Hello all,
I am working on a campaign in which my players get to be evil for a change and, in one of the stages, they will have to infiltrate a party of aristocrats/nobles to perform an assassination or theft.
In this environment, one the challenges they will have to face are court mages who know security spells such as Detect Thoughts/Seek Thoughts. Since the people being targeted are not controlled by a DM it becomes more difficult to determine what exact thoughts are considered "surface".
So far, my idea would be:
- Surface thoughts are dependant on what is being undertaken in the moment
- If they attempt a any kind of Bluff/Sleight of Hand or other deceitful action it would affect the surface thoughts
- They could attempt some sort of check or do some kind of action to avoid being detected (maybe?)
I have thus come to you, rules community, to help me find a fair way of making this work out without being totally easy.
Give the players an opportunity to plan out their infiltration in character. Keep a note of their plans.
Regularly ask them what they're thinking. "Okay, you see your friend has slipped the poison into the nobleman's cup. What's your character planning to do once he starts choking?"
Don't forget you can identify a spell that just targeted you with a DC 25+spell level Knowledge: Arcana check. Players are entitled to this check. This is separate to the DC 15+spell level Spellcraft check to identify a spell as it's being cast, which carry restrictions on needing to see the spell being cast.
My regular players are willing enough to not meta that I can simply say "you are the target of detect thoughts, what is your character's surface thoughts?" and get an honest reply from any of them.
One thing to keep in mind is that if someone is asking a question and you know the answer it is going to be in your surface thoughts. Try having someone ask you a question that you know the answer to and not thinking of the answer. About the only way to avoid thinking of the answer is to purposely not understand the question. If the questioner is not stupid they will know this and be able to tell it fairly easily. But keep in mind that the questioner needs to ask the right question for this to occur.
Since the spell already allows for a will save I would use that. If the questioner asks a straight forward question and the character knows the answer and makes the will save they were able to avoid thinking about the answer. Once they make the save they get a bluff to conceal the fact they know the answer.
The best way to counter this is to magically modify the characters memory. False Alibi and Modify Memory work very well for this. False Alibi even uses an assassination as an example.