A Question on Forging Documenets

[Sadronmeldir]

First time poster, so I apologize if this is somewhat of a beginner question that has been answered elsewhere. My search-fu failed me. I had a question about creating forgeries, outlined in the Linguistics skill section as follows.

PRD wrote:

Create or Detect Forgeries: Forgery requires writing materials appropriate to the document being forged. To forge a document on which the handwriting is not specific to a person, you need only to have seen a similar document before, and you gain a +8 bonus on your check. To forge a signature, you need an autograph of that person to copy, and you gain a +4 bonus on the check. To forge a longer document written in the hand of some particular person, a large sample of that person's handwriting is needed.

The Linguistics check is made secretly, so that you're not sure how good your forgery is. As with Disguise, you don't make a check until someone examines the work. Your Linguistics check is opposed by the Linguistics check of the person who examines the document to verify its authenticity. The examiner gains modifiers if any of the conditions are listed on the table above.

The emphasis is mine. In our campaign, we have an object (a magic inkpen) that once per day adds a competence bonus to Linguistics for creating forgeries. It could be I'm misreading the rules, but it sounds like the check to see how good the forgery turned out gets re-rolled every time it is examined. Is this right? Or is the roll done once by the DM secretly when the forgery is made and only the opposed Linguistics rolls have to be re-made?

Obviously, this would have a huge impact on the usefulness of the magic pen if two people could look at the same forgery and only be affected by the item's competency bonus.

Thank you in advance for the replies.

[Dominigo]

It says it works like Disguise, and here is the part from the Disguise skill you want:

"You get only one Disguise check per use of the skill, even if several people make Perception checks against it. The Disguise check is made secretly, so that you can't be sure how good the result is."

So you will only make one check to see how good the forgery is, but the DM makes that check in secret for you. The part about the check only being rolled once it is examined is probably talking about this part of the Disguise skill:

"If you don't draw any attention to yourself, others do not get to make Perception checks. If you come to the attention of people who are suspicious (such as a guard who is watching commoners walking through a city gate), it can be assumed that such observers are taking 10 on their Perception checks."

So basically, you get one secretly rolled check to determine how good the forgery is when you make it. Then, as with the disguise skill, no one will get a chance to oppose that check until they actually examine the document closely to determine if it is a forgery.

[Sadronmeldir]

This clears everything up! Thank you so much for the quick reply.