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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6033870" data-attributes="member: 22424">I agree with all of this. And the rest of the post, too <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, but especially this bit.There are lots of ways to deal with this.The first and most obvious is simply to have the NPC not answer - "how dare you ask me that?"Alternately, have the NPC simply change the subject.Or, have the NPC admit it... and then call his guards to have the PCs killed. Or, indeed, just point out that they need to be able to prove it, and they can't.But there's another important key to the "murder mystery" scenario that gets missed far too often in discussions in the D&D context (both in relation to Sense Motive, and indeed to alignment as a whole): everyone has secrets.If you run a mystery in which there are a bunch of entirely innocent NPCs and one BBEG, you're going to have a pretty damn short and unsatisfying adventure. The paladin uses detect evil, the walking lie detector uses Sense Motive, or whatever, and pretty quickly the truth comes out. Done.A better approach is this: everyone has secrets. Everyone tells lies. And there need to be villains around who are nothing at all to do with the matter at hand.So when the PCs start asking about what the seneschal was doing on the night of the murder, he proceeds to get oddly evasive. But not because he's the killer - he doesn't want his affair with the cook's wife to become public knowledge.When the PCs ask the captain of the guard, he tearfully admits to being responsible. But that's actually not true - he's just overwhelmed by his guilt."Everyone lies. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed for something they didn't do, and the guilty lie because they don't have any other choice."</blockquote>

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