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I was thinking about this class recently and I'm curious how those who played them dealt with campaigns with travel as a focus so your not in one area e.g. The Catman has been seen in BahRain, Cheliax, Absaolom, The Worldwound and Osiria. I know the mechanics in the class I'm talking about the roleplay aspect of how you explain this travelling vigilante always showing up in the same spot as "party A" and "cover identity B"?
Do you keep your secret identity secret from the party as well?
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In a medieval setting the vigilantly identity is probably not a costumed crime fighter. It is likely to be an adventurer. In many cases the character can simply stay in the vigilantly identify and not resume the social identity. There are lots of stories of a noble fleeing after their lands and titles are taken to latter come back and claim them. The noble often adopts an identity as an adventure. Another example of this would be silk (prince Kheldar) in the belgariad. Silk remained mostly in his adventuring identity for most of the books.
Yeah, I assume that the vigilante identity is the primary identity for an adventuring vigilante, and that the social identity is innocuous enough (at the beginning) that they aren't really missed when they disappear. So the vigilante just starts travelling with adventurers and they are as well known (in that identity) as the rest of their travelling companions.
The only real requirement is that the social persona stay unconnected from the vigilante persona, and even then it has very minimal impact.
I was thinking about this class recently and I'm curious how those who played them dealt with campaigns with travel as a focus so your not in one area e.g. The Catman has been seen in BahRain, Cheliax, Absaolom, The Worldwound and Osiria. I know the mechanics in the class I'm talking about the roleplay aspect of how you explain this travelling vigilante always showing up in the same spot as "party A" and "cover identity B"?
Do you keep your secret identity secret from the party as well?
I’ve never played a Vigilante, precisely because I found the premise so problematic and—not to be rude—because I thought certain aspects of the class were contrived. Let me pose this question to you, though:
Is there anything that limits the Vigilante to a single social identity or a single vigilante identity, other than the time it takes to build up renown (or transfer it to another community)?
I was thinking about this class recently and I'm curious how those who played them dealt with campaigns with travel as a focus so your not in one area e.g. The Catman has been seen in BahRain, Cheliax, Absaolom, The Worldwound and Osiria. I know the mechanics in the class I'm talking about the roleplay aspect of how you explain this travelling vigilante always showing up in the same spot as "party A" and "cover identity B"?
Do you keep your secret identity secret from the party as well?
I’ve never played a Vigilante, precisely because I found the premise so problematic and—not to be rude—because I thought certain aspects of the class were contrived. Let me pose this question to you, though:
Is there anything that limits the Vigilante to a single social identity or a single vigilante identity, other than the time it takes to build up renown (or transfer it to another community)?
It in contrived. It's so you can run a very specific kind of campaign. However, you can mostly ignore dual identity in any other campaign and the class works just fine, you're just losing out on that small part of it.
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The tricky bit to always staying in vigilante identity is most of the social talents only work in social identity, and you get them every odd level. I've got 3 characters that dipped vigilante to varying degrees, and all of them wound up with Companion to the Lonely as their first social talent.
It's a bit squicky, but stays useful forever and doesn't require the social identity.
Hence my question, above. I think it’s far less problematic if you aren’t limited to one social identity and one vigilante identity. I also imagine it’s probably much easier on GMs and fellow players alike to have interludes during which the vigilante builds renown and relationships and the party as a whole scout and prepare for whatever their objective is, than to deal with the problems raised by the OP.
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The good thing is in PF2 , Paizo handled the situation elegantly. They have made secret identity as an archetype dedication also called Vigilante that anyone can take. If I were inclined to run a campaign focused on this kind of intrigue, I would give the whole group this dedicated for free.
Don’t mind me while I wonder on over to the PF2 side of AON to check this out…
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Hence my question, above. I think it’s far less problematic if you aren’t limited to one social identity and one vigilante identity. I also imagine it’s probably much easier on GMs and fellow players alike to have interludes during which the vigilante builds renown and relationships and the party as a whole scout and prepare for whatever their objective is, than to deal with the problems raised by the OP.
I pretty much saw the same problems hence my question. My reading of it was once you pick an identity your locked into that one.
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As others have said… the Vigilante class doesn’t have to be a caped crusader… the class can be used to facilitate numerous character concepts…
Noble in hiding - Social Identity, their true identity - vigilante identity, their adventurer persona/false identity
Jekyl & hyde - your identies are both well known, and it may or may not be known that you are the same.
Master of disguise - perhaps your vigilante identity is the real you, but your social identity is whoever you need to be at that moment.
Thats just a few possible ways to use the vigilante without being stuck in the caped crusader mindset. I played one with a jekyl & hyde setup once. It was pretty fun. The whole party knew both identies were the same person, and she had no need to keep her identity secret… in her social identity she was a timid alchemist who was scared of everything, but her vigilante identity was a battle hardened beast who was scared of nothing.
Hence my question, above. I think it’s far less problematic if you aren’t limited to one social identity and one vigilante identity. I also imagine it’s probably much easier on GMs and fellow players alike to have interludes during which the vigilante builds renown and relationships and the party as a whole scout and prepare for whatever their objective is, than to deal with the problems raised by the OP.I pretty much saw the same problems hence my question. My reading of it was once you pick an identity your locked into that one.
My reading of it, which is by no means comprehensive—never mind expert—is that the game mechanics certainly qualify how long it takes to build your social and vigilante identities, the size of community over which they can exercise influence, and how long it takes for a vigilante to transfer or regain renown. The rules treats a single identity of each as the default, but I don’t think they ever state that multiple social or vigilante identities are prohibited.
I tossed them out of the classes eligible for play in my campaign and substituted The Peer designed by Owen K.C. Stephens.
I think of it as looking like you can't handle yourself in a fight. You can let your team in on the personality shift, but the world at large needs to be unaware of it.
Maybe you clean up nicely. Maybe you retired. Maybe you kick off your boots, tie your hair back, put on some glasses, and handle your party's administrative tasks whenever you come into town.
The faceless enforcer archetype is my personal favorite. You have a rep, and your armor has a rep. Ferocious hunter is simply hiding his orcish heritage, very subtle shift.
Fiction is full of ironically dual capable characters.
Why does your social identity have to be tied to a specific location? Some social talents have some restrictions on location, but there is nothing that says you have to take them. Your social identity could easily be a prosperous merchant instead of a landed noble. Many Guises does give the vigilante the ability to take on an unlimited number of mundane identities. This can actually be very useful for the party. Being able to enter a city without being recognized as anyone in particular is perfect for scouting out the area.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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As a fan of the class, it either is an issue or it isn't.
If you're in an intrigue game, then yes, it is important to think about the implications of relocating. In my current game, my vigilante does have the 'day job' of mild mannered weaponsmith and hasn't really recreated his vigilante idenity (backstory his cover was 'blown' and he escaped to Sandpoint from Westcrown.) Since it's Jade regent, he's going to build up the vigilante identity later.
With my PFS vigilantes it never came up much.
If all else fails, you spend a feat and don't worry about it.
Also I highly recommend the Legendary Vigilantes book for lots of reasons, but in relation to this topic the exposed vigilante archetype makes the dual identity question moot.
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Why does your social identity have to be tied to a specific location? Some social talents have some restrictions on location, but there is nothing that says you have to take them. Your social identity could easily be a prosperous merchant instead of a landed noble. Many Guises does give the vigilante the ability to take on an unlimited number of mundane identities. This can actually be very useful for the party. Being able to enter a city without being recognized as anyone in particular is perfect for scouting out the area.
My reading of the class say's both identities are tied to one or two locations.
I'll keep the book in mind if I ever intend to play the class.
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I tossed them out of the classes eligible for play in my campaign and substituted The Gentleman Class designed by Old Spice.
Some of the social talents do have restriction on location, but others do not. Renown and the talents that have it a prerequisite are limited by location. You can change the location of renown which would allow you to use any of the talents linked to renown in the new location. Doing so does take some time so if you are just passing through the area those talents are not going to be accessible. But if you are going to be in an area for a while you can gain access to them after you establish yourself. I don’t know of any vigilante talents that are restricted by location.
Neither dual identity nor seamless guise has any mention of being restricted by location, nor does any other class ability.
I tossed them out of the classes eligible for play in my campaign and substituted The Gentleman Class designed by Old Spice.
I completely forgot about that! Thanks! LOL!
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Another option is being a shapeshifter. Kitsune characters make excellent vigilantes. Had one for PFS. Never showed up as the same person. Never used my social identity either.
Are there any consequences for people knowing who you are?
What's to keep you from owning it, like Tony Stark? "I am Ironman."
Even little Spiderman has friends like Ned and MJ that know him as Peter Parker.
I suppose if both of your identities were known you might not enjoy the protection from scrying and alignment detection effects that comes with the class (GM-dependent). Then again, if nothing precludes you from coming up with new identities, then even then is only a 4-7 day-long detriment.
Vigilantes need not be heroes (The Serial Killer archetype for example). In this light villains like Mystique from Marvel comics would be Vigilantes. Her whole Vigilante identity gimmick was shapeshifting. Never needing to be in her social identity and appearing as anyone WAS her vigilante identity.
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Do you keep your secret identity secret from the party as well?
I view that as akin to stealing from your party, or PvP. It is a player's responsibility to create a PC that functions as a member of the party.
The tricky bit to always staying in vigilante identity is most of the social talents only work in social identity, and you get them every odd level.
Easy solution: Just stay in the social identity 24/7. Vigilante Talents explicitly work regardless of identity, and there are literally just four talents that don't fully work if you don't switch identities, the Renown line and Case the Joint, which are all hard to actually set up in a normal campaign anyway. And the only thing from the base class features is the scry protection that stops doing anything when the scryer targets a party member.
Also, two thirds of all social talents work in vigilante identity, or about seven eights if you discount the Renown line and related talents. Ultimately, only Social Grace and Well-Known Expert will actually be missed.
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Are there any consequences for people knowing who you are?
What's to keep you from owning it, like Tony Stark? "I am Ironman."
Even little Spiderman has friends like Ned and MJ that know him as Peter Parker.
in theory, you can have lots of people know. it just breaks the dual identity if your identity is 'exposed to the world at large.' without any definition of what that means.
So you could be Don Diego who only has a select few who know he's Zorro, or you could be Bruce Wayne who has the entire Bat-Family, villians, his fellow core seven leaguers, likely Amanda Waller and Jim Gordon...
As long as he doesn't reveal it on national television (Hi, my name is Peter Parker) it's not compromised.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Do you keep your secret identity secret from the party as well?I view that as akin to stealing from your party, or PvP. It is a player's responsibility to create a PC that functions as a member of the party.
This should be in flashing bold font in general and for rogues and vigilantes in particular.