Scams, Cons, and Skullduggery

[AchuakScale]

I'm starting a new campaign next month, and half of our party is some form of con artist. My characters con of choice is 3 Card Monte, but I was hoping y'all might have some fun scams to run on some unwitting NPCs.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm starting a new campaign next month, and half of our party is some form of con artist. My characters con of choice is 3 Card Monte, but I was hoping y'all might have some fun scams to run on some unwitting NPCs.

Create "official" documentation with Illusory Script to get it signed by some bigwig where it then gets locked up in an official library. Once enough time has passed that it's implausible for someone to be running a con, you ask a question about a certain deed, and who it's addressed to...

[nickl_2000]

Play the shell game where the pea hidden under the shell was created with Prestidigitation. Show at the end of round 1, then switch until the end of round 2 when it poofs out of existence.

[stoutstien]

Are you looking for a long or short term cons?

[Democratus]

The Spanish Prisoner would probably work on a gullible Paladin or Knight.

[Telonius]

Wikipedia has a pretty good list of famous con games here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks). The "Fiddle Game" is one of my personal favorites. In a D&D world, the "Money Box" scam could actually be believable (at least to anybody without any special knowledge of high-level transmutation spells).

Magic Aura would be a terrific help to fool cursory investigation.

For dealing with official deeds and other legal documents, Erase is a very low-level spell. Detect Magic wouldn't catch it after 1d6 rounds. Need your signature on a deed? Get access to the place it's stored, one casting, and sign.

[Sorinth]

I can't imagine sleight of hand cons would be all that popular in a world were magic exists because who knows if you are using magic to change the card or not.

It seems much more likely that con artists would be focused on selling "fake" magic items with possibly some actual magic thrown in but greatly exaggerated. Things like selling spell scrolls that are forged to look like legit scrolls with a casual glance but actually transcribing or using it would reveal it to be a fake. Or selling a powerful magic sword that is just a regular sword with the light spell cast on it.

[AchuakScale]

All cons apply, long, short, middling, pretty, grand, doesn't matter. Our party is pretty well balanced as well, with the Rogue, the Bard and the Artificer being the cons, with a paladin, a moon druid and a barbarian as muscle. There's a Wizard in there too but I'm not sure where she falls.