Ok... so I'm currently playing a rogue who's good at using Disguises and all the things involved with it. It's a low magic world so stuff like Disguise Self or Alter Self don't exist.
But, now that I read deeper into it, it just is confusing as hell.
Your Disguise check result determines how good the disguise is, and it is opposed by others’ Perception check results.
Now Perception itself does not mention Disguise at all, so it would seem it's a straight up check of the kind "If you roll higher Disguise than his Perception, he won't recognize you"
But that's where it get's interesting. Or confusing, whatever you want.
Disguise further gives a list of modifiers on how elaborate your disguise is:
Disguise Disguise Check Modifier
Minor details only +5
Disguised as different gender1 –2
Disguised as different race1 –2
Disguised as different age category1 –2
Disguised as different size category1 -10
Ok, so I understand that just changing a few details about yourself is easier than changing your race. That part seems to make sense... at first glance at least, UNTIL you realize what that actually means.
Disguise is put against someone's Perception. There are only a few Perception modifiers mentioned in case you're impersonating an actual person and the one making the Perception check knows that person. If you just look like "someone else, not me" they wouldn't get a modifier on their Perception.
I will ignore those modifiers for now for that reason. It doesn't change anything, since they'd probably apply in all examples below and just raise the Perception skill, but not change the underlying problem.
Now let's assume someone with a +15 Disguise skill, and someone with a +10 Perception is looking for them. And for sake of easiness let's assume the Diguised person takes 10.
Normal check: +15, on average can be beaten by rolling 5 more on Perception than the disguise roll, so that would be a 15 or higher.
Minor details only: +20 ... suddenly he needs a 20.
Disguise as an elf: +13 and now only an 13
It goes on like that, but I think you can see it.
What does that mean?
It means that in effect I'm better of just letting my hair down and wearing some glasses, because that gives me a +5 to my check.
Or if I'm playing a male character, glueing on a fake beard.
It would be stupid to try and look like an elf or make myself look older, because that apparently makes people recognize me faster.
In other words: Looking almost exactly like myself makes me look nothing like myself. While looking like an 80 year old gnome male instead of a 20 year old human woman would have everyone recognize me because I now got a -20 penalty on my Disguise check and apparently I'm looking just like myself.
That honestly doesn't make a lick of sense to me.
So am I looking at this wrong and is there something I didn't consider. Or is the whole system a little broken?
It is something you didn't consider. :)
The opposed check is not to recognize you for who you are, it is to recognize you are disguised. What happens after that is how they discover who you are. Do you have a good disguise job that people cannot tell or one of those disguises where people notice it right off the bat?
It is easier to make subtle changes without them being noticed as a disguise. It is much harder to make changes to your race, gender, age, or size. Noticing that this small halfling is really a 5' tall human is much easier than noticing this brown haired human is really a blonde haired human.
After they notice something off then they can capture, remove disguise, find out you are who you are, etc.
- Gauss
And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!
Hmm, ok that's possible.
But let's say I really am only changing minor details about myself, and the city watchman who's looking for me fails his Perception check against my Disguise (with the +5).
Would he then recognize me?
Or the other way around. I was disguised (with the +5 bonus) with minor details only, when I was committing the crime, and now the city watch is looking for my disguised alter ego. However now I'm not disguised anymore.
Will they immediate recognize me?
if you drop the disguise, its kinda like making those minor changes to your appearance, so the +5...as long as they didn't see you casing the joint before hand and make a sense motive against your bluff :)
Yes I can kinda see that flipping my cloak around to be a dull grey instead of a bright red, putting my hair down (or up) and maybe throw the hat away, could fool a guardsman, if he was chasing someone with a hat and a red cloak and concentrates on that, and just walks by the blonde woman in the grey cloak.