Swapping Rings


Advice


Scenario: you work for a thieve's guild. Your guildmaster is soon to meet with the representative of a powerful client for the first time. He is suspicious of the client's offer, and wants a hidden spellcaster to use Detect Thoughts to learn as much as possible during the negotiations.

Unfortunately, the client's representative is equipped with a Ring of Mind Shielding. The guildmaster learned this in advance, and has managed to create a fake ring that looks exactly like the rep's ring.

Your job is to swap the two rings. The rep is currently traveling overland towards the city, and will arrive in about 3 days, then spend about 1 day in the city before the meeting. He's a cleric, and tends to keep the ring on unless he has a good reason to remove it.

How would you go about it?


Rings should very rarely come off without good reason. For instance, chefs or bakers might take them off prior to cooking. Mechanics and such take them off so as not risk scratching paint on customers' cars.

Depending on the cleric's religion and practices, there might be a prayer or a ritual that would, if not require, at least make the removal of rings and such likely. Of course that situation would be making it easier for a rogue assuming they found out about the ritual. Maybe it occurs at a certain time of day, like the morning, or during high-noon.

Perhaps it is a specific, rare ritual that does not normally occur. This might require the rogue to try and stage or set up an event to trick the cleric into removing the ring. Depending on the religion, maybe a really good check would tell the rogue that if a cleric of X religion presides over an exorcism they typically take off an article of jewelry (usually a necklace, but maybe a ring) and bless it, kiss it and place it upon the afflicted, if only for a short time, while saying their prayers.

There's always the old, ask for a blessing and kiss the ring move. You shouldn't make it that easy though. Perhaps a simple Knowledge check to figure out that there is a blessing that might work that way (unless rogue is that religion) so the rogue at least knows the name of blessing to ask for. Then have the cleric ask some questions, make some intonations and the rogue can either improv or make more checks to figure out the appropriate response to get through to the end and have a chance to pull some Sleight of Hand.


I'd double rogue it. A night of merriment one slips it off during a handshake while a second places the fake in a pocket or lures the cleric to bed. Or you could just alchemically roofie the poor bastard.

Grand Lodge

He wouldn't take the ring off on his own. It's a ring, it stays on all the time. So do it while he sleeps, drug him, mug him (and conveniently drop the fake ring during your getaway), or sweet talk him into letting you examine it then sleight-of-hand to swap it out with the fake. Those are the things that I can think of off the top of my head.


Some good ideas. I hadn't considered drugging him. That's a good suggestion.

As for arranging a fake ceremony -- he's a cleric of Norgorber, in his aspect as god of assassins. I can't think of any particular rituals that might require him to take his ring off, except perhaps cleaning up after an exceptionally messy murder. But I'll double-check in Inner Sea Gods and see if anything jumps out.

Thanks, all.


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Don't forget to give the fake ring a magical aura. All it takes is a detect magic for him to discover that something's up.

Drugging him could be easy or hard, depending on the drugs used. There's also the option of getting an alchemist to make some polypurpose panacea infusion for you and use that to spike his drink.


Drugs work very well IRL (no, I'm not advocating that IRL at all, just saying they work) but they don't work very well in Pathfinder.

The easiest solution is to just beat the crap out of him. Unconscious. Make it look like highway robbery, bandits, even a monster attack if you can get the monster. When he's out, swap rings. Don't loot him, best yet, arrange for his side to win (can you get an invisible character to swap rings during the fight?)

If the frontal assault won't work, get him drunk or get him a woman or get both - if he parties hard enough, the swap should be easy.


I'm thinking ways to get around it with specifically switching the rings, considering the greater problem, if you prefer:
Targeted Dispel magic on the ring's effect could temporarily suppress said immunity. And there's no reason, if the guildmaster plays it cool, for him to suspect it's not working if the casting is covert.
As others have said, a fairly straight forward sleight of hand during a handshake would palm the ring away. I've seen street performers get watches and jewelry off people unnoticed easily (also ties, cell phones, etc). The problem then is returning it inconspicuously.
I nor anyone else I know, sleep with rings on at night. So again, petty theft could be straightforward. But who knows what guards and wards a 'high level cleric' would provide themselves. Also, none of my jewelry is magically, which would make it easy to change when I would and wouldn't wear it. And how would such a person act when they discover it missing comes up again. The switch could help with that though.
The point of magic aura'ing the duplicate is an important thing to remember.
Would offering a form of protection or escort to the rep help insinuate you? Either for a better chance at the swap or just as a show of goodwill/power-showing?


DM_Blake wrote:

Drugs work very well IRL (no, I'm not advocating that IRL at all, just saying they work) but they don't work very well in Pathfinder.

The easiest solution is to just beat the crap out of him. Unconscious. Make it look like highway robbery, bandits, even a monster attack if you can get the monster. When he's out, swap rings. Don't loot him, best yet, arrange for his side to win (can you get an invisible character to swap rings during the fight?)

If the frontal assault won't work, get him drunk or get him a woman or get both - if he parties hard enough, the swap should be easy.

Actually, drugs work pretty well in PF. Poisons don't. Drugs, by RAW, have no save vs effect, only vs addiction.

I'd say give him dreamtime tea somehow, if you can't pull off the panacea; the only problem is that he may have knowledge of the drugs workings.


Can you fake a doppleganger scare? Swap his shoes when he takes them off for airline security?

If you have an exact copy, you must have contacted the original jeweler, so you might know if there's any inscription. Let's hope no inscription.

"Say, I have that same ring..." your operative says, showing the twin. "What's the inscription, in yours?"

"Yes, inscribed. Kind of hard to see, but here..." (takes off the ring, shows prestidigitated inscription, a line of verse, a blessing, or curse, or whatever might pique the mark's interest)

"What's in yours?"

If he takes it off, FIREBALL or such, something to make him drop it. Your operative makes sure to get the real ring, and the absence of inscription proves the mark has his own ring back.

It's overly-elaborate. Some GMs love such things.


What's my level and class? I'd go about this very differently with a Fighter than a Rogue than a Wizard.


Step 1: Kill the client and take his stuff.
Step 2: When guildmaster complains, kill the guildmaster and take his stuff.

Just wanted to give the actual way PCs will deal with this.


Kestral287 - You've got 4 levels of Rogue and 6 levels of Druid. Oddly enough.

The target has 1 level of rogue and 6 of cleric. In case it's interesting, the target is ...

Rise of the Runelords spoilers:
... Justice Ironbriar, from Rise of the Runelords. Both he and Xanesha survived book 2, and he's been dispatched to Korvosa to hire the Cerulean Society to undertake more murders of greedy people. We're in between book 3 and 4, and one of the PCs is on a solo side adventure in Korvosa.

I sent Ironbriar because I wanted to tie the side adventure back to the main campaign. I'm planning for his identity to come out (if he survives the side quest), so that the PC can tell the rest of the party once they meet up for the start of Book 4. They really do need to know he and Xanesha are still active.


If the guild has an operative that specializes in breaking out of jail I'd suggest he takes the duplucate and "get caught" palming it after he shakesthe hand of the cleric. While you're first guy has already stolen the original.


I second a targeted casting of dispell magic, that's the easiest method.


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PCRogue meets Cleric, shakes his hand and blatantly steals ring. As the Cleric begins to react, PCFighter (preferably disguised as a city guard) punches PCRogue in the face "knocking them out cold", and, prying open PCRogue's *other* hand, casually hands the fake ring to the Cleric before hauling PCRogue off to "jail".

The best Con Job is one where the mark feels lucky that it happened...


Have you ended up pulling this off yet? What tactics did you try? Did it go well?


Ithnaar wrote:

PCRogue meets Cleric, shakes his hand and blatantly steals ring. As the Cleric begins to react, PCFighter (preferably disguised as a city guard) punches PCRogue in the face "knocking them out cold", and, prying open PCRogue's *other* hand, casually hands the fake ring to the Cleric before hauling PCRogue off to "jail".

The best Con Job is one where the mark feels lucky that it happened...

Oh man, I love this one. So simple, yet so good.


Keep in mind that it is very necessary to put an aura on that ring, or else he can very easily know it's not his. You also need to make a very convincing fake, as he should get a perception check to notice it is different.

And then, most importantly, you best hope he fails that check when you cast on him.

Because, if he succeeds he knows someone just targeted him with a spell and that he succeeded against it. He doesn't necessarily know who, but if I'm in negotiations and that happens you can be sure the negotiations will have ceased afterwards.

Quote:
Succeeding on a Saving Throw: A creature that successfully saves against a spell that has no obvious physical effects feels a hostile force or a tingle, but cannot deduce the exact nature of the attack. Likewise, if a creature's saving throw succeeds against a targeted spell, you sense that the spell has failed. You do not sense when creatures succeed on saves against effect and area spells.

Importantly, he will know someone cast and he succeeded, but the caster will not know he succeeded (until the thoughts fail to be revealed).

There is also the tricky problem of casting with him noticing, which is virtually impossible except with options that probably aren't available to you at this.

Which means he knows you friend just cast the spell.

You want a simple way to find out what he knows? Kill him and use speak with dead. Get him alone and cast charm person on him. Then ask him as a friend, to divulge what you want to know.

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