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<blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 5560748" data-attributes="member: 44797">This.&nbsp; By the time a PC has a +19 to Sense Motive, I assume there is some serious skill there.&nbsp; In our world, these are the judges who have the uncanny ability to determine within minutes who the lying scumbag is when two people come before the court to resolve a dispute.&nbsp; These are the police officers with lots of training and years of interrogating suspects, so that knowing the patterns and discrepancies that reveal a lie is like second nature to them.If my player got his or her character's Sense Motive up that high, I'm going to be sure that it works... a lot.&nbsp; Not always, but definitely enough.Also, I'm quite fine to give information without giving everything away.&nbsp; I never think of anything as a &quot;win button.&quot;&nbsp; So instead of saying, &quot;Yeah, she just lied when she said that she didn't kill the guy,&quot; I might try something like this: &quot;You sense that there is a hesitancy about her, as if she were filling in details on the fly.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; That's for you to figure out.&quot;&nbsp; Maybe it turns out she is covering for someone else.&nbsp; The players could take the &quot;she's making things up&quot; hint as an indication of her guilt and summarily kill her, but that would be a huge mistake.&nbsp; I'd typically expect corroborating evidence would be necessary to get a solid truth.Still, I wouldn't be sad to see Sense Motive working roughly as well as Zone of Truth.&nbsp; However, I wouldn't want to see it operate as well as Discern Lies.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="aboyd, post: 5560748, member: 44797"] This. By the time a PC has a +19 to Sense Motive, I assume there is some [i]serious[/i] skill there. In our world, these are the judges who have the uncanny ability to determine within minutes who the lying scumbag is when two people come before the court to resolve a dispute. These are the police officers with lots of training and years of interrogating suspects, so that knowing the patterns and discrepancies that reveal a lie is like second nature to them. If my player got his or her character's Sense Motive up that high, I'm going to be sure that it works... a [i]lot.[/i] Not always, but definitely enough. Also, I'm quite fine to give information without giving everything away. I never think of anything as a "win button." So instead of saying, "Yeah, she just lied when she said that she didn't kill the guy," I might try something like this: "You sense that there is a hesitancy about her, as if she were filling in details on the fly. Why? That's for you to figure out." Maybe it turns out she is covering for someone else. The players could take the "she's making things up" hint as an indication of her guilt and summarily kill her, but that would be a huge mistake. I'd typically expect corroborating evidence would be necessary to get a solid truth. Still, I wouldn't be sad to see Sense Motive working roughly as well as Zone of Truth. However, I wouldn't want to see it operate as well as Discern Lies. [/QUOTE]

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