I don't like taking away a lot of rolls from my players, but this one seems better done from behind the GM screen. It isn't that it's an Opposed Test, it's just that it seems that too much can be read based on the roll itself. Someone rolls a Yahtzee and they are fairly certain that they can trust the person. However, the flip is that if they glitch.. or worse, critically glitch, they could entirely misread the scene. If they see their horrible roll though, they might be inclined to know that their roll is bunk to begin with.

Anyone else feel the same about it?

It's the same with many rolls. Some will argue that a good player is able to tell the difference between what he knows and what his character knows. Other will tell you that the GM should roll them.

The problem I have with the GM rolling these is that it means that as a GM you have to keep track of the dice pools of every PC, including the current modifiers (due to drugs, injury, etc.) which can get pretty complicated. A possible solution is to have the player roll the dice behind the GM screen, or have the player roll the dice, and have the GM decide if the hits are the 5 and 6 or the 1 and 2.

Secret rolls for players are a pain in the ass to manage.

My favorite way of managing this is to give the player an actual penalty if they botch the roll, not just misinformation. Simple failure can be managed by a "you don't know."

By way of example:

1) Player rolls Judge Intentions to see if the guide is leading him into an ambush. He glitches but succeeds. He's pretty sure there's an ambush upcoming, but he misreads when/where, and receives a penalty to the ambush roll when it comes.

2) Player rolls Judge Intentions to see if an approaching man on the street is hostile or not. He glitches but fails (noncritical). He's not sure, and receives a penalty to the first social roll on the target if he's nonhostile (or ambush roll again if he's hostile).

3) Player rolls Judge Intentions to see if the Johnson is hiding something critical about the run. He critically glitches. Whatever big nasty is lying in wait gets a bonus to some relevant action when it first appears, since the character is absolutely certain there's nothing unexpected.

I dunno, the description says that successful rolls doesn't always equal 'you have perfect knowledge of the situation'. Realistically, even the best answer, unless from a peerless source, is "Well, I think I can trust him for now." But in the 'metagame' one could imagine that even a high Cha+Int char could still be distrustful of everyone ANYWAY. Hell, in real life I have friends that ruined their relationships despite the truth being their partner was trustworthy, 'rolling bad' or 'disregarding roll' of a "Judge Intention" check.

The thing is that Judge Intentions is no match for being skilled at con. See, if someone is actively conning you the opposed check is listed as con + charisma, which ironically makes Judge Intentions pointless as the moment you call for a Con + Charisma check the player knows he's being lied to.

Which is why I tend to randomly ask for Con + Charisma checks during conversations. It keeps them on their toes.

What I do sometimes, is "oppose" the "Judge Intention" roll with a con roll from the person being judged. If he's not hiding his intentions I ignore that roll. If he does, his hits are substracted from the PC roll. If he's got more net hits, he misleads the PC.

If you do have a player who can't keep his knowledge from affecting character actions tell him the truth if he glitches. It's amazing the reaction you will get.

Of course, depending on the GM the information from Judge Intentions requires a fair amount of interpretation anyways - you may be able to tell that someone is anxious, for example, but there's a lot of possible reasons why.

If you have players who will play it right, best to let them roll it - if you can trust the table, trust the table.