Forgery (Int)

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**Check:** Forgery requires materials appropriate to the document being forged, and some time. To forge a document the character needs to have seen a similar document before. The complexity of the document, the character’s degree of familiarity with it, and whether the character needs to reproduce the signature or handwriting of a specific individual, provide modifiers to the Forgery check, as shown below.

Some documents require security or authorization codes, whether authentic ones or additional forgeries. The GM makes the character’s check secretly so the character is not sure how good his or her forgery is. The Forgery skill is also used to detect someone else’s forgery. The result of the original Forgery check that created the document is opposed by a Forgery check by the person who examines the document to check its authenticity. If the examiner’s check result is equal to or higher than the original Forgery check, the document is determined to be fraudulent. The examiner gains bonuses or penalties on his or her check as given in the table below.

 Type of document somewhat known to examiner
 Type of document well known to examiner
 1 Cumulative with any of the first three conditions on the table. Apply this modifier along with one of the other three whenever appropriate.

A document that contradicts procedure, orders, or previous knowledge, or one that requires the examiner to relinquish a possession or a piece of information, can increase the examiner’s suspicion (and thus create favorable circumstances for the examiner’s opposed Forgery check).

**Try Again?:** No, since the forger isn’t sure of the quality of the original forgery.

**Special:** To forge documents and detect forgeries, one must be able to read and write the language in question. (The skill is language-dependent.) A character can take 10 when making a Forgery check, but can’t take 20. A character with the Meticulous feat gets a +2 bonus on all Forgery checks. A character without a forgery kit takes a –4 penalty on Forgery checks.

**Time:** Forging a short, simple document takes about 1 minute. Longer or more complex documents take 1d4 minutes per page or longer.

**Special: Official** documents can provide an excellent means of proving yourself and reinforcing your point. With properly forged documents—created with a normal use of the Forgery skill and opposed by the viewer’s Forgery check (or an Intelligence check for those without ranks in Forgery)—you can gain special bonuses to certain skills due to synergy. At the GM’s discretion, you can forge documents that grant a +2 circumstance bonus on a speciﬁc Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check. These false credentials become, in effect, the perfect tool for the job and provide a bonus much like the bonuses provided to other skills by mastercraft tools. Unlike other bonuses, these apply only when you present the documents and the creature you are interacting with does not detect the forgery. If you present forged documents and they are detected as a forgery, the check you were attempting to use the documents for automatically fails. The GM is also free to rule that there are other repercussions in such situations.