Petty
You guys, I’m out here rocking songs. Meeting friends and influencing people. I got poetry and lightning in my brain, having learned the ways of MAGICK and possessing the ability to TALK such that the tribes of MEN will render unto me such service as I beg of them. And that service friendos?
Do want to know what I’ll ask of you?
Do ya?
Then lean in close. Because I’ve got a deal you aren’t gonna believe! You ready? Close your eyes and hold out your hands. Here it coooo-ooooomes!
BANG! POW! Cream pie to the dome piece! Cue the canned laughter.
So look youse guys… There’s a reason that you’re not supposed to let Saruman speak. He will put a spell on you. And speaking as a practitioner, I’ve learned a trick or two myself.
So let me tell you buddy! There’s this bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell yas. Just a little up front money on the barrel head. And while we’re at it, try not to listen to the words of the conmen, but their meaning.
You ever fall for it though? Did you ever let that bad, bad ‘man behind the screen do you a heckin’ good bamboozle? What’d they say! CONFESS THY SINS! And we shall all have a good laugh at our mutual misfortune down in the dooblydoo.
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Oh, Necromancer… >_<
It's an interesting idea. Even in a world where magic is a known and verifiable phenomenon, when there are so many different kinds of it, how are people supposed to distinguish real arcana from snake oil if the person hawking it is skilled enough in lying, be it to punters or even themselves? In our own world, people still fall for outright cons, well-meaning pseudoscience and malicious mysticism every year. How would a genuinely magical world be different?
Apart from, you know, adventurers putting such operations to the torch, or consulting wizards and priests being able to empirically prove what is dross and what is genuine.
Who’s to say that snake oil *isn’t* a vital ingredient in various potions and elixirs? The occult is — by definition — secretive, and even if such things are real, the number of people who can tell a real product from a scam is small.
True, that.
Fun fact about snake oil: The idea of selling snake oil, as with a lot of bad medicine, comes from Westerners painting over a dumb idea with Eastern mysticism.
Oil from Chinese water snakes was used in traditional treatments for joint pain; it’s hypothesized that this might have been effective due to high concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids. But the version peddled in Europe and the USA didn’t use water snakes (rattlesnake and viper oil doesn’t have any omega-3), wasn’t prescribed for joint pain, and in some infamous cases didn’t even contain snake oil.
So the effectiveness of snake-oil treatments in principle has relatively little influence on the effectiveness of a snake oil salesman’s patent medicine.
as the saying goes:
Snake oil works just fine as I’ve never encountered a squeaky snake.
That’s very cool, I didn’t know any of that!
I feel like the answer is the same as in our world: Either know what the other person claims to be knowledgeable about, find a friend who is, or live in an era where you can find a reliable source to fact-check their claims.
Occultist scammed us out of a rant and alt-text it seems.
there is a rant now
„but not as we know it“
Alt Text is up as well, sorry for the confusion!
Ever wonder how big a comb a medusa uses ?
Well, the snakes complained about the hair dryer.
In one dungeon, I dropped a plot hook for a later mission as a monster encounter: the pack of undead in the trap-filled dungeon were a previous party of NPCs that had a few members scratched by ghouls in an earlier fight. They’d relied on a flask of Cure Disease that was actually a Potion of Delusion intentionally made and sold as patent medicine by some quack as a money-making scheme (“Uncle Chronic’s Miracle Tonic: Rids All Diseases—Soothes colicky babies, nervous mothers, upset stomachs, and the heartbreak of psoriasis—This Elixer will Fix’er!!!”) The infected had insisted that they were feeling much better—then they died in their sleep from ghoul fever, rose as ghasts, and ate the uninfected members of their team. A diary, some deduction from the evidence, and the remaining doses in the bottle helped the PCs figure out what had occurred.
While they didn’t go searching the countryside for the charlatan responsible for the tragedy, the PCs did swear that if they *ever* ran across the jerk who made and sold that stuff…
Oh man, I’m surprised they didn’t hunt him down on the spot! What a great setup for that, though, that’s very clever.
When last I was in the DM’s chair I had a con-merchant try and sell the party “Oil of essence”. People roleplaying wiser characters talked the more foolish characters out of it.
Towards the end of the campaign the Warforged Paladin tried to get a **Tome of Leadership and Influence**. I didn’t want to break bounded accuracy by increasing everyone’s save via **Aura of Protection**, so my way of saying “No” without actually saying “No” was to say that the only one they found for sale had a 99 year cooldown. They bought it anyway because they assumed Warforged were immortal. In my setting if a Warforged is operational too long without having its mind reset, the souls of the people used to make them will start to regain their sense of self which leads to schizophrenic and DID symptoms before the souls completely disconnect from the Warforged body since it isn’t their proper body. (Kind of a mix of Destiny’s EXO lore and Shadowrun’s Essence rules) Even if he did wait it out, it would turn out that it was an ordinary book magically disguised as the tome via a **Nystul’s Magic Aura**.
If I’m ever back in the DM’s chair I plan on introducing the characters to the “Chained Block”. It can trade illusions of very ugly apes. It also ravages the local ecosystem. They are the result of a coven of Hags who in addition to hating beauty and nature, also want to incite people into evil through greed for something ultimately worthless.
These are very sneaky plots, I’d love to see the Hag coven one come to fruition, let us know if you get to run it!
Now, I don’t know what Claire is planning to talk about this time, but I do know of a petty thing I’ve done myself: I have changed my character concept twice specifically to make fun of another player’s typo.
Oddly enough, it was the same player both times.
Well, now we must know what the typo was!
If you say so!
Typo #1: Player misspelled their class as “rouge”. I had suggested “okay then, I guess we’re all colors now!” So I was Viridian and another player was Chartreuse.
Typo #2: we’re playing a spacefaring game and the GM tells us our party needs we need a captain, a pilot, and an engineer. Player suggests taking either “captian or pilot” to which I responded “I might take the captain role, since [Player] here can’t spell it.”
I had a wizard who never bathed, due to simply being able to cast prestidigitation on themselves and magically clean themselves completely. Didn´t stop the party from making fun of their hygiene and lack of bathing.
Of course they weren´t laughing so loudly when they asked me to clean them up after wading through the sewers.
For Cons, I once ran an NPC who pretended to be an ancient wizard, holding the sword of the chosen one which powers would reveal itself in time. But to hand it over you would need to give what you thought it was worth. Which often lead to him gaining a lot of sentimental items. Which he then promptly sold. Paying of the cost of buying cheap longswords and giving them a paintjob.
Oh hey, I know that trick. 🙂
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/prestidigi-dry-cleaning
I know it’s not the case because “D&D”, but in some systems/genres being cleansed of your evil/sins/corruption/whatever will also revoke your ability to use your magic or supernatural abilities. So in those cases Necromancer would cease to be… Necromancer.
I wonder what she would become after losing her entire everything like that?
She could re-train herself as a Medium.
Why not a large? 😛
What, and ruin her figure? 😉
Is this meant as a reference to Lucy van Pelt’s Psychiatric Help for 5 cents store from Peanuts?
Alright. Let’s play this out. Tell me your troubles and I’ll give you advice. 🙂
Good catch!
Look at necromancer’s mouth closely for a fun surprise! ️⚧️
… Well, that’s not the emoji I was promised. Anyways. *Necromancer’s.
Thank you for noticing this. Made my day. 🙂
I’m not seeing it. What am I missing?
It’s a subtle slightly wonky trans flag. 😉
also, I don’t know why, but every time I glance at this comic I keep thinking it looks like they’re concluding a date. Something about how one of them appears more elevated as if on a porch step, the moody sunset lighting, the fact that they’re both girls and one of them is dressed very nicely,,, now kiss.
The fact that this is a) one of the few characters who already has an extremely firm romantic storyline, and b) one of the most toxic possible partners possible for a girl struggling to redeem herself does not dissuade me. Oh, in the latter case, quite the opposite. This comic needs more skeevy love triangles that don’t involve any horses.
All I see is lips, teeth, and tongue. I’m pretty sure she’s always had those…?
I believe it’s the colour scheme. Witch doesn’t usually wear blue lipstick from memory…
Necromancer does, actually! But I already answered this question above.
That’ll teach me not to post while I’m mostly asleep! Should be pretty difficult to mix those two up, but here we are
Also the colour scheme bit was trying to visualise the flag for Soleana in the above, not a random makeup comment!
Worst bamboozle was an alchemist of a rival party we defeated/surrendered, found trapped and abandoned in a dungeon. Dude offered to accompany us only to betray us at the worst moment later on, causing the death of one PC.
We got our revenge later on, murdering the bastard and the rest of his party.
Oh man, the betrayal after you’ve helped someone is always a hard thing to take.
Here’s a profitable scam most any wizard can do in Pathfinder. You need disguise self, Magic Aura, and summon mount.
Disguise self first (this covers your tracks later). Summon a horse with the summon mount spell, then cast magic aura on it to hide the fact it’s a magical creation. Sell the horse to a stable or horsemonger. Abscond. The summoned horse will vanish after a few hours (leaving no physical evidence anyone can use to accuse you of a crime), but you’ll be long gone by then, and any witnesses will be looking for your disguise form, not you.
Hmmm… I may have to look into this for my next wizard.
Necromancer does, actually! But I already answered this question above.
Ugh, replied to the wrong post!
To be fair, Occultist could turn this into a honest and profitable business by selling laundry/prestidigitation cleansing services for 1gp.
For a small extra charge, she can also make you or your clothes smell like the perfume of your choice.
Yes, but where’s the fun in being honest?
Ooh. I wonder what Necromancer needs all that cleanser for 😉
Did you forget how Witch and Succubus creeped her out with their ‘interrogation techniques’?
And she lives in the same house as them.
I think you have at least an inkling!
Yes and no?
We were seeking big story warping artifact level magic doodads that would weaken our end goal foe and strengthen our end game… uh, strengths for the final battles to come.
We got one early on and as we sought out the others (there were five total) we got TWO more along the way! 3 out of 5 baby! We were sitting pretty on our long and hard fought big wins…
Except we were “forced” to give one up in order to gain a big ally, so that we couldn’t use it and then we also had to let one go to be “studied” so we also couldn’t use that.
Oh well, one powerful artifact would be enough and we did weaken our enemy by a factor of three of five!
WRONG!
We found out after campaign that one of the items we collected was actually a fake, designed to be found so that our foe wouldn’t lose one to a bunch of rag tag heroes. And then it turned out that our big bad enemy only needed two out of the 5 in order to complete their scheme anyway, and they ALWAYS had those two in safe and secret space, so we never had a chance!
We still kicked the BBEGs ass at the end, but the big reveals at the end of the campaign were pretty deflating to our precious egos XD
Oh man, that’s quite the trick, there! I’ve always liked bad guys in fiction who are smart enough to do this, but a role-playing setting feels like it ought to give the party more of a chance.
it did “feel” like we had a chance, so I think that is important, even if we never did XD
I know the question is “what cons have your party/players fallen for?”, but I gotta share the party’s encounter with a merchant on the road. We were headed out to the next town, and met a merchant trying to sell stuff to us. And this, it begins.
He claimed the town burnt down and thus his stuff was the only stuff to buy, cause everything else was gone. Also he hurt his leg running away from the fire and he lost all of his money and other possessions in the fire, so won’t you help a poor soul?
No smoke could be seen in the direction of the town, and last anyone heard, it was fine. Fairly certain he’s bluffing about the leg, but we don’t tell him that. Merchant: 0, Party: 1
He starts pulling out items and showing us, claiming that one of them is “adamantine plate” (like plate mail).
Cavalier presses X to doubt, and the merchant changes his claim to “silver plate”. Throughout the entire interaction, he’s saying things like “you drive a hard bargain”.
Cavalier continues by saying the plate “wouldn’t even stand up to the scratch of a fork, much less a blade”, followed by my wizard chiming in with “this silver isn’t even worth copper”. Merchant: 0, Party: 2
To top it all off, the Battle Master ends up scaring the merchant, who runs off (clearly unharmed in any way). Battle Master jokes that we’ve healed him, and the Druid (in on the joke) decides to continue playing Cleric and casts Thunderclap when the merchant’s just out of the range of damage. Soundwave spooks him even further in a very funny way. Merchant: 0, Party: 3
All in all, it was a very funny random encounter XD
Poor guy, he was just trying to make a few silver at your expense!
A big thanks to Joanne Rowling, for making bringing up her series more and more awkward each year!
…but as I’ve got nothing interesting to talk about con artistry in my gaming, I’ve got to bring up Harry Potter, as it’s possibly the greatest illustration of wizards attempting to con each other in literature.
Whenever a major subplot-related source of distress sweeps the school, the students immediately start trading dubious magic items and information among each other. Some are straight-up scams (I’m pretty sure I remember that one student sold dried fairy poop, claiming it was a rare ingredient for something), some are earnest attempts that are just less than effective, some are actual working magic items (usually the Weasley Twins’ doing) or spells, and once somebody managed to sell Neville Longbottom an onion as a protective charm.
It doesn’t stop at the school boundaries, either! There’s wizards selling fake protective items, wizards pretending that they’ve lost valuable items in terrorist attacks, Arthur Weasly writing loopholes into laws so that he can continue with his technically legal hobbies, one major subplot about a wizard attempting to pay off his debts with vanishing gold…
The breadth of the scale of the many ways you can fake useful magic is just amazing, and a great source of ideas for shenanigans.
It really is! It’s a shame about her politics, since the world has so much potential. BUT that doesn’t mean you can’t shamelessly steal those ideas for your own games!
Beware the fey, for they are the masters of the con.
And you really shouldn’t eat or drink anything a fae gives you!
Heck, even talking to them is fraught with peril. I remember a story about a party meeting a satyr or something when they went into the feywild who asked “May i have your names please?” The party introduced themselves… and proceeded to lose their identities as they had given *away* their names.