Disguise Rolls for Superhero Costumes

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

4. However the rise of the surveillance society complicates the question of disguise. It becomes increasingly difficult to operate without having recordings of you in action, recordings that can be studied at length and compared to image databases. True the effectiveness of modern facial recognition software is over-rated. They're easy to confuse as long as you aren't actually posing for the cameras. But presumably they will improve as technology advances, and comic book geniuses don't have to wait for other's people's technology to advance. I recommend molded masks.

This is why the TDMs I mentioned a few posts above are generally in the 1-4 range, not 25(!) as was suggested. (Last time I took a modifier even close to that was a -18 penalty making a nigh-impossible shot with an starting Bow-31 skill.... a called shot to the jaw at 50 yards in a dark forest) If you assume that a superhero has a Disguise-12 and Holdout-12, and the average person trying to figure out "Green Arrow is really Oliver Queen" has a Per 10 or 11, the margin of success on the quick contest, giving Ollie nickel-dime bonuses for his gear - including voice distortion unit (a +2 to Disguise?) - adds up to widen the margin.

There's also the whole "stay in shadows" or "vibrate your features to a blur" angle, too; Stealth and darkness penalties to Per help a lot.

A smart super of the vigilante nature is not going to use only one skill to avoid tying one identity to another. He's going to use a variety of Disguise, Acting, Mimicry, and Stealth as well as special gear; it's up to the GM to determine which of those is the primary and which are the complementary skills in any given situation.

And don't forget that some folks - usually those who have "superhero" as their sole occupation (Scarlet Witch, Vision, Wonder Woman in many iterations), but occasionally just those who are simply unable to hide their nature in any fashion (Ben Grimm, Cyborg, Beast Boy), or have even decided for the publicity (Reed Richards, Johnny Storm) - don't use identity-concealing masks.

[Christopher R. Rice]

You guys have given me a ton to think about, you especially, Ted. Thank you. I'm going to mull over this for a while and get back to you. Thanks again, everyone. Lots to think about here.

[Bruno]

And this is why I favor shapeshifting or "power-up-form" supers; there may be no doubt that the super that rescued you was Blammo! the Exploding Man, but he's 6" taller than Mike Meekson and has a tan and a spectacular chin. You'd never confuse the two.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Bruno

And this is why I favor shapeshifting or "power-up-form" supers; there may be no doubt that the super that rescued you was Blammo! the Exploding Man, but he's 6" taller than Mike Meekson and has a tan and a spectacular chin. You'd never confuse the two.

True, nobody's going to mistake the clearly mid-30s Captain Marvel for 13 year old Billy Batson. :) Mary, on the other hand, is a tougher call, as her face doesn't change much between her 13 year old mortal form and her 18-20-ish year old super-powered adult form.

[Anthony]

As far as can be determined from the genre, superhero costumes make you immune to recognition by anyone who doesn't have super-powers or super-tech to penetrate your disguise.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

As far as can be determined from the genre, superhero costumes make you immune to recognition by anyone who doesn't have super-powers or super-tech to penetrate your disguise.

Depends mostly on era and publisher/medium.

Blake Lively's Carol Ferris was able to determine Ryan Reynolds's Green Lantern was Hal Jordan within seconds of getting a close look in the evening light (albeit with parking lot lights on), because his mask really didn't hide much of his face. On the other hand, Aunt May was unable to tell Peter was Spider-Man despite standing next to him in broad daylight, in part because his full-face mask muffled his voice slightly (but to be honest, her ears must really be bad if she didn't recognize his voice even through the mask).

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

As far as can be determined from the genre, superhero costumes make you immune to recognition by anyone who doesn't have super-powers or super-tech to penetrate your disguise.

With the proper perk.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Your voice is going to be more of an issue, especially if people record and broadcast your speeches. I would say Mimicry is best for that, and a SOP perk to be consistent about using it all the time.

Dude. That's a helluva idea. Stolen! (It's Batman Voice and I love the idea of using a One Task Wonder perk + SOP perk to do exactly this.)

Originally Posted by weby

In the short superhero campaign I ran I basically divided costumes into three types for disguise/donning:
1)Easy: something that can be under normal clothes and at most pulling a hood and gloves from the pocket. These types of costumes did not require any special things. Though technically they hard to be hidden with holdout but mostly with a bonus so did not have to roll for normal hiding. If they had been captured by a villain as "civilian" or similar there might have been a roll. All costumes were in this category unless you had gadgets and/or ally suit and/or you wanted a complex suit.
2)Hard: something that includes larger gadgets or similar things that cannot be easily hidden. Here they could either hide them at a hefty penalty or come up with a reasonable explanation how their gadget could masquerade as something common and buy a perk to allow that. That perk changed the thing to basically be same as the easy ones. Without the perk you would definitely had to roll to hide it.
3)Impossible: Things like battlesuits and such things that are about impossible to hide. If they were bought as Allies they could have summonable for effectively being able to hide. If they where bought as gadgets I allowed them to buy a special version of low/no signature that instead of hiding the effect hid the gadget when not in use. In both cases they had to explain what happened to the gear.

Interesting. Hmmm.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Snip

Dude. I love this. Do I have your permission to use it?

Originally Posted by Andreas

Should not disgusing your body language be an Acting roll?

It still seems way too low even if you add a +2. An IQ 10 person using Disguise at default would then only roll against 11 (and that is when spending 30 to 60 minutes on the disguise). In that case a skilled observer would have a very good chance of recognising that person.

Recognising someone just from things like roughly knowing their height and build is pretty much only plausible when you have a small number of people to choose among.

On the other hand, if we use the +25 bonus I mentioned, then the same IQ 10 person who takes 3 to 6 minutes to put on a disguise like that would roll against 21. This would make it very hard for even a skilled person to see through the disguise, which seems much more reasonable.

As someone who has worked in multiple professions (investigator, bouncer, etc.) I can tell you that ID'ing someone on pure body language is *hard*. It works on folks you know well because everyone who's not trained has ticks and mannerisms that give them away.

Still, you raise an interesting point. Acting *is* the skill of long term dissemination and maintaining an identity other than your own would be covered there. Hmmm. Another OTW perk I think.

Originally Posted by dfinlay

I'm not really sure why TL should matter. What pieces of technology do we have at present for making effective superhero disguises that couldn't have been done (with different materials, but still) in, say, the 1500s if you had enough money?

It was an approximation of Quality modifiers in GURPS - with the costume giving an extra bonus. Sort of like Undercover gives a bonus to Holdout.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

1. People under-rate the effectiveness of even the most modest disguise in screwing up eye-witness testimony. Rob a bank wearing a clown nose and pretty much every witnesses will only be able to say "He wore a clown nose". The much maligned domino mask probably won't fool your girlfriend when you rescue her, but if they ask the thugs afterward, all they'll get is "big and muscular, wore a mask".

Yes. 100% true.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

2. Similarly the skimpy eye-candy costumes of many fictional heroines and some male heroes, while not especially dignified and posing other problems during physical activity do attract the eye to places that aren't especially useful for post-action identification. "I'd know those breasts anywhere!" doesn't work. This stops working, however if you have exposed scars, tattoos, or birthmarks.

A good point.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

3. "Pretty" is usually pretty generic. There are an endless number of ways to be ugly. Only a few to be pretty. Even though people tend to look at pretty people more, it's still usually harder to tell one pretty person from another if you can't go by voice and hairstyle. The most distinctive thing about a pretty woman tends to be her hairstyle. Wear a wig in civvies and even people who know her well may have trouble recognizing her.

This is a really excellent point.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

4. However the rise of the surveillance society complicates the question of disguise. It becomes increasingly difficult to operate without having recordings of you in action, recordings that can be studied at length and compared to image databases. True the effectiveness of modern facial recognition software is over-rated. They're easy to confuse as long as you aren't actually posing for the cameras. But presumably they will improve as technology advances, and comic book geniuses don't have to wait for other's people's technology to advance. I recommend molded masks.

One of my players is working on a aerosol that causes pixelation in surveillance systems when they try to discern your face. He hasn't mastered it yet, but it's a great idea and I'll probably let him pull it off eventually.

Originally Posted by Bruno

And this is why I favor shapeshifting or "power-up-form" supers; there may be no doubt that the super that rescued you was Blammo! the Exploding Man, but he's 6" taller than Mike Meekson and has a tan and a spectacular chin. You'd never confuse the two.

Like someone who is technically a hivemind with a body made to look human but is in fact 140 lbs. of rats? Like that?

Originally Posted by Anthony

As far as can be determined from the genre, superhero costumes make you immune to recognition by anyone who doesn't have super-powers or super-tech to penetrate your disguise.

Not always. Super campaigns don't mean "Put on glasses and no one can tell who you are." The supers game(s) I'm running right now are actually pretty gritty - the characters themselves are on the cinematic side, but the world is more or less "normal."

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Depends mostly on era and publisher/medium.

Blake Lively's Carol Ferris was able to determine Ryan Reynolds's Green Lantern was Hal Jordan within seconds of getting a close look in the evening light (albeit with parking lot lights on), because his mask really didn't hide much of his face. On the other hand, Aunt May was unable to tell Peter was Spider-Man despite standing next to him in broad daylight, in part because his full-face mask muffled his voice slightly (but to be honest, her ears must really be bad if she didn't recognize his voice even through the mask).

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

With the proper perk.

This^

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Dude. I love this. Do I have your permission to use it?

Permission to use and expand on it given. I'm sure there's other things I missed in that post.