Just had a nasty experience when my character, using the Serpent birth sign from Appler's Passive Birthsigns (which gives permanent bounty) talked to an NPC in plain clothes and it turned out he was a guard. Since he was in plain clothes with no visible weapon I resisted arrest, but when fighting commenced he was suddenly armed and armoured. My character only got out a "WT" before being killed.
Looking at the AI Packages I see that he has a package Armour Unequiped and Weapons Unequipped flags, so that explains the sudden change of attire.

Anyone know of some ways (that don't involve the console) of recognizing a guard?
If not I think I'll just copy those AI Packages into my custom pacth and change the flags.
Or perhaps just avoid stern, square jawed chaps with cropped hair...?

Your need a phycic ability that can determine if the are a member of the Imperial Guard faction. OBSE? I need something like that too.

Something like that.
Or something that makes them only behave as guards when they are on duty. I don't know if it's possible, and if it was it would probably be to complicated, to dynamically change their Class (Guard while on duty, Commoner when off duty) based upon their AI Packages.

But I think I'll just play safe and don't talk to just everyone, as that really fits my character better anyway.

The class used by guards have a special guard flag, http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/IsGuard

Are you using TIE?
I haven't had much experience with the so called undercover people in TIE so I have no idea about the mechanic.

Me? No, I'm using FCOM. The guard (guard captain) in question turned out to be from Better Cities.

Vanilla guards can also be found out without their uniforms on if they're heading to eat/sleep and haven't yet arrived at their destinations. I guess Cyrodiil's cops are more diligent about making arrests while off duty than real ones are

and you can't recognize them from a mile away like real ones either! Somebody should add a donut shop mod - then we'll be able to track them down

:rofl:

So a Lesser Power could be made to determine if an NPC is a guard or not? And use som magic effect if the NPCs is a guard.

Exactly

Sounds like something I may be able to do myself - after a good night's sleep.

Doesn't the Thief birthsign of bg's RBP have such a lesser power? How hard would it be to rip that out for yourself?

Only problem with that power, as I used it just to see what it did in the Cobl version, was that is used a hell of alot of magika for a non casting thief.
Can't you get this information using something like Refscope?

'twas referring to the act of pulling whatever script it runs for your own use. As RBP modifies Birthsigns, I do not think it is actually compatible with APB.

I stripped the main RBP pluginf of everything but the relevant script, spell, birthsign and effect shader, renamed it to something else, than added APB as a master and copied the Serpent sign. Then I added Sense Guards to the Serpent Sign and deleted the Thief sign and saved.
Loaded the game - but no Lesser Power. So I opened the Showracemenu and exited it and the Lesser Power appeared. Went out and tested it and found out that it displays the magic effect (yellow globs) if there is a guard nearby instead of highlighting the actual guard(s). Casting it somewhere with no guards just produce a casting anination, but no spell effect.
So it does the trick, bit not quite the way I had envsioned it.

Well, it's a start at least. If I actually knew anything on modding, I'd offer to help, rather than just sit about offering suggestions.