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Captain
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 Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 10:12 am Post subject: |
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Why not call it 'Guile' instead of Discernment? The word is less clunky and covers a broad range of situations where a PC would have to use his or her inner guile to figure out if he or she is being played.
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 11:37 am Post subject: |
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Guile also has the connotation similar to Con, however. "He overcame them by wit and guile" implies deception, more than discernment.
I'd almost be tempted to call this a place where Alien Species comes in handy. My innate understanding of body language isn't necessarily going to help me read a Wookie... their body language is going to be entirely different. But knowledge of Alien Species, and how THEY project untruth or distrust or whatever, would serve as a good gauge on whether or not a person is telling the truth.
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Error
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 11:45 am Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | Guile also has the connotation similar to Con, however. "He overcame them by wit and guile" implies deception, more than discernment.
I'd almost be tempted to call this a place where Alien Species comes in handy. My innate understanding of body language isn't necessarily going to help me read a Wookie... their body language is going to be entirely different. But knowledge of Alien Species, and how THEY project untruth or distrust or whatever, would serve as a good gauge on whether or not a person is telling the truth. |
Guile and Con are cousins, not brothers. Besides, since we're talking about house rules, you get to define the skills of which you let your PC's avail themselves.
Guile seems to have multiple connotations. One of them is deception. Another is perceiving others' deceptions, or their efforts at them. I think the latter is the more useful in gaming terms, especially if you want to leave related skills as they are in the RAW.
That reminds me of the concept of "joiners" vs. "splitters". Joiners do their best to keep things simple, and would probably just have you roll your Perception to see if you notice anything. The splitters, on the other hand, will tend to come up with new skills because they feel one or more existing skills won't cover it. I am a splitter myself, because I like organization.
I do agree about the Alien Species thing, though. Can YOU read a Twi'lek's brain tails? Me either!
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Naaman
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Sonic Boom! |
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 1:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: | | Sonic Boom! |
Yeah, I was waiting for that joke. 
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Error
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | Naaman wrote: | | Sonic Boom! |
Yeah, I was waiting for that joke. |
Over my head...lol
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Error wrote: | | Why not call it 'Guile' instead of Discernment? The word is less clunky and covers a broad range of situations where a PC would have to use his or her inner guile to figure out if he or she is being played. |
I had considered Wisdom, but that's been done and done again by D&D. When I looked it up, Discernment seemed the closest match for what I was trying to do. And it's not like we don't already have plenty of skills whose names are quite a mouthful. Capital Ship Weapons Repair?
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Telsij
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| Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2016 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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Similar to what has been mentioned earlier: my group's name for this skill was "sense motive," borrowed from D20 -- a system which none of us cared for, though there were a tiny handful of elements (a skill or two here and there) that we did port over.
Our rationale too, also as has been somewhat discussed above, is that someone can obviously be a really good judge of character, and can accurately assess and "read" a given being, without necessarily being a good con man himself.
In those days, we also used a "notice" skill in place of simply rolling a passive Perception roll when determining surprise, though nowadays, in an effort to streamline skills, we just use a passive "search" roll made by the GM for the PC's, with MAPs applied for whatever else they might be up to.
| Error wrote: | | MrNexx wrote: | | Naaman wrote: | | Sonic Boom! |
Yeah, I was waiting for that joke. |
Over my head...lol |
EDIT: Also, totally read Error's response as a SFII joke itself, for crouching beneath the Sonic Boom and letting it pass overhead...
maybe while charging the sonic kick in case your opponent tried an overhead attack. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
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| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2017 5:08 pm Post subject: Re: New Perception Skill: Discernment |
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| Whill wrote: | | I see there being many people whose ability to detect lies is LESS than their ability to lie. Having them be separate Perception skills allows for all possible combinations... But I'm thinking that a Sense Motive skill may have more uses than just detecting lies. |
The above quote was from a 2014 thread. Below are select quotes from this 2016 thread. Although this thread had interesting tangents on roleplaying vs. roll-playing and metagaming, I wanted to get back to the OP's topic so I filtered the tangents out and posted this to save everyone from rereading the whole thread and weeding through the other stuff...
| CRMcNeill wrote: | I've been thinking about this one for a while.
Discernment
Time Taken: One round or longer.
Specializations: Specific skill being resisted (Con, Persuasion, etc.)
Discernment is a measurement of a character's ability to see through attempts by others to manipulate them. A person with this skill may not be all that adept at conning or manipulating others, but is quite good at spotting it when someone tries it on him.
In game terms, Discernment is treated as a reaction skill to resist Con and Persuasion attempts (as well as Gambling and Intimidation, under the right circumstances). This does not mean that the character using Discernment must automatically reject these attempts, merely that he recognizes what the other person is attempting to do |
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Error wrote: | | Why not call it 'Guile' instead of Discernment? The word is less clunky and covers a broad range of situations where a PC would have to use his or her inner guile to figure out if he or she is being played. |
I had considered Wisdom, but that's been done and done again by D&D. When I looked it up, Discernment seemed the closest match for what I was trying to do. |
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | My intention was to make something along the lines of the Sense Motive skill from D&D, so I wouldn't be averse to expanding this skill to include something like that. It could even be left as-is, with the Discern Motive option happening if you beat the opposing Con/Persuasion roll by a certain amount or higher. |
| Whill wrote: | | IIRC, Sense Motive already does that. I was suggesting the expansion to include the uses of the d20 skill, so it seems we were on the same page. |
| CRMcNeill wrote: | I went back and read the specifics of Sense Motive in the D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook, and it actually doesn't specifically allow this. It has three different effects:1). Hunch - Gut assessment of a social situation, such as whether or not someone is trustworthy, or if you are talking to an imposter.
2). Sense Enchantment - Detect if someone is being controlled or manipulated by magic.
3). Discern Secret Message - Detect hidden meaning or subtext in another conversation. ...
I could see a separate Perception skill (maybe "Poise" or "Cool") that allows a character to conceal his emotions and put on a deceptive front, even though their emotions aren't actually under control... |
| Whill wrote: | | You would think that a skill named "Sense Motive" would include the character's ability to, you know, sense motive. I like your idea of of sensing the motive behind a persuasion or con (if it's not obvious by detecting the con in the first place) resulting from the roll being a certain degree higher than the difficulty to discern. It's simple. |
| Naaman wrote: | | Oh, and by the way: sense motive does indeed oppose the bluff skill and even allows characters to avoid an opponent's feint in combat. |
| Telsij wrote: | Similar to what has been mentioned earlier: my group's name for this skill was "sense motive," borrowed from D20 -- a system which none of us cared for, though there were a tiny handful of elements (a skill or two here and there) that we did port over.
Our rationale too, also as has been somewhat discussed above, is that someone can obviously be a really good judge of character, and can accurately assess and "read" a given being, without necessarily being a good con man himself. |
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | So what would be some appropriate Difficulty levels? Obviously, it's going to be an opposed roll against the Persuasion / Con attempt, but I'm thinking the Discerning character should gain more insight based on how well they won the dice contest. |
FYI, I have renamed the Con skill Deception because I wanted it to better reflect that it could include different types of deceptions in my game.
Now I also want to adopt Discernment as a skill that includes all of the mentioned effects from the above quotes. Successful use can discern if you are being deceived, and if you are being manipulated through persuasion, charm, and intimidation (if they are subtle). It may also be used to get a general read on people to determine if they are generally trustworthy or hiding something (obviously the more time spent interacting with the person can help to get a better read on them). And if the Discernment roll is high enough over the opposed roll or difficulty, then it could possibly discern the motive behind the deception or manipulation if not obvious. Maybe a high roll could even discern that the target character isn't acting of their own free will, such as in cases where they are under the effect of the Force, or being blackmailed or intimidated by someone else. Discernment is a better skill name than "Sense Motive" since Discernment is more general and it may or may not determine the motive behind the deception/manipulation.
A lot of you have expressed support for the logic that the ability to deceive can lend to a greater ability to detect it in others and I can see that too, but I still think it should be possible for someone to be better at lying than detecting it in others. So a proposed compromise that protects the RAW correlation but still allows for all possibilities is that the Con/Deception skill can detect deceit at -1D. So what we have in effect is that a character can attempt to detect lies with base Perception, the Discernment skill at normal value, or Con/Deception -1D, whichever is higher. So if a character wants to be good at deception and also detecting it, he could just improve his Con/Deception skill only and let the detection ability just ride along with the primary ability 1D behind. If he wants to be better at lie detection than deception, then he can raise his Discernment skill above the other. It's ok for the two skills to have some overlap. The Discernment skill is not a waste on its own because has more uses than just detecting lies.
That's all I've got at this moment. Anyone else have any suggestions for CRMcNeill's last question above regarding specific benefits based on level of success?
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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So, what would the skill write-up look like?
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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This came up recently, so I'm giving it a bump. I'm working on a skill write-up, but I did come across another possible name for this:
Sagacity: having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; shrewd.
I'm going to write this up as Discernment, but I'd appreciate your thoughts as to which word is a better fit.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:26 pm Post subject: Re: New Perception Skill: Discernment |
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| Whill wrote: | | Successful use can discern if you are being deceived, and if you are being manipulated through persuasion, charm, and intimidation (if they are subtle). It may also be used to get a general read on people to determine if they are generally trustworthy or hiding something (obviously the more time spent interacting with the person can help to get a better read on them). |
So, in theory, Discernment would roll against the opposed Deception / Persuasion roll, and would get this result on a Simple Success (tie or better)...
| Quote: | | And if the Discernment roll is high enough over the opposed roll or difficulty, then it could possibly discern the motive behind the deception or manipulation if not obvious. |
Then this at +10 or better...
| Quote: | | Maybe a high roll could even discern that the target character isn't acting of their own free will, such as in cases where they are under the effect of the Force, or being blackmailed or intimidated by someone else. |
Then this at +15?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Whill
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 9:10 pm Post subject: Re: New Perception Skill: Discernment |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | Successful use can discern if you are being deceived, and if you are being manipulated through persuasion, charm, and intimidation (if they are subtle). It may also be used to get a general read on people to determine if they are generally trustworthy or hiding something (obviously the more time spent interacting with the person can help to get a better read on them). |
So, in theory, Discernment would roll against the opposed Deception / Persuasion roll, and would get this result on a Simple Success (tie or better)... |
Yes, with situational advantages or disadvantages possibly applying modifiers as for opposed rolls in general.
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | And if the Discernment roll is high enough over the opposed roll or difficulty, then it could possibly discern the motive behind the deception or manipulation if not obvious. |
Then this at +10 or better...
| Quote: | | Maybe a high roll could even discern that the target character isn't acting of their own free will, such as in cases where they are under the effect of the Force, or being blackmailed or intimidated by someone else. |
Then this at +15? |
Well since you're asking me, remember I have redefined difficulty levels and modifiers based on 3.5 instead of 5. So I would probably use +7 and +10 for those. But yes that general idea.
Modifier Guidelines
+1-3 Character has only a slight advantage.
+4-7 Character has a good advantage.
+8-10 Character has a decisive advantage.
+11+ Character has an overpowering advantage.
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Whill
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | I'm working on a skill write-up, but I did come across another possible name for this:
Sagacity: having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; shrewd.
I'm going to write this up as Discernment, but I'd appreciate your thoughts as to which word is a better fit. |
They seem pretty interchangeable. Out of the two, discernment is probably a more commonly understood word with a more intuitive meaning in the game for most. Having studied Latin and being into etymology, sagacity works for me, but I think Discernment is probably better for your average player of the game.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 9:54 pm Post subject: Re: New Perception Skill: Discernment |
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| Whill wrote: | | Yes, with situational advantages or disadvantages possibly applying modifiers as for opposed rolls in general. |
Con and Persuasion have their own list of variables (Persuasion actually states it uses the same Difficulties as Con, with some variations). Any thoughts on how to flip the Difficulties?
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