration mechanics, which the writers don't like. For example, if you are trying to hide your skin's natural colour with dyes, what happens if you are submerged in water? what happens if you are just sweating heavily. Does a wig last forever, or does it slowly lose hairs and become less convincing? When you're preparing your own disguise, do you notice your own mistakes in applying it? In short, there are a lot of things to consider in any given situation, and these aren't even getting picky/into physics. Depending on the specific circumstances, I'd say houserule with appropriate +/-2's Let me know what you come up with.