Help me rationalize this disguise

[Leitner]

I'm playing a character who is a tengu infiltrator(investigator) which specializes in disguise. Per the rules you normally take a -2 to disguise for attempting to look like another race, however, the infiltrator investigator gets rid of that penalty. So RAW I can go disguise as a human or whatever perfectly with absolutely no problem.

But the thing is, I just can't wrap my head around how this is happening without magic. I've got alter self, but for when I am going around in a plain old disguise, the beak is killing me. Every picture of a tengu I look at is rocking a gigantic beak. My GM isn't giving me any problems about it, and it is perfectly fine within the rules, but I just can't see how I'd be able to disguise as something other than a bird-like creature. Even my helmet I wear would have to have to account for a large beak.

So, anyone have some clever ideas how this is realistically plausible?

[SorrySleeping]

Because.

In all seriousness, the beak can be made into the part of the look of armor. A looser hood or scarf can conceal it. A low and wide brimmed bamboo samurai hat may trick them into thinking it is part of the hat.

Perhaps your Tengu is more of a bird with a shorter, easier to conceal beak.

[blahpers]

You're wearing a plague mask as part of the disguise.

[LordKailas]

you've attached pieces of string to your beak to make it look like a mask.

[Leitner]

Well, we do plan on infiltrating a masquerade ball in the near future. Plague mask is definitely going to be my to go option in this case.

[DungeonmasterCal]

There are some great suggestions above this post. Things I wouldn't have thought of, except possibly Plague Doctor. My admitted Pathfinder xenophobia and preference for the Core races plus a couple more very Human appearing ones would have kept me from coming up with those!

[blahpers]

LordKailas wrote:

you've attached pieces of string to your beak to make it look like a mask.

Ha! I like your suggestion better.

[Quiddity]

Simply make sure that your wig is secure and you should have no problems.

The problem with magic in a magical world is that it isn’t magic. We treat as a joke, or with patronization, the notion that modern technology is magic to those who don’t have it, but, in point of fact, tech utilizes branches of physics that those without said tech don’t know how to exploit. Creating a physical effect outside the bounds of known physics is literal magic.

All that’s to say that if “nonmagical” alchemy like tanglefoot bags are a thing, disguise kits that allow for Mission Impossible-plus faceshifting could be considered mundane as well.

As for how they physically work: I’d straight-up claim that they distort the physical space around your body, much like how shapeshifters have tons of personal mass floating about in extradimensional space. The alchemical ingredients in a disguise kit are no more remarkable than meeting a Skinwalker. It’s a much smaller jump than the Edgar suit, so if the latter didn’t asthetically bother you when you watched that film (it might have), the former fluff should work for Tengu-boo.

[Leitner]

lol, the chicken skit is amusing. But I guess I'll just go with my tengu has a naturally small beak. I suppose we could go the route of disguise kit seeming magical by our standards, and it does feel a bit odd to me.

[Selvaxri]

Sleeve of Many Garments?

Forget the beak, how are you going to explain the backwards-bending three-toes legs and giant feathered appendages that can somehow grasp objects?

[Leitner]

Selvaxri wrote:

Sleeve of Many Garments?

Forget the beak, how are you going to explain the backwards-bending three-toes legs and giant feathered appendages that can somehow grasp objects?

Sleeves of many garments was the first magic item I bought. it has come in handy for several different disguises thus far. But some things really don't fit well for having the bottom half of your face covered with a scarf(I.E. disguising as a house maid for example).

For the arms and legs, I took a dip to gain heavy armor proficiency. Currently the theory is that my legs and hands are covered with the armor. I've been very careful to avoid taking it off in company. I have an armor truss in my character's home to avoid them having to help me in and out of it. Thus far they have not been suspicious.

[Quiddity]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one must wonder about the term “rationalize” here.

Let’s take a look at Hat of Disguise.

Hat of Disguise wrote:

This apparently normal hat allows its wearer to alter her appearance as with a disguise self spell.

“Disguise Self" wrote:

You cannot change your creature type (although you can appear as another subtype). Otherwise, the extent of the apparent change is up to you. You could add or obscure a minor feature or look like an entirely different person or gender.

Is this a normal item in your world? I mean, as normal as a toaster is in ours? Because in d20 games I’ve played, it has been, and I daresay it is at most tables. (That’s opinion, but a fairly solid one.) If it’s common, I assume you’d have one because, well, it would be incompetent in character not to have one.

The only reason not to have one would be DM intervention: either a) the item is bizarrely rare (direct DM intervention) or b) the item is easily thwarted (it’s aggressively disbelieved constantly). Would people regularly be challenging your illusion thus making you and it suspect? That didn’t happen at my tables, but your DM is your DM.

If the hat works as expected, as it almost always does, then the hat will be the basis of your disguise. Per its text: it has your nose covered. Rationalizing disguise is a solution in search of a problem.

If the hat isn’t available, either literally or due to interpreting it into inoperatability (which I’m not declaring to be bad, mind you, just saying it’s a thing) then your problem isn’t rationalization even then: it’s determining what illusion and shapeshifting effects due in your DM’s system, which is an ancient d20 problem. This is a problem since solid a disguise-r is obliged to take some of the spicier stuff from those systems. If any of that is on the table as useful and available, your character would use it and then, like with the hat, you don’t even get to reasonably assert that you can’t rationalize your disguise since if you can’t rationalize that, you can’t reify anything in D&D. You’ve effectively said “look, I just can’t imagine magic working and dragons existing,” so you’ve shrugged yourself out of the game. (Of course, sapient bird-people are also absurd; are those rationalized?)

Not trying to be hostile here; just saying that there’s no such thing as a nonmagical sophisticated disguise in D&Dland just like there’s no standard “mundane” light source option on real-world Earth that eschews electricity. Non-electric lights aren’t “mundane” lights, they’re bad lights. A torch isn’t a nonmagical desk lamp, it’s a fire hazard and it sucks at its job of lighting things in every way. Similarly, grease paint and spirit gum aren’t “mundane” disguise materials, they’re what the ancient aboriginal people of this land used for disguise a thousand years ago. Today, we use this spiffy hat.

Keep in mind, you’d have the same problem — that is, the same non-problem that is singled out as a problem — with 10 ranks of Disguise and the skill unlock which erases the race penalty. In Pathfinderland, at rank 10 disguise, a tengu masquerading like a hobgoblin is just something you can trivially do.

Has your DM taken a hostile policy to illusion, polymorph, or both? If not, the issue isn’t rationalization. The issue is how you feel about the “magic” tag. That’s a problem you’ll have with all of the technology of D&D.

And by the way, if you use string and spirit gum to address a problem that is solved with modern technology (what we on Earth would call “magic”), your character isn’t clever or using a mundane solution; your character is freakish and bizarre with the context he lives in. Other characters will look at him and ask why he isn’t wearing a Hat of Disguise or using similar effects (which a disguise kit implicitly covers). If you, right here on Earth, decided to hide yourself in modern society by covering yourself in leaves and loam instead of electronically changing your identity, you’re not using a “nonmagical” or “mundane” solution, you’re a crazy freak who is incidentally bad at hiding.

Similarly, if you put some string on the beak of your completely impossible talking bird man, people in your game world will not be convinced that you’re wearing a plague mask, they’ll declare you a talking bird man with some string on his face. The people in your fantasy world will know the difference: they’ve lived in that world all their lives. Disguise kits hiding your beak or nose is literally less impossible than your impossible bird man. If people in your game world can’t tell the difference between:

• bird man
• bird man with string on his face using a Disguise Kit (tm)

— then that is because the Disguise Kit is clearly magical. Your solution literally reinvents your problem.

There is no such thing as a “Earth mundane” disguise kit in D&Dland; there simply can’t be. (As the game is currently written, of course.)

I’m not trying to squelch your fun, just trying to say that the world you’re roleplaying in is meant to be consistent and needing one of its magical bits to be nonmagical creates an inconsistence.

[Matthew Downie]

Quiddity wrote:

people in your game world can’t tell the difference between:

• bird man
• bird man with string on his face using a Disguise Kit (tm)

— then that is because the Disguise Kit is clearly magical.

The Disguise Kit isn't needed to disguise yourself. All it does is give you +2 to your skill check.

[Leitner]

Quiddity wrote:

text

Hat of disguise is a perfectly normal item in our world. And although I haven't tried to buy one yet I don't suspect I'd get any grief from my GM in terms of usage or purchasing. The only reason I don't have one yet is that I can't afford it. We are pretty low level, having just hit 4 last session.

I could have bought it instead of my masterwork fullplate I suppose, but decided to extra AC might be more important in the short term. My disguise score is still reasonably good without the hat, while my AC, is pretty low without the full plate.

So yes, all this will be a relatively moot point once I pick up the hat, or the greater version if I decide to save for that instead. But for the meantime I am usually just rolling a flat disguise check maybe with an inspiration bonus if I feel like it.

I will definitely be buying one at some point. Probably fairly soon if I decide to settle on the lesser version(which I most likely will). My question was simply how does this disguise make sense in the meantime?

[blahpers]

Disguise kits are not magical at all. They may or may not contain alchemical concoctions but given the cheap cost and the example items in the item description it seems unlikely that it would have anything particularly potent. And that doesn't get around the fact that disguise kits are not required when constructing a disguise in the first place.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Disguising is as much about performance as it is about appearance--there's a reason it's a Charisma based skill, after all! If you convincingly act like you're a human, people will think you're a human and either not even question the big honking beak on your face or assume that it's a magical effect, class ability, curse, or (ha!) disguise. The only reason to worry about rationalizing it is if one needs to roleplay the NPC being fooled by this disguise, and 90% of that can be simply ignoring the proverbial tengu in the room.

[ptrst]

Really good makeup contouring.

[Selvaxri]

Get a halfling sized marionette and convince people the marionette is the real character controlling a giant bird marionette

[blahpers]

Bonus: The marionette is in fact also a halfling.