Spes Magna Games

Since A Medieval Holiday is done and selling well at Paizo.com and at DriveThruRPG, I’ve been working my next PDF: Masters of Disguise. This new PDF’s main feature is the masque, a base class focused on deceit and disguise with four levels of spells. I’ve sent version 2 to my playtesters and received even more insightful feedback. I’m certain the masque is going to be an excellent base class once all the fine-tuning is completed.

But the masque isn’t all there will be. Masters of Disguise will also include useful crunch such as:

* Expanded uses for Diplomacy, Disguise, Linguistics, and Use Magic Device.
* More feats.
* More rogue talents.
* Equipment, both mundane and magic.
* A shapechanger bloodline for sorcerers.
* A disguise subdomain for clerics.
* And more!

Here’s an excerpt of the expanded rules for Diplomacy:

Diplomacy
Diplomacy serves many functions. A diplomatic character can help disarm conflicts and schmooze his way through potentially tricky situations. He can also keep abreast of the what’s going, using his gift of gab to gather useful information. But what if the character wants to put out bogus intelligence in order to mislead others?

Check: If you want to mislead those who trying to gather information about you, your Diplomacy check is opposed by your foe’s Diplomacy check. If you succeed, you misdirect your foe’s inquiries. This is typically an ongoing process with new opposed checks required each day.

You can also use Diplomacy for rumor-mongering in order to spread false information. This can make it more difficult for someone to interact favorably with other NPCs, applying penalties to their Charisma checks or other social skills. In order to rumor-monger, make a Diplomacy check opposed by the NPC’s Sense Motive check. If you succeed, the target of your rumor-mongering suffers a -2 penalty on interaction checks with that NPC for the next week.

Action: Using Diplomacy to mislead an information gatherer requires 1d4 hours of work, sowing bogus intelligence to informers. Rumor-mongering requires 1 minute of continuous interaction.

Try Again: You can retry Diplomacy checks made to spread false information and rumor-monger.

Special: Feats, spells, et cetera that modify Diplomacy apply to misleading and rumor-mongering attempts.

Masters of Disguise should be available in January 2011.