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Message: <blockquote data-quote="amethal" data-source="post: 2720634" data-attributes="member: 22784">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  <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=":)" /> 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."</blockquote>

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