Disguise Question
What are the options for Garou to disguise themselves over a moderate - to long period.
As mentioned under the Dramatic Systems section of the W20 manual, a combination of the social attributes with Credibility and Fast Talk would be involved. For physically disguising yourself, is there any Rules As Written method of handling this? I can't find anything in the W20 source that specifically covers this though its frequent element of fiction. I'm looking for something similar to what Val Kilmer's character could do in the Saint, or Sherlock Holmes does in the Robert Downey Holmes movies.
Also, any gifts that enhance this? Man Skin with the Black Furies is by far the most powerful for its level I can find. That is a Charisma+Subterfuge check which suggests a physical disguise using that check maybe the route to go. Obviously, using only a skill check would be more easily pierced than employing the gift - which requires only a single success with no mention of an opposed role. Charimsa+Expression(Acting) would seem a reasonable check as well.
Love to hear how other Story Tellers may handle this. Alternatively, feel free to shove this into Cubs Corner. I've ST'd a lot of other games and have some limited WtA story telling experience.
Thanks, I appreciate it. Regarding the situation, WARNING! I go deep thinking about the meta-elements of my world.
TLDR; I have NPC's that sneak into Pentex places and go deep. My players like being clever. Smart players end up imitating successful NPC strategies. Ultimately, I need to be able to tell them what dots to buy.
Long Story:
My PC's will be interacting with some NPC's (both allied and opposition) that use deep cover into organizations (Drug Cartels, Pentex, Indigenous Tribal Corporations, Government Bodies {NPS, BLM}, NGO's, etc.). They might want to do so themselves. I like to have a rationale recipe of how NPC's accomplish things, otherwise the PC's - who should be the protagonists - can't ever do something successfully that NPC's do all the time. This is especially important with allied NPC's that the PC's could simply ask in game terms "How do you do this?"
I'd be very surprised if my PC's then don't look at the nearby Enderon facility/Penitentiary/etc. and say, why don't a couple of us get a job and see what we can find out over the course of a month or two? Who would be best at it? What could they buy cheap to guarantee success and replicate in the future? My players are advanced role-players, preferring the acting side of RPG's over time, love doing prep work to tilt the odds in their favor, and like to be covert at times. This kind of thing is going to come up.
Also, in my flavor of WoD, I like the extensive conspiratorial flavor of the modern WoD. With things happening inside both Wyrm and Gaian organizations, it stands to reason people are sneaking into places and implanting themselves for stretches of more than a couple of nights. Real World government agencies do this all the time. I want my players to have the experience.
Put those together, and it impacts how the character is composed. Just like Werewolf's fight a lot. No matter how that character was initially started, all will tend to improve physical traits - Brawl, Dodge and Stamina at the very least. That's an opportunity cost that impacts both the character and by extension meta world. If my characters choose to get very good at infiltration I need to be able to give them some direction on what to spend XP on.
One of the obvious limits on this is the Rage rating of characters. Any sneaky pack really has to select for low Rage and keep that buttoned down. 7 Rage is going to get someone noticed even if the people around them don't know its a Fianna with out of control Rage they are sensing. At a broader world building level, this limitation combined with a lot of danger if caught along with a lot of time doing boring grunt work in an organization strongly suggests to me that the only way this is getting pulled off by the Garou is somewhat lower ranked personnel using Skill Checks (even if not rolled constantly) and conserving Gnosis for the scenes that matter.
Sure, Kinfolk will be doing MOST of this work for the Garou, and Ghouls for Vampires, etc. However, there comes a point where there are limitations for those semi-Supernatural types of characters that someone with a few gifts, fetishes, and Spirit Speech can take to the next level.
Also, sneaking around a Pentex facility and finding out who in middle management isn't actually middle management, then hearing the spirits whisper that the future director soiled himself when he discovers he had a Pack sabotaging the larger scheme under his nose for months is a cool Ragabash trick.