this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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Uh... What? Your skills are still just a d20+bonuses even against another player. Their sense motive check has to beat my bluff check to catch my lie.
I roll d20, add my whopping 33 bonus to it and that's the DC the other player's sense motive has to beat.
Wrong. For one thing, players don't have to agree to contested persuasion at all, feel free to look that up. Even if they do it's not just a simple dice contest, otherwise every face character would have free mind control over their entire party.
For example:
Player Elon Musk throws a Nazi salute. He uses his Deception +6 to claim that's not what it is, rolls a 5 for a total of 11.
Player Not A Moron rolls a 1. This does not matter, because they know what they saw, and further, they remember all that other Nazi shit he's been saying. They have effectly set their own Deception/Persuasion check DC to 30+, or roll+bonus+30 circumstance bonus.
Player Stupid Fucking Simp rolls a 20. This also does not matter because, as a stupid fucking simp, they already believe everything Elon says and take a -30 circumstantial negative and critical success skill checks are silly homebrew nonsense.
Tl;Dr you're forgetting that circumstance, including character emotions and affection, affects difficulty of all skill checks. If a player agrees to ignore that that's on them.
This also, btw, applies to NPCs trying to persuade the party. The DM does not a have a right to tell your character what they believe or disbelieve without magical effects.
If you think about it, beyond the fact of the player being the only one can say what their character is in totality and is biased towards as a result, this is how a system must work to prevent RPG horror stories of incels forcing other players into sexual or abusive situations, eg "ummm I rolled a +29 so your character has to sleep with mine and you have to roleplay it"
In what edition of the rules, for what system, and what page number of that rulebook would I find your version of these rules in?
They are not forced to believe anything; but they also can't tell a lie was made unless they beat the bluff check with an opposing sense motive.
You might have a point if instead of suggesting the guy I killed had a heart attack, I suggested the paladin killed him and he was made to fully believe that. That's not how persuasion works, even in PvE.
Every edition since at least 3.0.
In the sections describing how skills work and what circumstances you should allow checks for them, and the sections describing bonuses to those checks, what the role of the DMs and players are, including several very specific references to how character attitudes are very important to the DCs of those checks and the fact that skills only affect those attitudes in the first place and they aren't mind control.
In other words, the whole fucking thing.