Use of Sense Motive skill: Automatic?

[Tatsukun]

Well, Sense Motive, Spot, and Listen are all opposed skills that can be used as a reaction to someone else using a skill. This leads to a lot of rolling.

But, there is a game mechanic that covers "too many rolls being made for mundane tasks". It's called taking 10.

The Barmaid has a bluff of +5, she can get most little lies like the age of the bread past the fighter with the +2 Sence Motive with the same old tricks (taking 10).

If course, if she tries a big lie, or the situation changes, she can't get away with it without trying something risky (rolling).

If she does something that makes the player suspicious, the fighter will be jumping to conclusions (rolling).

In effect, most people take 10 on this stuff. If they tell the DM they want a check, that's a roll. Same for spot / listen.

Of course, sometimes the DM might rule that taking 10 is impossible in a given situation (the barmaid is too nervous to tell her old lies well). That's just rolling.

-Tatsu

 

[FireLance]

To me, that is the problem with having Bluff / Sense Motive skills in the game at all. I've played a lot of other game systems where Bluff / Sense Motive skills do not really exist and it makes for self reliance on the part of the players to figure stuff out, not for the DM to hand them information "because the skill says so".

Just wondering, if this is your approach to Bluff and Sense Motive, why do you have them in your game at all? Just let your players know that Bluff and Sense Motive (and probably Diplomacy and Intimidate, as well) do not exist as skills and should be role-played rather than resolved mechanically. Otherwise, it might not be fair to the player who sinks a lot of points into these skills and expects to get benefits that do not materialize.

 

[KarinsDad]

Just wondering, if this is your approach to Bluff and Sense Motive, why do you have them in your game at all? Just let your players know that Bluff and Sense Motive (and probably Diplomacy and Intimidate, as well) do not exist as skills and should be role-played rather than resolved mechanically. Otherwise, it might not be fair to the player who sinks a lot of points into these skills and expects to get benefits that do not materialize.

The question for all roleplaying skills is not one of using or not using them, it is one of how often they are used.


This is similar to Gather Information rolls. Sometimes, we roleplay this. Sometimes, we do not. Gather Information, to me, is a quick way to decide what information is acquired if you as DM decide to NOT roleplay out an entire situation (and even then, I sometimes roleplay my end of it "They say she is a witch, a witch I tells you." as opposed to "People are saying that they think she is a witch."). And quite frankly, I do not want to roleplay every single mundane pedestrian encounter with merchants and barmaids and drunks. Yawn. Hence, the need for dice rolls when applicable.

For example, I might say while the players are in a tavern "Frodo, give me a Gather Information roll as you walk up to the bar to get more drinks". I could just as easily say "Frodo, give me a Listen roll as you walk up to the bar to get more drinks".

(Btw, I often have players roll their own rolls and only roll them myself if I do not want the players to be aware that something important is going on or do not want my players to be aware of how high or low a DC might be, say in the case of Pick Lock.)


A different DM might only use Gather Information if the player explicitly goes out of his way to interact with NPCs to gather information and might only use Listen for the player to accidentally gather information.


Diplomacy and Intimidation, on the other hand, is almost always a roll combined with roleplaying in my game. To influence someone, you have to A) be convincing and B) have skill at doing so.

If a player of mine tries to talk a crowd of innocents into running away just before battle and says "Ahh, err, get out of here", the DC on his Diplomacy roll is going to be fairly high. If he shouts "Flee for your lives! A dragon is coming.", the DC for his (instead) Intimidation roll is going to be lower. But, I am going to give most (if not all) of the crowd the same DC and I will NOT roll an Intimidate (or Diplomacy) roll against every single person in the crowd. Rules or no rules, no thanks. Ditto for all of the roleplaying skills: Bluff, Sense Motive, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Gather Information.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I've seen a couple published adventures that say things like "Since the doppleganger is very careful not to outright lie, the PCs don't get an sense motive checks against him unless he is required to lie. They get a sense motive check when he says I am <insert name of person> but not when he says 'I want you go get this book.'"

When I ran that adventure, I gave the PCs one sense motive check for the entire conversation to determine that the doppleganger wasn't what he appeared to be, however, the doppleganger easily fooled them. *grin*

I ask everyone for their sense motive bonus and roll the checks myself when running an adventure. I got really fed up with people saying "I sense motive" on nearly every sentence of a person who was speaking. So, now I tell people "I'll let you know if you sense anything beyond what I'm saying, of course you suspect him, he's a strange man in the middle of a dungeon, but what he says APPEARS to make sense unless I say otherwise. You can believe he is lying all you want, you can role play your character however you'd like."

 

[Li Shenron]

One of my PCs says every time an NPC lies (use of the Bluff skill) he is entitled an (secretly rolled by the DM) automatic Sense Motive check.

I think that way things would be far too slowing the game (can you imagine a sense motive check per PC everytime any NPC tells something that is not the complete truth), and that it is not possibly logic to have "antennas up" 24 hours a day.

What is your advice (and interpretation of the rules)?

I think your player is right that Sense Motive should be automatic and all the time.

I think you are right that it may slow the game down a lot in certain adventures.

A good compromise is to assume the PC are always Taking 10 in Sense Motive, and you keep the SM "result" written somewhere. When someone is lying you roll only the Bluff check. In some circumstances you may still roll SM (such as if the Bluff modifier is large enough that the Bluff would succeed on a 1, in which case you may still want to leave a chance for SM to beat the bluff).

If you're willing to stretch the rules a bit, you may also allow the players a SM roll (even if that would be a sort of single retry, if they already Take 10) when they specifically tell you they're not trusting what this NPC just said and they're "trying to sense" in a more active way.

 

[FireLance]

The question for all roleplaying skills is not one of using or not using them, it is one of how often they are used.

This is similar to Gather Information rolls. Sometimes, we roleplay this. Sometimes, we do not. Gather Information, to me, is a quick way to decide what information is acquired if you as DM decide to NOT roleplay out an entire situation (and even then, I sometimes roleplay my end of it "They say she is a witch, a witch I tells you." as opposed to "People are saying that they think she is a witch."). And quite frankly, I do not want to roleplay every single mundane pedestrian encounter with merchants and barmaids and drunks. Yawn. Hence, the need for dice rolls when applicable.

(other bits snipped)

I can see where you're coming from, and I suppose it works for you and your players. It does seem to me, however, that the roleplaying skills would be devalued quite a bit since they would mostly come into play during mundane and routine encounters, and not during the important and critical ones. My preference as a DM would be to gloss over the mundane encounters without even rolling dice, i.e. simply declare what seems to me to be a reasonable outcome, and give the player who invested points in the skills the advantage when it really counts. Of course, YMMV.

 

[Li Shenron]

On more thing... Sense Motive by no means force a PC to believe or disbelieve someone. It does NOT force any roleplay nor restricts your free will. It just tells the character that "the NPC seems telling the truth / a lie". The PC may still not trust the NPC even if it sounds honest, tho that is a little like not trusting your own judgement. As such, Sense Motive is basically a possible "hint" in the game, like Gather Information (which may lead to wrong information, it's still up to the PCs to choose what to do with the result).

 

[S'mon]

Every time an NPC uses Bluff skill, PC gets a Sense Motive roll. However NPCs are not required to use the Bluff skill whenever they say anything! If the NPC doesn't beat PC on Bluff vs SM, then GM should not say "he seems truthful", but unless PC requests SM roll (& beats Bluff) the GM needn't say "he seems to be lying", either. The PC can request a SM check at any time & then GM should roll Bluff, whether PC is lying or not.

 

[apesamongus]

Don't forget that the amount of time Sense Motive takes is explicitly variable. As the PHB says: "Trying to gain information with Sense Motive generally takes at least 1 minute, and you could spend and entire evening trying to get a sense of the people around you."

Bluff has the same "varies" action time.

And, seriously, sometimes just roll a couple of dice even if you don't need to. It's not going to give things away anymore than if you only rolled search checks if there was something to find.

 

[KarinsDad]

I can see where you're coming from, and I suppose it works for you and your players. It does seem to me, however, that the roleplaying skills would be devalued quite a bit since they would mostly come into play during mundane and routine encounters, and not during the important and critical ones. My preference as a DM would be to gloss over the mundane encounters without even rolling dice, i.e. simply declare what seems to me to be a reasonable outcome, and give the player who invested points in the skills the advantage when it really counts. Of course, YMMV.

Go back and reread what I wrote earlier in the thread about using Sense Motive when something is outrageous, suspicious, or either important to the DM or a player.

There is a difference between using Roleplaying Skill rolls to skip past roleplaying completely (in mundane situations) and using Roleplaying skill rolls to enhance critical encounters. I use those rolls for both situations, I just do not roll for every situation.