It's going to be difficult to create a system that works and is balanced. Make forgery too easy to master, and the contract system could be broken by a flood of forgeries. Perhaps making it possible only with the right skills and experience - finding a scribe who is willing to take the risk to produce forgeries will make it a challenge.

One thing that could "break" forgeries is the meta-game. A respectable scribe could keep an archive of screen-shotted contracts he wrote up. If one of his/her contracts come into question, he could simply reference it to his archive to see if it really is his/hers or not. Even if players can't "beat" the game-mechanic of determining a forgery, they could know it really is a fake due to meta-gaming, and ignore the contract.

I have a little experience with forgery having forged multi dozens of documents while I was in middle school through highschool. I fooled teachers, staff, and my parents and nobody was the wiser. I forged signatures as well as handwriting full letters. The truth is that nobody pays that much attention to the fine details. And all it took was a small attention to detail and the muscle memory given by drawing realistically. Nothing more and nothing less.

The only time anyone questions a document is if a crime like a murder has been commited and any degree of suspicion is raised warrenting a deeper look at the last document usually being a suicide note and you need a hand writing forensics expert to take a fine tooth comb to documents with comparisons. Only then forgeries are exposed.

The funny thing is that the science of handwriting forensices assumes that no two people can produce the same exact copies of the same handwriting but also that an individual cant even exactly reproduce their own writing without variations. It requires the analysis, comparison, and evaluation of known documents. But even still that someone cant even reproduce their own hand writing or that their writing skills may have drastically improved since a document has been written even with comparison texts provided. Its just not a good nor realistic system that seems like every Joe Schmoe regular npcs can just pick up and declare forgery.

And yet in CoE everyone seems to question every dtail while being a Criminal Justice expert in everything including being a FBI handwriting expert. The thing is that there was no such finite science in detecting such writing.

I dont really see any of that being part of CoE in much detail or translating well. I also dont think that anyone should just be able to pick up a document and be like yup its a forgery simply because character skill highlights forensic science based on seeing a document from someone once before either without having comparison texts and careful examination of multiple documents.

But if it should exist I imagine everyone in CoE is capable of reading. But even as early as the 1900s 21.4% of the worlds population was able to read and write. In 2014 85.3% of the worlds population is able to read and write. And despite people being termed literate there are many who are functional iliterates who are being shoveled through the system who are able to hid their iliteracy for years.

In CoE language should be broken into 4 parts:

• Speaking a language
• Comprehension of a language
• Reading a language
• Writing a language

Being able to speak a language should not automatically translate into being able to fluently writng it. Writing should be based on how much you actually write contracts, books, tales, ect.

And based on your writing skill with any given language should matter and generate a style of how well you write. A style which could have different visual representations for each skill level from beginner to legendary.

That way you can visually tell the difference between someone who actually writes a lot vs a common criminal who does not.

But seeing as learning involves both practicing and reading texts as part of the skill system I think that it should give momentary skill increases where you could sit down and read a persons writing and continually practice forging it until a suitable result looks like a good forgery.

But also that counter forgery works the same way in reverse. A person who detects forggery should have to have a fundamental understanding of the language to a point to even notice the difference. As a player it shouldnt just be a skill check that points out differences but actually spotting the differences themselves. Like the noticable quality of the writing itself or the style of the writer.

Also the ability to write would need to also have a variation in the skill level someone writes by perhaps 5-10 skill levels or perhaps a range within their skill tier based on how fast the document was prepared to give room for forgery to exist and being able to forge a document by trying to fit within that range.

Providing the writing specialist would have copies of the person who the forgery is attempting to defraud. Just picking up a document and suddenly having access to both the forger and the person they are forging's handwritings seems pretty far fetched to me without having each skill level from 1-100 having destinct differences between handwriting quality.

I dont think that every npcs and joe schmoe should just take one look at a document and instantly see a forgery. There should be many telltale factors which raise suspicion.

Like if the other person isnt there in person or sending dignitaries recognized to be in their stead are suddenly asking for a contract to be signed with a random courier. Or if the contract is asking for things they previously have not asked for or sending the recieved goods and services to places not known to the sender.

You would just assume that the npc or player would simply refuse to sign such a contract without having the sender or their people there. Or that even if their emmisary showed up and asked for bogus things then they would have some sort of concern or question the document or refuse and ask the sender to come themselves without screaming forgery every time they read something.

If you are trying to forge a document you are not really trying to alter existing documents as both parties probably have a copy of the contract signed anyways but you are most likely trying to get someone to sign a contract or coument that legally binds them to whatever the document says. If they dont refuse to sign it outright then there really is no difference between what was signed even though it may or may not be forged. They had the option to have the actual signer there in person but chose to sign it without them present and are just as liable as the forger in that situation even if it is discovered to be forged later. Hindsight is always 20/20.