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PapaMojo
2017-08-16, 02:24 AM
Joining a 100 player Roll20 game soon. Going to play a con artist mesmerist. Anybody got any good tips? Advice on anything would be nice really, what spells work well, what archetypes work well, what feats work well, strategies, cons, tips for cons, people I should keep an eye out for for one reason or another. Whatever ya got, I'd love to listen.,

ATHATH
2017-08-16, 02:35 AM
This should be in the the D&D 3.5e/3e/d20 subforum.

You're using Pathfinder as your system, right? Is 3.5 material allowed? What are your other group members playing as (say more than just their races and classes)? What's your group's optimization level?

Firest Kathon
2017-08-16, 02:59 AM
Have a look at this handbook and the corresponding thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?438535-The-Grandeur-of-Delusions-A-PF-Mesmerist-Guide) on these very forums.

PapaMojo
2017-08-16, 03:14 AM
This should be in the the D&D 3.5e/3e/d20 subforum.

You're using Pathfinder as your system, right? Is 3.5 material allowed? What are your other group members playing as (say more than just their races and classes)? What's your group's optimization level?

Honestly mate, I dunno. I haven't been given much information on the game yet. I'll see if they have an FAQ or something. And yea, its PAthfinder.
Also, I just thought of this, any good con artist prestige or multiclass options would be good to know if anybody has any.

Aran nu tasar
2017-08-16, 08:15 AM
Joining a 100 player Roll20 game soon.

A what now? 100 players? I have no idea how that is going to work. Not a clue. Good luck, I guess, because that sounds like an utter mess.

But in any case, a con artist, that I've put some time into thinking about. I'm not up on my PF optimization so I can't help you much there. But for information about how to run a con, you should check out this guide to con artist players, from the GM's perspective. (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/3tj3wi/the_flimflam_man/) In addition, if you have the time, you should read/watch the classics of grifter fiction/nonfiction. The Sting and the BBC show Hustle are both excellent. If you can get ahold of it (you can buy it off amazon no problem, but non-academic libraries often don't have a copy) David Maurer's book The Big Con (https://www.amazon.com/Big-Con-Story-Confidence-Man/dp/0385495382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502887707&sr=8-1) is a fascinating historical study of con artists. For fiction, The Lies of Locke Lamora is fantastic, and other books (American Gods, Going Postal) feature short cons as an important part of the story.

The basic steps in running a con are as follows:
Step 1: Find a mark, and research everything you can about them. What do they want? How can you approach them?
Step 2: Make contact with them. Offer them something they want. Often you want this to be through the mark joining you in a shady scheme, to decrease odds that they go to the police/town watch/etc. afterwards.
Step 3: Figure out how to get money from the mark. This will be different for every con, but the idea is that the mark is going to have to put in money in order to get what they want. In the classic long cons this is often pretty simple; the grifter plays somebody with a lucrative sure-thing opportunity who doesn't have the money to finance it, and the mark chips in expecting a massive return.
Step 4: Gain their confidence. This is often done through a convincer, letting the scheme give the mark a modest return on their investment to encourage them to put in large amounts of money.
Step 5: The big moment that you've been waiting for. If you've done everything right, the mark hands over their money, of their own accord.
Step 6: The blow-off. Take the money, and don't give any back, but stage it in such a way that the mark doesn't suspect. Make it look like the payout didn't pan out through bad luck, or fake your own death, or something along those lines.
Step 7: The fix. Your con still might have repercussions, especially if the blow-off didn't go as planned. Good thing you've got contacts who can make it all go away, right? Throw some money at people you know in political offices or law enforcement positions to keep any heat off of you. May not be necessary if things go well, may not be possible if you don't already have those kinds of contacts (or know somebody who does).

Put more simply, you need to answer these questions:
-How do you approach the mark?
-What do you offer the mark?
-How do you twist that around to get what they want from the mark?
-How do you blow off the mark?

Another good way of looking at it comes from here. (http://walkingmind.evilhat.com/2017/07/25/running-a-con/) It's a blog post about running cons in Blades in the Dark, but the advice is still good. The approach is to ask three questions:

What do we want the mark to do? (often, the answer is 'give us a large sum of money.')
Under what circumstances would that happen?
How do we emulate those circumstances?

Of course, it's not that simple, and there will be plenty of complications that will arise. But that is the basic framework you should be thinking in.

I will also note that having magic opens so many options that wouldn't be otherwise available, while also making things more difficult. Illusion magic is a fantastic tool, but you need to have methods to defeat spells like detect thoughts or other similar techniques that could sink your scheme.

PapaMojo
2017-08-16, 05:57 PM
Change of plan, apparently mesmerist is banned in this game, so I'd be a bard instead. Pretty much the same question, what are some good archetypes, feats, spells, etc. for con artist bards? Thanks for all the info people have posted so far.!

Beneath
2017-08-16, 11:22 PM
You have to have details on what the world is to plan your cons. Can't sell someone the Brooklyn Bridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker) in a world without Brooklyn; can't sell the Eiffel Tower for scrap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig) unless it's in disrepair and not a part of the skyline that's been there longer than most residents have been alive. Counterfeiting is vastly different with paper money than with coins whose intrinsic value approaches their face value

I'd recommend reading up on the biographies of actual grifters, and also on cold reading techniques, learn the setting, and go from there.

I'm not sure if a hundred players will be enough for you to actually make a career in scamming people or get away clean (or at all). Even in a rotating table (for the people wondering, in large games it's common for there to be dozens of players on the roster but only a regular-size group shows up to any given session), eventually word will get around, and it's hard to both get away and keep coming back to the table unless there's a player-to-player understanding that it's all in good fun even if the characters are pissed off.

You also might upset the DM and more community-minded players if you consistently scam new players.