Is there a distinction between Bluffing and Lying?

[Bacris]

Why do I picture Jon Lovitz's character from Saturday Night Live when discussing this?

"I was, uh, in Chicago. Yeah, that's the ticket! Buying a, uh, kayake for, uh, my grandmother. Yeah, a kayake for my grandmother, that's what I was doing."

 

[SWAT]

From a game mechanics standpoint, if someone is attempting to lie then there is a required Bluff veruse Sense Motive check if someone is trying to discern if the character is lieing.

But I can't find a single rules reference that actually backs this up. The Bluff skill description never explicitly states that when you lie, you make a Bluff check. It instead says Bluff is for convincing/conning/distracting someone under false pretenses, which would involve lying. The Bluff examples they give are all about getting someone to react or behave in a certain way. Not a single one is simply a lie. Therefore, I'd like to propose the following, and see if anyone can provide a rules reference that contradicts it:

Bluffing (by which I mean using the Bluff skill) happens when you use false pretenses to try to get someone to react in a specific manner. This probably involves lying, which it seems we all agree is a subset of Bluffing. But, simply making a false statement is not a Bluff because you don't care how people react, you just want to make them believe the false statement. So, if we meet at a party for the first time and my name is Dave, but I tell you my name is Bob, I don't have to make a Bluff check for that statement. You can Sense Motive to determine how trustworthy I seem, but you can't Sense Motive to determine if the specific statement "Hello, I'm Bob." is a lie.

 

[Stalker0]

Yeah, there's nothing mechancially that says bluff can be used every time someone makes a lie. If you use lies to coerce someone, that's a bluff by the book, and you go with the rules. If you ask a person where they were last night and they say chicago when they were in Tahiti, there's nothing in the rules that says you'll know they are lying.

 

[igavskoga]

I've always found that this is in the same kind of grey area that the disguise skill can be in as well.

If I'm in a city I've never been in, disguised so I look differently among people I've never met, and interacting with people I've never met - is there really a need to worry about somebody seeing through the disguise? They have no reason to doubt that I actually have blonde hair rather than my natural black.

In instances where there is no possible reason for someone to doubt that I am lying, if I'm not specifically trying to coerce them, I typically handwave the opposed roll - often setting a low DC in my head for their "bluff" check just on the off chance they may say something completely outrageous.

Similarly, in instances when someone has no reason to question (or in fact does not know my actual name/history) the fact that I am Altair Nellom, merchant apprentice on the run from my abusive master who lives in a city 150 miles away, I'll typically handwave that as well.

A lot of social skills require DM involvement so that the PC does not think any of his hard thought ideas goes to waste on a single die roll, and so that everyone at the table gets the most out of those skills.

 

[Sejs]

A lie is a simple misrepresentation of the facts.

A bluff, on the other hand, is a quick prevarication intended to distract, confuse, or mislead someone

*brain explodes*

Those two statements mean the same thing. A prevarication intended to mislead someone is a simple misrepresentation of the facts.

They're making an artificial distinction to cover up for a mess-up. Look at the examples of the Bluff skill and the facade fails. Sorry Mr D20 Designer, but no.

Lies and bluffing are one and the same.

 

[Victim]

Sounds like BS to me.

Narrowing pre-existing abilities so that new ones can be introduced is a time honored RPG writing tactic. That's why there's such a strong emphasis in d20 about not making new skills.

 

[Vegepygmy]

I don't know what the official D&D rules were intended to be on this point, but I applaud the d20 Modern approach.

 

[Sejs]

I don't know what the official D&D rules were intended to be on this point, but I applaud the d20 Modern approach.

Personally I disagree. It takes something that should be available via a skill to anyone that chooses to persue it dilligently and relegates it to the sole perview of one particular PrC.

Why do I have to be Sam Spade in order to tell if someone's lying to me? What about bodyguards, gamblers, spies, journalists and the like? For a game that's supposed to be about options rather than restrictions, this, to me, is a step backwards

 

[SWAT]

Sounds like BS to me.

Narrowing pre-existing abilities so that new ones can be introduced is a time honored RPG writing tactic.

But the D20 Modern Sense Motive skill description makes no mention whatsoever that it can be used to determine if a statement is a lie. And the list of things that make you roll a Bluff check does not include simply telling a lie. So what makes you think they're narrowing pre-existing abilities by giving the Mystic his Discern Lies ability? It seems to me that Bluff and Sense Motive were narrow from the start.

Why do I have to be Sam Spade in order to tell if someone's lying to me?

Because telling if a single statement is a lie or not is hard! Think about it from a real life perspective. If someone simply says something to you, without any intent of making you react in a certain way, how can you possibly determine if it's true or not? Unless you're an expert at observing "tells", all you have to work with is the plausability of the statement. Or take something closer to the fiction of D&D: any episode of Law & Order. The cops inteviewing suspects usually determine if they think someone is lying, not by the specific statements, but by a general impression of the person (a Sense Motive check to determine trustworthiness!). Very rarely does a suspect make a statement, and they just know that statement is a lie.

It never made sense to me, in terms of realism, that if a person with a 0 Bluff modifier lies to a person with a 0 Sense Motive modifier, the person being lied to has an average 50% chance of telling it's a lie. Like Use Rope vs. Escape Artist, telling a lie is way easier than knowing if something is a lie. So, maybe, if Sense Motive is used to determine if a specific statement is a lie, it should be done with a -10 penalty?

 

[IcyCool]

Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I'm Sicilian. My father was the world heavy-weight champion of Sicilian liars. From growing up with him I learned the pantomime. There are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give himself away. A guys got seventeen pantomimes. A woman's got twenty, but a guy's got seventeen... but, if you know them, like you know your own face, they beat lie detectors all to hell. Now, what we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don't wanna show me nothin', but you're tellin me everything. I know you know where they are, so tell me before I do some damage you won't walk away from.

Nonmagical method for determining lies? Sense motive, IMO.