Which skill would work best to detect lies?

[griffinman01]

I'll be starting a sci-fi/Dark Champions scenario (think space bounty hunters) and I know that there will be times where the PCs want to try and analyze if someone just lied to them. I'm not talking about through an interrogation but through conversation. Say you walk up to a target at a party and ask them if a question, what skill would you use to determine if they just lied? I was thinking that it would be Interrogation, but you're not coercing them through manipulation or torture so I started thinking it might be acting since the Ultimate Skill mentions that you can use that to fake things like an injured limb or emotions. Anyways, I just wanted to see what would be the best skill to use from the list.

[Lucius]

I go with Conversation to get the answers, and Analyze: Communication to judge the honesty of the answers you get.

 

There would often be heavy penalties (if it were an easy thing to do, lying would not be so common) and Skill contests against the target's Acting or Conversation, but complementary Skills could include Conversation, Science: Psychology, possibly Deduction

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Xenopsychology to Analyze a palindromedary

[bigbywolfe]

Usually Acting would be used me the person doing the lying (though I'm sure there are situations where it may be complimentary to Conversation or Deduction).

[Greywind]

Detect: Lie

[Mathew]

Detect sound, as a sense, disc, (10 points) Limited Power - not vs. lies (-1/2), total cost 7 points. You can only hear the truth...

[Greywind]

Detect sound, as a sense, disc, (10 points) Limited Power - not vs. lies (-1/2), total cost 7 points. You can only hear the truth...

"Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

[IndianaJoe3]

I'd use the same skill the characters are using to get information - Interrogation or Conversation, as appropriate. Part of using those skills is knowing when the subject is not giving accurate information.

 

I also disagree with the characterization of Interrogation. I see it as an overt attempt to gain accurate information from a subject. (Conversation would be similar, only covert.) It covers both perp sweating and talking to the victim to get details of a crime.

[Killer Shrike]

I'll be starting a sci-fi/Dark Champions scenario (think space bounty hunters) and I know that there will be times where the PCs want to try and analyze if someone just lied to them. I'm not talking about through an interrogation but through conversation. Say you walk up to a target at a party and ask them if a question' date=' what skill would you use to determine if they just lied? I was thinking that it would be Interrogation, but you're not coercing them through manipulation or torture so I started thinking it might be acting since the Ultimate Skill mentions that you can use that to fake things like an injured limb or emotions. Anyways, I just wanted to see what would be the best skill to use from the list.[/quote']

 

Like almost all else in the HERO System, there are many ways to skin that cat.

 

In the realm of pure skills, any of the Interaction Skills could situationally be used to infer or tell that someone is lying depending on the context (even Oratory...for instance a boaster may be telling a big fish story, and the skilled Orator can infer parts that are likely exaggerated or "fictionalized" aka are not true), as could Deduction (the statement is inconsistent and the truth can be inferred to be something else), as could just a straight up PERception check (likely with some kind of penalty) to "notice the target's tells". So can Streetwise or High Society or similar "Social Set Savvy" skill. So can specific Knowledge or Professional or Culture skills...for instance a liar asserts something about a subject that the listener happens to be knowledgeable about, and thus know that it is either an honest mistake or a dishonest lie.

 

It can also just be general knowledge or lack of it that reveals a liar to someone else; such as "what color is the boathouse at Cambridge?" "blue!" "um, no, there is no boathouse at Cambridge", no skill required.

 

The hoops that must be jumped thru or the social opportunity to apply various skills may vary; for instance even a "polite" Interrogation is socially awkward; for my part I tend to prefer PERSUASION as the go to interaction skill for discerning a lie in general conversation, as it is the skill most useful for lying (and we've all heard the expression "don't try to con a con". However, in many situations multiple ways of discerning untruths are applicable, but often (especially for small lies, or lies that generally stick close to the truth and just tweak some key details) it is difficult to be 100% certain.

 

 

If you want to KNOW, absolutely, that you are being lied to, you could buy a custom DETECT: LIES or DETECT: TRUTH enhanced sense (which could be two ways of saying the same thing or represent subtly different abilities depending on how finely you wish to split existential hairs); if you piggy back it on hearing it's actually pretty cheap. You can also build it as a separate sense and tack on all sorts of elements such as 360 degrees, telescopic, targeting, etc to make a really unique and unusual ability. If you as the GM want the ability to detect lies to be a common one (such as in some Fantasy campaigns where it is a "feature" of certain kinds of religious orders), you can build out such an ability just the way you like it, add some fluff and make it a Talent and thus "standardize" it.

 

A character with Telepathy can also just read the targets mind and tell what they are actually thinking, and thus infer that what is being thought is not what is being said. With IPE applied, the target wont even know it. You could of course build a highly limited form of Telepathy for precisely this purpose. Functionally identical to Detect: Lies, this approach will generally cost more, but has the side benefit of also providing you with what they are actually thinking, which a narrowly defined Detect wont...and if a character is already set up to be a mentalist it might prove to have secondary advantages for them as they can leverage any investment in OMCV or perhaps make it a slot in a multipower, etc.

 

A character with enough Mind Control can just force the target to tell the truth, or admit that they lied.

 

If you add gear to the mix you can get more esoteric, with truth serums and polygraph equivalents as well...but such devices will usually be built around one of the things I've mentioned or an equivalent.

 

Hope that helps.

[mallet]

I think lying and, by extension, trying to detect a lie should be handled as a Skill vs Skill contest.

 

Just like someone if trying to sneak past a guard there would be a Stealth vs PER skill vs skill contest, the same thing should apply with tell and detecting lies.

 

The person telling the lie uses whatever social skill is involved in their communication (Conversation, Intimidation, Oratory, etc...) vs the listeners Perception (with some possible strong negative modifiers, to represent how hard it can be to tell if someone is lying).

 

Someone wanting to be great at knowing if someone is lying to them should by Perception Skill Levels in "Detecting lies".

[Xavier Onassiss]

I'll second the suggestion to use Conversation or Interrogation.

 

If you use the optional rules for Complementary Skill Rolls, I'd suggest Science Skill: Psychology, or something similar. (I make extensive use of complimentary skill rolls in my games; it encourages the players to buy and use lots of background skills.)

[Hyper-Man]

WF: Lariat

 

 

*plus a golden lasso of truth

[griffinman01]

Those are all great ideas and I think I've come up with a simple method that any character can use (since none of my guys bought analyze or deduction). I'm thinking that Conversation would be the base skill, since the situation I listed was a simple question in the middle of a conversation (ie, "hey, didn't I see your face somewhere?" "I don't know what you're talking about") and then PER as a complementary (picking up any subtle nervous ticks or tells from the target) versus the target's acting (telling a convincing lie). Since acting isn't a given skill like conversation is in most cases I think it fits since not everyone can lie convincingly.

 

Anyways, thanks for all the input.

[mallet]

(since none of my guys bought... deduction)... Since acting isn't a given skill like conversation

 

Obviously every campaign is different, but usually both Deduction and Acting are listed as being "Everyman Skills", meaning that usually everyone has at least a chance of doing both innately.