I ran into this problem in a session I had earlier today. My characters were going through a dungeon and after a fairly lengthy fight with a person who lived there, they decided they would question her about the place. The party was just fine at extracting information, and the hostage was actually quite willing to speak, but despite this they still didn't believe her (she was an illusionist and a prisoner, so it is natural they should mistrust her).
Everything she told them was actually the truth, but because they were skeptical, one of the characters decides to make an insightInsight check to see if she was lying to them. (We're playing D&D 4e.) He scored very low with a 9 on his check. I told him "You are inclined to believe everything she is saying is true". Now because he knew that he rolled incredibly low, he assumes that this means she is not telling the truth.
I suppose this is technically meta-gaming since he knows his dice roll, and the character is just to oblivious to know if she actually is lying or not. My questions are 1) How do I discourage players using the knowledge that they have a low roll to influence character decisions and 2) Should I, and if so how, tell my players if somebody is actually telling the truth even if they have a very low roll to avoid them thinking they are being lied to and their characters are too stupid to figure it out.
- How do I discourage players using the knowledge that they have a low roll to influence character decisions?
- Should I tell my players if somebody is actually telling the truth even if they have a very low roll to avoid them thinking they are being lied to and their characters are too stupid to figure it out? And if so, how should I tell them?
