Chris Perkins doesn't use Passive Insight

[I'm A Banana]

Passive Insight has a pretty strong role to play in keeping DM secrets, too.

If you make the players roll, they know if they rolled low or high. So if they rolled a 1, and you tell them "she's telling the truth!", they know she's actually lying...as players....even if their characters believe otherwise. This makes pretty obvious problems.

You can also use it as a "red flag" for an incompetent liar, but more so, asking for a roll alerts the player to the fact that there's something to see.

It's kind of like the DM asking for a Percpetion roll when something is sneaking up on you. Simply calling for the roll alerts the players to the fact that there's something there.

You can solve this by offering red herrings, or you can not have the problem to begin with, and use Passive Skill Checks to determine things they can automatically do, using Active Skill Checks to try and get higher, if the player wants to.

 

[S'mon]

To the extent that, when you're telling a lie in-character rather than simply acting a fictional part, you'll subconsciously provide perceptible 'tells' that a perceptive player can pick up on?

Yes, although I'm so bleedin' obvious a liar that it's barely 'subconscious'. If I'm playing an NPC with a really high Bluff I'll try to tone down the tongue-in-cheek a bit, but I see the NPC skills as primarily there to oppose the PC skills - ie to determine whether the player can get a mechanical Insight vs Bluff confirmation of what should be discernible anyway, if the player is paying any attention.

 

[S'mon]

If you make the players roll, they know if they rolled low or high. So if they rolled a 1, and you tell them "she's telling the truth!", they know she's actually lying...as players....even if their characters believe otherwise. This makes pretty obvious problems.

The GM should tell them "You can't tell" when they fail the check - whether the NPC is lying or telling the truth.

 

[KarinsDad]

The GM should tell them "You can't tell" when they fail the check - whether the NPC is lying or telling the truth.

Why? If a player fails a climb check by 5 or more, the PC falls.

What's so special about insight?

The DM should never just have a system of "I will never mislead the players on failed checks" and leave it at that. There's no mystery that way.

If a player fails an information (insight, perception, or monster knowledge) check by 5 or more, the DM should once in a while (or even always) give out some bogus information.

The concept that PCs (and hence players) don't make mistakes and think the exact opposite of what is really true should be part of any campaign.

The moment you say "you can't tell" and the DM never ever says "you think that he is lying" even though the NPC is telling the truth is the moment that the DM is really saying "you failed the roll". The players will pick up on this quickly.

So, the best thing to do for information checks is the DM to roll the dice so that the players have no knowledge of what is on the die, and for the DM to give out false info on a really bad DC, unknown info on a somewhat bad DC, limited info on a fair DC, and really good info on a really good DC.

This can lead to really interesting things in game. For example, two players want to roll Insight rolls. The DM rolls great for one player and terrible for the other. The DM says that "he seems sincere" to the one player and "you think he's lying" to another. If the players roleplay based on what their PCs think they know, you open the door up for some unique and interesting roleplaying (ditto for monster knowledge checks where one PC thinks the monster is of one type and another PC thinks the monsters is something else).

With a system of "you cannot tell" vs. "You think truth/lie", all PCs will get either the same result, or the "you cannot tell" result, so all players always know the proper answer (assuming one player rolled high enough). zzzzzz Boring. You might as well tell the players how to roleplay while you are at it.

 

[S'mon]

Why? If a player fails a climb check by 5 or more, the PC falls.

What's so special about insight?

A failed roll = "You can't do the thing you are trying to do". A bad fail on climb can equal "You fall", but the GM is not supposed to control the minds of the PCs, sans magic, therefore a bad Insight roll should not be "You believe him".

If necessary you can have gradated failure on Insight, but (a) it's not in the RAW and (b) would require hiding dice rolls, which I hate.

 

[S'mon]

The concept that PCs (and hence players) don't make mistakes and think the exact opposite of what is really true should be part of any campaign.

Players - and thus PCs - will and do make plenty of mistakes, without any DM forcing. IMO errors should come from the players' own misinterpretations, not from the DM forcing it. The DM should not be an unreliable narrator.

I guess it's part of my Gamist style - challenge the players, not the PCs. PC abilities are a resource for the players to use, not a hindrance.

 

[KarinsDad]

Players - and thus PCs - will and do make plenty of mistakes, without any DM forcing. IMO errors should come from the players' own misinterpretations, not from the DM forcing it. The DM should not be an unreliable narrator.

I guess it's part of my Gamist style - challenge the players, not the PCs. PC abilities are a resource for the players to use, not a hindrance.

Meh. PC abilities should never be infallible, especially abilities that relate to knowledge.

No illusions.

No mysteries.

No surprises.

Everything the DM utters is either the absolute truth of what the PCs observe or know, or the players know that the DM is lying because the dice in front of them say so.

Meh.

The game is often a lot more fun when the players are sometimes led down the primrose path and suddenly, they are not in Kansas anymore.

That's one of the best ways to challenge your players. Don't protect them from bad info, embrace it. That's not to say that the DM should constantly be giving the players bad info and always be a rat bastard, but he shouldn't spoon feed his players with "yes Timmy, this is what your PC absolutely 100% knows" either.


The purpose of an NPC bluffing is to Bluff. If the player doesn't make the Insight check, the PC and the player should be bluffed. The player shouldn't be constantly protected via "you cannot tell" and hence the player knows he missed the roll, nor should the player know that he rolled a 1 on the die and hence, the info is automatically questionable.

PC: "We've come 100 miles to kill the Evil Wizard of the Vale."
NPC peasant: "Evil Wizard? There hasn't been an evil wizard in the Vale for a hundred years."

This is much better than the players automatically knowing before the PCs even traveled the 100 miles that they missed on their Insight checks, so although an earlier NPC bluffed the PCs into thinking that the evil wizard exists, the players know they screwed up their rolls, so they might not travel in that direction.

PC 1: "That's a Death Archer. He's tough with a bow. Lock him down."
PC 2: "How come the Death Archer isn't using his bow and is cutting us down with a sword?"

One method spoon feeds the players with the exact knowledge that they always need. The other method keeps the players on their toes because most of the time, the info is correct. Some of the time, the players are misled by unlucky dice rolls.

Adding mystery and misdirection to a game is awesome. Not doing so? Meh.


And, having the occasional poorly rolled skill check be misleading is a potential way to get players to focus on skills a bit more and not always be only getting combat feats and powers. To me, missing on a skill check should be just as challenging as missing on a combat roll.

 

[S'mon]

It's funny, I've mostly been criticised for not giving players free Passive Insight checks to stop their PCs being Bluffed, but now I'm being criticised for not lying to the players when they've actively requested actual Insight checks.

There seems to be a lot of "taking the player out of the equation" - that everything should be based off PC skill/ability, not player skill/ability. That's definitely not how I want to run what is supposed to be a game, not a sim.

 

[KarinsDad]

There seems to be a lot of "taking the player out of the equation" - that everything should be based off PC skill/ability, not player skill/ability.

It's not a matter of taking the player out of the equation.

It's a matter of not giving the players information that neither the PC nor the player should have.

It's also a matter of playing the game in a way that isn't just a chess game where all of the rules are known and all of the abilities of all of the pieces are known. It's an RPG, not a board game.


The entire intent of not just handing absolutely true and correct information out to the players every single time is to allow the players to use more of their skills and abilities: their intuition and ability to see beyond what is just presented to them. By never allowing skill checks to have negative effects, the DM is training his players to not think for themselves.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The GM should tell them "You can't tell" when they fail the check - whether the NPC is lying or telling the truth.

So there's no penalty for a failed check?

Que the entire table rolling Insight and/or everyone piling on the character with the highest Insight bonus with Aid Another checks (and stuff like the half-elf Knack for Success that boosts skill checks by 4).

If there's no risk to making a check, there's nothing mechanically stopping them from spamming rolls until they succeed (which is sort of what the passive skill is supposed to represent anyway). Of course, not every group thinks like that, and everyone should do what works fine for their group, but from a baseline-rules-and-advice perspective, it can be a problem.

There seems to be a lot of "taking the player out of the equation" - that everything should be based off PC skill/ability, not player skill/ability. That's definitely not how I want to run what is supposed to be a game, not a sim.

My ability to buy property in Monopoly isn't based on my personal knowledge of real estate in New York City at the turn of the century. It's dictated by the roll of the dice and the amount of fake paper money I have. Strategy comes into play in spending the money on the things with the highest return.

A character's ability to detect deception in D&D, IMO, shouldn't be based on the player's personal knowledge and feelings. It should be dictated by the roll of the dice and the Insight training/Wisdom Score they have. Strategy comes into play in allocating those limited resources to Insight vs. something else (like Stealth).

Of course, D&D loves it some immersion, and there's things like ad hoc bonuses that make a lot of sense, if you'd like to include player skill as an effect on the success of die rolls.

No one's removing the player from the equation. At least for me, I'm just saying there's plenty of benefits to Passive Insight that a group that doesn't use it is missing out on. If the group doesn't care, I'm not one to quibble with what works for them. I wouldn't ditch it, though. Passive skill checks are one of the major ways I accomplish the goal of determining what a trained character can do without bothering to make a check, automatically, without a chance of failure. That includes knowing when bozos are not being entirely honest.