I haven't picked up the book yet, but looking through discussions, it seems like the Social Talents all make you popular, and probably something like an aristocrat.
So, does that mean there are no ways to make Peter Parker, Clark Kent, or anyone else with a day job?
Did the devs go so hard into the "social butterfly" thing that there aren't Social Talents for mixing in with the dregs of society, or your average layman?
'Cause railroading players into making the Scarlett Pimpernel wouldn't exactly make me thrilled to pick up the book.
But if the Social Talents are wide enough that you can make characters from any walk of life, that'd be far more useful.
You can definitely build a Vigilante who isn't a noble, but your social talent options are more restricted if you do.
Specifically you get ten social talents from level one to twenty and twelve of them don't have anything to do with being a celebrity.
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the only ones i've seen that truly make you popular are Celebrity Discount, In Vogue and maybe Gossip Collector, since renown could easily be gained from being "guy who always seems to be around when (insert vigilante form here) is about to show up." your GM could also rule that having renown decreases others' starting moods, instead of increasing them if you really want your social personality to be unpopular.
You can get social talents based on crafting/profession day jobs instead of being a celebrity/aristocrat, or bonuses to Cha/Int/Wis skills, or for directly aiding the vigilante identity, or for more disguise potential.
Renown isn't so much of you being famous, but more strongly regarded in your local community for the social identity, or more feared by your vigilante identity (the actual area of renown acts as a centre of influence with an extending radius of miles equal vigilante levels for the vigilante identity to have an intimidate bonus). In comic/tv examples, it's Matt Murdock seen as a lawyer of the common folk in Hell's Kitchen, or Peter Parker seen as a hard working student/photographer trying to make an honest buck and folks are friendly towards him. Or it can be a social identity that's more known in the dregs of society as a con artist/thief/troublemaker. Renown increases people's starting attitudes up one step (typically friendly), just like how intimidate does when used to change attitudes to friendly but much more widespread.
Even the aristocrat-ish social talents can be worked as more criminal in nature. Celebrity perks and discounts could be described as the social identity terrorizing citizens for cheaper or free things like a mob boss or protection racket. Gossip collector can be used for information broker. Case the joint is perfect for burglars. Loyal aid for access to a criminal network willing to help you out.
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I have always thought the duel identity aspect of this book could be accomplished with good role playing. I have done it in the past with a druid / rogue, he was good at forging documents and hid his true identity from everyone and created a couple identities for himself for different situations. And once you have access to the thousands faces trait as a druid it becomes even easier.
Now as the druid i had a class mechanic to help with what i wanted but i could accomplish the same thing as any other class with some careful planning, role playing, and making it clear where, when, and how i go about switching my identities and hiding my true identity with a mask or some sort.
I have not read through the book yet but just the duel identity feature seems like adding rules and class feature to create a single class niche that i previously could accomplish with decent role play and planning with any class.
I have always thought the duel identity aspect of this book could be accomplished with good role playing. I have done it in the past with a druid / rogue, he was good at forging documents and hid his true identity from everyone and created a couple identities for himself for different situations. And once you have access to the thousands faces trait as a druid it becomes even easier.
Now as the druid i had a class mechanic to help with what i wanted but i could accomplish the same thing as any other class with some careful planning, role playing, and making it clear where, when, and how i go about switching my identities and hiding my true identity with a mask or some sort.
I have not read through the book yet but just the duel identity feature seems like adding rules and class feature to create a single class niche that i previously could accomplish with decent role play and planning with any class.
It's EXACTLY a class that's accomplishing at lower levels more easily what other classes need clever roleplaying and higher level abilities for. But the vigilante class isn't invalidating clever roleplaying, it's merely giving earlier and different options, like any other base class.
You can still do the same things with roleplay, but the vigilante just introduces mechanics that merely gives stronger bonuses to that roleplay. No different than a ranger with camouflage being better than a fighter at higher levels trying to stealth.
Forged documents, extra identities, and other useful in-character tactics are still necessary for vigilantes to keep the dual identity separate from more scrutinous eyes.
Instead of druid's thousand faces, one can use seamless disguise or many guises line of talents to do similar things at earlier levels. This also makes more sense for a lot of players that someone who's more invested in the practice of disguises and alternate identities would be able to do this at lower levels versus a druid of nature getting extra abilities to transform into humanoids rather than turning into animals or other beings in a fantasy nature setting.
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I have always thought the duel identity aspect of this book could be accomplished with good role playing. I have done it in the past with a druid / rogue, he was good at forging documents and hid his true identity from everyone and created a couple identities for himself for different situations. And once you have access to the thousands faces trait as a druid it becomes even easier.
Now as the druid i had a class mechanic to help with what i wanted but i could accomplish the same thing as any other class with some careful planning, role playing, and making it clear where, when, and how i go about switching my identities and hiding my true identity with a mask or some sort.
I have not read through the book yet but just the duel identity feature seems like adding rules and class feature to create a single class niche that i previously could accomplish with decent role play and planning with any class.
The disguise skill alone is more or less all you need. Most characters aren't even entitled to a check to see through your disguise in the first place, and even when they are, it's not difficult to get really nice disguise bonuses at low levels.
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The vigilante has a few advantages over other classes to fit its niche.
The first is that it goes from "difficult" to "downright impossible" to have someone see through your disguise. The +20 bonus means that you're pretty much only going to get caught by someone with a ridiculous investment in perception and who is like 10 levels over you.
In addition, for any other character attempting this, all you need is one smart villain or one curious bystander for everything to fall apart with a single ill-timed scry spell. While anyone scrying for "druid-spiderman" would see him and discover his identity if he were in "peter parker" mode, the scry would actually come up completely blank if he were looking for "vigilante-spiderman" if he happened to be in his social identity. Unbeatable scry protection is the #1 reason that the vigilante has such an advantage in his niche over every other class.
The social talents are also quite nice for the role, and something I think a GM should consider if there were a vigilante and a non-vigilante trying to do the same thing.
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Seems like a more reasonable answer would have been to make some better options for evading things like scrying, rather than creating an entirely new class with a lot of meta-restrictions.
As noted before, even if your Disguise check is low, most aren't even entitled to a check to see through your disguise. Even still, getting your check so high that it's not really even an issue isn't particularly difficult either, even in core.
One would think that if the amount of effort that was put into making this class was put into making feats, skill options, abilities, items, and spells for being a vigilante of any class...well, we could have nice things.
well, we could have nice things
There are like 20 pages about the vigilante - and about 230 pages about everything else. I could point out things I consider good, but I don't want to see 'No, that's bad because...'. Personally I am not happy with everything in the book either, but that's a small price for the goodies inside.
yes you can, it's called the Wildsoul archetype
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The scry protection is actually a very interesting ability. So each identity is the specific target of the scry and if you happen to not be in that identity it fails outright. very interesting. One issue i could have with this is: if i acquire a piece of the person (hair, blood, finger, ect.) and use scry to find the individual that way would it also fail?
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I haven't picked up the book yet, but looking through discussions, it seems like the Social Talents all make you popular, and probably something like an aristocrat.
Renown and the Talents that follow it are the only ones that make you popular. And even they don't make you an aristocrat, just well known and liked within a certain community. You could be everyone's favorite baker or bartender as easily as a noble.
So, does that mean there are no ways to make Peter Parker, Clark Kent, or anyone else with a day job?
Easily. There are actually a few Talents for making you better at your day job specifically.
Did the devs go so hard into the "social butterfly" thing that there aren't Social Talents for mixing in with the dregs of society, or your average layman?
There are.
'Cause railroading players into making the Scarlett Pimpernel wouldn't exactly make me thrilled to pick up the book.
But if the Social Talents are wide enough that you can make characters from any walk of life, that'd be far more useful.
They're plenty wide enough.
Seems like a more reasonable answer would have been to make some better options for evading things like scrying, rather than creating an entirely new class with a lot of meta-restrictions.
What meta-restrictions are you referring to?
And they've implied that something to let people duplicate the dual identities thing is probably in one of the upcoming Intrigue-related Players Companions.
As noted before, even if your Disguise check is low, most aren't even entitled to a check to see through your disguise. Even still, getting your check so high that it's not really even an issue isn't particularly difficult either, even in core.
True, but it requires effort searching through things.
One would think that if the amount of effort that was put into making this class was put into making feats, skill options, abilities, items, and spells for being a vigilante of any class...well, we could have nice things.
They do seem inclined to add such options on top of the Class, so I'm not sure what the main complaint is here. The Class isn't super necessary, but it's convenient. Especially for new people. Someone with a lot of optimization experience who wants to play Spider Man or Batman can manage it a lot of different ways (The Eldritch Heritage Feat line with Rakshasa Bloodline is something I've used on an NPC to avoid divination, for example), but a new player? They would have some trouble...until the Vigilante, which is a quick and easy solution to the issue.
I don't have the book yet, so all of this is just from what I've read from others describing it.
The Social Talents and social personality seem like it WOULD HAVE been a great way to make an infiltrator like the Master Spy - a whole menagerie of disguising, hiding-in-plain-sight in a crowd, etc. abilities which can be molded into the "superhero" motif through application and roleplaying.
Instead, it seems like it's vice-versa: you are a superhero/villain, and trying to turn the class into something other than a location-restricted masked-man is like pulling teeth.
I don't have the book yet, so all of this is just from what I've read from others describing it.
The Social Talents and social personality seem like it WOULD HAVE been a great way to make an infiltrator like the Master Spy - a whole menagerie of disguising, hiding-in-plain-sight in a crowd, etc. abilities which can be molded into the "superhero" motif through application and roleplaying.
Instead, it seems like it's vice-versa: you are a superhero/villain, and trying to turn the class into something other than a location-restricted masked-man is like pulling teeth.
The vigilante isn't exactly location restricted, though. Even the most location restricting social talent, renown, can be re-keyed to another city fairly easily. In fact there's specific wording to be allowed multiple locations all at once, and a social talent that makes it even easier to change between many locations over the course of the campaign. You can also forgo renown entirely, which would make your character completely untethered to any single location. I would argue that renown would simply make no sense or be completely overpowered if it wasn't somehow tying you to your location of personal fame. I don't think a simple level 1 dude should be well known no matter where he goes, you know?
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The Social Talents and social personality seem like it WOULD HAVE been a great way to make an infiltrator like the Master Spy - a whole menagerie of disguising, hiding-in-plain-sight in a crowd, etc. abilities which can be molded into the "superhero" motif through application and roleplaying.
.... there are social talents that make you amazing at disguising and hiding in plain sight and disguising yourself as anyone with a giant bonus.
Instead, it seems like it's vice-versa: you are a superhero/villain, and trying to turn the class into something other than a location-restricted masked-man is like pulling teeth.
There are no superhero/supervillian abilities in the main class (some can be added through archetypes), and it is not location-restricted.
In all seriousness, you should probably just wait until the book is up on the PRD (or in your hands) before viewing with alarm. Its going to be difficult to get a coherent evaluation of the class if all your information comes from the reactions of Internet strangers on a forum.
Either way, good or bad, balanced or broken, the book is written and will stay more or less the same for some time.
By the way, I was really surprised that they basically gave away the pounce ability for free for vigilantes. And a pseudo-Dex-to-damage thing, too. How astonishing...
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I don't have the book yet, so all of this is just from what I've read from others describing it.
The Social Talents and social personality seem like it WOULD HAVE been a great way to make an infiltrator like the Master Spy - a whole menagerie of disguising, hiding-in-plain-sight in a crowd, etc. abilities which can be molded into the "superhero" motif through application and roleplaying.
Instead, it seems like it's vice-versa: you are a superhero/villain, and trying to turn the class into something other than a location-restricted masked-man is like pulling teeth.
As others note, this is almost the exact opposite of true. Master of Disguise is a very definite Social Talent Path to go down, and you can make a Vigilante without ever taking Renown (the only way vigilante gets location restricted at all).
I'd wait to get a look at the book before worrying about this stuff. Working class day jobs and being masters of disguise are both very much thematic elements that the class plays to...if you want it to.
By the way, I was really surprised that they basically gave away the pounce ability for free for vigilantes. And a pseudo-Dex-to-damage thing, too. How astonishing...
Well, they get Pounce at 12th, which is later than Barbarians or Brawlers get it already, and Lethal Grace has the real downside over Dex-to-damage that dumping Str actually hurts it.
But yeah, Vigilantes get some nice stuff. I'm a big fan of the 'Power Attack + Add your Power Attack Penalty as a bonus to your AC' Talent for a heavily armored Str-based Vigilante. That sounds fun.