Hello, I want to impersonnate to pretend to be a noble with a specific lineage.
I need help about this.
My first idea :
- A tiefflin with beastbrood (Courtly Graces)
- Devil in Plain Sight
- Finest trick
What are the needed skills to know an existing organization and the equipment, feats that permit to acess ?
What means are there to forgery a birth certificate ? (feats, ....)
My character will wish to know all the existing lineage from the noble ? What skill is it ?
I wish also to attract the nobles to meet my character with a rumor.
Thanks for your future help.
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You are deep, deep in the grey area of rules interpretation, table variance and GM discretion. So I would urge you to chat this through with the GM. To come with rules backup from this thread is very useful - but don't expect it to overrule the GM. If he isn't on board - neither of you will have fun with the idea.
Some aspects of the rules that are touched
Impersonate:
If you attempt to directly interact with someone while disguised, the GM rolls a secret Deception check for you against that creature’s Perception DC instead. If you’re disguised as a specific individual, the GM might give creatures you interact with a circumstance bonus based on how well they know the person you’re imitating, or the GM might roll a secret Deception check even if you aren’t directly interacting with others.
...
Critical Failure The creature can tell you’re not who you claim to be, and it recognizes you if it would know you without a disguise.
What is your reaction / fallback if you ever are discovered.
Just counting nat1 as crit the chances to stay undetected are
Interaction Chance to be detected
1 5%
10 40%
27 75%
44 90%
So it isn't a question if - but rather when someone gets suspicious - and what that person might do. This doesn't even account for circumstances like getting into a zone of true seeing or other magics / circumstances that could yield an automatic discovery.
To whom do you want to keep this secret? I once in my earlier career as GM allowed something like that for someone who kept it secret from his fellow players. As GM it was foolish to allow as eventually the jig was up and the player did a table flip when it happened. And if you keep it from other players it will happen eventually.
Is it a large or small nobel family? What benefits (apart of name or status) do you want to gain that way?
What level do you start? Higher level has more options to get skills/feats.
Society and crafting would spring to mind for forgery - but why not buy a forged document. Again - this would be an uncommon/rare item and that would be up to the GM to determine cost and quality.
Good luck with the concept.
My advice - do it with the GM and the fellow players. Against either of them likely will end in tears.
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Edit Lore Skills: Genealogy Lore and Heraldry Lore are the obvious ones already in the rules. Restricting them to the one family should narrow what you can use it for but should give you a much deeper knowledge of that family. Again - a GM can tailor that to your needs or can ok something you write up.
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You might also look into the Vigilante archetype. Especially if you are an adventurer at some times and a noble at others.
Lore skills would be better for some of these, but if you want the generic skills:
What are the needed skills to know an existing organization and the equipment, feats that permit to acess ?
Society. That is in charge of knowing about organizations.
What means are there to forgery a birth certificate ? (feats, ....)
Also Society.
My character will wish to know all the existing lineage from the noble ? What skill is it ?
Probably Society. For this one a Lore skill like Genealogy would be much better.
I wish also to attract the nobles to meet my character with a rumor
There is a skill feat Sow Rumor which sounds like exactly what you are trying to do.
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Courtly Graces is a feat that lets you pretend to be a noble with Society. You'd need Deception to pretend to be a specific noble though. Courtly Graces is also a prerequisite for Connections which is likely a worthwhile feat in such a game.
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The problems I think you would run into are:
1) If you just want to pretend to be a descendant of a noble family (a family that those around you aren't familiar with) then while you might be unlikely to be caught, it's also unlikely to matter to those you are tricking.
2) If you are pretending to be a member of a noble family that people would recognize as being from that area, then you run into the issue of other nobles going "Hang on, I know the count only has 3 sons and you're not one of them".
3) Or you try to be one of those 3 sons, but that's harder to pull off, even if you can polymorph yourself to look like one of them. People who are familiar with the individual will know what to look for, and those who aren't familiar with that individual puts you back to case number 1.
About the only angle I can see working well is pretending to be the illegitimate child of the noble family.
While being a noble does come with some benefits, it's hard to explore where exactly it will benefit you in a meaningful way within the context of the game. There will certainly be instances, but not many (in my perspective as a GM).
- A tiefflin with beastbrood (Courtly Graces) (1)
- Background Insurgent
- Class Rogue/Mastermind
- Devil in Plain Sight (5)
- Finest trick (13)
Ok, Society for organization as Firebrands to obtain sow rumor(2) feat and Entourage (7) [Hobnobber (1)]
Unmemorable Mantle can perhaps useful to erase memory from NPC.
Ok, Society and Genealogy Lore for the forgery and to know all the existing lineage from a noble in a specific region.
Then Connections (2) and quick contacts (2) to arrange meeting with an important figure.
So it isn't a question if - but rather when someone gets suspicious - and what that person might do. This doesn't even account for circumstances like getting into a zone of true seeing or other magics / circumstances that could yield an automatic discovery.
Vigilante archetype is interesting : Perhaps Hidden Magic(4) (for the magic item) and subjective truth(7). Optional : Many Guise(8). Social purview (4)
To whom do you want to keep this secret?
Yes.
s it a large or small noble family? What benefits (apart of name or status) do you want to gain that way?
A small noble family. Benefit : Infiltrate the noble and arrange meeting with them.
What level do you start? Higher level has more options to get skills/feats.
Middle or high level.
3) Or you try to be one of those 3 sons, but that's harder to pull off, even if you can polymorph yourself to look like one of them. People who are familiar with the individual will know what to look for, and those who aren't familiar with that individual puts you back to case number 1.
About the only angle I can see working well is pretending to be the illegitimate child of the noble family.
An illegimate child or to take the place of a child and perhaps to be the only survivor.
Devil in Plain Sight and Finest trick are polymorph effect, so I need a feat to hide this polymorph effect :
Slippery secrets (7)
Blank slate (16) ?
What do you think about these feats ?
Legendary negociation (15)
Underground network (2)
Streewise (1)
Glad Hand (2)
Group Impression (1)
Bon mot (1)
Charming liar (1)
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An illegimate child or to take the place of a child and perhaps to be the only survivor.
I don't think being an only survivor helps you very much.
A noble family with a "penniless" survivor, even with a noble family heritage isn't likely to see much benefit.
Much of nobility is about money and power, only in countries that are good aligned would I expect that you could use a noble name (whether really yours or not) to propel yourself up from nothing.
Honestly, a poor powerless noble isn't much different from a power powerless commoner. At least not in most places.
And to be honest, since noble is a background that any player character can take being a noble must by default not really give very much advantage on its own, or else every player would be practically required to play a noble.
A tiefflin with beastbrood
Do you mean Tiefling? I assume so with the feats mentioned, but it's an odd spelling to use multiple times.
PS: are you perhaps a French speaker?
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Yes, tiefling.
Yes, I'm a french speaker.
Yes, tiefling.
Yes, I'm a french speaker.
Ok, that makes sense then. Tiefflin looked familiar but I didn't make the connection to french right off. I don't use french often enough I guess. ;)
As to the reason you posted: it looks like other posters did a good job with replies. I'll give it some thought and make a post if I can think of anything that hasn't been covered.
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An illegimate child or to take the place of a child and perhaps to be the only survivor.I don't think being an only survivor helps you very much.
A noble family with a "penniless" survivor, even with a noble family heritage isn't likely to see much benefit.
Much of nobility is about money and power, only in countries that are good aligned would I expect that you could use a noble name (whether really yours or not) to propel yourself up from nothing.
Honestly, a poor powerless noble isn't much different from a power powerless commoner. At least not in most places.
And to be honest, since noble is a background that any player character can take being a noble must by default not really give very much advantage on its own, or else every player would be practically required to play a noble.
I might even make the check harder because the opponent actively doesn't want to believe you- even if you were telling the truth. Shooing an imposter out your door is a lot easier socially then being rude to some poor unfortunate colleague down on his luck. So they would actively want to find some angle to label you as a charlatan.
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I guess what I would warn here as a GM, is that you're spending several resources to attempt to appear as a noble. As a GM I would make sure you understood that you're likely to only see a marginal tangible benefit, in game mechanics, from that.
There might be some in-story slight social benefits, but hard to know without more specifics of the campaign.
And as a GM I would say, as long as you're comfortable with that and understand that you're not going to see a lot of return on investment for what you're doing then have at it.
And if you were expecting to see a lot of benefit, this conversation would serve as a warning against that.
I could see a fake noble identity as a long term investment. You are investing your other success into this charade, and the end goal is that you leverage that in order to have someone powerful use that as an excuse to reward you later.
The obvious angle would be a king that wants to add some hot, popular young hero to his faction, and 'recognizing an existing title' is easier than 'granting a title'. At that point, he just needs to throw a bit of land or some special post at you, and he can help shore things up.
This isn't something you do for a direct gameplay benefit. This is a long term character goal that you are trying to accomplish. The lie is just a pretense used to justify the political power dynamics that you will work to create. Even if everyone knows the truth- and even if they can prove the truth- they will have to go along with it to avoid conflict.
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Not impossible, but it also feels like something that would happen at the end of a campaign.
I found it much easier to play a noble who was pretending not to be one. Two party members already knew exactly who she was, but none of the others figured out the ruse. It helped that those not in the know were not from the same country.
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I think ultimately the issue here is, one of the default backgrounds of a character can be noble in PF2. By virtue of that, being a legitimate noble can't provide a substantial advantage over not being one. So pretending to be one can't provide much of advantage (generally speaking) either.
But from an RP perspective, yeah it can be cool to pretend to be a noble (or pretend to be a commoner).
My only issue is spending so many character resources to do almost nothing.
I don't see anything particularly weird about someone wanting to leverage the name of some slightly prestigious family for their own ends. I don't really get all the pushback on the OP in that regard.
The problem seems to be that this is something the rules don't cover well. Impersonate seems to be written with the idea that you're wearing a disguise in such a way that it's readily apparent one way or the other who you are.
It doesn't really cover longer, more subtle deceptions where you might not necessarily need a disguise and handling it via impersonate seems to stack the odds too hard against the player since there's a roll every time you directly interact with someone.
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I don't see anything particularly weird about someone wanting to leverage the name of some slightly prestigious family for their own ends. I don't really get all the pushback on the OP in that regard.
I wouldn't call this a pushback on my end, as much as a warning.
Slippery secrets (7) , is it obsolete with vigilante archetype ?
When a spell or magical effect tries to read your mind, detect whether you are lying, or reveal your alignment, you can attempt a Deception check against the spell or effect’s DC. If you succeed, the effect reveals nothing.
Alignment hidden ? Read Mind ?
With sujbective truth against zone of truth.
Blank slate
detecting nothing unless the detecting effect has a counteract level of 10 or higher.
Can you explain me "counteract level of 10 or higher" ?