G
Guest 6801328
Guest
Can't...stay...away...
Yes, this. In spades. I mean, read the description of insight again:
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, 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.