Should you be able to use Sense Motive in this scenario?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Shadow Lodge

Your party comes across 2 groups of humaniods fighting. Could you use Sense Motive to determine anything about the combatants?


Sense Motive looks to be designed specifically for you to discern oddities about people's behavior directly towards you. That being said, I'd let you use it in this case; I'm pretty sure you'd get a sense that the two groups are hostile towards each other. I don't think it would be sufficient to determine which group is the "good" guys and which group the "bad".


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You can use it to get a "hunch" (the skill's wording) about people's intentions, yes.

Sovereign Court

As GM I'd would allow an attempt. Though, I would probably ask the players for more specific inquiries as to what they hope to discover.


I'd probably be willing to go "that one looks like he has the advantage" or "that one looks like the aggressor here" if applicable to the situation.

Liberty's Edge

I would see it as a situation where you can gain insight into how the battle is going, who leaders are, what tactics are being used, who has the upper hand, whether one side is foghting in a more coordinated manner than the other, this sort of thing. In other words, elements that are subject to observation given the events. Less obvious stuff is going to be obscured by the drama and immediate concerns of the moment. of the moment. Some of these aspects may require more time.


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Could be

sense motive (the kobolds are wide eyed in terror )

perception (You notice that the cart is made for small humanoids, meaning it belongs to the kobolds, making the orcs the attackers)

profession: soldier (thats a defensive formation, or what used to be one)

Knowledge local: Kobolds would never start a fair fight.

Liberty's Edge

I like BNW's approach. It distributes the knowledge and allows multiple individuals to contribute.

In these situations, I also like distributing the info on index cards and letting them roleplaying the knowledge download, rather than just verbalizing it as the voice from above, GM style.


Pan wrote:
As GM I'd would allow an attempt. Though, I would probably ask the players for more specific inquiries as to what they hope to discover.

+1.

Shadow Lodge

Thanks for info.

I was trying to figures out, if you ran across this of scenario type, if there was away to make it easier to figure out who to help (if you wanted to help anyone that is). I guess detect evil would give some help here.


Sense motive should give information about the emotions of the individuals. Perhaps one if really angered but theother is frightened, perhaps the two of them are veterans with no trace of fear in their eyes.

THat is the kind of information I will give with a successful roll.


Or, to use an unusual example, if you used Sense Motive on two individuals fighting, you might notice if they were deliberately using the flat of their blades (indicating that they might just be sparring for practice) or if they were obviously angry at each other, or if one looked desperate and overmatched, and so on...


Quote:


Sense Motive
Check: A successful check lets you avoid being bluffed
(see the Bluff skill). You can also use this skill to determine
when “something is up”
(that is, something odd is going
on) or to assess someone’s trustworthiness.

I would ask players to roll sense motive when they came upon this group (assuming the intent was they were to attack the party) and anyone who made the sense motive roll would notice that these two groups 'fighting' were not actually fighting but were actually waiting for them.

Things would proceed from there.

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