How do you guys handle Snese Motive?

[Muddman]

I've struggled with this for as long as Sense Motive has been a skill and I'm still looking for answers. I run alot of mystery adventures where sooner or later someone has to be lieing.

I've heard it said many times, "Sense Motive is not a lie detector" and yet you're supposed to make an oppsoed roll every time an NPC lies. I think it ruins the illusion for the players if we're roleplaying and I start rolling d20s, then they know something is up.

Recently I've been holding to the letter of the Sense Motive rules (and not the Bluff rules) which state that you must talk to the person for at least a minute to make a check and all you'll be able to figure out is whether or not they are trustworthy, which speaks nothing to whether or not they are telling the truth on any particular subject. The only time I have NPCs roll bluff checks is if they are telling something truely unbelievable.

How do you guys handle it? Thanks for the advice!

 

[Griego]

This is why I randomly roll d20s all the time, whether I need to or not, when I'm at the table (I play online now, so rolls can easily be hidden from players).

 

[Kask]

This is why I randomly roll d20s all the time, whether I need to or not, when I'm at the table (I play online now, so rolls can easily be hidden from players).

Yes, I've been doing the former for 30 years. On rolls for stuff that the player wouldn't know about, I make them.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

When I can DM in person again, I intend to gleefully roll randomly and often, many times for no reason at all, in order to keep the players on edge and/or prevent metagaming.

For now, we play online in a chat room due to geography, so unless I wanted to open a second chat as my "DM screen," all rolling is basically required to be open. What we do is rather simple. You're entitled to ask for a sense motive check whenever you want (but only once per suspected lie, and within reasonable limits). The "accused" rolls a d20 even if he is telling the truth. Most often, it will be between DM and a player, so the DM's total won't be known. Simply an answer of "you think he is being dishonest" or "you can't find anything misleading in his statement." If the player fails to detect a lie, he can't be sure if it's because it's the truth, or the NPC is a good liar.

That said, the impetus is on the listener to ask for a sense motive check. If the player does not ask for one, he is implicitly accepting the statement as true. This holds for me the DM as well. If the NPC wants to sense motive, I call for a bluff roll from the player. If he doesn't, he for whatever reason chooses not to scrutinize the words and the PC may get a lie past without a roll.

EDIT: Perhaps worth mentioning that, with the exception of one or two players, I've never seen this handling of Bluff/Sense Motive lead to a hyperactive game of rolling every few seconds during role playing. Most players are cool about it, and won't ask for a sense motive on a frequent basis unless given a reason to be suspicious. Like...the NPC lied, they suspected and detected it...and then not long afterwards, he does again.

The people I play with also tend to understand that asking for sense motive every time the NPC speaks is tantamount to intently scanning body language and parsing words in your mind in a rather obvious way. Which, if the NPC has been honest, will tend to make him justifiably upset.

 

[Nimloth]

Where does it say that players get to roll every dice for their characters? I know they want to, and some believe it is their Gygaxian given right to. You, the DM, are well within your power to make the rolls for them and only tell them if they succeed. Search, Sense Motive and Bluff are skills that the player should usually not roll for themselves. <search roll> "You don't think you found any traps..." is better than, "I rolled a 2, I think I'll search again."

 

[Vegepygmy]

I've heard it said many times, "Sense Motive is not a lie detector" and yet you're supposed to make an oppsoed roll every time an NPC lies.

I disagree with this statement. The rules do not call for an opposed check "every time an NPC lies." The rules call for an opposed check when an NPC uses the Bluff skill, but not every lie calls for a Bluff check.

I don't recall the source, but someone once explained things very well, and I saved a copy. Here it is:

"A lie is a simple misrepresentation of the facts. For example, if a suspect tells you she was in Chicago on the day of the crime, when in fact she wasn't, that's a lie. If a client tells you she'll pay $10,000 for the job when she really intends to stiff you, that's a lie too. Body language and attitude are part of such communication, but not necessarily the major part. A lie may be very sophisticated and well thought-out, and it is intended to deceive someone at least until evidence to the contrary is discovered.

"A bluff, on the other hand, is a quick prevarication intended to distract, confuse, or mislead someone—generally only for the short term. It is intended to momentarily deter an action or decision, not to withstand long-term or careful scrutiny. You bluff your way past a security guard by flashing your video club card as though it were a press pass and acting like you know what you're doing. You bluff your way out of a brawl by acting like you're tougher than the 250-pound biker who's challenging you. Bluffs depend almost completely on attitude and body language. They may or may not involve actual lies, but if they do, those lies usually aren't very sophisticated and aren't intended to deceive the target for more than a few moments.

"The first usage of the Sense Motive skill mentioned above [opposing a Bluff check] allows you to see through a bluff with a successful check, but it doesn't help you determine whether any given statement is a lie. From a purely mechanical standpoint, an NPC should not have to make a Bluff check every time she utters a lie. And if no Bluff check is required, there's nothing for the Sense Motive check to oppose.

"The second function of the Sense Motive skill is to determine the general trustworthiness of a character. When the skill is used this way, a successful check might reveal that your suspect is highly…well, suspicious, and that she might tend to lie to you. But that doesn't tell you which, if any, of her statements are actually untrue. In fact, an NPC can be highly untrustworthy even if she doesn't happen to be telling any lies at the moment. Again from a mechanical standpoint, this usage of Sense Motive requires a whole minute to use, so it can't be applied to a single statement." ​

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Where does it say that players get to roll every dice for their characters? I know they want to, and some believe it is their Gygaxian given right to. You, the DM, are well within your power to make the rolls for them and only tell them if they succeed. Search, Sense Motive and Bluff are skills that the player should usually not roll for themselves. <search roll> "You don't think you found any traps..." is better than, "I rolled a 2, I think I'll search again."

Well, that depends how conscious you think the characters should be of their own ability and sense of judging what caused failure to succeed/notice something. Obviously, something may not be there. But also, maybe a character should be able to get a feel of, "I think I may have overlooked a corner, I felt kind of rushed." Not that their performance was in the bottom 10% of their possible range of searching technique (rolling a 2), but at least know that "I think I could have searched that cabinet a lot better than I did." Of course, you could still roll in secret for them and give them this kind of general information about how well they did, but I think to some extent the players should be aware.

 

[Creeping Death]

Did anyone else read this as Sneeze Motive?

 

[Animal]

yeah, i agree that rolling d20 in the middle of PC-NPC interaction is a huge immersion breaker. every player seeing that DM is rolling dice right after some NPC's reply can't help experiencing certain metagame thoughts "ok, what's he rolling? bluff, sense motive? something MUST be wrong"
to avoid this i just roll some dice BEFOREHAND and write the results down on a sheet of paper somewhere. later when i need some sneaky dice rolling i just peek at the paper and none of the players realize that i've just technically rolled a die.
hope this helps.

 

[Shin Okada]

I seem to be in a minority here but I will let PCs use Sense Motive check only when players asks so. And I allow it even when NPCs are not lying. And if Sense Motive check is reasonably high (usually 10+), I say the NPC seems to be not lying.