One approach I have not seen discussed is the idea of ignoring the person who is trying to bluff you. Just as you can close your eyes to avoid a nasty gaze effect, you should be able to ignore the known liar who is spouting nonsense at you. Since you need to be actively listening to somebody to be convinced by what they are saying, couldn't you avoid the need for a Sense Motive check by ignoring them? The downside is that you have no real idea what they were talking about, but if you have already decided that what they are saying doesn't matter, what does that matter?
This is a rules question in the rules question forum.
So here is the rules:
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true.
If his Bluff beat your sense motive you belive him. If he says it's night you'll believe in that while staring at the sun. If he says he is god you'll bow down and worship, because you believe that. That is RAW.
Anything about he being a known liar or believing that he believes it and may be crazy or not rolling bluff because the player can't make a convincing pitch despite the rules saying his character can, are house rules and have no use in this kind of thread.
I think of it as this way: If you search for traps and don't find any, you're still allowed to suspect there are traps. Similarly, rolling Sense Motive and failing still allows you to suspect the person is lying.
Admittedly, our group tends to use Sense Motive actively. We declare that we're using the skill, instead of waiting passively for our GM to tell us to make a roll. Our GM also tends to give more information than 'you have a hunch.' It's more like 'you note he seems to avoid referring to his employer by name,' or 'he's hoping you'll go away.' It's Sense MOTIVE, not Detect Lie.
Sense motive may give you awareness of visual cues and evasive language to catch a bluff, but your character is still allowed to be untrusting of people.
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Just a couple thoughts on this:
As my group is pretty easy going and all of us generally enjoy humor at each others expense this sort of shenanigans comes up frequently at our table.
As GM's (a couple of us take turns and we discuss this sort of thing after games frequently) we have generally come up with the following response.
Knowledge skills and/or intelligence checks can mitigate this sort of flagrant bluffery in the following way:
Knowledge Planes will help you recognize the tiefling for being a teifling, in which case you're free to assume he believes he's an elf. and therefore from his perspective telling the truth.
Knowledge Nature will help you with identifying the "skin condition" which depending on your wisdom might lead you to conclude its an unknown malady, or that the teifling is not being entirely truthful which can provide positive bonuses to your sense motive sense motive relative to how successful your knowledge check was with regard to recognizing an illness this might be as little as a +2 to as much as a +10 circumstance bonus.
A Heal skill check might provide some insight as well, although to a lesser extent. These are our house rulings, but it never hurts to suggest them to the GM.
However if you're character has low sense motive, and no knowledge skills/low int and wisdom, well there is a price to be paid for dump stating...
Okay, maybe the example I gave was more distracting than clarifying. To rephrase my question more explicitly, are characters railroaded into believing everything said to them at face value if they fail a given Sense Motive check?
It seems to me that a character who is bad at sense motive would be aware that they are bad at it, much in the same way that someone with low Knowledge (planes) knows that they know little about the workings of the outer planes and their denizens. Do low SM characters automatically believe that what is said to them is true all the time, or do they merely gain no additional information from the GM about the motivations of those they speak with?
The latter interpretation seems more sensible to me.
This is in fact counter-intuitive to the way things work. People with a minimal amount of knowledge in a field often consider themselves far more adept at that knowledge than people who are genuinely trained and skilled at what they do. It is in part the origin of the phrase "A little knowledge can be dangerous" and the concept of how Plato describes the wise man as "the one who knows he knows nothing."
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This is in fact counter-intuitive to the way things work. People with a minimal amount of knowledge in a field often consider themselves far more adept at that knowledge than people who are genuinely trained and skilled at what they do. It is in part the origin of the phrase "A little knowledge can be dangerous" and the concept of how Plato describes the wise man as "the one who knows he knows nothing."Okay, maybe the example I gave was more distracting than clarifying. To rephrase my question more explicitly, are characters railroaded into believing everything said to them at face value if they fail a given Sense Motive check?
It seems to me that a character who is bad at sense motive would be aware that they are bad at it, much in the same way that someone with low Knowledge (planes) knows that they know little about the workings of the outer planes and their denizens. Do low SM characters automatically believe that what is said to them is true all the time, or do they merely gain no additional information from the GM about the motivations of those they speak with?
The latter interpretation seems more sensible to me.
But seriously, I draw the line at bluff abuse. I had a PC cast glibness and walk into a demon fortress IN HELL and declare that he was their new boss. -40 on the bluff check and he still made it. Entire encounter was almost ruined (luckily he didn't have the rumormonger ability. He picked it up later). He tried to basically use it to get out of every encounter with a sentient creature, including tricking a dragon out of his hoard.
That is an awesome thing to do. Why would you be against a player being imaginative and resourceful?
With that kind of Bluff check the player should be able to do stuff like Loki, who made a bunch of giants believe a 7 foot tall bearded male barbarian in an ill fitting dress was the goddess of beauty, Anansi, who convinced one of his enemies to stand still while he tied him to a pole because he wanted to measure how big he was, and Hermes, who convinced his brother to trade an awesome magic item for a musical instrument he cobbled together from garbage he found around the beach.|
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But seriously, I draw the line at bluff abuse. I had a PC cast glibness and walk into a demon fortress IN HELL and declare that he was their new boss. -40 on the bluff check and he still made it. Entire encounter was almost ruined (luckily he didn't have the rumormonger ability. He picked it up later). He tried to basically use it to get out of every encounter with a sentient creature, including tricking a dragon out of his hoard.That is an awesome thing to do. Why would you be against a player being imaginative and resourceful?
With that kind of Bluff check the player should be able to do stuff like Loki, who made a bunch of giants believe a 7 foot tall bearded male barbarian in an ill fitting dress was the goddess of beauty, Anansi, who convinced one of his enemies to stand still while he tied him to a pole because he wanted to measure how big he was, and Hermes, who convinced his brother to trade an awesome magic item for a musical instrument he cobbled together from garbage he found around the beach.
Just because the player succeeds at first doesn't mean his actions wont have dire consequences when his victims later discover the lie. As a DM it's your job to roll with the punches, absorb your players actions into your story and redirect their attention to the plot at hand. Sometimes this means that they gain a momentary boost in power only to find out later that a dragon has been razing the country side in their wake to recover every single misspent copper piece of their horde so be it. And just because the potion of glibness worked once doesn't mean it will work again, in the next encounter with the dragon have his opening move be Disjunction targeted on the hapless liar. It really bites going into a dragon fight without any magic (pun intended).
Compare it to any other opposed roll such as stealth vs perception:
DM: "Roll perception"
Player: "14. What do I see?"
DM: "Nothing...but then you're sneak attacked."
Player: "Nope. Even though they beat my opposed roll, I'm choosing to ignore the skill and result because my character is always alert..."Not sure why people want to ignore the very clearly written skill; a character's actions are dictated by dice rolls all the time:
characters get hit (and killed) even when their players would rather not get hit; failing a save versus Hold Person means they can't act at all, even when they want their character to; you can't track someone when you fail your Survival check, even when the player wants to track that person; etc.
But that effect is based on something that you failed to perceive -- so refusing to even attempt the check would not help you.
However, if you told the DM that you were turning your back on a door that an ally was about to open and there was a medusa on the other side, would it be fair for the GM to have you attempt a saving throw to avoid petrification? But anything he wants to impose based on you not seeing what is in that room would be perfectly fair.
The refusal to listen to a supposed ally that you know to be full of it would be more in that category. You do not believe what he said because you refused to listen to him -- but you also have no real idea what he was talking about, for the exact same reason.
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There is no roll you can make that ensures that someone will believe a thing which you also believe to be true.
Forgive me for citing without context, but isn't that what diplomacy is for?
Personally I think when Paizo condensed the skills list they should have combined bluff under the diplomacy umbrella. Most diplomats are exceptionally skilled prevaricators.
This is a rules question in the rules question forum.
So here is the rules:
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true.If his Bluff beat your sense motive you belive him. If he says it's night you'll believe in that while staring at the sun. If he says he is god you'll bow down and worship, because you believe that. That is RAW.
Anything about he being a known liar or believing that he believes it and may be crazy or not rolling bluff because the player can't make a convincing pitch despite the rules saying his character can, are house rules and have no use in this kind of thread.
You believe that he believes what he is saying. Insisting that you MUST believe impossible things because someone rolls a 20 is ridiculous, on par with insisting that dead characters can take actions because it doesn't say that they can't.
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Insisting that you MUST believe impossible things because someone rolls a 20 is ridiculous, on par with insisting that dead characters can take actions because it doesn't say that they can't.
While this statement is quite possibly true, the rules disagree with your premise.
I bluff, Your sense motive fails to meet or exceed my bluff check, there fore you believe what ever untruth i have just fed you regardless of how utterly ridiculous the claim may be. This is why the bluff skill has modifiers associated with it based on how believable the claim.
If I tell a halfling that his parents adopted him and he was really a mutant pygmy space giant with a dysfunctional growth hormone gland, and that his alien parents are coming to pick him up and take him to his home planet, he will believe me as long as I still exceed his roll with mine.
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Insisting that you MUST believe impossible things because someone rolls a 20 is ridiculous, on par with insisting that dead characters can take actions because it doesn't say that they can't.While this statement is quite possibly true, the rules disagree with your premise.
That is completely not true
Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true
Something that you know for a certainty to be false would fall under "impossible to convince anyone that they are true."
Bluffer: I rolled a 53 so now you think it's night time.
Other: Nope, I'm outside and it's high noon, it's definitely not night time.
Your example is even more ridiculous. Of course this is up to the GM, but any GM not wanting to just screw with players should realize that these would simply be too far fetched to believe.
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Ah...
*looks sheepish* The difference between impossible and improbable sometimes requires splitting an exceedingly fine hair.
For your example it would depend upon the bluff that triggered the roll of 53.
For example, if someone were to say:
We were attacked by a band of powerful Drow wizards who trapped you in a temporal bubble. While you were trapped they cast a spell to make day into night and night into day. Even though the sun is shining above your head, its actually supposed to be midnight right now! We've driven off the wizards for now, but you need to help us figure out how to reset the time cycle to its original state...
Then you darn well better beat that 53(modified accordingly), because while incredibly implausible it is not impossible.
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Ah...
*looks sheepish* The difference between impossible and improbable sometimes requires splitting an exceedingly fine hair.
For your example it would depend upon the bluff that triggered the roll of 53.
For example, if someone were to say:
We were attacked by a band of powerful Drow wizards who trapped you in a temporal bubble. While you were trapped they cast a spell to make day into night and night into day. Even though the sun is shining above your head, its actually supposed to be midnight right now! We've driven off the wizards for now, but you need to help us figure out how to reset the time cycle to its original state...Then you darn well better beat that 53(modified accordingly), because while incredibly implausible it is not impossible.
Yeah, I would definitely allow that. It would be far-fetched, but with the appropriate negatives that's probably still more than plenty enough to beat someone's sense motive.
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Insisting that you MUST believe impossible things because someone rolls a 20 is ridiculous, on par with insisting that dead characters can take actions because it doesn't say that they can't.While this statement is quite possibly true, the rules disagree with your premise.
I bluff, Your sense motive fails to meet or exceed my bluff check, there fore you believe what ever untruth i have just fed you regardless of how utterly ridiculous the claim may be. This is why the bluff skill has modifiers associated with it based on how believable the claim.
If I tell a halfling that his parents adopted him and he was really a mutant pygmy space giant with a dysfunctional growth hormone gland, and that his alien parents are coming to pick him up and take him to his home planet, he will believe me as long as I still exceed his roll with mine.
I see no one remember this piece of text in the bluff skill
Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
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Emphasis mine:
Not quite, you're the third person to mention it. Though most do seem to ignore it.I see no one remember this piece of text in the bluff skill
Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
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We don't ignore it, we dismiss it with our discretionary power (which is well within the rules). We do this because frankly its more fun that way.
An ordinary understanding of English is assumed in interpreting the rules. Believing someone is being truthful is synonymous with believing they believe what they are saying is true.
Yes, there is the discretionary statement. It's not necessary to conclude that one doesn't automatically believe that black is white upon the rolling of a bluff check.
Though a great many gamers don't play it that way, the rules are quite clear that PCs are just as susceptible to Bluff as they are charm person or dominate person. Does this generate problems sometimes? Yes. Then again, so do a great many other rules in the game.
Does the interaction of Bluff and Sense Motive not make a lick of sense sometimes? Yes. Then again, so do a great many other rules in the game.
That doesn't change how the game defines their usage. Feel free to house rule differently, but RAW is clear that if a conman convinces you that you're a yellow-footed rock wallaby, then that's what your character believes--just as if someone had hit you hard with a mind-affecting spell.
Is it broken? Hell yes. Still doesn't change the way it works.
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Bingo!Sense Motive is necessary for you to KNOW the person is lying.
It's still completely possible that you don't believe them, just with no basis for that decision.
If you properly Bluff, you convey no sign that you are lying, however, so it's very possible others will see you as paranoid, or out to get the other person.
Wrong as previously noted:
Check: Bluff is an opposed skill check against your opponent's Sense Motive skill. If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true.
You believe him, you're convinced what he's saying is true. That's basically the definition of Belief.
Bluff and intimidate work on opponents under RAW. Even if fellow PCs are not opponents, NPCs can be so PCs can be forced to believe something is true or to act friendly or give information or limited assistance to an NPC.
Bluff is an opposed skill check against your opponent's Sense Motive skill. If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true.
. . .
You can use Intimidate to force an opponent to act friendly toward you for 1d6 × 10 minutes with a successful check. The DC of this check is equal to 10 + the target's Hit Dice + the target's Wisdom modifier. If successful, the target gives you the information you desire, takes actions that do not endanger it, or otherwise offers limited assistance.
Diplomacy, however, works only on NPCs under RAW.
You can change the initial attitudes of nonplayer characters with a successful check.
The diplomacy rule is much better for how I prefer the game to run.
Telling PCs what their characters believe and how to roleplay their characters is generally a terrible thing to do IMO.
The unnaturalness of the bluff result to the situation based on nothing more than the die roll and rules as written for a mundane skill attempt at convincing someone of something is incongruous in a way that supernatural mind control magic that accomplishes the same result is not.
Still, under RAW the implications of a successful check still leaves some wiggle room. Believing something is true does not necessarily mean acting in the way the bluffer wants or even acting on that belief.
Diplomacy, however, works only on NPCs under RAW.
You can change the initial attitudes of nonplayer characters with a successful check.
Which has no effect with how Bluff operates.
Telling PCs what their characters believe and how to roleplay their characters is generally a terrible thing to do IMO.
I agree. However, it would be equally bad to have effects like charm person or dominate person to not exist at all. There are too many things in fantasy literature and media that would dictate losing control of your actions for a while to not include such things. It would be like excluding some other staple, like dragons.
Bluff is just another one of those effects.
The unnaturalness of the bluff result to the situation based on nothing more than the die roll and rules as written for a mundane skill attempt at convincing someone of something is incongruous in a way that supernatural mind control magic that accomplishes the same result is not.
Still, under RAW the implications of a successful check still leaves some wiggle room. Believing something is true does not necessarily mean acting in the way the bluffer wants or even acting on that belief.
The Bluff skill does state that the GM can rule some lies so improbable that failure is automatic. That's there to keep that Order of the Stick comic strip from actually occurring in games I imagine.
Well by RAW then the GM is literally the key.
If one player makes a absurd story but possible enough that the GM allows the roll , which means he thinks it is possible AND that a player can even roll against one another , the other player only deffense is sense motive.
If the second player fails , then he believes the sky for some reason just turned purple and that there are demon lords invading in the form of small very helpful and friendly halflings just outside the tavern.
True enough , later on he can go check to be sure about it , but on that moment he will believe the lie and depending on the lie it might be quite hard to find out the truth.
When you replace a player's ability to role play a character by substituting a mechanical die roll effect for the character's thinking capacity, you may as well not be playing a role playing game at all.Then why does the sense motive skill exist, at all?
To give you mechanical extras and to operate against opposed mechanics.
Its a mechanic to oppose being feinted by someone using the bluff skill.
To have the DM give you a hunch if you make a DC 20 sense motive check. (you can still come up with your own hunches on your own without the skill).
To have the DM tell you that your character notices someone's behaviour is influenced by magic.
To notice secret messages being passed by the bluff skill.
Robert,
It really depends on your group, if your players are pretty easy going, they roll with the punch, and everyone has fun. If on the other hand, your players are the type to flip the chessboard when you capture their queen, then probably you should make new friends anyway...
Nah , some people just prefer to play in a coop manner and while they understand that the GM is there to put things to mess with them , they get really annoyed when their party starts doing it.
This happens sometimes when i play with my friends :P , we actually broke games where we had one objective, but ended up killing one another out of irritation and vengence because one did that and this and eventually it escalated lols. (more often than not my PC is a follower of the goddess of vengence herself ... thus you can imagine lols)
By the end the party all died because we fooled each other into traps and such lols.
When you replace a player's ability to role play a character by substituting a mechanical die roll effect for the character's thinking capacity, you may as well not be playing a role playing game at all.Then why does the sense motive skill exist, at all?To give you mechanical extras and to operate against opposed mechanics.
Its a mechanic to oppose being feinted by someone using the bluff skill.
To have the DM give you a hunch if you make a DC 20 sense motive check. (you can still come up with your own hunches on your own without the skill).
To have the DM tell you that your character notices someone's behaviour is influenced by magic.
To notice secret messages being passed by the bluff skill.
The Sense Motive bonus represents how your character is "hard to fool", and is unrelated by the player's own capability to see through lies, as the character is a role to be played with the character's knowledge and mental traits, otherwise it's metagaming.
If I'm not charming for various reasons, should I refrain from playing cha-based classes as the convincing power due to my playing of some arguments is subotimal while the character should be actually proficient?
Otherwise if a character is lying to one other for wathever reason, he would not believe the other because the player knows it is a lie? I'ts an arbitrary antagonism that is endless unless you resolve the thing by chance, i.e. by rolling a dice. But you have to count in this chance how Charater A is good at telling lies and how much gullible is Character B, and this is exactly Bluff vs Sense Motive
Who the Character is is not who the Player is
One must wonder: How does one convince someone of the truth of a thing?(When you are, in fact, telling the truth.)
"The white rabbit slew twelve of my best men, and your dear King Robert along with them" said the wounded soldier to the shocked tavern onlookers. "Now, who will venture with me to avenge ourselves upon the beast?"
One must wonder: How does one convince someone of the truth of a thing?(When you are, in fact, telling the truth.)
"The white rabbit slew twelve of my best men, and your dear King Robert along with them" said the wounded soldier to the shocked tavern onlookers. "Now, who will venture with me to avenge ourselves upon the beast?"
According to the uses of the skill:
Hunch: This use of the skill involves making a gut assessment of the social situation. You can get the feeling from another's behavior that something is wrong, such as when you're talking to an impostor. Alternatively, you can get the feeling that someone is trustworthy.
A SM check with a fixed DC of 20
One must wonder: How does one convince someone of the truth of a thing?(When you are, in fact, telling the truth.)
"The white rabbit slew twelve of my best men, and your dear King Robert along with them" said the wounded soldier to the shocked tavern onlookers. "Now, who will venture with me to avenge ourselves upon the beast?"
Probably Diplomacy? The social skills aren't always good fits for everything we want to do, though. A lot of GM discretion is probably quite necessary.
The social skills aren't always good fits for everything we want to do, though.
And thus my point is made.
The social skills aren't always good fits for everything we want to do, though.And thus my point is made.
B-but I did answer to you :c
B-but I did answer to you :cThe social skills aren't always good fits for everything we want to do, though.And thus my point is made.
Actually that is not something the person telling the truth did.
That is something the people listening roll to get an idea if what is being said is truth.
He didnt convince anything , the others that convinced themselves :p.
B-but I did answer to you :cThe social skills aren't always good fits for everything we want to do, though.And thus my point is made.Actually that is not something the person telling the truth did.
That is something the people listening roll to get an idea if what is being said is truth.
He didnt convince anything , the others that convinced themselves :p.
:c
Usually the DM made me roll a Diplomacy check if I wanted to covince someone of something true.
That is appropriate, as the Diplomacy check is used to bring people to do your bidding by convincing them by argument rather than deception.
Changing the attitude of others is also making them trust you
Rule zero: the DM is the final arbiter.
The bluff skill specifies:
Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
The accompanying table gives die roll modifiers from +10 to -20 depending on how plausible the situation is, and the above texts suggests that in some cases no phenomenal bluff check result is sufficient, if the lie is improbable or impossible enough.
If you're going up against hostile creatures, you might also need to do something to get them to listen to you in the first place. Using bluff to fool the dragon out of his hoard presupposes that he didn't just torch you on sight.
We also have the sense motive skill allowing for a flat DC20 roll to "sense something is wrong". Offhand, I'd say there are a number of mechanisms already in place to help prevent bluffing from getting out of hand, as long as the DM remembers to exercise his authority to judge the relative probability of a situation each time.
What's all the hubub, bub?
There are three kinds of lies: there are lies, damned lies, and... statistics.