Sense Motive: Difference between revisions
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You are skilled at detecting falsehoods and | Sense Motive is the skill of being skeptical, approaching social and life situations with a clear-eyed wariness that makes you hard to take advantage of. You are skilled at detecting both falsehoods and truthful intentions. You are hard to bamboozle or flim-flam, you have your own view of things and are not easily swayed by honeyed words. | ||
===Common Uses=== | ===Common Uses=== | ||
A successful check | A successful check clues you in that something is afoot. It does not allow you to see through disguises or camouflage, it does not let you spot someone who is hiding or sneaking around. It does allow you to spot when someone is trying to pull one over on you, such as selling you a shady bit of gear, or asking you to do something for nefarious purposes. (Yeah, that guy is evil, he's totally evil, just look at him!) This may lead you to start looking for someone with a disguise on, or start searching for a hidden or camouflaged object, but it will never reveal such a thing directly. | ||
Sense motive is a skill which can compliment a lot of situations, both before and after combat has begun. | |||
* Discern Secret Message: You may use Sense Motive to detect that a hidden message is being transmitted via the Bluff skill. In this case, your Sense Motive check is opposed by the Bluff check of the character transmitting the message. For each piece of information relating to the message that you are missing, you take a -2 penalty on your Sense Motive check. If you succeed by 4 or less, you know that something hidden is being communicated, but you can't learn anything specific about its content. If you beat the DC by 5 or more, you intercept and understand the message. If you fail by 4 or less, you don't detect any hidden communication. If you fail by 5 or more, you might infer false information. | * | ||
* '''Hunch''': This use of the skill involves making a gut assessment of a social situation. You can get the feeling from another creature'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 and their story is truthful, as far as they know. The DC of a 'cold read' like this is usually 15 + double the Challenge Rating of the highest level creature involved in the social situation that is participating in being deceptive. | |||
* '''Sense Enchantment''': You can tell that someone's behavior is being influenced by an enchantment effect even if that person isn't aware of it. The usual DC is 10 + double the Caster Level of the enchantment effect, but if the target is dominated (see dominate person), the DC is only 5 + double the Caster Level of the Domination effect because of the limited range of the target's activities. | |||
* '''Discern Secret Message''': You may use Sense Motive to detect that a hidden message is being transmitted via the Bluff skill. In this case, your Sense Motive check is opposed by the Bluff check of the character transmitting the message. For each piece of information relating to the message that you are missing, you take a -2 penalty on your Sense Motive check. If you succeed by 4 or less, you know that something hidden is being communicated, but you can't learn anything specific about its content. If you beat the DC by 5 or more, you intercept and understand the message. If you fail by 4 or less, you don't detect any hidden communication. If you fail by 5 or more, you might infer false information. | |||
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! Task || Sense Motive DC | ! Task || Sense Motive DC | ||
|- | |- | ||
| | | Pierce Bluff: Lie or Deception || Opponent's Bluff Check result | ||
|- | |||
| Pierce Bluff: Avoid Fast Talk || As above, with a +10 on your roll | |||
|- | |||
| Pierce Bluff: Notice Secret Message || Opponents Bluff Check result(See below) | |||
|- | |||
| Pierce Bluff: Notice a Faker || Opponents Bluff check result to Feign injury or helplessness. | |||
|- | |- | ||
| Sense | | Pierce Bluff: Break Feint or Diversion || Opponents Bluff check result to Feint or Divert | ||
|- | |||
| Pierce Bluff: Notice Manipulation || Opponents Bluff Check to Suggest Course of Action | |||
|- | |||
| Sense Enchantment || 10 + double CR of the Enchantment effect | |||
|- | |||
| Notice Domination || 5 + double CR of the Domination effect | |||
|- | |- | ||
| Discern secret message || Varies | | Discern secret message || Varies | ||
|- | |||
| Hunch || 15 + double CR of highest level target | |||
|} | |} | ||
Note: Sense Motive will allow you to realize that two people are 'in cahoots' and passing secret messages. It will not allow you to see how they are actually doing the nefrious deed, or intercept such messages. To do that, see "Convey Secret Message" in the [[Bluff]] skill for details. | |||
===Action=== | ===Action=== | ||
* '''Retry?''' | Piercing most uses of the Bluff Skill are free actions, much like a Knowledge check. Either you 'click' onto something being wrong, or you are not aware of it. | ||
Sensing an Enchanted person or noticing a Dominated person usually takes a few seconds of interaction. Out of combat this is very fast, but in combat, this requires a full round action. | |||
Getting a Hunch, on the other hand, takes a good while. Doing a 'cold read' of a social situation takes time to 'settle in' to the situation, and get a feel for what's going on, both in conversation and in the myriad little clues and nuances. Trying to gain such information with Sense Motive generally takes at least 1 minute, and you could spend a whole evening trying to get a sense of the people around you. | |||
* '''Retry?''' Piercing Bluffs, no, though you may make a Sense Motive check for each Bluff check made against you. | |||
Sensing Enchantments or Noticing Dominations, yes, you may re-try these at intervals set by the GM. In general, every time an Enchanted or Dominated person is in a situationn where your attention is focused upon them allows a re-roll. | |||
Hunch: No, you may not try to re-read a social situation. Getting a Hunch usually takes a fairly long time, and you may only attempt it once per interation. That said, you may attemtp to get a Hunch on all interations in your vacinitiy, if you have time. Trying to get a read on every knot of conversation in an entire fancy-dress ball is possible, but it would be seriously difficult. | |||
===Modifiers=== | ===Modifiers=== | ||
* '''Feat:''' If you have the [[Alertness]] feat, you get a +2 bonus on Sense Motive skill checks. This bonus increases as you put more ranks into the skill. | * '''Feat:''' If you have the [[Alertness]] feat, you get a +2 bonus on Sense Motive skill checks. This bonus increases as you put more ranks into the skill. | ||
*'''Hasty Hunches''': You may try to get a snap hunch as a full round action, at a -10 to the roll. Ouch. | |||
* '''Three's a Crowd''': You may attempt to use Sense Motive against several creatures at once. The DC is the result of the highest Bluff check they all made, +2 for each additional creature you are resisting after the first. This gets VERY difficult, VERY fast, but if you can pull it off, it's pretty awesome. | |||
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===Discern partial alignment=== | ===Discern partial alignment=== | ||
(DC | (DC 10 + double CR, or, Epic Bluff Check Result) - learn 1 axis of a target's alignment. | ||
===Discern full alignment=== | ===Discern full alignment=== | ||
(DC | (DC 15 + Double CR, or, Epic Bluff Check Result) | ||
===Detect surface thoughts=== | ===Detect surface thoughts=== | ||
(DC | (DC 20 + Double CR, or Epic Bluff Check Result) as the detect thoughts spell | ||