I wonder if disguise self and alter self spells can be used to impersonate a specific person. No doubt they can make you look not like you, but I’m skeptical of the idea that you can easily achieve portrait likeness, say, to a duke you’ve briefly seen once five years ago.
My common sense suggests that some additional requirements should be met for the caster to assume a look of a concrete person. The magic has otherwise to retrieve the exact image of that person’s facial features from the caster’s memory (or elsewhere?) and to reproduce it with photographic precision. It looks too powerful for a 1st or even a 2nd level spell.
And what if the duke misses a tooth, but the caster is unaware of this because he’s never seen the duke with his mouth open? If we suppose the spell somehow gave you a look of the duke, what will happen with the missing tooth?
Or perhaps should the spell allow you to assume a form of some person even if you’ve never seen them? “Make me look like Plato’s father”, “Make me look like the richest man in the world”, “Make me look like the real Jack the Ripper”—where are the limits of magic in this case?
So far, the emphasis has been on facial features, but we should into take account many other person’s characteristics as well, including the figure, characteristic gestures and postures, gait, speech patterns, clothes etc. If you want to impersonate the duke, you don’t only need to reproduce his natural facial expressions and voice tone, but also to avoid behaving out of duke’s manners. I really doubt if a low-level spell could be able to provide all these things for you.
I think it would be fair to require the caster to develop some “mental image” of the target person beforehand, and the more comprehensive the image is, the more accurate the result will be. In addition, some expertise in areas like sculpture, or makeup, or anatomy might help: you cannot construct a realistic face if you don’t know how the face should be arranged. And if the caster is going to act in character, I’d also ask for Deception checks or something.
Still I have no idea where to draw the line: to what extent can disguise self and alter self reasonably do the work of passing for a specific person, and what additional efforts should a character make for a successful impersonation? What do you think?
Disguise Self already incorporates a mechanism for failing to pass scrutiny:
To discern that you are disguised, a creature can use its action to inspect your appearance and must succeed on an Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC.
Now, one might consider that that has more to do with attempting to discern that your appearance is a magical disguise, and less about discerning that details are wrong about that disguise... it depends on how you interpret what "to discern that you are disguised" means. If you as a DM wanted to subject a character to an opposed Deception (Charisma) or History (Intelligence) vs. Insight (Wisdom) or Investigation (Intelligence) check to see if they got all the small details right... I think you'd be within your right to do that, without violating the wording of the spell. Even failing that check, there's no doubt that the character would continue to "look different until the spell ends," so you haven't imposed a novel condition for it to fail or end.
That's where using your Deception, Performance, and Persuasion skills come into play. You can physically look like someone with those spells, but when you start to talk and interact with people you need more than just a spell. Especially people who know the target who you're impersonating.
This is what makes me so upset about the Assassin subclass. Half their "impersonation" abilities are things that any rational DM would allow with just a successful check... which your typical rogue would pass like 95% of the time anyway.
Still I have no idea where to draw the line: to what extent can disguise self and alter self reasonably do the work of passing for a specific person, and what additional efforts should a character make for a successful impersonation? What do you think?
To the exact extent required by the plot. Sounds like a non-answer I know, but these things are left open so that you can adjudicate whatever keeps the story going and makes it fun.
9th level: if you tell a guard you've never met before that you're a merchant named Joe, then the guard will believe you unless he has a reason not to.
Yeah, like.... how is that any different from normal play? Or even if there is a subtle shade of difference of degree there... what DM is really going to be keeping that feature in mind in the moment to moment of ad libbing Random Guard 23's response to the Rogue's shennanigans?
13th level: you can copy handwriting.... which you already have probably been doing for 13 levels using a Forgery Kit. You can also mimic their speech and behavior perfectly, which is a little more useful in theory in conjunction with a spell like Disguise Self... until you realize that all it actually boils down to is "advantage on Deception checks," which your DM may very well have already been handing out when you're impersonating someone with the assistance of a spell like Disguise Self. And even if they haven't, that's hardly a 13th-level-worthy feature.
Yeah, Assassins read as if the authors thought their level 3 feature was so amazing in combat that they dare not give them any other combat features until 17. Unfortunately, in practice, Assassinate is nowhere near as useful as it appears on paper, and the subclass is left as quite possibly the single worst published subclass for any class in 5E >:(
I play that Infiltration Expertise and Disguise Self/Alter Self work as follows:
1)With just Deception you can pretend to be someone important but only to people that have no idea who that person is. I.E. You can pretend to be the Captain of the Guard but NOT to a Guard. But they will always recognize you later on as the same person. No check required. "Hey, thats the guy that said he was the Captain of the Guard!". However, an Insight check will reveal you are not who you claim to be.
2) Alter Self will let you not be recognized later on if you make a Deception Check 15. Otherwise they recognize your voice.
3) With a Disguise Spell, OR a Disguise Kit proficiency and Deception, you can pretend to be someone else and they will NOT recognize you later on without an opposed Investigation vs Deception Check (Spell adds + 20 to the Deception check, kit adds +5 OR lets you use your Disguise skill instead of Deception). You can also pretend to be the Captain of the Guard to a Guard, but it is at least a DC 20, (25 with the spell) to someone that has met him once, 30 to someone that knows him well.
4) With the Infiltration ability, recognizing you later on when you are not 'in character' requires a DC 20 check minimum (or from step 3 above). In addition, an insight check will at worst make someone suspicious of you, requiring a week long background check with an Investigations check DC 25 to decide you are an imposter.
5) With the Imposture ability, as listed, you get Advantage on all checks and only suspicious people make that check. I.E. It lets you walk into the Palace as the King, but the Queen , the Treasurer, etc. will get a check in certain circumstances.
I wonder if disguise self and alter self spells can be used to impersonate a specific person. No doubt they can make you look not like you, but I’m skeptical of the idea that you can easily achieve portrait likeness, say, to a duke you’ve briefly seen once five years ago.
My common sense suggests that some additional requirements should be met for the caster to assume a look of a concrete person. The magic has otherwise to retrieve the exact image of that person’s facial features from the caster’s memory (or elsewhere?) and to reproduce it with photographic precision. It looks too powerful for a 1st or even a 2nd level spell.
And what if the duke misses a tooth, but the caster is unaware of this because he’s never seen the duke with his mouth open? If we suppose the spell somehow gave you a look of the duke, what will happen with the missing tooth?
Or perhaps should the spell allow you to assume a form of some person even if you’ve never seen them? “Make me look like Plato’s father”, “Make me look like the richest man in the world”, “Make me look like the real Jack the Ripper”—where are the limits of magic in this case?
So far, the emphasis has been on facial features, but we should into take account many other person’s characteristics as well, including the figure, characteristic gestures and postures, gait, speech patterns, clothes etc. If you want to impersonate the duke, you don’t only need to reproduce his natural facial expressions and voice tone, but also to avoid behaving out of duke’s manners. I really doubt if a low-level spell could be able to provide all these things for you.
I think it would be fair to require the caster to develop some “mental image” of the target person beforehand, and the more comprehensive the image is, the more accurate the result will be. In addition, some expertise in areas like sculpture, or makeup, or anatomy might help: you cannot construct a realistic face if you don’t know how the face should be arranged. And if the caster is going to act in character, I’d also ask for Deception checks or something.
Still I have no idea where to draw the line: to what extent can disguise self and alter self reasonably do the work of passing for a specific person, and what additional efforts should a character make for a successful impersonation? What do you think?
Disguise Self already incorporates a mechanism for failing to pass scrutiny:
Now, one might consider that that has more to do with attempting to discern that your appearance is a magical disguise, and less about discerning that details are wrong about that disguise... it depends on how you interpret what "to discern that you are disguised" means. If you as a DM wanted to subject a character to an opposed Deception (Charisma) or History (Intelligence) vs. Insight (Wisdom) or Investigation (Intelligence) check to see if they got all the small details right... I think you'd be within your right to do that, without violating the wording of the spell. Even failing that check, there's no doubt that the character would continue to "look different until the spell ends," so you haven't imposed a novel condition for it to fail or end.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
That's where using your Deception, Performance, and Persuasion skills come into play. You can physically look like someone with those spells, but when you start to talk and interact with people you need more than just a spell. Especially people who know the target who you're impersonating.
Professional computer geek
This is what makes me so upset about the Assassin subclass. Half their "impersonation" abilities are things that any rational DM would allow with just a successful check... which your typical rogue would pass like 95% of the time anyway.
To the exact extent required by the plot. Sounds like a non-answer I know, but these things are left open so that you can adjudicate whatever keeps the story going and makes it fun.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
9th level: if you tell a guard you've never met before that you're a merchant named Joe, then the guard will believe you unless he has a reason not to.
Yeah, like.... how is that any different from normal play? Or even if there is a subtle shade of difference of degree there... what DM is really going to be keeping that feature in mind in the moment to moment of ad libbing Random Guard 23's response to the Rogue's shennanigans?
13th level: you can copy handwriting.... which you already have probably been doing for 13 levels using a Forgery Kit. You can also mimic their speech and behavior perfectly, which is a little more useful in theory in conjunction with a spell like Disguise Self... until you realize that all it actually boils down to is "advantage on Deception checks," which your DM may very well have already been handing out when you're impersonating someone with the assistance of a spell like Disguise Self. And even if they haven't, that's hardly a 13th-level-worthy feature.
Yeah, Assassins read as if the authors thought their level 3 feature was so amazing in combat that they dare not give them any other combat features until 17. Unfortunately, in practice, Assassinate is nowhere near as useful as it appears on paper, and the subclass is left as quite possibly the single worst published subclass for any class in 5E >:(
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I play that Infiltration Expertise and Disguise Self/Alter Self work as follows:
1)With just Deception you can pretend to be someone important but only to people that have no idea who that person is. I.E. You can pretend to be the Captain of the Guard but NOT to a Guard. But they will always recognize you later on as the same person. No check required. "Hey, thats the guy that said he was the Captain of the Guard!". However, an Insight check will reveal you are not who you claim to be.
2) Alter Self will let you not be recognized later on if you make a Deception Check 15. Otherwise they recognize your voice.
3) With a Disguise Spell, OR a Disguise Kit proficiency and Deception, you can pretend to be someone else and they will NOT recognize you later on without an opposed Investigation vs Deception Check (Spell adds + 20 to the Deception check, kit adds +5 OR lets you use your Disguise skill instead of Deception). You can also pretend to be the Captain of the Guard to a Guard, but it is at least a DC 20, (25 with the spell) to someone that has met him once, 30 to someone that knows him well.
4) With the Infiltration ability, recognizing you later on when you are not 'in character' requires a DC 20 check minimum (or from step 3 above). In addition, an insight check will at worst make someone suspicious of you, requiring a week long background check with an Investigations check DC 25 to decide you are an imposter.
5) With the Imposture ability, as listed, you get Advantage on all checks and only suspicious people make that check. I.E. It lets you walk into the Palace as the King, but the Queen , the Treasurer, etc. will get a check in certain circumstances.