Sense Motive: Walking Polygraph Machines?

[Hammerforge]

As a DM one of the skills I truly hate is Sense Motive. IMO, it's pretty unrealistic for someone to be able to determine for sure if someone is lying just by looking at their gestures and facial expressions. Not only that, but I feel it can really throw a monkey wrench into certain plans I have for the campaign because often I have NPCs try to trick the PCs by -- of course -- lying.

I've thought about secretly modifying my players' Sense Motive rolls by -5 in order to reflect the realism that such a task really is very difficult to pull off. (Of course, the same penalty would apply to NPCs trying to use Sense Motive on the PCs.)

Of course, the other idea I've had is simply to eliminate the skill from the game altogether.

Any other ideas? Does anyone else feel the same way that I do about this skill?

 

[orchid blossom]

I'm of two minds about sense motive. The games I've played in, the player always has to ask for a Sense Motive roll. Usually you ask when your character is already suspicious of what the NPC is saying. Even after the roll, the best information the DM would give would be along the lines of "something about his story doesn't seem to fit," or "he seems very sincere as far as you can tell."

And if the answer was that something seems off, it could be anything, possibly having nothing to do with what the PC's are trying to find out. For example, the PC's ask the wife of an NPC they want to find where he is. She lies and they think she is protecting him, but really she wasn't supposed to know what he was doing and had him followed... they just stumbled into a situation that could take them way off course.

That didn't happen often, but it can, and it made us a little wary of totally trusting sense motive rolls. We just used them to try and confirm suspicions.

 

[diaglo]

which classes have sense motive as class skills?

bard, monk, paladin, rogue

all of which make sense.


not barbarian, not cleric, not druid, not fighter, not ranger, not sorceror, not wizard


they can take them as crossclass, but that means giving up for many of them a lot of their skill ranks for that lvl.

 

[amethal]

I feel it can really throw a monkey wrench into certain plans I have for the campaign because often I have NPCs try to trick the PCs by -- of course -- lying.

I haven't had any problems with sense motive (no one has any ranks in it!) but my general advice is to never let the dice get in the way of the story.

After all, the players don't know how many ranks in bluff the NPC has.

However, if at all possible I don't have my NPCs tell an outright lie. Instead they exaggerate, shade the truth, put forward opinions as facts and withhold vital information.

A successful sense motive check then reveals "You get the impression he knows more than he's saying", to which my players are likely to respond in a suitably sarcastic manner, since all my NPCs know more than they are saying.

Quite often, the PCs are not interracting with the real villain anyway. They are being briefed by his pawn, who has been duped into believing what he says is true.

Come to think of it, I can see why none of my players have bothered to spend precious skill points on sense motive in my campaign

I'm exaggerating somewhat - if a player has a good result I do try and give some useful information, but I'm certainly not going to derail the plot if I can help it.

Even on a fantastic result, I won't do all the player's work for him. "He definitely knows more than he's saying. In particular, he seemed a bit agitated when he mentioned his relationship with his wife - possibly there's been some tension there lately - and you get the impression he may not have been entirely honest when he said he couldn't think of anyone who would want to kidnap her."

That's a far cry from saying "He's clearly lying. You realise from his manner that he must have argued with his wife lately, and chances are he kidnapped her himself."

 

[Brother MacLaren]

which classes have sense motive as class skills?

Which classes have Bluff as a class skill? Not that many. If neither party has it as a class skill, then you have a roughly 50% chance to correctly discern that another individual is lying, which does seem quite high. Obviously, a roll that should be made in secret by the DM.

The DM is free to apply circumstance modifiers based on the plausibility of the lie; I'd also add them based on its simplicity and based on the amount of interrogating the PC can do. A single lie is easy, but a story built on several must have them all fit together or it falls apart under questioning. Obviously, you can ask many more questions if you don't care that the NPC will think you don't trust them.
The NPC is telling one very straightforward lie and the PC doesn't want to comes across as distrustful or rude? -10 or so to the check.
A brief conversation? -4 to get an overall sense of their honesty in that discussion, -8 to identify if any one particular element was a lie.
The NPC is telling a very involved story with many lies and the PC has the chance to interrupt with many questions? +4 or so.

Note that even the polygraph (which really only works if the examinee thinks it works) is often interpreted to give a sense of "overall pattern of deception in this interview," not veracity of specific statements.

 

[Zappo]

What I do is - first, PCs have to ask for a Sense Motive roll. I won't roll Bluff until they ask, and if they do I will roll Bluff even if the character is telling the truth. That fixes the "the DM is rolling a d20, the NPC must be lying!" problem.

Second, read the Bluff description; if you say a lie that the victim wants to believe, he gets a -5 to his Sense Motive roll. That's quite a lot. Any liar worth his salt will get this modifier damn near every time, if he had five minutes to plan. You just have to chat with the victim for a bit or do some research to find out what he wants to hear, and then tell him, putting things in the "right" light. This is all in the RAW (so much for social skills dampening roleplaying).

Third, if the character is lying by omission, a successful Sense Motive isn't going to tell you anything except that he told the truth but there is something more. Again, a skilled bluffer can do a lot with this. Often, you can easily arrange things so that the victims will do as you say even if they realize that they don't know all of the truth.

Fourth, Sense Motive doesn't work against anyone who is convinced of what he says. Sending an envoy who is going to get killed in the ambush together with the heroes is a classical BBEG tactic. There are plenty of cases where the liar doesn't know he's lying.

 

[Blue]

I find the climb skill sometiomees gets in the way off a story, because PCs take alternate routes and avoid some of the things I plan ... or maybe not.

Look, I'd rather have the skill removed them secretly nerfed. It's something characters spend precious skill points on, don't take that away from them.

Think about books and movies - telling someone is lying often happens. These are the heroes, if all the time they are lead around by their nose because people lie to them with no way to ever figure out the truth, that's not very heroic, nor satisfying to a player.

That said, many time sense motive, like spot, listen, search, and other perceptive skills, should be rolled secretly by the DM. I am NOT advocating fudging the roll so it fails, but if a player knows he rolled a 19 he'll put more stock into it. If there is no clue how well the roll was, the information becomes suspect even when true. Even moreso if for some spectacularly bad rolls you give out false information.

To sum up, don't nerf the players, but don't let them bring meta-game knowledge (how well they rolled) into it.

Cheers,
Blue

 

[Psion]

Third, if the character is lying by omission, a successful Sense Motive isn't going to tell you anything except that he told the truth but there is something more.

I agree with all your points/approaches but this one. Sense motive is about reading people. A person hiding something will have "tells". I'll typically give players a roll to note "he seems like he's hiding something."

 

[Bardsandsages]

As others have said, remember that Sense Motive isn't an automatic thing. The PC has to ask for it. Also, it is an opposed check, not an automatic thing.

And a lot of it depends on how you play the NPC in question, and the situation. A pretty villager in a panic is less likely to draw a Sense Motive call from PCs that a noble who has for no reason invited the party to his home. NPCs with perceived low intelligence are less likely to illicit a Sense Motive roll than NPCs with perceived high intelligence. Depending on how you set up the scene, it may not even occur to the PCs to roll Sense Motive.

And as in real life, so too in gaming, the more elaborate the lie, the more likely people believe it. I do this all the time to PCs. For example:

PC's get attacked while waiting for a hired wagon to show up. Wagon shows up minutes after the fight is over.

NPC: "Um, sorry I'm late. um...Wheel fell off the wagon."
PC to GM: I want to sense motive.

or

NPC: "By the gods! I thought I'd never get here! Someone dug a ditch in the middle of the road, and when I drove over it the wheel fell right off! Have you ever tried to change a wagon wheel by yourself? My back is killing me.....Um, what on earth happened here?"

PC: (who now thinks the attackers must have deliberately tried to stop the wagon from arriving in order to attack them) "We were attacked by..."

It's all about the set-up.

 

[Zappo]

I agree with all your points/approaches but this one. Sense motive is about reading people. A person hiding something will have "tells". I'll typically give players a roll to note "he seems like he's hiding something."

Sorry, I may have worded my point unclearly. Here's what I meant: if a character is lying by omission, a successful Sense Motive will only tell you "there is something more, even though what he said is true".