Covering up a crime scene [3.P]

[Arcanist]

Anyone have any ideas for making a "Locked Room Mystery" using only skill checks? How might, say a Rogue (or any skilled class), murder someone and make it look like a suicide or an accident? It does not need to be the picture of a "Locked Room Mystery", it just needs to be an effective way of making a death look entirely accidental.

I am not asking as a DM, I am asking as an 10th level PC.

[Waker]

You want to know how to cover up a crime using only mundane skills?
I'd say craft (trapmaking) and disable device are going to be your friends. See about rigging something to collapse when weight is put on it or try to built a trap that appears innocent after being sprung.
Who exactly are you trying to kill and where?

[Arcanist]

You want to know how to cover up a crime using only mundane skills?
I'd say craft (trapmaking) and disable device are going to be your friends. See about rigging something to collapse when weight is put on it or try to built a trap that appears innocent after being sprung.
Who exactly are you trying to kill and where?

Nobody in particular. Just trying to figure out how to do it.

[Preaplanes]

I'm thinking Disguise checks if you're making the corpse look different, Hide checks to conceal evidence, Forgery checks to fake a suicide note (or cover up projectile marks), spot checks to see any evidence you missed. Simple actions like "drag the body and lift it into a dumpster" wouldn't need any checks.

If you can access it, Pass Without Trace could be good for making it look like only one person entered the room, which could potentially baffle the investigators. It's a L1 Divine spell, 1hr/level duration, and anybody with a level of Druid could give it to you. Personally I always loved having a lot of points in Use Magic Item as a rogue so I could use some scrolls for just such an occasion.

EDIT: A potion would actually work just as well, 50gp. Twice the price of the scroll, but no party Druid, party Ranger, or Use Magic check required.

[ArcturusV]

Probably would have to play a long game with someone. You'd need to give them some disease to weaken them quite a bit. And one without a lot of blatantly obvious effects in it's initial stages. Combine that with a poison which has a long time before it's initial damage. The target could be far away from where you actually poisoned them (I seem to recall there are some poisons who have initial damage times measured closer to an hour). This can easily create the sort of scenario where someone just dies in a room remotely removed from where the deed was actually done.

Now... the benefit to this is that people will probably figure out poison. But they won't figure out that it was a slow acting one. Because who uses the slow acting ones when you could get equally lethal poisons that generally start effecting a target in a manner of rounds, or minutes, instead of hours?

Unfortunately the damage on most poisons is low enough that you'd have to weaken them with a disease or similar happenstance to actually make this work as a plan.

[Preaplanes]

That sounds a bit too Xanatos-Rouletty for a PC.

[ahenobarbi]

You can't really do it to anyone important (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/speakWithDead.htm).

[ArcturusV]

I disagree. Mostly because Xanatos Roulette is based off of "Ha, I planned for you planning for my plan to plan around your plan which planned around my plan to plan your plan". Least as I understand it.

This is more of a Long Con sort of situation where you spend a longer time to take down someone. Which isn't necessarily outside the realm of PCs. Though most PCs favor immediate action. But it's not too unrelated thematically to how a PC might systematically destroy a villain. Stacking up defeats on the villain until he's finally overcome.

It just has less dramatic confrontation.

EDIT: Note that my method of doing it suggested above would negate Speak with Dead as the victim would have known jack and **** about how he died or who did it necessarily.

[Preaplanes]

You can't really do it to anyone important (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/speakWithDead.htm).

Meh, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/soulBind.htm) it (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/destruction.htm) depends. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm)

[Preaplanes]

EDIT: Note that my method of doing it suggested above would negate Speak with Dead as the victim would have known jack and **** about how he died or who did it necessarily.

He's a rogue. Sneak Attack-ing from stealth is how 2/3 of them operate, nothing all that climactic about a dagger in the throat or a bolt to the back of the head. Less so if he takes a level of Assassin, heck, then he can hide all over the place, though that requires an Evil alignment. The corpse would be able to say "I think I got shot", leaving the coroner thinking "well that's unhelpful."

Too many things could go wrong with the long-term poisoning. He could catch wise, or if he's a paranoid Cleric could go about Purify Food/Drink-ing his meals.

There's a lot of the circumstance we're not told, but "in a room alone" reduces the outside factors dramatically.

EDIT: And that's not a xanatos roulette, that's a Batman Gambit. A Xanatos Roulette is an elaborate plan that has a lot of smaller parts to it that could go wrong and foil the whole thing, though in written content (IE by a DM or in a less statistics-based setting like a book or tv show) it's usually successful anyway. A DM can say the circumstances happened, the PC has to roll to MAKE the circumstances happen.

The NPC falling over in the specific room when he/she dies of the poison? Nobody noticing that he/she looks ill beorehand? (heck, it's D&D, there's pathetically-simple spells to help that (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/detectPoison.htm))

It's just too many factors.

[ArcturusV]

Yeah. I was operating off the idea of the Locked Room mystery. The point of it being "Hmm... this person died in a circumstance where no one should be able to get to them."

Like finding a victim who was shot. Inside their safe room. With the murder weapon in the room with them so that you're pretty sure they weren't shot THEN went into the room.

So you're left wondering "How did someone get inside this impossible to break into room to do it, and why are they not still here?"

Just slitting a throat or something doesn't have that effect. Well, it might. But if you can sneak into a room with purely mundane skills then it doesn't really have the effect. Unless you were some epic rogue who basically cracked an "impossible" security system just because no one ever thought a rogue would be able to hit 120 on Open Locks or Disable Device and you did, proving all trapsmiths/locksmiths in the land wrong.

I suppose the idea is that you want someone to drop dead somewhere without an obvious sign of foul play. Well, not a sign that it wasn't something natural or accidental. And done in a situation where no one can figure out a way that it might have been done. Least not at first.

[ahenobarbi]

Meh, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/soulBind.htm) it (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/destruction.htm) depends. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm)

Nope. The spell lets you speak with corpse, not with soul. So trapping soul won't help. If you destroy body you have "mysterious disappearance" not 'mysterious murder".

Well you could cast speak with the dead your self and thus block other attempts to do it for a week.


He's a roguehttp://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/commune.htm. Sneak Attack-ing from stealth is how 2/3 of them operate, nothing all that climactic about a dagger in the throat or a bolt to the back of the head. Less so if he takes a level of Assassin, heck, then he can hide all over the place, though that requires an Evil alignment. The corpse would be able to say "I think I got shot", leaving the coroner thinking "well that's unhelpful."

However it stops a lot of meddling with crime scene. You moved body? So what, the victim can tell where ([s]he|it) died etc.

[Preaplanes]

I suppose the idea is that you want someone to drop dead somewhere without an obvious sign of foul play. Well, not a sign that it wasn't something natural or accidental. And done in a situation where no one can figure out a way that it might have been done. Least not at first.

I was operating under the assumption that it was a room that the NPC was supposed to die in, no witnesses. I was reading more of a "how in the Abyss did this happen?" rather than "what in the Abyss happened?"

Unless the NPC is Venerable, they are going to suspect foul play anyway. Of course this is all assuming they don't have access to any Rezzing-spells to make the whole point moot.

Long-term poisoning is out if you want something anywhere NEAR predictable/reliable in this game. With pure rogue abilities, this is tricky. I'm trying to stick to low-level consumables to help this along.

[Preaplanes]

Nope. The spell lets you speak with corpse, not with soul. So trapping soul won't helpIf the throat is slit, that would leave a physical body unable to talk anyway, so that's even easier, unless you can somehow talk to things without functional vocal cords without using a soul.

Also, if he's killed in the "mystery room", that doesn't leave much help for the investigators.

[Arcanist]

Nope. The spell lets you speak with corpse, not with soul. So trapping soul won't help. If you destroy body you have "mysterious disappearance" not 'mysterious murder".

So I need a method of creating a cover identity or a disguise so the corpse false identifies the assailant (Disguising as the victim)? Simple enough. (If this is of course what you are implying).

Of course we can assume they would get a +10 bonus to the DC (I'm pretty confident most people are Intimate with themselves!)


Well you could cast speak with the dead your self and thus block other attempts to do it for a week.

If they were truly desperate enough for the information, they would wait for it.

[Waker]

I think suffocation would be the easiest locked room accident look-a-like. Either find a way to seal the room and prevent oxygen from getting in or if the room has a fireplace, plug the chimney so the room floods with smoke.

[ahenobarbi]

Also, if he's killed in the "mystery room", that doesn't leave much help for the investigators.

True. But it foils many interesting ways of doing mystery murder.


Of course we can assume they would get a +10 bonus to the DC (I'm pretty confident most people are Intimate with themselves!)

"What am I doing over there, shouldn't I be right here? And why am I holding a sword?"

[Preaplanes]

So I need a method of creating a cover identity or a disguise so the corpse false identifies the assailant (Disguising as the victim)? Simple enough. (If this is of course what you are implying).


The bonus is applied to the Spot check, not the Disguise check. You want to avoid giving the guy bonuses if you're trying to play the one-armed man.

This doesn't have a potion, but a Disguise Self spell (L1 Brd/SorWiz/Trickery) would give you a +10 to your Disguise check, and you wouldn't even need to scrounge up a silly fake mustache or something! :smallbiggrin:

Edit: Sorry, it's late. Or, erm, early.

Edit 2: Ah, seems my D&D group keeps house-ruling a check in for non-casters using scrolls. There are other ways, but it requires some dedicated resources.

[Arcanist]

The bonus is applied to the form underneath the Disguise, not the disguise itself, which is what you're trying to see past. Unless you somehow cloned/time traveled to meet yourself, the +10 doesn't happen. That's a good thing, you want them to roll a low Spot check against your high Disguise check.

I'm confused by this notion. The bonus applies to the spot check to see past the creatures disguise? :smallconfused:

Now it makes sense. So how do you recommend we give penalties to their spot check? It has to be sudden and undetectable if possible.

The Speak with Dead returning with "I saw a Flash of light and it was over" or "All I saw was Darkness" would be fine; As long as they are unable to identify their assailant.


This doesn't have a potion, but a Disguise Self spell (L1 Brd/SorWiz/Trickery) would give you a +10 to your Disguise check, and you wouldn't even need to scrounge up a silly fake mustache or something! :smallbiggrin: The scroll costs 25gp, I forget the DC for a non-caster to use it if you don't have a trusted source of the spell.

Is getting an item for at will (or limited use) Disguise Self (or some variant) worth it? Like a Wand of Disguise Self (or an Eternal Wand)? This is a Skill based class (Rogue, Factotum, Artificer, etc.) so they most likely have Use Magic Device as a class skill. Assume they can make a UMD check of at least 1d20+13.

So it seems now that it just comes down to deceiving Speak with Dead?

[ahenobarbi]

I'm confused by this notion. The bonus applies to the spot check to see past the creatures disguise? :smallconfused:Is getting an item for at will (or limited use) Disguise Self (or some variant) worth it? Like a Wand of Disguise Self (or an Eternal Wand)? This is a Skill based class (Rogue, Factotum, Artificer, etc.) so they most likely have Use Magic Device as a class skill. Assume they can make a UMD check of at least 1d20+13.

Hat of Disguise(here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm))?

[Preaplanes]

I'm confused by this notion. The bonus applies to the spot check to see past the creatures disguise? :smallconfused:



Is getting an item for at will (or limited use) Disguise Self (or some variant) worth it? Like a Wand of Disguise Self (or an Eternal Wand)? This is a Skill based class (Rogue, Factotum, Artificer, etc.) so they most likely have Use Magic Device as a class skill. Assume they can make a UMD check of at least 1d20+13.

So it seems now that it just comes down to deceiving Speak with Dead?

If all goes according to plan, yes. Ideally you wouldn't even need to, a killing-blow Sneak Attack if you succeed on your Hide check might be enough, so long as there were no witnesses.

But should he catch a glance at you, you need to make sure he has no clue. There are other options.

Greater Invisibility would allow you to hide anywhere but places where even a peon could track you (fresh snow, sand, etc), and let you attack the guy without dropping your invisibility. THIS is always worth it for the party rogue if you ask me. Invisibility is canceled if you attack, though if you can cast it immidiately after, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Pass Without Trace would allow you to walk away covered in blood without leaving a smear, a drop, a footprint, or even a scent trail to follow, essentially making a perfect escape. This is something I'd suggest anyway, since you could enter the room, kill the guy, and be on your merry way without directly leaving any evidence you were there aside from the guy dying, or if somebody manages to actually spot you enter/leave.

The Disguise Self is simple enough to use, and if you go incognito frequently, it might be worth it to carry around a magic item to let you do so more or less at will.