Vampires and disguising their SLA abilities

[Joex The Pale]

I'm building a vampire bard who pretends to be human and I want to disguise his various SLAs as one of the appropriate type spells. How would one go about doing so? Opposed spellcraft checks to detect his fake castings?

[Joex The Pale]

Maybe Perform: Fake Spellcasting? ;)

[caos]

if i would make a home rule in my game. I would probably make it a slight of hand check

[Buri]

SLAs have no components or focuses. What are you hiding?

[The Beardinator]

what's an SLA?

[Cap. Darling]

To the Common man all he need is to swing his Harry Potter stick and say a few words when he use a SLA(Spell like ability). But to folks with Spell craft i thing hi is out og luck and need be carefull.

[Eltacolibre]

I wouldn't really bother, as a bard you have many tricks to help you disguise your spellcasting. Making Illusions/distraction for your players then using your SLA are probably the easiest way to do it.

[Pizza Lord]

SLA is short for Spell-like Ability (Sp). Most vampire's powers are classed as Supernatural (Su) however.

Normally there isn't really a lot you can do to conceal or disguise them. I suppose you'd need Spellcraft to know the gestures, material components, and words that you should be saying. The material components won't disappear though.

You could claim that your instrument is magical and performs those effects. That would require Bluff, most likely. "It's a pipe of the sewer. It summons swarms of rats or bats.... also wolves, because it's special"

Examples:

1. Your Children of the Night comes from your magical pipes or flute or whatever.
2. Dominate which used to be a gaze type attack, but regardless you could wear glasses or goggles and just claim they're eyes of charming or somesuch. They needn't know you're dominating your foes instead of charming. If they used Sense Motive they'd have an easier time telling one from the other, but who'd ever bother to do that?
3. Spider Climb, which is Extraordinary (Ex), you could claim your cloak or boots or slippers are magical spider climbing items. Works better if they're actually magical in case someone detects for it, but most players automatically say things like "Ignoring the auras from my party..." or "Other than my party's items..." so unless they're actually focusing on you you might get away with it.
and
4. Change Shape would be believable if you were a druid or if you had a "cloak of the bat or something.
5. When you go into gaseous form maybe you just pull out an ordinary vial of water (won't hurt you) and pretend you just drank a "potion".

Some of those might require extra actions or effort though. Your DM might reasonable ask for a Concentration check to use an ability while playing a bagpipe to demonstrate distraction (not that you care how well you play). He might allow you to just feign drinking the "potion" as part of a move action since you don't really care if you splash it or miss and thus can use your standard to activate gaseous form. Still giving up a move action though to put on the show.

You could probably pull off the bluff against NPC commoners if you don't stick around them long. If you're trying to blend into a party of PCs without them knowing, it's not likely to work. How dense are people that you don't go into the sun, don't enter houses without invitation, don't cast a shadow, and also get hurt when they try and heal you with magic?