iserith
Magic Wordsmith
Okay I want to detect if the npc is lying by smelling his breath, looking for dust on his coat, checking the color of his pants looking for changes in speech, looking for changes in eye movements, looking for perspiration, looking at his hair style, drawing on all my background experiences with liars (I’ll list them one at a time just to be sure), oh and take not of his shoe hand and nose size and his breathing and his height and whether he has dry skin or bloodshot eyes and his eye color and the exact alignment of the sun moon and stars ....
I think I could go on all night. You want 2 hours of this?
So what you're saying is that you CAN come up with an approach to trying to detect a lie, one that might even make sense in context, and perhaps even win you automatic success without an ability check and any corresponding meaningful consequence for failure.
The rules work! I rest my case.