Scrying vs Disguise as Another REAL Character?

[Caligstro Smith]

I know if you're disguised as a fictional persona, meet someone, and then later that person you met scries for the disguised persona they met, they will still see you, however you are at the moment, disguised or not, at least by RAW. That's not what I'm asking about here. (So not the same question as this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?217220-Scrying-someone-you-met-while-they-were-disguised).)


What happens if you're disguised as a different REAL person, impersonating them, and then later someone scries for that person?

I assume they actually scry that real person instead, not you (assuming they didn't see through the disguise, obviously).


Follow-up question: what if they've never met that real person before? They've only met/heard of/seen that person when it was really you imitating them?



I'm mostly looking for a RAW answer, as best as can be determined, but I'm also interested in people's RAI or own solutions to the issue, if they disagree with the reasonableness of the RAW, or if they'd do it differently at their tables.

[Kayblis]

RAW is ambiguous, but I believe it would work on how you define the target of your scrying. If you scry with a focus of "That person I met yesterday", it's firsthand knowledge and it targets the impostor. If you scry for, say, "Mr. Baggings, the Baron", it's at best secondhand information and it targets the person who was impersonated. Unless it's a perfect disguise, you'll easily see that your target is not who you thought he was.

The spell only specifies you need to choose a creature, so the way you phrase your choice will impact who is chosen.

The Scrying spell lets you scry on people you have no knowledge on at all, although with a hefty Will bonus to the target. If you know nothing about the impersonated person, it might fall under "no knowledge at all", but if you spoke at some length with the impersonator and got real facts about the impersonated, as well as asking around about him, it may count as "secondhand knowledge". The first case nets the target a +10 to Will to resist the scrying, the second case only gives it a +5. This sort of thing should be talked with the DM, because there are no hard rules for secondhand information.

[sreservoir]

Scrying requires you to use a connection if you have no knowledge of the subject.

Between firsthand and secondhand knowledge, I can see focusing in on phrasing or intent, e.g. you'd get the imposter if you wanted to check on that guy you met yesterday to see if he's guarded in his sleep, but if you heard that the person being impersonated was going to be in a meeting and wanted to watch you'd get the person being impersonated.

On the other hand, scribbling a sketch of the person in question is such an easy -2 to their will save that I'd expect it to be standard operating procedure for spellcasters casting scry—RAW doesn't give you different penalty for how good the likeness is. But even if you rule that a really bad drawing doesn't give you the penalty, it's still a fun detail to slip into your setting that spellcasters usually try to draw something, if for no other reason because sometimes it helps and they don't have in-character knowledge of whether it helped in any particular case, and humans are huge suckers for that kind of thing.

(You might be able to use this with players without totally giving away the game by asking them whether they have a possession and whether they'd want to spend some time trying to find/buy one or make some kind of Craft check to draw one.)

[Troacctid]

Multiple people can have the same name, so clearly the target of a scrying spell can't simply be name-based, or you'd get hundreds of false positives when scrying for common names. One presumes that it tracks the caster's intent and locates whatever individual is the focus of their will. So if you think about the fake version during casting, that's who it should target.