Sense Motive - passive or active?

[Thanee]

Here's a little bit of help...

Spoiler

S'mon: So according to the book RAW it can't even be used in "He went thataway!" situations, even by player request, unless you're prepared to spend a minute or so interrogating the speaker.
Thanee: Then look up the bluff skill description.
S'mon: But there's nothing in the Bluff skill description that says you as GM _have_ to use this skill...
Thanee: No, you never have to use the rules...

So, it was just a response to his claim, that there are no rules for this situation.
No accusation implied.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Figure I'd better join in...

I did indeed mention the rules about Sense Motive, and forget to check my knowledge of Bluff...whoops.

My experience of both S'mon and SB as DM's is excellent - both are content to let decent role-playing work when it needs to, and use the social-skills to define what happens in more difficult situations. Part of the big difference between them and other DM's on this forum is that in the games we play we're happier to go with non-optimal choices in order to have more fun.

This may sound odd, but it's more satisfying (to me only!) to have my PC's exist as slightly flawed characters that make mistakes, and to avoid meta-gaming as much as possible. Going back to the Spot/Listen examples, if S'mon asks for a Spot check and I fail it (which happens a lot with my Fighter) then I'm happy to leave it at that and get ambushed. I didn't build a character that's good at spotting stuff, I built a character that's good at fighting stuff. If every time I fail a spot roll I get paranoid, then it stops being so much fun. I let other players have fun by shouting warnings.

As far as Sense Motive goes, it tends to be all in the context. NPC's never exist in a vacuum, they're always rooted in the world. So, if I'm talking to a merchant, I'd probably want to Sense Motive on him because everyone knows merchants are always trying to take you for a ride. Same with politicians that I don't know that well. However, random person on the street? No point SMing him, since he's got no great reason to lie to me. It could be that he's an agent of the bad guys, but hopefully I'll be offered a visual clue to help me with that and thus lead me to suspect him to be lying.

Going back to the "Which way did he go?", well, if the NPC in question is someone we've never met before I'm likely to believe him without a roll. However, if (by the rules) he's making a bluff check to lie to us, then I'd hope for a Sense Motive check to oppose it and tell. Still, if him lying to us and us not noticing leads to a good story, it's not exactly going to worry me.

In an attempt to draw some sort of conclusion to this post which is probably far too long and doesn't explain myself very well at all, I've played under both S'mon and SB, and never had any problems with what's happened as far as all forms of social interaction goes.

 

[IceBear]

Figure I'd better join in...

I did indeed mention the rules about Sense Motive, and forget to check my knowledge of Bluff...whoops.

My experience of both S'mon and SB as DM's is excellent - both are content to let decent role-playing work when it needs to, and use the social-skills to define what happens in more difficult situations. Part of the big difference between them and other DM's on this forum is that in the games we play we're happier to go with non-optimal choices in order to have more fun.

This may sound odd, but it's more satisfying (to me only!) to have my PC's exist as slightly flawed characters that make mistakes, and to avoid meta-gaming as much as possible. Going back to the Spot/Listen examples, if S'mon asks for a Spot check and I fail it (which happens a lot with my Fighter) then I'm happy to leave it at that and get ambushed. I didn't build a character that's good at spotting stuff, I built a character that's good at fighting stuff. If every time I fail a spot roll I get paranoid, then it stops being so much fun. I let other players have fun by shouting warnings.

As far as Sense Motive goes, it tends to be all in the context. NPC's never exist in a vacuum, they're always rooted in the world. So, if I'm talking to a merchant, I'd probably want to Sense Motive on him because everyone knows merchants are always trying to take you for a ride. Same with politicians that I don't know that well. However, random person on the street? No point SMing him, since he's got no great reason to lie to me. It could be that he's an agent of the bad guys, but hopefully I'll be offered a visual clue to help me with that and thus lead me to suspect him to be lying.

Going back to the "Which way did he go?", well, if the NPC in question is someone we've never met before I'm likely to believe him without a roll. However, if (by the rules) he's making a bluff check to lie to us, then I'd hope for a Sense Motive check to oppose it and tell. Still, if him lying to us and us not noticing leads to a good story, it's not exactly going to worry me.

In an attempt to draw some sort of conclusion to this post which is probably far too long and doesn't explain myself very well at all, I've played under both S'mon and SB, and never had any problems with what's happened as far as all forms of social interaction goes.

You sound like a good player, and I really doubt anyone thought that SB or S'mon were bad DMs. I would like to think that most serious players would prefer to make sub-optimal choices in order to have more fun (I know my group does). I think people are taking this debate and turning it into two black and white camps where the truth lies in the grey middle area. Most players would prefer a good story over nitpicking rules (again, in my experience).

One thing that I try to do in these forums is pretend that my answer considers the "lowest common demoninator" if you will. If there is a group out there that consists of people that simply can't stop metagaming, making SM a passive check by the DM will help shield that group from themselves as much as possible. Of course if you've got a group that can ingnore metagame clues and stay in character then it's mostly irrelevant if it's active or passive, but, as I said, I try to think about the other side of the coin too.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

While I'm not that far removed from most of you in knowledge of how these things 'really' work, SB's own particular background is so far above the rest of us in terms of knowledge of this area that it must be a bit frustrating for her.

Ok, I have to respond to this particular argument from authority on two levels. 1) This is the internet, SB could be a high school kid, you could be her math teacher and I really could be a small black cat (or a mental patient with access to my shrink's computer, who only thinks she's a small black cat). This is no slam against SB, just making it clear that I accept her as an authority on nothing except as she can express herself consistently and give distinct examples, just like the rest of us, and just like I assume I am treated by others.

2) An argument from authority is meaningless on a subject that can actually be subjectively experienced. When I (and others on this board) have personally been involved in conversations where we went into it with no suspicions and at no point started trying to activly analyse the other person for inconsistencies or signs of falsehood, but nonetheless came out of the conversation with the strong feeling we were being BSed, (or on a less involved and even more relevant example, asked for directions with no suspicion but got a feeling from the respondant that maybe we ought to verify them cause the townies may be having fun with us) another person's resume does not matter. If the other person tries to tell us, in essence "No one can do the things you have casually expereinced and never thought much of", the response will be "You're wrong." An attempt to bolster the statement with arguments from authority does not help.

Any frustration felt by anyone on a messageboard because their opinion or expereicne is not accepted as truth by others is entirely self generated. Hopefully SB is not expereincing this.

I/we don't like being told "If you don't do it this way, you're doing it wrong." That's only natural.

Well, this IS the rules forum. *shrug* However, in the personal judgement way you are implying, I haven't seen people say that anyway. What has been said with stunning regularity is some variation of "The way you do it I would not enjoy it, or have not enjoyed similar expereinces in the past." or "If you do it that way, I would feel compelled to respond in this way to level the playing field, which would get real old, real fast." And a drop of "Your assumptions about how consistantly and fairly you are able to do what you are trying to do may not be correct." Since the orriginal point of the thread was to discuss which way to use the skill, all of those will be legitamate topics to further the overall thread, and there's no point in taking it personally.

Kahuna Burger

 

[S'mon]

No, you never have to use the rules...

Bye
Thanee

It took me a few hours to work out that you're implying that not using Bluff skill rolls AGAINST PCs is "not using the rules", even though the game specifically says NOT to use character-interaction skills like Bluff & Diplomacy against PCs?

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Part of the big difference between them and other DM's on this forum is that in the games we play we're happier to go with non-optimal choices in order to have more fun.

ummmm.... Nope! That doesn't sound like a difference from my play style at all... not sure where you'd get that from actually, I didn't reread the entire thread, but I can't seem to recal anyone saying "that sounds like a really fun way of doing it, but I can't bring myself to sub-optimise the game mechanics in the way it would require for that level of enjoyment." Thinking back, in fact, seems like the feelings of both DMs and players who perfer the other style is that having SM be a fully active skill wouldn't be fun for them.

Come to think of it, since fun is a pretty major component of optimising games for me, the whole idea of going with "non optimal choices in order to have more fun" sounds sort of rhetorical.

Kahuna Burger

 

[Thanee]

Just some lil comments...

This may sound odd, but it's more satisfying (to me only!) to have my PC's exist as slightly flawed characters that make mistakes, and to avoid meta-gaming as much as possible.

That's not odd. That's roleplaying!

Of course, roleplaying is kinda odd to begin with...

However, random person on the street? No point SMing him, since he's got no great reason to lie to me. It could be that he's an agent of the bad guys, but hopefully I'll be offered a visual clue to help me with that and thus lead me to suspect him to be lying.

That's what I meant initially, when I was talking about S'mon/SB's method leading to some weird kind of metagaming... you (the player) hope for a clue, which your character should get, so you can let your character do a SM check...

Going back to the "Which way did he go?", well, if the NPC in question is someone we've never met before I'm likely to believe him without a roll. However, if (by the rules) he's making a bluff check to lie to us, then I'd hope for a Sense Motive check to oppose it and tell.

So, only if he makes a Bluff check, you have a chance to spot the lie. If he just chooses to lie to you without a Bluff check, then you do not.

Isn't that kinda weird?

This is the point I was making earlier in this thread.

In an attempt to draw some sort of conclusion to this post which is probably far too long and doesn't explain myself very well at all, I've played under both S'mon and SB, and never had any problems with what's happened as far as all forms of social interaction goes.

I didn't expect anything else.

To conclude... I have absolutely no doubt, that S'mon and SB both are fantastic DMs. In fact, I absolutely believe they are. I also do not think you should do everything per the rules, I do not follow them in every situation either. I just think, and my opinion hasn't changed during the past days, that Sense Motive should be passive in one of it's fundamental applications (which is, funny enough, not listed in the skill description). That's all. Not that it wouldn't work the other way around, just that in some situations (see above) it seems to not work very well to me.

Bye
Thanee

 

[S'mon]

Tallarn meant optimising outcome for the PC as a game-piece ("pawn stance") as opposed to having (optimal) fun by acting as the PC 'would' act (actor stance). I'm not sure if this idea that our games are less Gamist & more Simulationist than most is accurate, we'd both consider ourselves Gamist GMs.

SB is far too nice to rely on arguments from authority. I mentioned it after she'd already quoted some of her sources. I mean, I only have it on her authority that she came #1 in her, shall we say, 'specialist' class, and that letter asking her to go to Iraq could be a forgery for all I know - and I could be lying (Bluffing) you now... )

 

[Thanee]

Modesty is a virtue.

As I said somewhere on page 5, I really cannot argue that.

I also don't deny that some dedicated concentration is required to spot behaviour patterns, which would point towards untruthfulness, for example.

However, I do believe, that this concentration is done pretty much automatically (as in you simply cannot shut it off completely), especially if you are trained in that field of expertise. So, even if the concentration is active, I would still see it as a passive skill roll.

And note, that Sense Motive still has active uses as well, as you pointed out earlier.


Something else...

Re: social skills versus PCs

Of course, I am also of the opinion, that NPC social skills should not influence PC behaviour.

For example, an Intimidate check might maybe result in some penalties as explained under Intimidate, but surely wouldn't make the PC act in any specific way. Likewise, Diplomacy cannot just change the PC's attitude to friendly. That's the player's right to decide and I wouldn't deny them this.

However, unless the player already has some knowledge about what is being presented to him or her, he or she cannot decide whether an NPC is being truthful or not. That's where the Sense Motive skill is used instead of the player's judgement. Because without a skill roll (or the DM telling the player instead of a skill roll), it's impossible for the player to derive any information of this kind.

So, when an NPC tries to bluff the PC, a Sense Motive roll is normally used to decide, whether the PC spots anything in the NPC's behaviour, that alerts him or her. Of course, modifiers, up to +20 to the bluff check, could make it very hard to do so, for example if a complete stranger states something, which is quite believable.


Looking at it from another perspective. You have stated somewhere above, that you would dislike a crappy diplomacy roll to stand in your way, if you performed a fabulous speech as a player. I agree with that, and I have no problems to use the roleplaying instead of dice rolling in that case (altho the opposite is true as well, if a player just can't express him- or herself that good). Ok. Now let's get back to Sense Motive.

Say, you have spotted something that alerted you in the DM's roleplaying of the NPC and you request a SM roll to see, if your PC notices something. Isn't that similar? I mean, you already have that feeling, that something is wrong, why roll for it?

Bye
Thanee

 

[DarkMaster]

Looking at it from another perspective. You have stated somewhere above, that you would dislike a crappy diplomacy roll to stand in your way, if you performed a fabulous speech as a player. I agree with that, and I have no problems to use the roleplaying instead of dice rolling in that case (altho the opposite is true as well, if a player just can't express him- or herself that good). Ok. Now let's get back to Sense Motive.

I love to see it. If you want your character to be as good or better than you in performing fabulous speech, invest in it. If you allow it once you are better off allowing it all the time, at least your player won't invest in social skills, they will rely on their own ability, reminds me when I build an NPC I personnaly go study magic so that my BBEG fighter can cast fireball (I make sure that we play outside because all those fireball could seriously damage my house).

Why prevent someone socially challenged to play a highly charismatic bard? not playing by the RAW remove you that option and it is very sad. Also why charismatic player have an edge on less charismatic player around the table This is completly unfair.