character affected by lightmap

Yes it works very well. you dont remove the lightmap, you simply vertex color a best batch to the dark tones of the lightmap. the shot below has both lightmap and vertexcoloring for the purpose of picking the vertexcolor instead of reading pixels from the texture..

http://www.empowergames.com/pubimages/mc_treepack2.jpg?
http://www.empowergames.com/pubimages/mc_newlm4.jpg?

Plenty accurate if your using say a mesh terrain. as i am, i havent tried it in say an interior scene, you would be right in that case unless you segmented flat areas to accomodate the vertex light effects

but then i was just offering a suggestion to try, didnt realize you would want to debate it. I agree that Halos idea is a good one.