Dungeons & Dragons - The Insight Skill

by Julian Kok

 Today we're going to look at a single skill: Insight. I'm working on an adventure, and I thought it would be fun to have the entire adventure partially revolve around the use of one skill.

We'll go through some D&D books and get a look at how insight works, and the different situations you might use it in. Also, how can it be used in an adventure? Are there any things to watch out for when attempting to use it?

Here's the description from the Player's Handbook:

Insight

"Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms."

I've definitely mixed up Insight and Perception in the past. Here's the DMG entry on Perception:

Perception

"Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses. For example, you might try to hear a conversation through a closed door, eavesdrop under an open window, or hear monsters moving stealthily in the forest. Or you might try to spot things that are obscured or easy to miss, whether they are orcs lying in ambush on a road, thugs hiding in the shadows of an alley, or candlelight under a closed secret door."

Here's a quick list of instances where insight was used in official D&D books. You might make a Wisdom (Insight) check to:

• Determine if someone is under a charm spell.
• Figure out if someone is lying to you (the liar makes an opposed Charisma (Deception) check).
• Determine characteristics. You can find out a creature's Ideal, Bond, or Flaw!
• Gamble successfully during downtime. Insight is one of three skills needed to be successful at gambling during downtime.
• Help solve puzzles. Insight allows you to learn clues/identify patterns of a puzzle.
• See through a disguise.

Lying: It seems like the most common use of insight is to use it to determine if someone is lying. The heroes can use their insight to figure out if someone is lying to them, if they're nervous, that kind of thing.

Failing the Check: This leads to one of those small issues that come up when running a game: If a character rolls an insight check to see if someone is lying, but they roll low. their character shouldn't know that they failed their attempt. In game, this definitely shouldn't prompt the other heroes to try a roll because they know their ally failed the check.

by Zoltan Boros

In the Dungeon Master's Guide, under "Running the Game," They talk about dice rolling and when to hide your rolls:

"You might choose to make a roll for a player because you don’t want the player to know how good the check total is. For example, if a player suspects a baroness might be charmed and wants to make a Wisdom (Insight) check, you could make the roll in secret for the player. If the player rolled and got a high number but didn’t sense anything amiss, the player would be confident that the baroness wasn’t charmed. With a low roll, a negative answer wouldn’t mean much. A hidden roll allows uncertainty."

So maybe in my adventure, I should tell the DM to write down everyone's Insight scores so the players aren't tipped off.

Another pitfall here is, if a character fails an insight check, can they attempt another on the same target? When? After 1 minute? After an hour? The DMG covers this, too.

Multiple Ability Checks: "In other cases, failing an ability check makes it impossible to make the same check to do the same thing again. For example, a rogue might try to trick a town guard into thinking the adventurers are undercover agents of the king. If the rogue loses a contest of Charisma (Deception) against the guard’s Wisdom (Insight), the same lie told again won’t work. The characters can come up with a different way to get past the guard or try the check again against another guard at a different gate. But you might decide that the initial failure makes those checks more difficult to pull off."

Determining Characteristics: I did not realize this was a thing. It turns out that you can use your insight check to learn more about an NPC! You can actually learn their ideal, bond, or flaw.

"After interacting with a creature long enough to get a sense of its personality traits and characteristics through conversation, an adventurer can attempt a Wisdom (Insight) check to uncover one of the creature’s characteristics. You set the DC. A check that fails by 10 or more might misidentify a characteristic, so you should provide a false characteristic or invert one of the creature’s existing characteristics. For example, if an old sage’s flaw is that he is prejudiced against the uneducated, an adventurer who badly fails the check might be told that the sage enjoys personally seeing to the education of the downtrodden."

Magic items: There aren't many magic items in the DMG that are linked to insight. The most prominent one I found was an ioun stone. In the book, it is literally called the insight ioun stone.

Ioun Stone, Insight. (incandescent blue sphere): +2 to your Wisdom score

So far, our mining expedition in the core books has given us a few potential possible encounters that utilize insight:

1. A bad guy tries to lie to the heroes.
2. The heroes can sit down in a tense environment with a mysterious NPC, and try to root out their Flaw, Bond, etc.
3. Have a scene where the group gambles, and utilizes insight (maybe in a high stakes game of Three Dragon Ante?)
   

Let's look through some more books and see if there's any more insight stuff.

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

In the downtime section, there is discussion of gambling as a downtime activity.

"The character makes three checks: Wisdom (Insight), Charisma (Deception), and Charisma (Intimidation). If the character has proficiency with an appropriate gaming set, that tool proficiency can replace the relevant skill in any of the checks. The DC for each of the checks is 5 + 2d10; generate a separate DC for each one. Consult the Gambling Results table to see how the character did."

3 successes means you gain double the amount you bet. 

You could do a thing that happens in movies, where there are people watching the game - an official looking for cheating, a scoundrel trying to slip something in a player's drink, that kind of thing.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

Magic Item: One of the teeth of Dahlver Nahl, a magic item, grants you telepathy 120 feet and the ability to cast detect thoughts at will. "You also have disadvantage on Wisdom (Insight) and Wisdom (Perception) checks from constant whispers of memories and nearby minds."

Puzzles: In the puzzle section, a character can use insight to figure outhints, figuring out if a creature is sincere, the meaning of certain markings on a puzzle,

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

In this adventure, you can use insight to:

• Figure out that Volo can't really pay as much as he says he can.
• Discern whether or not a certain creature poses danger to Waterdeep.
• Realize that someone is under the influence of magic.
• Roll a really, really high Insight check to spot Jarlaxle in disguise.
• Tell that someone you're having a clandestine meeting with has come here alone.
• Discern that an NPC is hiding something.

Dragon Heist is definitely a crime caper type of adventure, which leads to more insight opportunities. I imagine insight-based encounters revolving around tense moments, quietly scanning a foe to see if they are nervous or about to try something.

Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus

There are some interesting uses of insight:

1. Determine whether some bad guys are playing dead.
2. Secure a loan, with or without the intention of paying it back: Charisma (Deception) vs. Wisdom (Insight).
3. Realizing that a creature moves a certain way because it is injured.
4. Detecting the insincerity of an offer.
5. Eating a meal at a certain place on Avernus gives you both the benefits of a heroes' feast spell and disadvantage on Insight checks made against the owner.

I really like the "play dead" one. That's a nice set-up for an ambush. Or, perhaps an NPC is playing dead until its assailants leave the scene. the heroes see that the NPC is still alive, and note that the bad guys are about to loot the NPC's body.

Making a Diabolical Deal: Love this one! Insight is absolutely involved when you try to make a deal with a D&D devil.

"If a devil attempts to deceive a character at the deal-making stage, the devil can make a Charisma (Deception) check opposed by the character’s Wisdom (Insight) check. If the character’s check result is higher than the devil’s, the character sees through the devil’s deception."

There is also a magic item that boosts insight:

The Sword of Zariel: "Truth Seer. While holding the sword, you gain advantage on all Wisdom (Insight) checks."

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden

There are a few new applications of insight:

• Spotting that someone is faking an injury.
• Examining the plans of a magical device, realizing that there is a design flaw, and knowing how to fix it.
• Noticing that underlings have lost faith in their leader, and that they would be delighted to see that leader taken out.
• Looking at a crude ice statue and figure out what it is supposed to depict (in this case, a kobold).

I really like the "underlings lost faith" one. That would be a nice twist to an encounter, where it goes from a straight battle to influencing the underlings to turn against their master.

by Zoltan Boros

Nothics: A monster I overlook a lot, but has a lot of cool lore and powers attached to it.

Nothics have "Weird Insights."  Characters in this adventure can actually learn things from nothics:

"The nothics have no memory of their lost humanity, and any information they might provide is garbled with bits of nonsense. Characters who succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom (Insight) check can glean the following information from the nothics after a brief conversation..."

Let's go to the Monster Manual and see what the deal is with nothics and insight.

"Dark Oracles. Nothics possess a strange magical insight that allows them to extract knowledge from other creatures. This grants them unique understanding of secret and forbidden lore, which they share for a price. A nothic covets magic items, greedily accepting such gifts from creatures that seek out its knowledge."

In their stat block is the "Weird Insight" power:

"Weird Insight. The nothic targets one creature it can see within 30 feet of it. The target must contest its Charisma (Deception) check against the nothic’s Wisdom (Insight) check. If the nothic wins, it magically learns one fact or secret about the target. The target automatically wins if it is immune to being charmed."

So a nothic has a magically-enhanced ability to peer into a character's mind. Very cool.

I think I can mine a bunch of insight encounters out of this! There are some other good articles on Insight below. Thanks for reading!

Links

Nerdarchy: Insight 101

Arcane Eye: Guide to Skill Checks

Angry GM: Adding Insight to the Insight Skill