Disguise Layering
The cheese is real.

Put a skill wall entry for the different types of disguises, much like with make-up, but for every disguise. The more complex the disguise, the more coverage, more expensive, requires more skill to use. This will also kill layering, or require more skill for using it.

However, if you do this most people will just get skillsofts down the road or don't use disguises at all.

Many skills have entry requirements, chemistry, medical, driving, flying, forensic, etc. Disguise is pretty much on of the only useful skills I can think of which can be capitalized with almost no investment for the characters.

I'm not sure if we're talking about getting to a name change here, or just general slippage, but it does take stats and skills to become OK enough to be comfortably disguised (in my experience).

There are other items that provide huge benefits with little to no stat gateways (high-level armor, certain offensive consumables, chrome, etc.) Are those "solving problems with chy instead of RP" too? Armor is heavily layered as well.

Honestly this system is one of the most unique and fun aspects of SD. I'd be really bummed if it was nerfed into oblivion.

We're not talking about nerfing the actual mechanics of disguise as a skill. Right now, you need very little UE invested to stack up a couple of disguises enough so that with a couple of weeks of training and some chy, you can run around and murder people with damn near impunity, because you have to fail numerous skill checks to get caught. If anything, cutting down on layering is a nerf to items and a buff to the skill itself.

Finally, regarding the 'other items that provide huge benefits with little to no stat gateways' the examples are kind of.. not good. You can't effectively stack dough without a serious stat investment. You really cannot stack chrome without a serious stat investment. Consumables I agree with you on, but they're intended to try and equalize the playing field between UE gaps, so that's working as intended.

If I could see two changes made I would like to see:

1. Have where you can effectively don disguises sharply limited

2. Adjust things so that a character with middling relevant skills and stats can't use layers to achieve what should require significant skill and stat investment (getting a disguise name and maintain a disguise for extended periods)

I think the rest is mostly fine.

I invested a decent amount in Disguise and associated Stats. It is not to the point where I can change my character's disguised name. I can RP / pose a fair amount without disguise slippage. I don't do much combat, but I don't remember the disguise dropping during the little combat that I do, do.

My experience with layering does not align with what people are talking about in this post.

Specifically if I layer a few disguise items, the lower layers (those put on first) do not seem to matter. By that I mean, if I put on 3 items, as soon as I remove Item #3, my character's @name becomes visible again. Although the description might still include a disguise item such that their @nakeds in the covered location(s) are not visible, the character @name is ALWAYS visible.

From that, I'd infer that if the first layer 'slipped' for whatever reason, the char @name would become visible. If that's not the case, then it might be worth looking into why manually removing a layer of disguise does more to 'break' the disguise than involuntary slippage does.

I realize what I said was a bit ambiguous when I said 'murdering people with impunity.' I did not mean to say that there are characters who can just stomp on people in one sided fights using disguise layering. Of course this is happening, however, I think it's a natural assumption to make that those characters have a pretty good investment in the stats and skill required to make disguises effective.

What I did mean is that the people committing crimes with disguise stacking are doing so without recourse for their actions, because they are able to get away 'clean' from crimes as a result of some, but not all of their disguises failing in the process.

Just wanted to clear that up!