Shattered Kingdoms

The disguise isn't confusing the player, it's confusing the game. I wouldn't shoot the trib NPCs intentionally, but my character does because of the code limitation of only being able to use adjective or race in the skirmishing target instead of having the option to put the whole "adjective sex race" title in there and be done with it. And because of a lack of clear rules on what is appropriate.

Unfortunately, the Talon NPCs are easier to abuse that way because their naming follows the "adjective gender race" standard and they aren't simply nameless legionnaires or peacekeepers. I like how they look but if they are going to be abused like this, they should better change to the more generic "Talon whatever" system. Unless it's also appropriate to make "leggionaire male humans" and "council female half-elves".

A master of disguise would use change sex herbs, polymorph scrolls or even the usual cabal spell that does the job nicely. Not exploit a targeting weakness.

I still vote for no, and learn to target. After all disguise is given to classes that are a) crappy in combat otherwise and b) supposed to be tricksters

Okay, can't wait till the next CRS raid I do! Learn to target me when you have 40k number of the NPCs attacking with the same adjective as myself and try to pick out which one is me!

Wow, interesting to see the divide on this issue. I have to say disguising yourself as the enemy is fair game. People on the opposing side seem to think it is totally unrealistic to dress up as the enemy, and that people on the same side never shoot each other accidentally. I think both of these things happen fairly often and you could probably come up with RL examples of both. So this is definitely player v. player, imo.

Using permanent adjectives like the ones from the NPCs you're fighting? ehhh, not so much.

I don't think I ever used disguise to look like something that was in the same area as me. The skill is good enough without taking advantage of the limitations of the targeting system. There are so few instances where doing so would undeniably be legitimate, so it is best to just avoid it.

Revamping the whole targeting system in the way jhorleb mentioned would probably take a lot of work, but would be awesome.

IMO targeting for anything should go as follows(for hostile actions, reverse order for non-hostile actions):

Target PC not in group;
Target NPC not in group;
Target NPC in group;
Target PC in group;

Since, the targeting issue is mainly dealing with pvp and spells and abilities (using the above checklist), a modifier should be for skirmish.

-p and -n

skirmish <adjective/name...> <-p/-n>

-p removes PC's from the targeting scheme, -n remove npc's remove targeting scheme.

Ohhh... auto party would also be a necessity for this to work.

Now given a certain cabal spell, that spell should be modified so that it really can confuse targeting.

I will give you this, though. It is indeed utterly lame when you disguise as something that begins with the same letters as a pet. Then indeed, you are fooling the game, not the enemy.