I think it's irrelevant. Minthara doesn't care if you're lying. She believes she can wipe you out and the grove regardless. To her, it's a game, and she fully believes she will win. So making a Deception roll is pointless because the result will be the same. She'll play along and pretend you are on her side because she thinks it's interesting and cute that you are trying to outsmart her.
I’m interested that you take that view as I’d got the impression from discussions on other threads that you have some of the same problems as I do with our not being able to make our motivations clear in the game, and I thought that having a deception check when agreeing to help here would be a nice, simple way to at least partly address this problem in this particular instance (and possibly other similar ones).
Of course, it’s fine if you think it’s the wrong way to go about solving the problem, but is there an alternative you have in mind? Or is this not a point at which you care about registering your intentions?
I do want the game to make our motivations clear. The idea of a Deception check isn't wrong or bad. I'm just not sure it's necessary in this instance. If the result would be the same regardless of success, the roll is not needed. That's all I'm saying. It's based on the way I interpreted the encounter.
However, if they DID decide to make it so Minthara calls you out on trying to trick her if you fail the roll, that's totally fine with me too. That would certainly change the entire encounter. If she thinks your lying and attacks, then everything I interpreted is out the window. Either way, I'd be fine with it.
