Pointed Question:
"You ask a question that charms or needles someone in just the right way. Ask a question of a non-allied creature that you can see. Attempt a Diplomacy check against the creature’s Will DC. The creature is then temporarily immune for 1 hour.
Critical Success The target must directly answer your question. It doesn't have to answer truthfully, but you gain a +4 circumstance bonus to your Perception DC if the creature attempts to Lie to you. Whether it answers truthfully or not, you glean something from its body language, and it is off-guard to the Strike you make using Devise a Stratagem against it before the end of your turn.
Success As critical success, but the circumstance bonus to your Perception DC is +2.
Failure The target can refuse to answer you as normal.
Critical Failure The target can refuse to answer you as normal, and its attitude toward you decreases by one step due to your aggravating attention."
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I am not entirely clear whether the creature becomes off-guard both on Critical Success and Success, or only on Critical Success.
I am also not clear whether the creature becomes off-guard only if you besides succeeding on the Diplomacy check also succeed on the Perception check to determine whether it is lying or not.
The rule says, "Whether it answers truthfully or not, you glean something from its body language...", but I am not sure whether that means that you get that bonus even if you fail in determining whether it is lying or not.
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It becomes Offguard on both Critical-Success and Success, Whenever an outcome says that it has the same effects as another outcome that means in full with any modifications mentioned within. As the circumstance bonus being +2 instead.
The bonus is also to Perception DC as you are not the one rolling the secondary check in this scenario you gain offguard regardless of any Lie to you.
Summary,
Offguard on both Success and Critical Success.
Offguard regardless if the creature truthfully answers, successfully lies, or fails to lie to you when answering your question.
(Otherwise you would've known the creature was lying if you failed to detect the lie)
NorrKnekten wrote: It becomes Offguard on both Critical-Success and Success, Whenever an outcome says that it has the same effects as another outcome that means in full with any modifications mentioned within. As the circumstance bonus being +2 instead.
The bonus is also to Perception DC as you are not the one rolling the secondary check in this scenario you gain offguard regardless of any Lie to you.
Summary,
Offguard on both Success and Critical Success.
Offguard regardless if the creature truthfully answers, successfully lies, or fails to lie to you when answering your question.
(Otherwise you would've known the creature was lying if you failed to detect the lie)
Thanks, NorrKnekten, that clears everything up!
Agreed on "As critical success or any other degree of success but..." means a complete copy/paste and then modify.
Quote: Whether it answers truthfully or not, you glean something from its body language, and it is off-guard to the Strike you make using Devise a Stratagem against it before the end of your turn. Well, if it does answer truthfully, then you don't even need to try to detect if it is lying. The rule doesn't try to tie the off-guard benefit to your success at detecting a lie that they might or might not try to tell. It instead explicitly disconnects the off-guard benefit from the enemy's choice of trying to lie or not.
The way I would run it is that if your Investigator succeeds (or better) at the Diplomacy check, then they get the off-guard benefit.
At the end of the day, if the mook doesn't even know the answer to the question, off-guard is the only benefit that the Investigator will get for their success.
Thanks, Finoan! It's good that I get at least something out of what seems to be the weakest Investigator subclass or methodology :)
Here I thought the question was going to be "what does directly answer" mean.
Cause that's a part that trips up both players and GMs.
As a GM, it is completely valid for a character to say "I don't know" regardless of whether or not it is a lie as that is a direct answer whereas something like "Screw you!" is not.
I bring this up simply because some players like to imagine this ability as absolutely providing the answer to whatever question they'd like to ask when GMs would prefer to feed information in drips and drabs as a sort of investigation.
Also responding "I'll never tell you!" or "I don't want to tell you" is also a direct answer which is truthful.
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Claxon wrote: Also responding "I'll never tell you!" or "I don't want to tell you" is also a direct answer which is truthful. It is direct and arguably truthful (never say never).
But it doesn't answer the question. These responses dodge the question and do not give any information. That violates the rule of the ability.
An answer of "I don't know" does (if truthful) give information. It informs the Investigator that this targeted mook is just an uninformed mook. Not someone who has information on the main villain.
Claxon wrote: I bring this up simply because some players like to imagine this ability as absolutely providing the answer to whatever question they'd like to ask when GMs would prefer to feed information in drips and drabs as a sort of investigation. Well, yeah. Because that is what the ability says that it does.
Quote: Ask a question of a non-allied creature that you can see and have been conversing with.
The target must directly answer your question.
If you want to run an investigation campaign and want to only feed information to the characters in drips and drabs, then ban the Investigator class from the campaign.
Don't allow Investigator and Pointed Question, let the player spend the action and make the roll, then no matter what the dice show give them the result of failure on the check. That isn't playing the game in good faith.
Refusal to answer the question is not a direct answer to the question, Question dodging or Declining to answer is very much the essense of a non-direct answer regardless of how truthful it is.
But I agree that a response about not having that information is a direct answer.
I guess we have a difference of opinion then, as to what constitutes a direct answer.
Which goes back to the exact issue I was trying to highlight.
As a GM, I'd rather not ban a class, but I'll make a note in the future to let any potentially player know that how I interpret the ability.
Regardless we at least agree saying "I don't know" is a direct answer (and it doesn't matter whether that is truthful or not).
And thus arises the problem with this ability beyond simply making GM's life difficult, is that a character can say I don't know (whether true or false) and satisfy the abilities requirement, but that will get boring and annoying to say as a GM.
Now, as a GM I wouldn't do it all the time, be there are definitely situations where I don't want to give away information that easily. But if you limit the GM's ability to respond by only saying "I don't know" to satisfy the ability, I think it's harmful to the story and game.
And I think that any NPC that is hostile to the PCs is absolutely going to be as evasive as they can. Ultimately, I think it's a bad ability to have written.
Claxon wrote: I guess we have a difference of opinion then, as to what constitutes a direct answer.
Which goes back to the exact issue I was trying to highlight.
As a GM, I'd rather not ban a class, but I'll make a note in the future to let any potentially player know that how I interpret the ability.
Regardless we at least agree saying "I don't know" is a direct answer (and it doesn't matter whether that is truthful or not).
And thus arises the problem with this ability beyond simply making GM's life difficult, is that a character can say I don't know (whether true or false) and satisfy the abilities requirement, but that will get boring and annoying to say as a GM.
Now, as a GM I wouldn't do it all the time, be there are definitely situations where I don't want to give away information that easily. But if you limit the GM's ability to respond by only saying "I don't know" to satisfy the ability, I think it's harmful to the story and game.
And I think that any NPC that is hostile to the PCs is absolutely going to be as evasive as they can. Ultimately, I think it's a bad ability to have written.
Thats the whole crux of a pointed question and the design intent behind the investigator, Especially one specializing in interrogation, Any reasonable answer to a pointed question is going to yield information if formulated well enough. Its a means to fish for more information just a simple query.
You arent wrong that it is a badly written ability but its not because it allows players to gain a massive wealth of information,The answer can be as long or short as you want as long as it is touching the subject of the question.
They can still be evasive trough lies and deception, If the party is looking for a name of an accomplice the target can give the wrong name, And the investigator has no way of figuring out the actual name. Even if they figure out that it was a lie outside of effects that force the truth out of them.
NorrKnekten wrote: Claxon wrote: I guess we have a difference of opinion then, as to what constitutes a direct answer.
Which goes back to the exact issue I was trying to highlight.
As a GM, I'd rather not ban a class, but I'll make a note in the future to let any potentially player know that how I interpret the ability.
Regardless we at least agree saying "I don't know" is a direct answer (and it doesn't matter whether that is truthful or not).
And thus arises the problem with this ability beyond simply making GM's life difficult, is that a character can say I don't know (whether true or false) and satisfy the abilities requirement, but that will get boring and annoying to say as a GM.
Now, as a GM I wouldn't do it all the time, be there are definitely situations where I don't want to give away information that easily. But if you limit the GM's ability to respond by only saying "I don't know" to satisfy the ability, I think it's harmful to the story and game.
And I think that any NPC that is hostile to the PCs is absolutely going to be as evasive as they can. Ultimately, I think it's a bad ability to have written.
Thats the whole crux of a pointed question and the design intent behind the investigator, Especially one specializing in interrogation, Any reasonable answer to a pointed question is going to yield information if formulated well enough. Its a means to fish for more information just a simple query.
You arent wrong that it is a badly written ability but its not because it allows players to gain a massive wealth of information,The answer can be as long or short as you want as long as it is touching the subject of the question.
They can still be evasive trough lies and deception, If the party is looking for a name of an accomplice the target can give the wrong name, And the investigator has no way of figuring out the actual name. Even if they figure out that it was a lie outside of effects that force the truth out of them. All of that is even more reason why this is a bad ability (that I didn't mention previously but thought about).
Because the best case scenario (with a hostile NPC) is that the player asks a questions and the NPC lies to them and the players know they lied.
"Where is the culprit?" "On vacation in Hell"
"Who did this?" "Your mom"
Etc
Those are valid direct responses, which are lies, but give the players basically nothing.
I mean best case scenario in that spot is that you gain a bonus to detecting their lies and have them offguard if done during combat ontop of gaining information about what they do know.
The issue I have with those examples are also that they by definition arent direct as they do not adress the question, a non-related answer is not a lie, rather it's a refusal to answer which the ability strictly forbids.
Especially if the question has a binary answer the only real direct answers would boil down to variants of Yes, No or I don't Know. A lie to any of these gives plenty of information. Even if the party does search for a specific piece of information that said hostile does not want to give they still have options to follow up trough Sense Motive or Coerce the latter of which just outright states RAW "The target gives you the information you seek"
Pointed Question is perfectly fine in that aspect but its an issue that it not only handwaves what a pointed question is within interrogation but also that it heavily relies on the GMs ability to adlib without giving to much or to little away. Recall Knowledge also has this issue when used outside of "whats the lowest save" styled questions.
Claxon wrote: I guess we have a difference of opinion then, as to what constitutes a direct answer. Well, how about the other result then?
Define Pointed Question: Failure wrote: The target can refuse to answer you as normal. And explain how a response of "I'll never tell you!" is anything other than a prime example of refusing to answer.
You're right that a refusal is covered by the ability, but tell me what the difference between: "I'll never tell you" and telling an obvious lie is for the party?
Nothing. Both are worthless. It's part of why I absolutely hate how this ability is written, it hamstrings GMs in some ways, but ultimately is irrelevant because it doesn't actually guarantee to get you anything.
The only exception is if you can come up with a question that is a yes or no only answer is important. But in an investigation that's not normally how things are going to go. By the time you can ask a yes or no question, you generally have a pretty good idea of what happened and why.
Where pointed question would actually be useful is in a "courtroom" when you already know what happened and you're questioning a witness or someone involved with the case to confirm facts you already know.
The difference is that a lie that is still a direct answer to the question still imparts information. Lets use a simple binary question. "Are you involved with X""Do you know about X""Is X wearing a hat" This can be a random person off the street or during a combat. The yes or no questions should be the first things you start with simply to establish if they know something unless this person already is your lead, Simply because of that 1 hour immunity.
If they answer "They are wearing your mom as a hat", They have refused to answer. You could call it a personal attack on the one who asks or acknowledging the question without an answer. But ultimately they have not answered.
Which means binary questions are the most useful as an initial probe for information the target might have.
If they answer yes but the lie is detected, you now they either dont know or have no involvement.
If they answer no or I don't know and the lie is detected then you know they are likely involved and the interrogator knows that they are a prime target for what the methodology says it is all about on the can, Further interrogation. With successful coercion forcing them to tell the truth. That is where you ask specific questions.
Similarly depending on context the ability to force a direct answer even if it is a lie is incredibly useful for a class which depend on its active investigations, You may not have information that a random mugger is affiliated with a cartel or serial killer, But Pointed Questions allows you to get enough to confirm if this target is relevant to your investigation during combat. Now you can use Clue In, And your devise stratagem becomes a free action. You also gain the circumstance bonus from pursue a lead.
As a GM, I hate all of that
And you are free to have your oppinion about that. Every table is going to have their own subjective views on what is or isnt a good rule element. Especially when it involves behind the screen information.
Investigator as a whole operates with this design that they are made to reveal information a party otherwise wouldn't easily get, Thats their entire core premise. So I see no issue with Pointed Question. Against a hostile NPC its going to give minor combat bonuses with the slight offchance that the party gains information that there is a point in even trying to interrogate them where any other party either wouldn't bother, would use magical means to do so or end up doing something that might ultimately be pointless as they would Coerce the target regardless.
In a similar manner, I have a personal distaste for Thats Odd when running mega-dungeons as the feat essentially spells out that I as a GM have to warn the investigator when there is hidden loot, traps and passages nearby even if I dont tell them what it is I still need to reveal if there is anything to find. But at the same time a player picked that feat for that specific reason.
Restricting it to much would be akin to telling a thaumaturge that their Exploit Weakness has no effect because they already have a silver weapon when the Personal Antithesis was made for when you are already hitting their highest weakness. Basically removing part of its core.
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