1. It pays to know what they're lying about. Knowing if they're lying about who you'll be messing with as opposed to who is hiring you is quite useful.
2. It helps you with post meet leg-work too, if that's your bag.
Let's get these two out of the way first. Number 1 up there? That is what legwork does, not judge intentions; legwork as in having your decker dig around for information in the matrix, or fishing for information from contacts. Judge intentions will tell you (correctly or not, depending on rolls) basic yes/no type things. Do I think the Johnson is lying to us? Do I think the Johnson plans to betray us? Now it doesn't exactly have to be yes or no, your GM can tell you "You feel he's going to betray you" or "You think he's being level with you." Even if you roll high enough to get a correct idea of the basics, that can change. The example used in the book, under the judge intentions description mentions that just because they don't intend to betray you at that point doesn't mean that they can't change their minds.
I don't tend to need judge intentions, because my motto is "Never trust, always verify," and I have far more effective ways to get better information than playing 20 questions with Johnson. The last line in the book sums up why I don't need the skill usually:
"This primarily serves as a benchmark or gut instinct about how much you can trust the person you are dealing with."
I don't need a test to tell me that I already don't trust them. I have other skills to help me to dig out the facts, as well as skills available from the team, skills actually designed for digging more than a surface deep, gut feeling. Perhaps it's just a case of your GM being generous with the check though; it seems your group is getting far more information from using judge intentions than it says it gives. /shrug
3. So what if you're never alone with Mr. Johnson? That's irrelevant to the importance of a Face's capacity to spot tells and other cues. The meet where you get hired is the least of the concerns there. You automatically assume he's lying, go with it. Judge Intentions is good to tell if someone bought your story elsewhere, or figure out if your contact is keeping something from you.
I'm curious, how often do you actually roll this during a session? Just a rough guess? If someone didn't buy my story, there's always a backup plan for that event. ALWAYS. My Face doesn't try talking, if he can help it, until we decide what will happen if it goes south. In those circumstances where you have to make a hasty story up on the spot, we still have something to fall back on, even if it's the basic "Shoot them in the face until they stop twitching, and then evac."
4. Irrelevant.
5. Not only irrelevant, but contradictory with your post-meet leg-work. Motivations tell you the why of the job, which tells you how things are going.
Number four is not irrelevant at all, this falls into that planning on being betrayed anyway mentality; it's why you don't need to sit there and think "Is Mr. Johnson lying to me or planning on betraying me?" (i.e. judge intentions); you plan on it, prepare for it in such a way that it becomes obvious you are prepared for any betrayal at the hand-off, and if they go ahead and do it you drop the hammer on them and/or evac. Judge intentions is not needed there. Besides, like the description for judge intentions states in the rulebook, just because they initially don't plan on betraying you doesn't mean they can't change their mind (the converse of that is true as well).
Number 5 is not irrelevant either; see above. It is also not contradictory; the legwork we do isn't to find out their motivations. We don't give a damn about their motivations. If any of legwork, researching information that we need to accomplish our goals (hint: Johnson motivation isn't in that category), would somehow uncover something sinister (i.e. Mr. Johnson is actually trying to reestablish a new version of the Universal Brotherhood for his insect overlords), we'll decide if we want to continue the run or take other steps instead. Judging intentions isn't going to tell you that kind of information; actual legwork will (generally speaking digging that deep requires finding some kind of matrix trail, although contacts can help).
6. Everyone should do it, but it is a part of the Face's role. The entire purpose of the Face is to deal with people. Judging Intentions is a part of it. Would you say a customer service representative is good at their job if they can't tell when someone is unhappy with a product? Yeah, everyone should be able to do it, but a Face should be able to do it well.
You still haven't stated what "
well" is. What is the magic number of base dice you think a Face
has to have for judge intentions? The original example I put up was a Fomorian with a Charisma of 5 and Int of 3, giving 8 base dice and the ability to pump that to 14 dice (before any possible modifiers get tossed in). However, after I posted that it was established that Giants (still a Troll) don't get the social penalty I had thought they did ( says it in the fluff, but no actual rules). With that in mind, I stated Giants would be good as well. Making it a Giant and tweaking the attribute points would get you Charisma 5 and Int of 4 for a base judge intentions of 9, and the ability to spike it to 15 if needed (again before any other positive modifiers are taken into account). Again I'll ask, how is this bad? What is the number you think is needed in each attribute before it's no longer bad?
7. Well, if you actually read what Whiskey is saying, Intuition has far more value than just Judge Intentions (or Initiative). Evasion, Perception, Knowledges; Intuition affects a lot of important things, especially for a Face who probably isn't investing so much into combat attributes. And you can't turn over 10 karma into Nuyen. Cut that number down to 70,000.
I did read what he said, but neither of you stated why a starting Int attribute of 3 is bad. Willpower is important as well, same with body, and agility, and archetype important attributes (and if you're a technomancer, everything is important). Yeah, it factors into a lot of important skills, which you can put skill points into at character creation, and which can be raised far higher than attributes (for the most part).
Yeah, my bad on the nuyen; I don't know where I came up with 20. However, 70k nuyen still can buy you everything I listed previously, and still get you something to improve initiative. Granted it's not going to be top shelf, alpha-grade level 3 ware, (more likely rating 1 used) but you can get initiative improvements at character gen with that priority selection.
To note; you are far too focused on the pre and post-run meetings. That is only a small section of the game.
That's a misconception on your part; I only mentioned them to point out how judge intentions isn't that useful for me; as I stated previously it's the post-acceptance legwork where the real work is done, and generally speaking I haven't needed judge intentions there either. We do some legwork, including planning for the actual run, and then
we do the run. We don't go around trying to dig up motivations.
