Sense Motive

You are skilled at detecting falsehoods and true intentions.

**Common Uses**

A successful check lets you avoid being bluffed (see the Bluff skill). You can also use this skill to determine when “something is up” (that is, something odd is going on) or to assess someone’s trustworthiness.

*Hunch*: This use of the skill involves making a gut assessment of the social situation. You can get the feeling from another’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.

*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.

 Sense enchantment
 Discern secret message

**Action**

Trying to gain 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?** No, though you may make a Sense Motive check for each Bluff check made against you.

**Analyze Prowess**:

You can read a foe’s body language, movements, words, and other cues to guess its prowess and likely abilities. The DC is 10 + target’s base attack bonus + target’s Charisma modifier or 10 + target’s Bluff modifier, whichever is higher. If you succeed, you learn the target’s base attack bonus. For every 2 points by which you exceed the DC, you learn of one combat feat the target possesses. Analyzing prowess is a move action. If you fail this Sense Motive check, you can make a guess at your foe’s abilities, but are aware that it is unreliable. The GM secretly takes the higher of the foe’s base attack bonus or ranks in Bluff, subtracts 4, and adds 1d8. You learn only the result, but know that it may be as much as 4 points different from the true value and could represent either combat training or the ability to fake it well.

**Quick Scan**:

You can make a Sense Motive check to get a hunch or sense an enchantment in one-third to two-thirds the time it would normally take (minimum 2d4 rounds), but the DC is increased by +10. You can attempt to suss out such information with only a full round of observation and conversation, but if you do, the DC is increased by +20.

**Sense Motive Unchained**

Characters with the signature skill feat for Sense Motive unlock additional abilities when they attain 5, 10, 15, and 20 ranks in a skill.

With sufficient ranks in Sense Motive, you earn the following.

**10 Ranks**: After 1 minute of conversation, you can read a creature’s surface thoughts (as detect thoughts) by attempting a Sense Motive check at a –20 penalty opposed by the creature’s Bluff check. These effects simply replicate the pathfinder spell and aren’t actually magical in nature.

**15 Ranks**: You can read surface thoughts as above after 1 round. In addition, when attacked, you can attempt a Sense Motive check as an immediate action opposed by your target’s attack roll. A successful check grants a +2 insight bonus to your AC against attacks from that specific opponent for 1 minute.

**20 Ranks**: You can read surface thoughts as above as a standard action. A successful check to gain an insight bonus to your AC also negates the attack that triggered it.

**Bargaining**

An item is worth only what someone will pay for it. To an art collector, a canvas covered in daubs of random paint may be a masterpiece; a historian might believe a weathered jawbone is a holy relic of a saint. The rules presented here offer you a way of playing through the process of selling off goods brought up from a crypt, liberated from a millionaire’s penthouse, or plundered from a mafioso’s vault. They also enable players to establish contacts with local fences, launderers, antiquarians, and obsessive collectors.

**Valuation**

The Appraise skill allows a character to accurately value an object. However, the fine arts of the jeweler, antiquarian, and bibliophile are complex. Valuable paintings may be concealed by grime, and books of incredible rarity may be bound in tattered leather covers. Because failure means an inaccurate estimate, the GM should attempt this skill check in secret.

In general, a character can sell an item and gain a +1 bonus to their wealth checks so long as the item’s purchase DC was higher than their current wealth bonus. This keeps players from getting bogged down in bargaining with NPCs over small bonus to their wealth check over an unimportant item, and maintains game balance by not allowing players to use bargaining to go overboard with their wealth bonus by buying low and selling high.

For rare or unique items, or in certain cases, the GM might allow or encourage bargaining. Keep in mind that bargaining usually involves one PC talking with an NPC while the other players wait, and watching someone else bargain is rarely interesting. Bargaining should be infrequent, and should happen only when it’s important to the story.

If bargaining goes properly, the GM can reduce the base purchase DC by up to -5 if buying something from them, or if things go poorly, raise the DC by up to +4.

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 Roll of 15 or less

**Collector NPCs**

The GM can define a few NPCs as collectors, traders, or antiquarians interested in unusual items PCs collect after their adventures. If the PCs establish an amiable relationship with these collectors over time, They can gain an additional +1 to their wealth checks after making a sale to them. This can be increased by as much as +2, and this stacks with the bonus usually gained from the selling rules.

**Flooding The Market**

When PCs attempt to sell multiples of a durable good, the GM may not allow them to gain the +1 bonus to wealth checks to reflect market saturation in that location. For example, a border town patrolled by guards with AK-47 can always use more ammunition, but has limited use for a truckload of photography cameras, so selling the items to those particular sellers may not be worth doing.

**Trade Goods**

Trade goods are exempt from bargaining, even in extraordinary circumstances.