Well, depending on exactly what you are trying to fool the spell into thinking, you could look into the Vigilante class and the Everyman/Any Guise abilities. Also, see the Infiltrator story feat from the Spymaster's Handbook.
Those are the only things I can really think up right now. Good luck!
You may have to homebrew an answer to this. I always thought Illusionist would make spells like this to frustrate diviners, but few spells are made that cover this type of trickery.
I suppose a third-party spell will require a third-party/homebrew answer to counter.
Sadly, this will be the most likely scenario.
I suppose a third-party spell will require a third-party/homebrew answer to counter.Sadly, this will be the most likely scenario.
Why are you calling this a sad scenario? This is De Rigeur for a DM. Paizo does it all the time to make scenarios and AP's work. It's a tradition that goes all the way back to TSR. The rules on magic item creation are there to limit the players, not the DM or author.
Sad in that I couldn't offer a direct spell, feat, class feature, etc. that would directly solve the situation. I didn't mean to say that it is sad that a solution will most likely need to be self-made. Sorry for the confusion in my post >.<
Well, how does Analyze Ancestry work? Its counter should be included (or alluded to) in the description.
It notes that a Will save negates the spell, but I assume that would just result in no reading, rather than a specific, carefully tailored false reading.
But what does the spell do?
I generally dislike having my NPCs have access to plot-breaking, custom magic items or spells that the players will never have access to. If there's a way to do this within the rules, I'd really prefer to find it. Too much GM fiat pisses off the players.
The misdirection spell might allow this villain to fool the heroes.
By means of this spell, you misdirect the information from divination spells that reveal auras (detect evil, detect magic, discern lies, and the like). On casting the spell, you choose another object within range. For the duration of the spell, the subject of misdirection is detected as if it were the other object... For instance, you could make yourself detect as a tree if one were within range at casting: not evil, not lying, not magical, neutral in alignment, and so forth. This spell does not affect other types of divination magic (augury, detect thoughts, clairaudience/clairvoyance, and the like).
I am not sure if Analyze Ancestry falls into the group of spells that misdirection fools. It does not seem to.
Homebrew a magic item that uses this spell to allow the Analyze Ancestry spell to be fooled. That is my suggestion. The heroes can keep the item if they want to, or sell it for gold down the road.
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School divination; Level cleric/oracle 3, druid 3, paladin 2, ranger 2
CASTINGCasting Time 24 hours
Components V, S, M (rare herbs and oils worth 100 gp), DF
EFFECTRange touch
Target creature touched
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance noDESCRIPTION
The target creature’s complete genealogy, going back ten generations, is instantly revealed to you. You know the name, race, and other identifying characteristics of each of the individual’s ancestors.
Pasted from d20pfsrd here
As the GM, lots of options to fool this one.
The biggest is misinformation. 10 generations worth of geneology, so hand them lots of information, with most of it being unrelated junk, which only serves to confuse the players. Big families will make this near useless. Plus you can also make it harder by having small towns where everyone is related to eachother, making it the PCs vs the town, when they to do things by geneology.
Another consideration is that although spells like this exist, adoption isn't included. So you can have family lines that appear useful, but a certain person given could be only part of the family genetically speaking. Most royal families will have some adoption, and it doesn't make people ineligible for the throne. A family line may officially include members that are adopted, but are still consider to have the "blood" of the family in an official capacity. Likewise, the genetics may include members of the family that are not officially part of the family (like bastard children).
And yet another consideration is that the "Identifying characteristics" may not include current appearances, but you could instead determine that it refers to birth related characteristics (like birthmarks, eye and hair color, race, and any birth related deformities). It also would reasonable to have it only know their birth names, not their current name or alias.
Last, and this is the biggest, even if they know the name and normal appearance of their lost heir, that doesn't fool a simple disguise check. They could have walked past the Lost Heir lots of times on their journey already, and just not known about their disguises.
So, to fool the spell with magic, really there is little need. The spell is highly limited and doesn't really give them much. The main issue I see with the spell, is that it would be a lot of work for the GM to be expected to produce 10 generations of people each time the player casts this spell.
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I would just have the character in question's parent or grand parents have been adopted in order to prevent the connection that you're worried about.
Don't go elaborate into magic, when mundane means can suffice.
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A casting time of 24 hours and a range of creature touched?
It is fairly hard to cast it unnoticed or on an unwilling target.
And casting it on several targets will cost a lot of time.
As I read it, it give only the direct ancestors of the creature examined. So father and mother, grandfather and grandmother and so on, not siblings, order of birth or similar things. I don't see a mention of surname, too, but I suppose that it will give them, if they exist.
So John, son of Robert Smith and Mary Tudor, Robert is the son of John Smith and Elizabeth Ferrier, Mary of Charles Tudor and so on. 1026 names in one go.
Read once one of the genealogies in the Bible and then recite it. Way less than 1026 names, but i doubt you will be able to recall all the names and place them in the correct order.
And then you will have plenty of repeated names and surnames.
Honestly I doubt that this spell will work. It need a duration, a time in which you retain the information clearly, or it should write down the results. otherwise it could be used to confirm a suspected information, but with the tendency to repeat names in a family (she should be called Rose like my grandmother) it will be hard to say if the Robert Wood from 3 generations back is the one that interest you. 3 generations can be as little as 50 years or as much as 150 for humans, and very different between the mother and father sides (it is not so rare to have elderly males get a son from very young females).
I doubt that this spell will be really useful to check more than a couple of generations worth of ancestors.
The NPC spent months of time and a small fortune to research a new spell form of Misdirection.
The NPC has spent 1,000 gp per spell level (or even more for particularly exotic spells) and made both a Spellcraft skill and a Knowledge skill appropriate to the NPC's class. Wizards and bards use Knowledge (arcana), sorcerers use a Knowledge skill appropriate to their heritage (usually arcana, nature, or planes), druids and rangers use the Knowledge (nature) skill, and clerics and paladins use Knowledge (religion).
For each week of research, the NPC made separate Knowledge and Spellcraft checks against a DC of 20 plus twice the level of the spell being researched, modified according to Table: Spell Research Modifiers. The NPC succeeded at both checks to successfully research the spell. Failure indicates the week was wasted. Spells of 4th-6th level requires 2 weeks of successful research, while spells of 7th-9th level require 4 weeks. The NPC may have employed up to two assistants in the research process to assist on the skill checks using the aid another action.
Core rule book. All completely legal. He just happened to have done it all before encountering the PCs.
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Actually, the specific scenario I have is that there is a NPC who knows about the spell, and who wants to make his ancestry appear to be something that it is not for plot reasons. Furthermore, this person is already going to have the spell cast on him, due to plot reasons, so just skipping them is out of the question. But I've decided that a modified form of Misdirection will work well enough for this.
If the NPC is planing to be dishonest anyway, just bluff it. Pick one of the known ancestors and impersonate them. Since the PCs haven't actually met them, they just have a very general idea from the spell, it would be very easy to step in and pretend to be one of the ancestors.
Alternately don't fool fool the spell. Fool the caster. There are a lot of magicial and mundane ways to do so