Determining Whether Someone Is Lying?

[shootingwomprats]

Daniel here!

In a previous adventure I was GMing, a player was physically restraining an NPC in order to keep a fight from happening. The NPC was asked that if he were released, would he keep calm? The NPC said yes. My player, in turn, asked an unusual question: Could I use Perception to tell if the NPC was lying?
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Don Diestler
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[Whill]

Are you asking if RAW addresses this? It does at the top of R&E p. 56. A player can choose to just let the GM's Con roll determine how convincing the NPC is to the PC, or the player can roll the PC's Perception or Con opposed to the NPC Con roll to attempt to determine if the NPC was lying or not.
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[shootingwomprats]

Thanks, Whill! The things I miss, even when I research!
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[garhkal]

Yup. Lying is always an opposed con vs con (or perception) check. Though some dms i know always prefer to RP it out.
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[Whill]

Sure, we always roleplay it out, but the rolls are there to help to determine the outcome.

In my game I've been thinking about making the detection of a Con just be a base attribute (Perception) ability instead of being able to use the Con skill itself. I'm not so sure that having an increased ability to deceive others necessarily grants an equally increased ability to detect deception in others. Plus people seem to get away with lying very easily so I would think that overall there are higher levels of Con than levels to detect them. What I mean is, if everyone could detect lies as well as they lie, then only about 50% of all lies would be believed.

But then again, this could be coming from my honest nature. I tend to take what people say at face value and give everyone the benefit of the doubt until I have a clear reason not to. Maybe my ability to detect deception in others comes from my own weakness with deception?

What do you guys think? Do you think Con should be able to be used to attempt to detect cons in others, like in RAW? Or should it be base attribute only (barring species special abilities that provide an increased ability to sense motive)?
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[garhkal]

I think the reasoning the RAW went that way is they felt someone who lies real well, should be more able to tell when someone else is lying. Plus it gives a bit more balance to it, cause most NPCs have 2-3D in perception (4d us the highest i have seen), while its not unheard of for PCs to get upwards o 8d+ for their con score, which would make practically ANY con roll they make, successful if it was just against Perception.
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[DougRed4]

If we are going for just realistic, Perception is probably more accurate. For the work I do, this is actually something I use regularly (like on a daily basis, as I work around criminals, many of whom lie on a regular basis).

Decipher's CODA system (which I have played a lot of with both their Lord of the Rings RPG and Star Trek CCG) has a stat called Savvy for this, and it's probably better still (they also have Perception as a base stat). But for this game, probably base PER is good.
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[jmanski]

I'm good with con. Who better to catch a conman than a conman?
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[Whill]

Thanks for your input guys. I can see both sides, but how about splitting the difference as a possible house rule? Maybe detecting deception could be at half way between the Con skill and base Perception? That way someone's skill at deception could still help them notice when someone is lying to them, but not quite at the full level they have at using Con themselves?
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[Random_Axe]

Hmm, this raises an interesting question: if PC's have an option of rolling opposing Con dice to detect if an NPC is lying, when would you allow the opposite direction to take place? Would there ever be an NPC who might roll his own Con score as an opposed check against a PC's effort? Or is that action more or less assumed in the PC's Con roll itself?

[Whill]

R&E p. 55 says "The difficulty of the con depends on who is being conned" before listing the static difficulty guidelines followed by the static modifiers. So it seems clear that RAW intends that NPCs do not resist PC con attempts by opposed rolls.

But I can see a GM doing opposed rolls for NPCs to resist PC con attempts, once the GM determines if it will be at full Con, base Perception or halfway in between. But I would think it should be always one way or the other for NPCs (opposed rolls or static difficulties) to be consistent.
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[garhkal]

As stated though, just basing it on Per only pretty much guarantees once a PC's con gets up to 6d+, they should always be able to con their way past most ANY Npc..
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[jmanski]

What if there's a Detect Lie skill? It could even be a specialization of Con if GMs felt it too expensive.
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[Raven Redstar]

I've had several GMCs that have the Con: Lie Detection skill, most are law enforcement, interrogators, or whatever.

I personally run it as an opposed Con roll, because it's simple. Although, I suppose I'd allow a character to pick either Con or Willpower, depending on the situation. Willpower is used to resist all other social (not business) interactions: i.e. Persuasion & Intimidation. I'd allow a character to roll willpower to resist someone challenging beliefs or whatever through an attempted deception.

One of the equalizers for a straight perception roll would be that rolls can be given situation modifiers, so if the person isn't inclined to believe them to begin with, they'd get a bonus to detect the lie in the first place.

I do agree with gar that perception can be out rolled relatively inexpensively, especially with a PC starting with 4D or 5D perception.
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[Whill]

Good discussion. And I see garhkal's point about allowing NPCs to resist PC Cons with opposed rolls possibly making it too easy for PCs to Con NPC. But as far as what attribute or skill for PCs to roll to detect lies...

My only problem with Con: Lie Detection is that the Con score is the minimum Lie Detection ability, so Lie Detection can be even greater than the ability to Con. I'm not saying it can't be greater, but since I am hovering between base attribute and Con skill, Lie Detection being a specialty of Con puts it in the other direction of Con.

If you're going to have Lie Detection, it would make more sense to me to have it be a completely separate Perception skill from Con. That way in any character you could have any combination: both being base Perception, both being higher than base Perception but equal to each other, or either being higher than the other. The down side to that is, you lose the relationship between the two abilities that RAW has (being better at Conning makes you better at detecting it), other than them being based on the same attribute.

In my game, Con has already been renamed as Deception, and if I was going to have the ability to detect lies be a separate Perception skill, then I would probably go the d20 route and generalize it to Sense Motive which includes lie detection. And I guess I could still relate lying to to lie detection by allowing players to roll Sense Motive or Deception (or half the difference between Deception and Perception) to detect lying.

But I have so many Perception skills already!
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