Ruin Explorer
Legend
Do you know how many art forgers are skilled artists? It's about 100%. If you are a skilled artist, and capable of imitating styles (which is not a matter of special training), then you can forge art. That's how forgers get into the business, typically. How well you can do it is another question, but practice makes perfect to a large extent. It doesn't require special training, it doesn't require special tools. It requires experience, patience, and the right kind of mind (not everyone has the latter).
Relevant to D&D, I could pull of DiTerlizzi well enough that you might believe it was an original when I was 17, because I was utterly obsessed with his stuff. Copying directly rather than riffing off it would have made it even easier. Not every artist can do this, but it's talent, not some kind of special training. I was able to do stuff like this since I was very little. I didn't need special training to be an extremely good imitator.
Modern art forgery is much harder, but only because the analysis techniques we have now are amazing, and that's all irrelevant to any time before say, the 1900s, and really the 1970s-1990s is when most of the power techniques come in.
Calligraphic forgery will be similar but easier (again, assuming no modern techniques, no microscopes etc. in routine usage, which is a fair assumption in most D&D). It will require a practiced hand, care, and good materials (and enough of them to deal with your mistakes), but absolutely, yes, an experienced scribe, who has the talent (again I stress this is a talent, not special training - some people will always be bad at it, some people will pick it up easily), and the inclination to imitate styles, and some experience in doing so (he probably has such experience from doing different kinds of
You say "Oh a street urchin could do it but not a old sage". I say the exact reverse, assuming both had the talent the old sage still has great eyesight and manual dexterity, and both had the talent, the knack. He's has vastly more experience of different documents, the different hands that write them, the different materials involved with them, the different qualities of ink and different ways you might cut your pen. The urchin is more likely to get mixed up in it, of course, but he's far less likely to have the experience and skill necessary to do it (again, assuming both are in good health in the right ways). The urchin will probably have been exposed to tiny fraction of the writing the sage has, and whilst he may be determined, he's just not going to be thinking about ways you might give yourself away, whereas an old sage will be very familiar with looking at documents, and seeing that sometimes, the person who was writing them changes without acknowledgement and so on.
So to sum up:
1) You need the basic skill. You cannot forge calligraphy or art without being a calligrapher or an artist. Period. So the idea of a forger without the appropriate skill is a nonsense.
2) In my view experience of being quite a good copier, you need a talent. Some people are just not good at copying other people's stuff, and it's pretty consistent - like if they can't imitate one style, they probably can't imitate another. D&D doesn't deal with talents, it's too small-scale, so I guess the player/DM decides if they have the talent.
3) You want experience. The more writing or art you've seen, the more techniques you're familiar with, the more you know about the materials, the approaches and so on, where inks come from, what they're made of, the better job you're going to do.
What you don't need are particular tools beyond the tools of the appropriate trade. I mean you do now, but even those are generally improvised and specific to the exact thing you're forging, that's not really the case here. You could improve your odds simply by stealing the right things - if you can "borrow" the exact ink, parchment/paper/whatever, and exactly the right kind of pen (i.e. if he cuts his own quills, one he cut), that's going to make your life easier and reduce the need for experience.
The only specialized thing I can think of is maybe something to make a seal. I'll be honest, I'm not actually sure how you'd do that, other than use vaguely similar seal (or just a blank one) and then very carefully cut at it with a little knife/scraper (which I can assure you an artist or scribe will own), and drip wax where necessary to make it look right. Which again will be essentially an artistic task, I don't think it'll require tools you don't have.
It's also worth noting that most of your targets will have little/no experience with forgery, some of them won't even be able to read, and even those who can, are unlikely to possess the kind of awareness to look for this. They may notice a seal looks odd, or falls apart when they touch it or something. The person you should be most scared of is the old sage - he'll have seen countless works which have been copied by multiple hands, or where the author is someone other than who he professes to be.
Imho "forgery kit" should be removed from the game. Whether you can forge something should be a matter of whether you believe your character has the talent and inclination, and if you can make the right checks. Having access to an example document and the right ink/wax/parchment etc. (probably stolen, or very carefully sourced) might give you advantage.
EDIT - To be clear, the notion of "proficiency" in a specific "forger's kit" is the problem here, not what exactly is in that kit. A calligrapher should be able to do literally all the same things - including the gold leaf. And further a forger who can do this? They can certainly act as a calligrapher/scribe.
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I have standards!
