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A PC makes a Sense Motive check vs an NPC and fails it, now what?
In the past I've required that the character behave as if he believed that NPC, but lately I'm wondering if that's too heavy-handed. I'm thinking of dropping that down to simply sensing no deception.
My problem is that I feel like this leads to metagaming. If you sense no deception from someone, why wouldn't you believe them? How do you fine GMs handle this situation?
A PC makes a Sense Motive check vs an NPC and fails it, now what?
In the past I've required that the character behave as if he believed that NPC, but lately I'm wondering if that's too heavy-handed. I'm thinking of dropping that down to simply sensing no deception.
My problem is that I feel like this leads to metagaming. If you sense no deception from someone, why wouldn't you believe them? How do you fine GMs handle this situation?
Because what they're saying is inherently implausible?
Because what they're saying is inherently implausible?A PC makes a Sense Motive check vs an NPC and fails it, now what?
In the past I've required that the character behave as if he believed that NPC, but lately I'm wondering if that's too heavy-handed. I'm thinking of dropping that down to simply sensing no deception.
My problem is that I feel like this leads to metagaming. If you sense no deception from someone, why wouldn't you believe them? How do you fine GMs handle this situation?
That's built into the Bluff rules.
In fact, going with that train of thought, you could literally say something impossible and be believed with a high enough Bluff. This seems pointless if the PCs can then choose to disbelieve you anyway.
Your just looking for a hunch. You either get it or you don't get it. If someone tells you something you don't believe you can still question them and choose to follow or not, regardless of whether you know personally that they're lieing or not. You don't fail sense motive and immediately believe them, you make the sense motive to get an idea that something might be up and to be sure. If that makes sense. Its other uses are to sense enchantments and see secret messages of course.
Your just looking for a hunch. You either get it or you don't get it. If someone tells you something you don't believe you can still question them and choose to follow or not, regardless of whether you know personally that they're lieing or not. You don't fail sense motive and immediately believe them, you make the sense motive to get an idea that something might be up and to be sure. If that makes sense. Its other uses are to sense enchantments and see secret messages of course.
Bluff counters Sense Motive. Fail a SM vs Bluff, and you do believe what you're told.
You can choose not to believe no matter what your told. You can choose not to believe when someone is rolling diplomacy even. You don't have to believe a truth!
If you can choose to disbelieve it, what's the point of Bluff? What's the point of Sense Motive, for that matter?
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What's the point of free will and talking if dice rolls determine everything? Its still good for giving a poker face, and its good to remember lies are supposed to be believable. There is a huge difference between telling someone your someone else who they never met but they expect, the king of Cheliax, the truth about who you are, or that your their best friend who they've known for their entire life. I'm very likely to believe your taking the next guard's shift, but not that your George when George is standing right next to me. That's how I understand it anyway.
What's the point of free will and talking if dice rolls determine everything? Its still good for giving a poker face, and its good to remember lies are supposed to be believable. There is a huge difference between telling someone your someone else who they never met but they expect, the king of Cheliax, the truth about who you are, or that your their best friend who they've known for their entire life. I'm very likely to believe your taking the next guard's shift, but not that your George when George is standing right next to me. That's how I understand it anyway.
"Everything" isn't determined by dice, but lies and belief are. The George lie will probably fail unless you're very gullable and the bluffer is very good. If you're an idiot though...
You can choose not to believe no matter what your told. You can choose not to believe when someone is rolling diplomacy even. You don't have to believe a truth!
Have to agree there. All sense motive does is tell you whether the person is being honest/really believes what they're saying. Think about it this way—what happens if tow NPCs tell conflicting versions of the same event to a player who fails both his sense motive rolls? If a failed sense motive roll means that the PC believes whatever they're told, then you have a bit of logic bomb on your hands...
If you're really worried about players metagaming sense motive rolls, you can always do something like making concealed rolls for the party or have them sometimes roll sense motive against people who are telling the truth. Also, never underestimate the paranoia value of carefully ambiguous wording in your answers.
As a general rule, you don't want to take control of the PCs away from the player. "He seems like he's being honest." Works a lot better than "You believe him."
What's the point of free will and talking if dice rolls determine everything? Its still good for giving a poker face, and its good to remember lies are supposed to be believable. There is a huge difference between telling someone your someone else who they never met but they expect, the king of Cheliax, the truth about who you are, or that your their best friend who they've known for their entire life. I'm very likely to believe your taking the next guard's shift, but not that your George when George is standing right next to me. That's how I understand it anyway.
That's covered in the rules, however.
There's a -20 to the check for an "impossible" lie. Though that would be more a combo of Disguise and Bluff.
If you just auto-disbelieve when you've failed your Sense Motive you are metagaming. This is generally frowned upon.
Sense Motive is an indicator of whether you think he's telling the truth or not. If you think he's telling the truth, why would you disbelieve him?
The reverse of this is what if the GM did it? The Bard with the +23 Bluff check vs the village idiot with the -2 Sense Motive. We're approaching can't fail territory here.
Yet the GM decides "Nope. He doesn't belive you. No reason. Screw your rolls, your bonuses and your stats."
I'd say it depends on what you just told him. Did you tell him he's a jackolope? That does approach jerk DM territory if its something totally believable and he has a reason to believe it.
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Usually you try and sense motive if you're not sure if an NPC is telling you the truth or not. It's an active check. The GM can tell a bluff, and if you don't pipe up to say you want to make a sense motive roll, you shouldn't get to roll it - as a player and a character, you haven't even thought to do a double-take.
So what do you do detect something outrageously amiss? If you're so certain you don't even want to make a check, fine - you're free to believe what you like. If you then say, well hang on, let's roll sense motive - and fail - you might detect that you aren't so sure that he's lying.
This works best if the GM rolls sense motive for you every time. Obviously you're going to be able to tell if you roll a 1 and your GM says nope, you believe him.
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That's built into the Bluff rules.Because what they're saying is inherently implausible?A PC makes a Sense Motive check vs an NPC and fails it, now what?
In the past I've required that the character behave as if he believed that NPC, but lately I'm wondering if that's too heavy-handed. I'm thinking of dropping that down to simply sensing no deception.
My problem is that I feel like this leads to metagaming. If you sense no deception from someone, why wouldn't you believe them? How do you fine GMs handle this situation?
No. What's built into the Bluff rules is that you are more likely to suspect deception. Not that you're less likely to believe.
Lewis put it well: liar, lunatic, or Lord? If someone tells you their breakfast was a doughnut, you're likely to believe them. If someone tells you that THEY are a doughnut, you are likely to think they're lying.
But if you decide that they're totally sincere, which is what Sense Motive will tell you, then you will not change your mind about them being a doughnut. You'll just think they're crazy. In this case, literally.
There are three choices. He's lying, he's telling the truth, or he's misinformed. Sense Motive can only rule out the first choice.
Sense Motive is best rolled by the GM to prevent metagaming. There are already built in modifiers for how believable or unbelievable something is. Furthermore, for particularly good role playing you can even apply another bonus to the roll, a +4 maybe. For a particularly poor attempt then you might apply a negative -4. The modifiers are built in. I view sense motive and bluff as must happen effects. You can't choose not to believe if you fail the sense motive, otherwise what would be the point of the bluff skill at all. "Well guys, I rolled a 1 here, and even though I failed at knowing he's lying, I'm pretty sure he's lying". You can know that as the player, but your character shouldn't be played in that way.
Roll dice for the PCs behind a screen.
You can't choose not to believe if you fail the sense motive, otherwise what would be the point of the bluff skill at all. "Well guys, I rolled a 1 here, and even though I failed at knowing he's lying, I'm pretty sure he's lying". You can know that as the player, but your character shouldn't be played in that way.
The problem there is in the open die roll, I think.
I find it difficult to believe that someone thinks that they can ALWAYS tell that someone's lying, or even that people ALWAYS know the truth about what they're talking about. I find it especially difficult to believe that someone who specifically knows a lot about people and how to read them would think this way.
Think of it this way : take a low-level rogue, specialized in deception. He'd have to know that there are people out there who are even better liars than he is. So if someone says something to him, he's not going to take it at face value. Which is more likely, that the person in front of him is a 10th level rogue, or that the person in front of him really IS a talking doughnut?
Think of it this way : take a low-level rogue, specialized in deception. He'd have to know that there are people out there who are even better liars than he is. So if someone says something to him, he's not going to take it at face value. Which is more likely, that the person in front of him is a 10th level rogue, or that the person in front of him really IS a talking doughnut?
A low level rogue specialized in decpetion will have a high bluff score. A very wary rogue would have a high sense motive score. They are different, and that is what you're describing. If a character is built with high bluff but no sense motive, then he is great a lying to someone, but doesn't know when he's being lied to. He may not take things at face value, but when someone is actively bluffing him and their bluff is higher than his sense motive, he believes them. He believes the high level rogue that say he's a talking donut (even after the rogue's bluff took a -20 penalty) because "He's seen magic turn someone into a dragon, a giant, and many other things in the world. Why not a doughnut?" He also doesn't have any ranks in knowledge Arcana or Spellcraft.
@Claxon: That's more or less exactly my point. You're not giving the rogue in question credit for any amount of self-awareness.
First, I'd describe a low-level rogue specialized in deception as having a moderate bluff score, not a high one. But I agree that she is likely to be much better at telling lies than she is at detecting them.
I also think she'd know this.
I also think she'd know that there are people -- high level rogues, for example -- who are much better at telling lies than she is.
That's not metagaming, that's simple self-awareness. Just as a second level fighter knows that she's not the most vicious thing on the material plane (or should, if she wants to see third level), so does the low-level rogue know that she's not the best confidence trickster in the world. And so she has to be aware of the possibility that the person she's talking to is the best confidence trickster.
Not knowing that you're being lied to isn't the same as believing what you're told. There are a lot of reasons that people will tell you things you shouldn't believe, including being mistaken, being confused, being someone else's dupe, or simply being a really, really, good liar.
The idea that a professional liar wouldn't be aware that there are other liars in the world, some of them quite good, strikes me as ludicrous.
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I made a reply earlier, but something happened to the Paizo website as I tried to submit it. I'm going to sum it up in a more brusque manner than I did earlier.
"Self-awareness" is combined in to the sense motive skill and the wisdom ability (which is added to it). Regardless of whether or not the rogue knows someone lies better than him doesn't change the way the skill is stated to work.
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true.It's right there, you believe it to be true. Period. You don't get any additional "Well I disbelieve because..."...NO. Otherwise bluff never works because you just choose never to believe anyone other than your most trusted confidant. Of course the skill does still say,
Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
So some things might be genuinely impossible subject to the GM's discretion. But with the amount of magic that exists in the Golarion universe, convincing someone that you're an giant animated doughnut should be doable with a sufficient bluff and disguise check.
Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).So some things might be genuinely impossible subject to the GM's discretion. But with the amount of magic that exists in the Golarion universe, convincing someone that you're an giant animated doughnut should be doable with a sufficient bluff and disguise check.
Of course my opinion on what's impossible and what someone else does might be wildly different. I would have a lot of trouble believing your a giant animated doughtnut, unless of course this fantasy had some sort of candy land. Though I suspect candy land wouldn't last long if the right creature had a sweet tooth. DM's discretion.
Of course my opinion on what's impossible and what someone else does might be wildly different. I would have a lot of trouble believing your a giant animated doughtnut, unless of course this fantasy had some sort of candy land. Though I suspect candy land wouldn't last long if the right creature had a sweet tooth. DM's discretion.
Indeed, your DM's opinion will vary. However, in a world were you can literally turn into a dragon, a giant, an animal, any humanoid, an elemental, a plant, and can transform a pebble into a human, and a human into a marionette I think it's pretty darn reasonable to convince someone you can turn them into a jelly doughnut.
Please see the following spells: Form of the Dragon, Giant Form, Beast Shape, Elemental Body, Alter Self, Plant Shape, and Polymorph any Object.
None of those are jelly doughnuts. Not every commoner knows people can conceivably turned into those things even. The important question here... Does Golarion have Jelly donuts?
The spell polymorph any object just gives human to marionette as an example, but I don't think that's much farther than human to doughnut. This might not even have to be a lie for a high level wizard. He could just be like, "I'm going to turn you into a doughnut and eat you." Though that would actually just turn into an intimidate check.
I do agree not every commoner knows the extent of how powerful magic is, but I think telling the commoner "because magic" will probably suffice.
Nah. It's only Intimidate if it's a threat.
That's how you can run it. As a DM I don't think that's a very believable lie, though circumstances would vary.
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That's how you can run it. As a DM I don't think that's a very believable lie, though circumstances would vary.
So you're telling me that despite being something that you could actually do with the spell Polymorph Any Object (an 8th level spell that can be obtained at 15th character level) it's not a believable lie?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. I don't think I would believe someone is a jelly donut under most(if any!) circumstances.
For me, the trick with these things, and other checks, is throw them in even when nothing is happening. That way the player is always guessing. I have them make perception and sense motive checks when there is nothing to find and no lie being told. I also have them roll when there are other things besides lying. For example you roll well on a sense motive motive roll on the innkeeper telling you about the mine you're about to explore and sense something is bothering him. When you ask you discover he has just fought with his wife. Is this information critical to your quest? No. But it allows for these rolls in game without arousing metagame suspicions.
Too many times have I seen a DM never use the rolls all game and then you're speaking with someone suspicious and he has you roll a sense motive. The players immediately don't trust them and assume if they roll low the person is hiding something. Same thing goes for random rooms that you suddenly need to roll perception in. Golly, maybe there's something secret in this particular room!
For me, what I tell the player he is sensing depends on the level of his success or failure.
Firstly, I make those rolls. I do not let the player. Letting him roll immediately tips him off as to where the whole situation is headed. Some players cannot help but metagame. It's just their nature. Most of my players are glad to let me roll, because they want the mystery and the challenge. For the one or two who had a hard time giving up the roll, I made compromises to let them get involved in other areas to make up for it.
If the result is a major failure or a major success, I tell the player what his character is sensing and that he is as close to positive he is right as is possible. (Because, remember, even if he is totally off base, a major failure means he THINKS he is totally right.)
If the result is a minor failure or minor success, I tell the player what his character is sensing, and that he is either pretty sure, or somewhat unsure about what he is hearing.
If the result is right at the target number, I just play it casual in the positive.
I never tell a player that his character is 100% certain about anything.
A PC makes a Sense Motive check vs an NPC and fails it, now what?
In the past I've required that the character behave as if he believed that NPC, but lately I'm wondering if that's too heavy-handed. I'm thinking of dropping that down to simply sensing no deception.
My problem is that I feel like this leads to metagaming. If you sense no deception from someone, why wouldn't you believe them? How do you fine GMs handle this situation?
Depends on the conversation. As a dm, I might play up their suspicions, but that they don't know the truth, or the whole truth (how much is a lie? How much is truth?). They also know that their suspicions may be wrong as this person seems legit.
Then let them go from there and make their choices.
I also give out a lot of info with really good sense motive checks. Body language, tone, the meaning behind meanings. The major meaning, the hidden intent and position. So if they don't get it, the players aren't eager to be stuck in the mud.
Hmm, now that I think of it, for a bluff check, there is usually a major lie, a minor lie, a position and attitude that the pcs' can glean.
So someone may be telling you the truth, but by sensing his motive you realise they are untrustworthy, may turn on you, actually have an allegiance against your interests.
If the player failed the check and assumed what was said was a lie, they would actually be wrong. They hadn't correctly sensed the motive!
So yeah, by Lamashtu I love the potential with bluff and sense motive.
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When our characters talk to any semi-important NPC, somebody asks if they are lying or holding something back. We roll sense motive and if it low the GM usually says "You can't tell"
Now it could be because people aren't lying to use as much as not telling us everything.
But if your are worried about your player metagaming hidden rolls plus and/or asking for random rolls are your best bets
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he reverse of this is what if the GM did it? The Bard with the +23 Bluff check vs the village idiot with the -2 Sense Motive. We're approaching can't fail territory here.
Yet the GM decides "Nope. He doesn't belive you. No reason. Screw your rolls, your bonuses and your stats."
Usually different rules are applied for NPCs using social skills on the PCs than the reverse. This is because it can interfere with a player's control over their character. For example, a person with a +10 diplomacy check has a 50/50 chance of convincing a Cha 10 stranger (indifferent attitude) to give them lengthy or complicated (but not dangerous) aid. That's not a hard modifier for a 5th level character to achieve. If you hit +20 that's an automatic success. Would it be fun for the players if a 5th level bard could walk up to their characters, roll a die, and force them to spend a day setting up his stage? Probably not. Definitely not if it happened frequently. It's like Dominating the PC for a day - bad enough to be charmed or dominated in battle, but at least there are magical defenses against that. There's no good defense against a Diplomacy check.
Bluff and Sense Motive adds a little more distance. It's "you believe X" instead of "you do Y." But in some cases it's not much distance. If a paladin believes that an innocent is in danger they are required to attempt to help that innocent. If the average injured adventurer is handed a potion of poison and is told it's a potion of CLW, they will drink it. While you can put ranks in Sense Motive to protect yourself, doing so can be difficult for classes with only 2-4 skill points per level - especially the fighter who doesn't get it as a class skill and probably doesn't have a great Wis. I think it's better to limit a Sense Motive to "you sense/do not sense deceit" when used by PCs rather than risk social skills turning PCs into puppets. Sense Motive is still useful because you've got a better chance of getting a good "reading" through your PC's lie detector.
That said, I usually assume that my character believes someone unless my GM tells me I think they're lying or unless the PC is biased against a specific individual. For example, if they've been conned before by a particular individual they might assume that anything that person says is a lie no matter how convincing it sounds, leading to the opposite error.
Have you had a problem with Sense Motive in your game?
A PC makes a Sense Motive check vs an NPC and fails it, now what?
You tell them that the NPC doesn't appear to be lying. That's it.
In the past I've required that the character behave as if he believed that NPC, but lately I'm wondering if that's too heavy-handed. I'm thinking of dropping that down to simply sensing no deception.
I think it is heavy handed. Sense motive is not detect lie. Sense Motive is Sense Motive. If the PC fails, then they sense the wrong motive. They can still be suspicious if other facts would point to other conclusions. I'm a big fan of monkey-wrenching NPCs if players are metagaming so that even if they were lying at first, I change it to the truth. Not always possible, but the egg on their face is worth the effort.
My problem is that I feel like this leads to metagaming. If you sense no deception from someone, why wouldn't you believe them? How do you fine GMs handle this situation?
It's all circumstantial. I'm curious who asked for the sense motive check, you or the player? If it's the player, then a fail just means "no result". It's like asking for a perception check to hear non-existant enemies. A failure means no result.
If it's you, well, why are you asking them to take a sense motive. That screams "DON'T TRUST THIS GUY". If anything, the NPC's bluff should be pre-generated, or just have the NPC "take 10" and make that the DC and put that against the players "taking zero". If Allanon the Druid happens to have a great sense motive, enough to beat the NPC's bluff without dice, then maybe you drop him a hint.
A character can be paranoid, that's legit, especially if other facts corroborate this hunch (Why do I believe a goblin who I know hates elves. I'm an elf, he hates me, he must be lying about the dragon's weakspot). Hopefully the rest of the group reigns them in, describing them as paranoid (I'm a half-orc, goblins like me, why would this cute little guy lie? That dragon is toast).
If, however, the PC habitually breaks character because their sense motive check's keep failing, start feeding them a steady diet of Red Herring, and suddenly they'll begin to doubt the power of failing as a means of detecting lies. Or even passing: Characters can be lying or coercing players to do things, but those reasons aren't always to the detriment of the characters. Perhaps someone is lying in an attempt to convince them to get to safety, or for a greater good.
Maybe they could have had a longsword +3, but the dragon melted it because noone smashed the chalice the goblin told them to smash because the elf was paranoid.
Maybe the smashing of the chalice made the dragon super easy to kill, but it also released a terrible spirit that was harder to kill than the dragon WITH the chalice's protection and the goblin didn't want that thing loose, but also didn't want any outsiders to find out about the spirit, lest it's power attract other baddies, worse than the dragon in the under-mountain, who mostly just sleeps and eats adventurers. Maybe the goblin would have given the adventurers aid in exchange for the chalice, but now leaves them to die at the hands of the chalice ghost?
Little traps like this can make for fun roleplaying hooks and can beat the metagamer out of players without punishing them too much and without forcing the dice to dictate roleplaying choices.
Alternatively, tell them the truth on a fail, that'll really mess with them, just tell them different motives for the lie. (The goblin seems to be lying in order to get you to smash the chalice)
When our characters talk to any semi-important NPC, somebody asks if they are lying or holding something back. We roll sense motive and if it low the GM usually says "You can't tell"
Now it could be because people aren't lying to use as much as not telling us everything.
But if your are worried about your player metagaming hidden rolls plus and/or asking for random rolls are your best bets
My problem is I never like to take rolls away from the players, as I've been in a game where a dm did that--he wanted to do most of our rolls.
Vorpal Laugh is a great name by the way.
Wait, why would you allow the NPC to Take 10 on their Bluff but not allow the PC to Take 10 on their Sense Motive.
That would mean that even a mediocre liar would be able to deceive even an accomplished lie detector with no effort.
Using Take 10 is a good way t do it, but do it on both sides is what I'm saying. 10+Opponent's Bluff is almost always going to be higher than the player's 0+Sense Motive.
Wait, why would you allow the NPC to Take 10 on their Bluff but not allow the PC to Take 10 on their Sense Motive.
That would mean that even a mediocre liar would be able to deceive even an accomplished lie detector with no effort.
Using Take 10 is a good way t do it, but do it on both sides is what I'm saying. 10+Opponent's Bluff is almost always going to be higher than the player's 0+Sense Motive.
Actually, I think there's a rule about not being able to take ten on an opposed skill check. Not 100% sure about that, though.
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These skills are really not so much for PCs as they are for NPCs.
You want to lie to an NPC to get him to do something on bad information that he wouldn't do if he had correct information? Fine, let's roll your Bluff and his Sense Motive and see if you have convinced him. As a DM I like this. It saves me from having to mentally divide what I know from what the NPC knows and then reason out what he is likely to believe or disbelieve and what he'll do about it - it simplifies all that into a quick roll.
It also creates a mechanic whereby a clever PC is capable of doing things that a not-so-clever player might not be good at (or the other way around when a clever player comes up with a great deception but has to use his dim-witted overly-honest paladin to carry it out - comedy gold).
But it doesn't work the other way around. The NPC cannot make the PCs do something that the player doesn't want to do. Period. It's not a poor-man's Charm Person after all. So the NPC gives bad information and the players (not the PCs) decide whether they believe it. If they want, they can try a Sense Motive check. Success will tell them that the NPC seems deceptive (but it doesn't auto-reveal the truth, and doesn't even necessarily reveal which part of the story is a lie) so they know the NPC has ulterior motives and isn't being truthful, but it's still up to the players to decide what to do with that revelation.
It's never the case of:
DM: Well, the NPC told you that's not a cliff so you walk off and fall to your death.
Player: I can see the cliff. How could my character be so stupid to think it's not a cliff?
DM: Your character failed his Sense Motive so he thinks it's not a cliff. You're dead.
(yes, that's over-the-top drastic, but the same idea applies all the way down to the simplest, tiniest, most harmless bluff)
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When our characters talk to any semi-important NPC, somebody asks if they are lying or holding something back. We roll sense motive and if it low the GM usually says "You can't tell"
Now it could be because people aren't lying to use as much as not telling us everything.
But if your are worried about your player metagaming hidden rolls plus and/or asking for random rolls are your best bets
I'm not worried about metagaming hidden rolls, I'm worried about PC ignoring the roll results completely. I don't want my players assuming someone is lying even after I tell them they see no signs of deception.
Actually, I think there's a rule about not being able to take ten on an opposed skill check. Not 100% sure about that, though.
I don't think there's such a rule. I've seen several instances, for example, where bored guards and other ordinary folk are assumed to be "taking 10" on their Perception checks to look for something suspicious, with the implication being that if you can get a +11 bonus to your Disguise skill you can wander around all day without being noticed until/unless you draw their attention to you by something you do.
Remember that the take 10 rules are there to provide an official way to cut down on the number of die rolls you happen to make. Otherwise if my character decided to disguise himself and walk through the marketplace, the GM would have to make 200+ rolls for every member of the crowd every time I turned a corner.
As an oft-practicing GM, "bugger that for a game of soldiers," says I. Give me a reason not to have to roll dice by the armload.
I'm not worried about metagaming hidden rolls, I'm worried about PC ignoring the roll results completely. I don't want my players assuming someone is lying even after I tell them they see no signs of deception.
But, as I've pointed out, you don't need to see "signs of deception" to assume someone's lying. If I tell you I'm a doughnut, the mere fact that I'm self-evidently not a doughnut should be a pretty big hint....
You can believe that the speaker believes that what he is telling you is the truth without believing what he is telling you.
Example: Person tells you that he's just seen something implausible <let's say a UFO>. You ask for a sense motive roll (implying a hidden bluff roll by the GM).
The person telling the story may have not seen anything and is bluffing.
OR
The person telling the story may BELIEVE that they saw a UFO, but really saw something else.
OR
The person telling the story actually saw a UFO.
If you failed your sense motive, it could be any of the three. If you made your sense motive, it might be the second OR the third. Blowing the sense motive roll does not mean your character now believes in UFOs.
TL/DR: If you make your sense motive, you do not neccessarily believe the speaker, but you do believe that THEY believe what they are telling you.
