Have I missed something or does the adventure not really say what happens if you act whilst disguised ? Should notoriety not be gained for killing guards ? Or does this measure represent the authorities being on alert in general ?
I (foolishly) let my players by masks from a “opera shop” and they have also grabbed things like dottari uniforms, ccg armbands (because of course they have red armbands) and red Jill cloaks
I think some assume just donning some of these items give them a free pass
Should it? The disguise skill is not something i have really used
Obviously if they overuse the weird opera masks they will be recognisable in their own right - and tracked back to the shop at least. That could be a grim moment
How have other people’s PCs gone about the disguise route ? And how has this been treated ?
Yes, notoriety should accrue to the Silver Ravens organization. Just not to the secret identities of the Silver Ravens.
Right now, due to failed disguise checks, the dottari are on the lookout for The Ordinary Man and The Pink-haired Aasimar. The Ordinary Man responded by varying his disguises in different shades of attention-getting oddity, while the party tried to make pink hair fashionable for a while as a way of dealing with that identification. Then the character got access to a magic item granting Prestidigitation at will, so the hair color thing is now all over the map.
They also started tagging the SR logo everywhere in town to fight back and gain visibility for their organization. Morgar, their idiot Bro Fighter, got it stenciled on his breastplate for vigilante missions.
Mechanically, if they're reasonable about corpses and public street fighting, Rexus' ability to decrease notoriety kept their score reasonably in check.
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Notoriety is an abstract. Partially to represent how infamous the PCs are, partially to show how much of a buzz the Ravens are making on the street. That's why you roll it to see if people recognize the PCs and the players can gain it even if the do something in disguise/kill a guard and hide the body but the body is later found.
There's nothing wrong with the players having disguises... it would be silly if they didn't think to hide their identities. But yes, if they're always using the same ones (like my group is) those disguises will be recognizable. If they're changing them all the time the notoriety is still going up for the Ravens but perhaps the players aren't recognized as being part of the organization/leading the Ravens.
Which could lead to someone else stepping up and trying to claim leadership.
Also, surely the supporters/allies know that the PCs are the leaders (or, at the very least, influential) and there is the constant attrition built into the system. Some people that left the rebellion could easily have loose lips or were picked up by guards and interrogated.
Just because the PCs are quiet about things doesn't mean that others are.
...Morgar, their idiot Bro Fighter...
What a fantastic way to describe him!
(It's the personality I've given him as well)
Thanks! I may give him a butt-tattoo of the SR if he survives to become someone's cohort.
Think of it like the Arrow series. By a certain point, everyone knows of the Arrow and sometimes even rally to his cause. Most people don't know it's Oliver Queen, but the circle of people that do gradually expands the more he acts as a vigilante, which causes its own set of interpersonal problems. He's also put on trial early on in the series, but wins the case.
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One thing Disguise doesn't hide is combat skill. Four people attacked us - one guy with a rapier, another with a long bow, a wizard and maybe some kind of cleric (just to pick on my group.) Just because the set of four looks different every time, eventually people are going to catch on to what to look for. And unless the pc's are disguising their gender and race (with ensuing increase in skill DC), etc. it's not going to take too long.
[For some reason the same scene from an obscure movie keeps running through my head: at one point in Zorro, The Gay Blade the fill-in Zorro attacks different caballeros in various fruit-colored outfits.]