How does the Shifting Faces feat interact with worn equipment?

Question

The Kitsune feat shifting faces lets you, once per day

You wear many faces, even those that don't belong to you. When you Change Shape into your tailless form, you gain the effects of 3rd-level illusory disguise for 1 hour or until you shift back, except it's a transmutation effect rather than an illusion.

Normally [Changing shape] into a tailless one does not change your equipment but the Illusory disguise spell specifically includes that it can. My only headscratcher is that this version is transmutation, not illusion. Plus it seems like you can change things like your weight more than the base change form seems to imply. Does RAW using the shifting face feat actually transmute your gear with you for that hour? More nebulously, does that seem RAI, or did they just want a way of saying you could appear in a bunch of different faces but didn't think about the fact the spell they chose could also disguise your gear? Being able to be in full armor while appearing to be in a kimono could have definite advantages in some situations....or even the alternate, if you're the sneaky spellcaster appearing to be in full plate to get people to not attack you first!

Answer 1

RAW, Yes

RAW is as you stated; this functions as 3rd level Illusory Disguise with a simple trait swap. So it does the same thing (including disguising equipment) as Illusory Disguise, but it will look different to e.g. 3rd-level Detect Magic.

My suggestion to RAI

This is a powerful feat per RAW, but I wouldn't say it's game-breaking. Getting a 3rd level spell for a level 5 ancestry feat seems to be stronger than equivalent feats that I can find (such as Fey Influence, but that grants you access to that line), but I didn't find a good one-to-one comparison feat (I also didn't do an exhaustive search). I don't think this is a problem, and I don't foresee any real advantage to having your gear disguised via transmutation instead of illusion (other than countering illusion-specific defenses) that Illusory Disguise doesn't normally give you. So I'd run it as I describe RAW above, otherwise you'll deal with all sorts of clothes sizing questions (e.g. "There's no way my plate armor would fit on a dwarf!") that are annoying and (for most groups) unfun.