If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?

[Guest 6801328]

Can't...stay...away...

Yes, these discussions always seem to revolve around Insight being used to resolve tasks to discern truthfulness, but the DMG has a structure for resolving social interaction challenges (DMG, p. 244-245). In that setup, the PCs are generally going to be trying to suss out ideals, bonds, flaws or hidden agendas which can then be leveraged to modify the NPC's attitude. When the attempt has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure, an Insight check resolves it. The NPC's attitude in turn is used to determine the DC for any checks related to the PCs getting the NPC to do something for them.

Given this setup, what you'll tend to see in my experience are the wise characters assessing things in the background while the charismatic characters do the talking. The wise characters share the insights with the charismatic types who use that to bend the chances of success in their favor. This way, there's more participation in the challenge. I almost always give my less charismatic characters Insight for this reason. Sometimes those characters set about trying to discern truthfulness, but the real advantage is in trying to get at those ideals, bonds, flaws, or hidden agendas.

Yes, this. In spades. I mean, read the description of insight again:

Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move.

Where in there does it say "know if they are lying"? It doesn't. It allows you to determine their intentions. That's not the same as knowing if they are truthful.

This makes it harder (for the DM) to use well than other skills. It might take some quick thinking on the DMs part to come up with something on the fly (which is why maybe it's a good reason to prep this kind of stuff as much as possible) but success at Insight should provide a clue to the motivations of an NPC, not act as a lie detector.

And, anyway, humans (and by extension other PC races) cannot detect lies in strangers. A lot of cops think they can, but they are wrong. We can glean clues that lead us to suspect whether somebody is lying or not, but we can never know with 100% certainty. (And likewise for truth: we suspect, we don't know.) Which means if we really wanted a "detect lie" skill it should be some kind of blind roll with the possibility of both false positives and false negatives.*

I could almost imagine/accept an Int based skill that you can use to catch somebody in a lie, through advanced interrogation techniques. But that could possibly give you false positives (e.g., the person is lying but has managed to avoid contradictions). And, like a friends spell, it would have a good chance of pissing off anybody you used it on.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This presupposes that the only use of the skill is telling if someone is lying. Imagine, for a moment, that you cannot just ask if someone is lying and then press the Insight lever for an answer. How would you go about investigating to tell if someone is lying? Do any of those things seem like they might implicate Insight?

To address your question directly, looking for body language may not always yield a good response. If the target is not of your culture or kind, the difficulty is very high, and, with a consequence for any failure, the risk is also very high. Might not be worth it. Instead, you could engage in conversation and see if any of the story changes: "I'll talk to her a bit and review details, looking to see if anything changes." Bam, Insight check. Or, "I want to see if I can find out what bonds the NPC has, so I'm going to try to get them to open up about what they care about." Insight check to see if you successfully glean a bond, which can then be leveraged to find out if they're lying about something, depending on the bond. Or trait, or ideal, etc. Heck, even finding out that an Ideal is "I always serve myself first" can be a powerful indicator of certain lies.

There's tons of ways to use Insight that don't involve being a human (elf?) lie detector and also don't rely on studying body language.


This is a perfectly valid way to play, and also one I saw when I played with skill use declarations as the norm after a failed Insight check. The player already had an opinion and, instead of acting on that, used the "free" Insight check to validate. Heck, it was often used as proof of a lie, which is weird to me now.

I think you're being unfairly critical of your ability to imagine things. You're in a rut of thinking, is all, where the way you've been playing has become the way you think about the mechanic. Step back, absolutely forbid "body language observation checks", and see what you come up with for how you could possibly use Insight. It's a common thing for people to confuse how it is right now for how it ought to be, or could possibly be. It takes a moment of setting aside what you already think you know and looking at the problem in a new light, and being open to that. You might find you still prefer how you do it now (I think many do), but, then you'd know why you think that instead of just staying with the comfortable 'how it is nows'.

As always, how you enjoy playing is the best, most right, absolutely, irrefutably correct way to play -- for you! How I play should really only be a curiosity. Unless you like talking about how games are played, in which case, let's go!

I guess a big difference here is I never want my skills to ask questions for me.

Talking to an NPC and seeing if the details change is something I would declare I am doing, and I'd either be asking those questions live or I'd tell my DM I'm doing that thing and see what they tell me the results are. I would not want the success of that action to rest on an Insight check. Insight doesn't tell me if I asked the right questions, at least, not in my mind. Insight is the action of gaining insight into a person.

And, to be clear, it can be used for more than lying. Insight into if a person is happy, sad, angry, ect, but I don't expect Insight to tell me if I asked the NPC a detail from their past that only they would know to prove they aren't a changeling. I just ask them that thing, it doesn't require a check.


So, out of pure curiousity of our different styles, if you can't use Insight in reading body language and vocal intonation through observation, and you don't use it instead of actually asking the relevant questions, what is the use you find for Insight?

Where in there does it say "know if they are lying"? It doesn't. It allows you to determine their intentions. That's not the same as knowing if they are truthful.

This makes it harder (for the DM) to use well than other skills. It might take some quick thinking on the DMs part to come up with something on the fly (which is why maybe it's a good reason to prep this kind of stuff as much as possible) but success at Insight should provide a clue to the motivations of an NPC, not act as a lie detector.

And, anyway, humans (and by extension other PC races) cannot detect lies in strangers. A lot of cops think they can, but they are wrong. We can glean clues that lead us to suspect whether somebody is lying or not, but we can never know with 100% certainty. (And likewise for truth: we suspect, we don't know.) Which means if we really wanted a "detect lie" skill it should be some kind of blind roll with the possibility of both false positives and false negatives.*

I could almost imagine/accept an Int based skill that you can use to catch somebody in a lie, through advanced interrogation techniques. But that could possibly give you false positives (e.g., the person is lying but has managed to avoid contradictions). And, like a friends spell, it would have a good chance of pissing off anybody you used it on.

Yes, we can't do it in real life. But people do it all the time in fiction.

That's what I want to emulate. And frankly, my DM's are not good actors. They can't precisely control every aspect of their delivery to give me subtle clues that the NPC is lying, and sometimes when they tell me "he's sweating a lot" it is a clue with many different interpretations. Insight can be used so the DM pulls back the curtain a bit and says "Your character is fictionally good at reading people, and with that unearthly insight you can determine this about the person"

The dragon is scratching the floor tiles as you talk. I can tell a player this, but if they roll a high insight on I feel I'm okay to tell them whether the dragon is bored, has a nervous tic, or is about to rend the diplomatic party limb from limb and bath in their blood. They are free to interpret the action however they feel like without insight, but if they ask in the fiction if they can determine more, and they roll well, I feel like I should allow them to learn more.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, we can't do it in real life. But people do it all the time in fiction.

While I don't go so far as to say that you absolutely 100% know that someone is telling the truth, I don't see a problem with saying that they seem to be truthful. Or at least the truth as they know it. To me, the rules "determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie" do say it can be used to determine whether someone is lying or not. So if someone beats the deception check by 10 or more, they know the NPC is lying. Less than that? They know the NPC is hiding something and at the very least not being totally honest. Of course someone telling the truth could also be hiding something.

That may be an over-simplification of real life, but D&D is full of that.

 

[Hussar]

Heh. It's somewhat ironic. Folks in this thread have made a very specific point about how they are following the rules in the way they play. Yet, when you actually point out what the rules say about the skill, then suddenly the rules don't matter quite so much.

Seems somewhat inconsistent no?

 

[iserith]

Heh. It's somewhat ironic. Folks in this thread have made a very specific point about how they are following the rules in the way they play. Yet, when you actually point out what the rules say about the skill, then suddenly the rules don't matter quite so much.

Seems somewhat inconsistent no?

Who are you talking about?

 

[Hussar]

All the people who insist that Insight cannot tell the motivations of an NPC with a successful check. It IS right there in the text of the skill. But, apparently, we're allowed to pick and choose what "rules" apply. It's perfectly acceptable, apparently, to claim that your play style is an "excellent fit" for 5e, while at the same time, not following what the text actually states.

Just pointing out the inconsistency. After all, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], you spent considerable bandwidth arguing with me about this, but, are completely silent when people claim that Insight cannot detect falsehoods.

 

[iserith]

All the people who insist that Insight cannot tell the motivations of an NPC with a successful check. It IS right there in the text of the skill. But, apparently, we're allowed to pick and choose what "rules" apply. It's perfectly acceptable, apparently, to claim that your play style is an "excellent fit" for 5e, while at the same time, not following what the text actually states.

Just pointing out the inconsistency. After all, @iserith, you spent considerable bandwidth arguing with me about this, but, are completely silent when people claim that Insight cannot detect falsehoods.

Unless I've missed something, I don't recall that @Elfcrusher has made any significant "rules-based" arguments that inform his or her approach in this thread. He or she often makes ones based on his or her take on realism instead plus just general preference. And @Ovinomancer suggests that Insight can be used for more tasks than determining truthfulness. Unless you're talking about someone else?

Just because some of us agree on the approach doesn't mean we all think of it the exact same way or arrived at the same conclusion by the same path. Please feel free to respond to or refute someone's assertions. But please do not lump us all together as if we perfectly agree or assert that any one of us has an obligation to say anything about our respective positions. We are individuals, not identity groups.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Unless I've missed something, I don't recall that @Elfcrusher has made any significant "rules-based" arguments that inform his or her approach in this thread. He or she often makes ones based on his or her take on realism instead plus just general preference. And @Ovinomancer suggests that Insight can be used for more tasks than determining truthfulness. Unless you're talking about someone else?

Just because some of us agree on the approach doesn't mean we all think of it the exact same way or arrived at the same conclusion by the same path. Please feel free to respond to or refute someone's assertions. But please do not lump us all together as if we perfectly agree or assert that any one of us has an obligation to say anything about our respective positions. We are individuals, not identity groups.

Yup.

Honestly I can't figure out where [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] thinks the inconsistency or contradiction is. I'm not you (@iserith). Your explanations in this forum have helped me understand the game differently and have improved my DMing, but that doesn't mean we interpret things in exactly the same way.

The funny thing is that I read Hussar's (and others') posts and I think, "Yup, I could have written that once upon a time."

 

[Hussar]

Fair 'nuff I suppose.

I guess, I imagined posts like ones from you, or Immaculata or a few others talking about how you are following the rules of 5e in your play style, but, somehow allowing the player to know the true intentions of the NPC by using Insight isn't possible. Could be I'm confusing different posters. It's been a busy thread after all.

I'm pretty sure, though, that I've seen more than a few posters talk about how you cannot use insight as a lie detector. I dunno, maybe I'm imagining things. Funny how I get taken to task for not following the rules, but, others get ignored.

I mean, if we're going to cheese weasel rules lawyer the meaning of "Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie " as not actually knowing whether they are lying or not, then, well, it's pretty hard for me to take folks seriously when they insist they are following the spirit of the game. The fact that you, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], see no problems with what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is saying says to me that you are more interested in being right than actually discussing this.

Regardless of when the roll was called for, it shouldn't matter. But, of course, in your style, you can avoid all this peskiness, can't you? You can just not call for a roll, and, that player never has the chance to use the skill as it's written. So, the players are nicely kept in their place. Which leads, inevitably, to the players simply turning to the magic system, over which they have greater control, and ignoring the skill system as much as possible.

Sorry, not interested in weaponizing the skill system at the table in order to force my interpretations on the group. I'd much rather place the power squarely in the hands of the players and let them decide. Makes for much greater ownership over the game at the table and much greater engagement from the players.

But, hey, it works for you. You do you, as was said to me earlier. This is all just differing playstyles. As always, play what works for you. I'm just explaining why it doesn't work for me.

 

[iserith]

Fair 'nuff I suppose.

I guess, I imagined posts like ones from you, or Immaculata or a few others talking about how you are following the rules of 5e in your play style, but, somehow allowing the player to know the true intentions of the NPC by using Insight isn't possible. Could be I'm confusing different posters. It's been a busy thread after all.

I'm pretty sure, though, that I've seen more than a few posters talk about how you cannot use insight as a lie detector. I dunno, maybe I'm imagining things. Funny how I get taken to task for not following the rules, but, others get ignored.

I mean, if we're going to cheese weasel rules lawyer the meaning of "Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie " as not actually knowing whether they are lying or not, then, well, it's pretty hard for me to take folks seriously when they insist they are following the spirit of the game. The fact that you, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], see no problems with what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is saying says to me that you are more interested in being right than actually discussing this.

I think you got this all wrong. If you recall, I refused to call what you're doing "house rules" even when you invited me to do so. My position isn't and has never been that you're doing it wrong if you're not following the rules. My position is that I have an approach and that approach is informed by the rules, and that I work hard to make sure I'm not running or playing the game as if it is some other game. That's it. Nothing more than that. Every other post of mine of note is trying to refute erroneous assertions by people who I am trying very hard to imagine are discussing the topic in good faith.

Regardless of when the roll was called for, it shouldn't matter. But, of course, in your style, you can avoid all this peskiness, can't you? You can just not call for a roll, and, that player never has the chance to use the skill as it's written. So, the players are nicely kept in their place. Which leads, inevitably, to the players simply turning to the magic system, over which they have greater control, and ignoring the skill system as much as possible.

I don't call for a roll when there's no uncertainty as to the outcome and/or no meaningful consequence for failure. This isn't about "keeping players in their place." These are the rules of the game which define who gets to do and say what.

And it should be noted that, as DM, I have as much "power" over spells as I do ability checks. If I decide a spell can't be cast or doesn't work, then that's how it is. That's how this game works.

Sorry, not interested in weaponizing the skill system at the table in order to force my interpretations on the group. I'd much rather place the power squarely in the hands of the players and let them decide. Makes for much greater ownership over the game at the table and much greater engagement from the players.

But, hey, it works for you. You do you, as was said to me earlier. This is all just differing playstyles. As always, play what works for you. I'm just explaining why it doesn't work for me.

"Weaponizing the skill system?"

"Force my interpretations on the group?"

When did this become a power struggle between players and DM in your view? We each have roles as defined by the rules of the game. I don't intrude on theirs. They don't intrude on mine. We individually perform our roles and responsibilities to the best of our abilities and the game as a whole works just fine. Almost as if it was designed that way.

And as far as "greater engagement" goes, I think you'd be hard pressed to make an argument that your game - as described by you - is one of "greater engagement," especially when players are just throwing dice at boring content put forward by the DM to "get to the good stuff" as you previously said in your own words. That doesn't sound like "greater engagement" to me. Please feel free to describe how your previous observations square up with what you mean by "greater engagement" and "greater ownership" in this regard.