D&D 5E No Equivalent of Detect/Discern Lies in 5E?

[Sithlord]

This spell has never been a problem for me. It’s more like once the players get the info what do they do with it.

 

[DammitVictor]

It's a spell that bypasses whole categories of encounter design with no player skill involved. Even if a clever DM can write their way around it, it's going to produce less compelling results than if the players had to solve the problem themselves.

Frankly, the Insight and Investigation skills are already bad enough. If you want to run mysteries in D&D, you should probably start with a system that's designed for it... and then work backwards.

 

[Sithlord]

good d&d players should be surprising DM’s by bypassing encounters and even having easy encounters that were meant to be hard. And this will keep happening until the DM learns to create challenges appropriate to the level. And that’s good. If they get one encounter done too fast or bypass an encounter there is always another. Find out one truth. Then get someone to believe it. And there are always many unexpected things because the players ask the wrong question. Let it play out.

 

[iserith]

This spell has never been a problem for me. It’s more like once the players get the info what do they do with it.

Yes, this.

It's just one more bit of evidence to use to make decisions. "Knowing the NPC is lying about X, what do you do now?"

The game moves forward when the players have information. It stalls when they do not. So to my mind, more information is never a bad thing. Even better when they have to spend resources (e.g. a spell slot) to get it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think you're overstating it. My point is knowing someone lied doesn't automatically solve the actual problem. It doesn't tell you what the truth is. Let's say the murderer is a low level street thug. So what? You know they did it. Hurrah. The person is still dead and you still don't have any motive or evidence. Now what?

"Who hired you?"

In earlier editions, pretty much any significant NPC came with an amulet of immunity to Detect Lies and Detect Alignment. One has to conclude that such amulets are common, rendering the spell useless, so no one bothers with it any more.

 

[Yaarel]

It's a spell that bypasses whole categories of encounter design with no player skill involved. Even if a clever DM can write their way around it, it's going to produce less compelling results than if the players had to solve the problem themselves.

Frankly, the Insight and Investigation skills are already bad enough. If you want to run mysteries in D&D, you should probably start with a system that's designed for it... and then work backwards.

Relatedly, I prefer the design of new school D&D where skills replace what used to be spells: such as the History skill making the Legend Lore spell less significant.

Even when using the Insight skill (whose empathy I feel should be a Charisma social skill relating to emotional intelligence), the DM has a say on how skills work. I prefer narrative adjudication. The player has to do something specific, before rolling a skill check to determine if the action is successful. Someone else described this narrative approach as making the skill check a kind of "saving throw" against failure.

With regard to the Insight skill, it cant reveal what the truth is, but it can convey if there is some vague feeling of need or of deception. For example, a player character can try to discern if an NPC is hostile or not, or if there seems to be an unsaid agenda underneath a truthful statement. But the DM decides how much information to reveal, if anything. Likewise, the DM can decide that this kind of empathy might require spending some time with the NPC, and only attempting such discernment once per Short Rest, or once per Long Rest.

Also a situation might be complex, such as an NPC who is friendly but working for (or coerced by) someone else who is hostile.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I mean, sure, if you aren't interested in making any particular thing in D&D work, you can totally do that. I just don't understand why you would actively choose to eliminate your own fun rather than use the thing as a tool to make the adventure more fun.

How many thrillers have been built around knowing the who dunnit but hinging on the why, or the who next, or the what now? You interpretation seems to be bent entirely toward not wanting to engage in such an adventure. More power to you. Not everyone likes mysteries or thrillers.

I like mysteries so I don't want to have abilities that trivialises them.

 

[Yaarel]

I like mysteries so I don't want to have abilities that trivialises them.

For D&D, I want to see an item called "Salt of Protection". Compare Holy Water as an easily purchased magical item.

The player pours the salt in a continuous line, and no divination nor planar travel can enter its wall or circle.

The Salt of Protection makes it routinely easy for DMs to keep certain rooms or containers mysterious.

Likewise, the flavor makes much more sense than the "lead" metal lining caveat that awkwardly interrupts various spells.

If the DM needs the salt, it is there, and players will be familiar with what it is because they can buy it themselves.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I mean, sure, if you aren't interested in making any particular thing in D&D work, you can totally do that. I just don't understand why you would actively choose to eliminate your own fun rather than use the thing as a tool to make the adventure more fun.

Trivialising detective stories by casting "Solve Plot" is actively choosing to eliminate our own fun. I just don't understand why you would actively add back things to eliminate your own fun.

How many thrillers have been built around knowing the who dunnit but hinging on the why, or the who next, or the what now?

And with "Discern Lies" you can then just ask them as long as you have any way to get them to talk.

You interpretation seems to be bent entirely toward not wanting to engage in such an adventure. More power to you. Not everyone likes mysteries or thrillers.

On the contrary. Your interpretation seems to be bent entirely towards having to rewrite any such adventure to make it fit D&D. More power to you. Many people like mysteries or thrillers, and you yourself seem to admit that the spell messes up two entire genres.

I'd rather not have a single spell in the game than make an entire genre very very difficult to run - or to turn the game into a magical arms race.

 

[DammitVictor]

Relatedly, I prefer the design of new school D&D where skills replace what used to be spells: such as the History skill making the Legend Lore spell less significant.

Yeah, for sure. One thing I really like about Pathfinder is the stealth nerf to spells like knock and remove disease that suddenly make "mundane skills" very important. And Skill Unlocks from Pathfinder Unchained. Way, way too much of the interaction/exploration pillars of modern D&D is relegated to "magic", the sole province of magic classes, and way, way too much of "magic" is just spells.

It would require revisiting the last forty years of the game's evolution to fix. I like skill systems, but a lot of the grogs more hardcore than myself think it's the Thief class that was the beginning of the end, running around farting on everything instead of paying attention to his surroundings.