Detect Lies (Action)

[OOC: The following are stopgap rules pending a major revision of the Social Combat system.]

Deception is a normal part of conversation, a keystone in political discourse, and in many ways can be considered the default state of the world. Attempts to use deception in social attacks use Manipulation as opposed to Charisma, but their success or failure occurs based on how convincing the points can be presented, success and failure not indicating if the lie is believed or found false.

To Detect Lies, a character must syspect a lie, then target a character and a particular statement or conversation in an action that take, rolling Perception + Investigation against a difficulty of the target’s target’s lowest applicable MDV during the time the action is carried out. This is an action which may be taken on its own (five long ticks, -2 MDV) or in response to a social attack the target has just completed (in which case their next action is delayed by five long ticks and they suffer –2 MDV until then).

Success allows the character to determine if the target has been lying, or making a significant omission for deceptive purposes. This does not give insight into the truth behind the lie, the motivations for it, and is not itself enough to prove to others that the target has been lying… though having succeeded on a Detect Lies roll grants the character +1 to their pool for Charisma-based social attacks attempting to convince others the target has lied.