Fish Stories: What's the best bluff you've ever gotten away with?

[Kae'Yoss]

Some time previous, our party killed a (rather young) green dragon, and the druid had an armour made of its scales (which the DM imbued with some extra greenish abilities).

Of course, the next dragon - a blue one - we saw ourselves face to face with, was rather older, and a bit too strong for us to take on (like CR 8 above our level), especially since we didn't expect to find a dragon in there.

Luckily, he didn't want to kill us, just buy back our freedom (for quite a sum).

And then, he suddenly asked the druid, what sort of armour he wore.

The druid (not the highest cha, and no ranks in bluff at all), replied "Crocodile".

One 20 on a bluff, followed by a 1 on sense motive later, he actually believed it, and we were let off "light", by only paying through our nose, for the "entrance fee" and the info we were supposed to get from the elf sorcerer who lived there before the dragon killed him and take his stuff.

 

[wolff96]

Our party was on the run from the Red Wizards of Thay. They had put a *VERY* substantial reward on our heads and we were constantly being targetted by assassins and other ne'er-do-wells out for the bounty.

We set up camp outside a moderate-sized city and were somehow discovered. When the local lawman (who we knew was working for the Wizards) showed up with a posse and tried to arrest us -- for camping on protected lands, I think -- I cooked 99% of his low-level men with a single empowered chain lightning. The lawman managed to escape alive.

The party rogue, Arclite -- our face man, master of disguise and king of BS -- left camp, taking a horse and saying "Trust me". Somewhere between leaving our camp and catching up to the out-classed lawman, he paused to strip a (scorched) uniform off a dead man and disguise himself as another survivor.

After catching up, Arclite spent the evening commiserating with the lawman over alcohol. Then he excused himself, changed his appearance AGAIN, and used the intelligence he had gathered in their earlier conversation to convince the lawman that he was a bounty hunter. He offered to drop the PCs and share the reward with the lawman.

Fast forward to when he comes back to camp.

Arclite took four of the dead men's heads, disguised them in a mundane manner, then had me enchant them beyond that. When done, we had exact copies of the four party members that could stand up to most any scrutiny... for a while.

We went back to town -- the whole group in disguise, now -- and sold the lawmen OUR OWN HEADS. In anticipation of the reward, he paid our share of the bounty to us right then and there -- mostly so he could screw this naive bounty-hunting group out of part of their money.

--------------------------

Long story short: We sold the crooked lawmen some of his own men's heads for 25,000gp. We obtained a bunch of intelligence about how the Red Wizards were tracking us and just how badly they wanted us. *AND* we got that lawman in trouble with the Red Wizards when he tried to turn over a bunch of fake heads to them.

Good times. I only wish I'd had the brains to pull THAT one off.

 

[Rel]

So there I was, at GenCon, playing at a table FULL of great ENWorlders, being GMed by Piratecat. This game is set in his game world and we're playing a set of PC's that run parallel to the PC's in his regular weekly game.

We're sent by Lord Ioun on a mission to investigate this evil cult that has spread from another land into his. We're supposed to track them back to the foreign land to another city under the guise of being on a trade mission to trade gems and jewels to them from Ioun's empire. I'm playing a Rogue/Diplomat type.

So we managed to get into this city and avoid most of the authorities and start poking around. The evil cult got wind of it and sends this big, nasty bug assassin thing against us and we barely survived but we killed it. So a crowd of civilians and some of the cultists start to gather around and we're just getting ready to have to make a run for it when I get an idea.

My PC starts making a speech, "I know that you mistrust us because we are foreigners to your lands. But we have come here not to fight you, but to warn you! Because these members of the cult that makes their home in your city...there is something that they do not want you to know! A secret hidden in their hearts that grows there without your knowledge!..."

Meanwhile I'm walking slowly toward a couple of the low ranking cultists who wear distinctive white robes. As I get within reach of him I Quickdraw my Keen Rapier and slashed him through the heart, killing him instantly (he was a mook plus, ya know, 7d6 Sneak Attack Damage). The crowd gasps in horror and I know that in moments the other cultists are going to swarm all over me. I shove my hand through the gaping wound in his chest and pull it back out, bloody.

"THIS IS WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!" I open my hand to reveal...the biggest gem that we brought with us on our trade expedition (my Slight of Hand skill RAWKED!). The citizens gathered looked at me...looked at the giant gem...looked at the cultists. Then the cultists started running. Fast.

AND we got the hell out of town before they figured out that it was a fraud.

 

[painandgreed]

One player had ended up sneaking into the castle and stealing the (gold and gem encrusted) royal seal which ends up being searched for. Other player decides its a really bad idea to have this seal and trys to return it which results in killing a gaurd who attacked him when he shows up with the seal. Guard turns out to be queen's nephew which further complicates matters as they are now looking for his murderer as well as the seal.

My bard comes up with a plan to get rid of the seal. I'm singing at the queen's nephew's funeral (getting the job was how we discovered the identity of the guard killed) so I sent the thief out to find a suitable patsy who will go into a high risk deal. Once that is done we send the murder with the seal to talk to the patsy and entrust him with the seal to hide for a promise of more gold than he's ever seen. The thief is in the inn when this happens. I sing at the funeral and then introduce my friend, the thief to the queen as she has information that might result in her nephew's muderer and the seal. Thief informs queen of the deal she overhead going down in the inn and queen sends the guards to patsies house to get him and the seal. Patsy can only describe the murderer whose description they already had and we collect reward money for return of the seal and leave town.

On the way out of town we encounter a group of dwarves being attacked by goblins and jump in to help. We kill the goblins but the remaining dwarves were killed first. We are left with the dwarves wagon which contains just a single crate. Inside is the replacement for the missing royal seal which they had ordered from the dwarves as the above senario took weeks in game time and they desperatly needed a new seal. We left it in the crate and just kept going without looking back.

 

[Ender_rpm]

I convinced your mom that I loved her..... Oh, wait, you meant IN game? yeah, I got nothin...

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

This was from a d20 Modern session I was GMing.

Note: high-ranking crime organizations like the Mafia or bikers often demand a cut from smaller crime organizations. The players didn't seem to know this, though.

The heroes were chasing down some gunrunners, and located some of them on a ship. (The dangerous villains hadn't arrived yet.) The heroes pretended to be "port authorities" (but weren't any good at disguising) and attempted to subtly suggest that these bad guys should surrender or not ship anything. Due to a really high Bluff check and some confusion on everyone's part, the heroes came off as bikers posing as port authority officials. The smugglers then handed over several thousand dollars in cash as a bribe. The heroes liked their good fortune and didn't kill any of these villains.

They did ambush the villains coming with their large numbers of guns, and the same hero who bluffed the pants off the villains found he couldn't fight well at all...

 

[Jacob the Impaler]

I played a young, smooth talking 1st level wizard with dangerously low wisdom and a nice quarterstaff. I almost convinced a tribe of goblins living in the ruins of a mage's tower that I was an ancient archmage returning to his fortress. The main part of the bluff was pointing my staff threateningly at them. Then one of the smarter goblins asked "What does that staff do, anyway?"

Somehow everyone survived.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

While I've had a few good bluffs over the years, by far the best were by a PC in a campaign I GMed.

This character was an intelligent undead of a decidedly non-combative type (an Eletum, for those who have FFG's Mythic Races or Dragonstar Races of the Galaxy) and an Akashic (Arcana Unearthed); rather than drawing on racial memory for his akashic abilities, he drew on his own thousands of years of existence. Much of that existence had been spent disguising himself as a human. OK, many different humans.

He was an extraordinary skill character in a variety of ways, but nothing except his disguises could compare to his bluffs. Over the course of the campaign, he:

1. Convinced the enemy he was the party leader, causing their snipers to futilely attempt to crit him and eventually to stop trying to shoot the actual party leader.
2. Convinced the enemy that *another* enemy country was responsible for an attack that destroyed their capital, instigating a war that forced the second country to ally with the PCs' country.
3. Convinced the conspirators who had seized control of the PCs' country that one of their own had leaked their conspiracy to the populace, simultaneously paralyzing the conspirators with distrust and rousing the capital's citizens against them.

The best, however, was this sequence:

The PCs were infiltrating the enemy capital (this eventually led to scenario 2., above) and had botched an earlier sabotage mission, alerting the enemy to their presence. The PCs went to ground, but one was captured. He was psionically interrogated by the enemy secret police, who discovered which apartment the PCs were hiding out in. The secret police came to the apartment and found - an innocuous apartment (due to the eletum's massive, massive Disguise or Hide check, I forget which offhand, the party was able to tunnel out and conceal all evidence) and an old factory worker (the eletum, superbly disguised) who insisted he'd just moved in. So convincing was the eletum's bluff that he'd just moved in and found the place empty, the secret police allowed him to leave provided he agreed to further questioning. The eletum promptly slipped into an alley, changed his disguise, rented another apartment, removed and disposed of his disguise, and 'hung himself.' When the secret police checked this apartment, they found the skeleton of a long-dead tenant, which was taken to the morgue for further inspection. The eletum waited a couple of days in the morgue... then applied a new disguise and walked out, eventually rejoining the other PCs.

 

[celewritor]

Here's a story from a game I DMed

One time a party learned an enemy of theirs was having supplies shipped in. The shipment was being brought in by some smugglers and being picked up by a criminal gang called the Blackwaters. When the PCs arrived they were just unloading. With no superiors in sight, one PC approached the gang and said that they were reinforcements sent because the gang leaders were expecting trouble. When their enemies minions arrived they attacked the PCs on sight. Of course the gang members came to help their "allies". In the end they had captured an important minion, took the shipment for their enemy, and the money the gang was going to be paid for the shipment.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Party is sent to try and warn the inhabitants of a small city about the BBEG's army coming to destroy them. Guard captain at the gate is a secret agent of the BBEG, and is coming up with all the BS excuses he can think of to not let us in, insulting the party members and calling them liars and forgers.

The short-tempered dwarf is by now livid, shouting back at the top of his lungs, but he doesn't attack-the townsfolk will never believe people who come and murder the very citizens they're supposed to protect. With the dwarf and the rest of the party providing a distraction, the thief pulls the wizard back. Thief is suspicious, as the guard captain seems much more rigid than he might expect. He has the wizard cast a mind-reading spell, which is not noticed due to the dwarf's distraction, and the wizard learns that the guard captain is very, very nervous, his mind racing and thinking frantically.

Thief realizes something fishy is going on, and so asks to speak to the guard captain in private. He uses his own BSing skill to claim that the party was sent by the mayor in secret to investigate and see if there was any truth to the town council's fears of invasion. The adventurers have found that there actually is no invasion, but they're still pretending that there is one, putting on an act to test the vigilance of the guards. Letters of introduction from the Good Wizard are forgeries, all an elaborate set-up to strengthen the disguise.

Guard captain buys the story, and lets them in. Party then shows letter of introduction to the town council, who accept the warning and call a meeting to deal with the situation. Traitorous guard captain is not pleased, but he can't speak out-thief spoke to him privately, and there's no one who could back up his claim, as the thief could just deny it. Party has town council's ear, and guard captain would just be calling undue attention to himself.

Guard captain and his followers are reduced to sneaking out of the city at night, but one of them has remorse, and alerts the heroes as to what the guard and his men are pulling. Guard captain and his men are caught at the city gates and slain for their treachery.