Is there a distinction between Bluffing and Lying?

[irdeggman]

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:

Are you trying to get someone to believe something that you want them to believe? If so it is a Bluff.

Under Bluff:

A successful Bluff check indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe. Bluff, however, is not a suggestion spell.

Under Sense Motive:

SENSE MOTIVE (WIS)
Check: A successful check lets you avoid being bluffed (see the Bluff skill). You can also use this skill to determine when “something is up” (that is, something odd is going on) or to assess someone’s trustworthiness.

Task Sense Motive DC
Hunch 20
Sense enchantment 25 or 15
Discern secret message Varies

Hunch: This use of the skill involves making a gut assessment of the social situation. You can get the feeling from another’s behavior that something is wrong, such as when you’re talking to an impostor. Alternatively, you can get the feeling that someone is trustworthy.

You can also use the "Hunch" DC for Sense Motive to determine if the target is trustworthy, but this is an observation check and not an interaction check (all interaction checks are opposed checks).

Sense Motive will not tell you that the target is lieing specifically, but it will tell you that they are "untrustworthy". If they are trying to get (as in force you - you always have the option to believe what they say without a check) you to "believe" something then they need to do a Bluff check against your Sense Motive.

 

[Sejs]

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.

"A successful Bluff check indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe."

That 'or believes something that you want it to believe' says to me that bluff is the lying skill.

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.

Flip side of the coin: someone with no ranks in Bluff also has no particular ability to conceal their tells. They mumble, flush, pause, stutter, repeat the question to buy time, fidget, and so on. Add in the -5 penalty to sense motive for a lie the target wants to believe (No dad, I did my homework) and it becomes more plausable.

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.

Which is precisely why the people doing the lying (in D&D terms) take pains to make whatever they say fall as low on that modifier-by-believability chart as possible. Where were you?: "I was at home" (believable, +0 mod) versus "was working at a soup kitchen, helping the less fortunate" (little hard to believe, +5 mod) versus "I was out of the country the entire time and didn't get back until after it had happened" (hard to believe, +10 mod).

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?

Personally I figure that's pretty much covered by the existing modifiers on the Bluff table. The one thing that I think is particularly missing would be a stacking modifier based on the target's disposition toward the speaker. So if someone is unfriendly you get say a -4 penalty try to lie to them because they're already suspicious of you. Or maybe have it be an automatic adjustment up a category on the chart. To an unfriendly target, any attempt to lie to them is automatically a little hard to believe at the minimum, if they're hostile (and actually willing to listen to you talk) it's automatically hard to believe. But on the other hand it's easy to lie to your friends because they give you the benefit of the doubt.

 

[tomBitonti]

One distinction

Just going by the names, "detect lies" and "sense motive", the basic difference, IMHO, is that "detect lies" should tell when an utterence is a lie, but would not give information about why a lie was stated; "sense motive" would provide information about the speaker's intent.

I agree that a bluff is a lie, although, a bluff perhaps is more invested in providing false "fluff", while lies would seem to be more false "crunch".

Have been trying to work up an example, and the best that I've got so far is as follows:

You look somewhat similar to your older brother (or sister); you nab their ID and use it to try to enter a club to which you are too young to be allowed entry.

When you enter, the bouncer asks you if you are 18, and you say, "ya", and flash them your sibling's ID. As you do so, you make an effort to bolster your image to seem older. And, when you got ready, you have borrowed some of your sibling's clothes to improve your chances.

A second take ... bluffing is about presenting a lie in a convincing manner ... more about presenting one's self in a manner so to convey the impression that *you* believe the lie that you are telling.