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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sejs" data-source="post: 3229447" data-attributes="member: 4910">"A successful Bluff check indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe."That 'or believes something that you want it to believe' says to me that bluff is the lying skill.  Flip side of the coin: someone with no ranks in Bluff also has no particular ability to conceal their tells.  They mumble, flush, pause, stutter, repeat the question to buy time, fidget, and so on.  Add in the -5 penalty to sense motive for a lie the target wants to believe (No dad, I did my homework) and it becomes more plausable. Which is precisely why the people doing the lying (in D&D terms) take pains to make whatever they say fall as low on that modifier-by-believability chart as possible.  Where were you?: "I was at home" (believable, +0 mod) versus "was working at a soup kitchen, helping the less fortunate" (little hard to believe, +5 mod) versus "I was out of the country the entire time and didn't get back until after it had happened" (hard to believe, +10 mod). Personally I figure that's pretty much covered by the existing modifiers on the Bluff table.  The one thing that I think is particularly missing would be a stacking modifier based on the target's disposition toward the speaker.  So if someone is unfriendly you get say a -4 penalty try to lie to them because they're already suspicious of you.  Or maybe have it be an automatic adjustment up a category on the chart.  To an unfriendly target, any attempt to lie to them is automatically a little hard to believe at the minimum, if they're hostile (and actually willing to listen to you talk) it's automatically hard to believe.  But on the other hand it's easy to lie to your friends because they give you the benefit of the doubt.</blockquote>

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