Sense Motive - reactive ?

[meatshieldxx1]

Just a quick question here. Is sense motive reactive? What I mean is, perception allows you an immediate free check when you walk into the room to see if you notice the hiding rogue in the corner.

Does sense motive work the same way? That is when someone is lying to you do you automatically get a free check or do you only "sense their motive" if you actively tell the DM "DM - I want to do a sense motive check" ?

To be clear here, the sense motive I'm concerned here is when you are having a conversation with you and they are lying to you (I'm not concerned with the other uses of sense motive for this post).

Thank you!

[Ascalaphus]

Yeah, when it's opposed to Bluff it's a reactive check. No action required.

As a GM this is often tricky. If you have to ask players to make a Sense Motive check, the players will know that something is up, so you run into metagaming issues.

A possible solution is to have players make some Sense Motive checks in advance and keep a list of them. Then when your NPC tries to Bluff them, roll the bluff behind your screen and compare it to the written roll (and cross it off). If you're worried the roll behind your screen might alert the players, have your NPC Take 10 on it instead.