Mild-Mannered Unicorn
It was a close one, but the votes have been tallied and our latest Patreon poll has a winner. I hope you will all join me in welcoming Vigilante, the latest never before seen and definitely new character to inhabit Handbook-World! (Better luck next time, Artificer!)
Writing today’s comic was actually a bit of a head-scratcher. If you’re familiar with Pathfinder’s vigilante class, then you know it’s all about playing with secret identities. You’ve got your social identity and your vigilante identity, and never the twain shall meet. If you’re familiar with this comic, then you also know all of our characters are already named after their respective classes. You begin to see my problem.
I knew I wanted to reveal that one of our characters had been a vigilante all along, but you can’t just take a bard or a barbarian and claim that they were the social identity of another class. How were they raging then? How was my courage getting inspired? Happily, there was one character waiting in the wings without ties to another class. Enter Lumberjack Explosion.
Amusingly, the decision makes sense from an in-game perspective. Animal companions running around with non-companion classes are famously squishy. Sure your fighter can make pals with a noble steed at low level, but you’ve got to find some way to keep them relevant as the party grows in power. While a CR 3 unicorn is a handy thing to have for a great many levels, at some point you’ve got to give it a template or some hit dice or something. It just so happens that, in this case, the “or something” was a secret superhero identity.
You laugh now, but I cannot tell you how excited I am to run an evil game where the party’s familiars and animal companions are actually an all-vigilante anti-party (though I think it might be more fun to play as the familiars).
Question of the day then: Have you ever dealt with a secret identity in-game? Did you unmask a villain Scooby-Doo style? Perhaps your hat of disguise launched your career as an untraceable criminal? Or maybe you’ve adopted the cape and mask yourself and played as a vigilante? Let’s hear your tales of intrigue in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
Ah, the hat of disguise. Easily one of my favorite items in D&D, up there with the decanter of endless waters and the portable hole. One character I played on a PbP game was an LE warforged juggernaut flavoured as animated armor in a decidedly lower magic setting where such a thing was unheard of. To get around he had a hat of disguise integrated into him, which he naturally used frequently and accrued many personas. This was made quite difficult by him having no social skills, so I had to be very, very careful in how I did interactions. This was especially awkward trying to keep his construct nature a secret from a wizard he encountered after being invited to his house and trying to pump the wizard for information. Anyway, it was going pretty well, with him planning to start a wight-ocalypse after making a deal with some draugr, which he would use to break into paladin hq to steal some sentient constructs they had captured. Unfortunately, a combination of the game stalling and me getting very busy IRL stopped it from ever reaching fruition.
One of these days I want to take that sort of thing up to the next level, with a 3.5 Master of Many Forms or similar. All the disguises are mine!
I’m one of these things in a campaign right now:
http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Lunar_Exalted
Pity the poor GM who has to run for a table full of shapeshifters. Everybody is a sneaky bastard. The hijinks are many.
Fighter can’t possibly be murderhoboing. He bothered to tie up the bank guard.
What, you think Fighter has ranks in Use Rope? Thief is just off panel Scrooge McDucking it up in that gold pile.
I’ve played a Vigilante before, it’s really fun. Especially since I used the Magical Child archetype. My magical boy hero was butterfly themed and had an Aether Elemental as his familiar. They made a great crime fighting duo, especially since I multiclassed into Eldritch Guardian Fighter for the sharing feats ability. The party was aware of his dual identities but nobody else was.
What was the elemental’s social identity?
A monkey, so she could still use a sword and the combat feats just in case.
Well then. That changed my mental image considerably: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/spaceghost/images/3/30/Blip2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110709083709
That was basically the vigilante identity before 7th level.
Aw man, you’re late on this! I already threw off the ranger tresses and got my Inquisitor hat.
I had an Illusionist that had a whole chat site thinking he was an old, ripped Monk for weeks. Eventually he saved some people with some second level spell and the jig was up, although they still thought the wizened old pokey was buff underneath his robes.
Also, is this the reason why spectating horses can rack you up a bounty when you steal things in Skyrim?
Equines have a famously strong sense of justice.
I love how much more dignified the secret identity is than the actual name here. Such a wonderful reversal.
As for secret identities…. I am currently playing in a game where my character is actually a secret cultist of a cult that loves monsters. It’s great because they’re my Summoner class and I’ve already gotten away with a few subtle hints that there’s something a bit off about the character and it’s flown past the other players’ radars. I’m looking forward to every future opportunity to slip weirdness past my fellow players and just as much looking forwards to their reactions when the jig is finally up. =D
But monsters are people too! Remember this pic of my wizard?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/heroesofkassen-e1447727307177.png
That behir started off as a half-starved, mad-with-hunger enemy. A few exceptional Diplomacy checks later and I had the world’s most OP familiar. So maybe you can do what I did with my party: adopt a monster. Show ’em how useful they can be. Pay for damages when it eats the farmers’ pigs.
Eventually they’ll come to like and accept your monster bro. Then you can hit ’em with the cultist indoctrination pamphlets.
Well if memory serves me correctly in one game we had this Eladrin ranger, and after one fight with a water elemental we found a “Ring of Gender Change”. This item as the name may suggest allows the wearer to swap what gender they are percieved to be. So our lovely feywild elf took said item and used it to its fullest potential. Seducing powerful lords, masquerading as a fey elf lord, escaping guards and other such nonsense through the use of this ring. The worst bit was only half the party was in the know so everytime the wizard turned up with a beautiful elf woman we were just a tad suspicious.
“Wait a minute. The wizard has no game! How’d he get with that hotness? Something doesn’t add up here….”
“Thrudgar, Barbarian PI” premiering on the CW this fall.
One of my current characters is a Lawful Evil Aasimar Magus, who wears a hat of disguise to project an image of the classic angelic-looking Aasimar, and, in a very dark twist, wears clothing made of angelskin to hide her evil aura. She’s in the process of starting a crusade, which she is going to twist to her own purposes.
Hat of disguise, man. Such a good item. Just gotta stear clear of those true seeing outsiders and you’re golden.
There was a Runequest campaign I was in (where it turned out everyone had a decent musical skill, so it became known as the Band on the Run tour), where it turned out in the end that another another player’s character, who we all thought was a perfectly decent Daka Fal shaman, was actually a particularly nasty Thanatari headhunter who had been spying on us and setting us up for a fall all along.
Well you can’t just leave me hanging like that. WHAT HAPPENED!?
Man I would love to play a game where the party’s familiars/ACs are a vigilante anti-party, especially if they all take the Magical Child archetype, if for no other reason than the absurdity of your familiar having a familiar.
I can see it now: through an ability known as “being a secondary spellcaster” the wizard’s raven familiar becomes a tengu focused on spatial manipulation magic; the ranger’s wolf dons a suit when he turns into a dhampir wielding a rapier with a rose clutched between his teeth; the drake rider’s companion takes advantage of the Almost Human trait to become an appropriate plane-touched race in a ballgown with numerous concealed wands providing damaging magics; the witch’s cat becomes a catfolk using Improved Grapple; and the druid’s snake turns into a vishyanka that takes Spear Dancing Style for use with a bardiche.
I think it could be fun to play a vigilante whose two personas are actual split personalities, and have at least partial disassociation involved. Perhaps have it so that the social persona doesn’t remember what happens when the combat persona is in charge, and maybe add the idea that in the fluff, the vigilante doesn’t will the change, the combat persona just takes over when needed. You could even have it so that the social persona doesn’t know the combat persona exists, his mind just papers over the blank spots.
Or to take this yet further, have it so that neither persona remembers what the other does. The combat persona has some degree of spillover, enough that it knows who are its allies and who are its enemies and what they can do, but anything about the social persona’s specific actions or long-term goals is a blur. That could even lead to the social and combat personae working at cross-purposes, which would be really cool.