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Message: <blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7497179" data-attributes="member: 6919838">I think this is partly a case of expectations. Also system. Do you expect that a skill check activity can go wrong or just not go good?Can a failed climbing check lead to a fall & loss of gained height or only not advance your climb any farther? Can a failed investigate check give you a false lead with an inaccurate clue or just not give you any result to go on?Similarly, can a failed insight check give you false impressions or just give you inconclusive results?To me, since it is deception vs insight it seems obvious that its not just "do i see signs of lying" but also "do i see signs of being truthful". That creates a neutral ground of "cant tell either way."  If that is the case, then it would seem to me that "he seems to be being sincere" is a valid response. Now maybe you wont believe that and no matter what you werent gonna believe him, if so, why roll? No matter whst the result your going to be in the same place - i dont believe him. Why roll to stand still?But in 5e a failure result is defined for ability checks as "makes no progress towards the objective or makes progress with setback determined by GM." PHB under Ability checks. That would seem to allow the result of an insight failure to include "he seems to be lying" even if he is being truthful about most things (setback is picking up minor lie as the full read) or "he seems to be truthful" if he is lying (setback being only picking up the signs of truth for the bits that were, missing the tells that mattered.)Or imagine a investigation check vs a rune set depicting some ancient lore.Success shows George and Barry went hunting Orange Bog Serpent and killed it but after in dispute over claiming kill George kills Barry. Failure PWS might give you George and Barry went hunting Orange Bog Serpent and killed it but **unknown bits** kills Barry. Could even be more explicitly misread as Serpent killed Barry with "some stuff still unclear."Or the failure could be "no progress" and give you nothing.But in 5e the ability check opens up **both** of those possible failure results by RAW - pws or np.</blockquote>

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