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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brother MacLaren" data-source="post: 4007653" data-attributes="member: 15999">Sounds cool!  The key is to outsmart the PCs (for a little while at least), not just out-buff them.  That's hard to do, since there are more of them than there are of you, but here are a couple of ideas.The BBEG could work through intermediaries or lieutenants.  Conveying false information through people who believe it to be true.  If she's involved in the Thieves' Guild, she might routinely pass useful information to the Captain of the Guard, with the caveat that revealing her identity will ruin her value as an informant.  So he comes to trust her as a confidential source, and when she wants to finally put her big plan into motion she has a way to spread rumors.  Since the Captain of the Guard believes that the information he's relaying is true, Sense Motive won't work.  But he also won't reveal his source for the PCs to check it out. Planting false information is also a great deal easier if it's something the PCs want to believe or something that it appears she doesn't want them to know.  Suppose she finds out that one of her assistants is a spy for the PCs.  She acts like she doesn't know, and uses him to unwittingly funnel false information about her plans.  When the PCs act on this, she catches them and makes them look like the bad guys -- perhaps they try to sneak into her tower when they think she's away and she has the city guard there.  Or perhaps they confront her in court with a sealed letter from her to a known necromancer (smuggled to them by their spy), only to have it debunked as a forgery when the seal doesn't match hers.I'm no mystery or espionage novelist, but there's a wealth of great stories about trickery and deception and false information.</blockquote>

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