Secret Identity
The dashing do-gooder known as Horsepower returns! It’s strange, but the longer I look at him, the more I think I’ve seem him somewhere before. Hmmm… He must just have one of those faces.
Weirdly, I don’t think that the concept of unicorn-cohort-turned-vigilante-to-make-up-for-his-party’s-murderhoboing is even the weirdest secret identity I’ve seen in a game. That honor goes to the time my goblin dressed up like Batman and clubbed Henry VIII over the back of the head (story below the comic over here.) I bring it up because, as far as genre tropes go, I think that this one deserves special attention. Secret identities are unusually genre neutral, but they’re always a good time at the table.
If you’ve ever played an actual superhero RPG, you already know what’s up. Plot setups like Bruce Wayne held hostage or villain over for dinner have their own TV Tropes pages for a reason. That level of dramatic irony is delicious, and that’s true whether you’re playing Mutants and Masterminds (which you should) or simply tacking a Prince and the Pauper storyline onto your D&D character. The Scarlet Pimpernel gave us the setup in 1903, and we’ve been throwing it into everything from gangster pulp to Spanish/Mexican folk heroics ever since. Of course we all think of Superman’s glasses and phone booths when we hear the phrase, but the secret identity is a surprisingly genre neutral conceit. If you haven’t given it a whirl before, I highly recommend trying it out on your next PC.
Question of the day then. Where have you seen the secret identity trope come into play? Let’s hear your tales of botched Disguise checks and romances that can never be in the comments!
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure hall will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
Closest I have ever gotten is my kobold dressing up like a clown for a public execution that we were supposed to guard, but decided we were going to foil, only to learn later that he was the ONLY kobold in the entire city… It was also funny when he started throwing smoke sticks everywhere to start a riot after the execution went afoul by other means. All that did was disperse the crowd since nobody wanted to riot in a cloud of smoke. So not only did everyone know who he was, he did exactly what he was supposed to by complete accident…
On another note, what do you think of the Pathfinder Vigilante class?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/vigilante/
My group thought it was interesting, but overall too complicated to integrate into a campaign not specifically designed for it in the first place. You have to practically keep track of two characters at once.
Laurel is running a Vigilante in a two-player gestalt game at the moment (Curse of the Crimson Throne). It fits well thematically, and is well-served having a single urban location for much of the adventure (not to mention that the low number of players allows it to be a focus). You can make it work in most campaigns, but I think you have to be willing to write it in. Building in time to change personas takes mental bandwidth for a GM, but I think that’s more of a “how much attention am I willing to give this one player” problem rather than a “it won’t fit in this campaign” problem.
What part of the campaign are you in?
Also, given the number of half-human/half-[insert sentient species here] that there are in RPG universes, I wouldn’t be surprised if her counter argument was “But it is in the next kingdom over!”
Just sayin’, dragons can’t be the only ones to use Shape Shift for a good time…
Just finished Book 1. Its conclusion may have had something to do with my encouraging Laurel to go Vigilante.
Heh, Yeah… I bet…
I wonder what would happen if horsepower were to die and brought back to life with the reincarnation spell? Or is it that he actually used to be humanoid, but died and was reincarnated into a unicorn?
Or is it that he’s a unicorn with vigilante levels? The world may never know.
I always assumed he was a Wildshaping Druid or a Beast Shape-using Wizard or a Mooncursed Barbarian or something. A unicorn disguising himself as a unicorn would just be silly.
Ooh! What if he’s an agathiel?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/vigilante/archetypes/vigilante-archetypes-paizo-inc/agathiel-vigilante-archetype/
Maybe he’s a unicorn who uses his powers to turn into an identical unicorn?
Wait a second… Druid has Wild Shape. They CAN be together!
Ok I think you’ll like this one.
I’m playing a supers game (Worm inspired to be precise).
Our group is heroes belonging to a (nebulously) heroic organization.
We’re also teenagers.
In the pre-going out and announcing our identities to the world phase, my character secretly (both to the organization and even the other players), began dating a member of a quasi-villainous group. Neither my character nor the girl knew about the other being supers before they started dating. Heck, even I didn’t *know* before a private scene I had with the GM where both characters got outed to each other.
The characters rolled with it and agreed not to blab on each other or combat each other if it was a thing that came up.
So here’s the great part.
Just recently we’re out on our first patrol. My character is paired up with another player’s since we’re doing it in pairs.
Our person back at the base notices an unusual hot spot in this otherwise normal neighborhood and we go check it out.
My character knocks on the door while my partner goes to check around the house.
Who should answer the door but my character’s girlfriend. In costume.
They have the briefest of exchanges where she informs him she was disposing of some of her power related garbage.
Just as the conversation ends and the door closes the partner comes back, says he saw something weird. We go check it out, it’s gone.
At this point the partner is suspicious and asks pointed questions and I wind up having to fast talk my way out of it and get us moving on.
The other player still has no concrete knowledge (that I’m aware of) that anything actually fishy was going on.
Yes. Very yes. That is a hilarious setup.
Are you doing this metagame style or cloak and dagger style?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/intra-party-romance
Can’t wait to hear how it turns out in any case. 😀
Not 100% sure how you meant that question. The clarify, neither the other players nor the other characters know about the romance (though they might have guessed, I dunno) and they certainly don’t know it was his girlfriend (who is an NPC to be clear) who was at the door. And even if they somehow did, they have no particular reason to believe she’s a super.
Unless of course they have information I’m not aware of. Which they might. They certainly do about other things.
(For example we all know out of character that one of the PCs is a member of a cult. But none of the PCs know it. Which has already been pretty funny on a few occasions.)
I was basically asking “do the other PCs know about this, or are you playing it close to the chest via note passing to the GM and such.” Sounds like you’re using both styles in the same game, which seems like a cool way to go.
Mm, sadly my only attempt at that was thwarted by my group. It was the changeling character who ended up having to ruin the surprise to prevent a TPK to goblin ambush. It was definitely worth it in the end and makes for a good story, but it did ruin the surprise.
5e does have good support for it though. The “Charlatan” background comes with a fake identity with full document support and the like to prove it. One day I think i’ll make a charlatan and use the secondary identity as my primary one, my primary as the secondary.
Oh hey. I’d forgotten about the charlatan background. That’s actually a thing in my Out of the Abyss game.
My tiefling Warlock has the Disguise self invocation. His alter ego is also a con artist, specializing in bilking merchants out of wares by claiming to be the personal shopper of powerful wizards.
“Let us sample your reagents. My master wants to try before he buys.”
Anywho, a couple of late additions to the campaign are bounty hunters, and actually came to the Underdark in search of my alter ego. I’m waiting until I can save their characters’ lives once or twice and earn some trust before busting out the personal shopper persona. DRAMA!
Sounds fun! I’m always inspired by your amusing character ideas.
Right back atcha. 🙂
If you don’t have the anniversary edition of that adventure path. . . GET IT. It really helps tie together some vague areas of the overarching story. The focus changes rather abruptly around book 4, and it can be tough to keep the objective of the whole campaign in mind while you’re off doing something else.
It’s more convenient to study up on the campaign via the old 3.5 PDF, but I do indeed have the hardcover sitting at the table with me. It’s a very on-again off-again campaign though, so if we simply make it to book 4 I’ll be thrilled.
I’ve got a Vigilante in PFS and she’s pretty fun to play. Vishkanya lady with a superhero form that’s got a heavy Medusa motif. The hero identity (Dame Valens) is actually her old LARPing character. Thus, she can be a little melodramatic at times.
Recently, she’s undergone a personal arc to take herself more seriously, which coincides with my arc as a player to improve her janky-ass build with much help from the forums.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2ucup?PFS-Help-my-salvage-my-Vigilante-please#1
Funny thing about her Social Identity is that it boosts her Sense Motive skill. This technically makes it better at fighting than her Vigilante identity, since she uses SM as her defense in her iconic Snake Style.
How is Vigilante in Society play? I hear a lot of feedback about how the class looks like it takes too much effort to work into a campaign not specifically built for it. Any thoughts on that?
Not as bad as they say, at least in terms of holding you back. If you just look at the Vigilante as “Fighter, but you actually get skills” then you’re in for a great time. Vigilante Talents are interesting and they enable some fun builds.
Social Identity is fun, and there’s some roleplay opportunities, but it works best when you tell your PFS table what you are from the outset
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfg1c8dyZYM
because the coy little ‘oh, but who is this mysterious person???’ game gets old.
You get skills, talents, a flavorful identity and some of your archetypes are great when Paizo isn’t accidentally nerfing them into irrelevance. (Ultimate Wilderness familiar rules vs Magical Child) Saying they don’t fit into a campaign is like saying Druids don’t fit into campaigns because they’re too nature focused, or Clerics don’t fit into the campaign because not everyone in the party is a follower of the same god.
So like… Do they know your secret identity, or are you just always in Batman mode? How does switching back and forth between personas work out?
I’m a fan of letting the party know about both of them during the mission briefing. In terms of switching…. depends on the scenario. If things involve skill checks and an urban setting, I start Social and go Vigilante when shit starts to get real. If we’re going to a dungeon or some ruins? Vigilante all the way.
If you mean in terms of how swapping flows in a scenario? Finding a minute of “me time” to get your game face on isn’t an issue most of the time. And when it is, I still get a Disguise check to play it off.
And if nothing else, Pathfinder Society provides a gigantic safety net because each scenario is pretty much a completely separate instance, so in the unlikely situation of getting unmasked, it won’t carry over unless you’re running a multi-parter.
Of course I’m in an awkward position because Social is better at fighting than Vigilante right now. I wonder if Social identity being able to use Vigilante talents but not vice versa creates unintentional flaws in design.
I think I’ve told you this story before, but one of my parties has a Kitsune who, in her backstory, was hired by a noblewoman to impersonate her while the noblewoman ran off with her definitely-not-nobleman boyfriend. Worked out pretty well, until the man the noblewoman was supposed to marry (Kitsune didn’t mind marrying him, since she got a life of luxury in the process) figured out that the Kitsune was an imposter, concluded that she had murdered the noblewoman in order to steal her identity and hired a bunch of bounty hunter Samurai to hunt her down.
Did I mention that the rest of the party (in-universe) did not know that the Kitsune was not an ordinary (if magical) human Sorcerer?
Nice! Full on prince and the pauper. I’ve never tried that out in game, but it always looks like fun. How’d the big reveal go with your fellow PCs and their players?
We could move to Alabama
A southern man don’t need you around anyhow.
Not a full-on secret identity, but close.
My Halfling Warlock’s parents demanded he not use his actual Surname when adventuring.
Keeps vengeful surviving enemies away from the family Inn in the capital city, but if you ask the parents, it’s because no self-respecting Halfling should be adventuring, anyway, much LESS making pacts with strange, unearthly Fey women! The scandal!
Nice! Very few people keep the disapproving halfling trope from Tolkien, but I always found it charming. Good show!