system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Inception] What would make for an absolutely deception-proof totem? Even something like a dungeons and dragons die has a small chance of being successfully faked.
gpt
In the way that the totem is *supposed* to work, literally nothing. Since you know all the elements of how your totem works, then eventually your subconscious can be made to reveal those elements to any skilled thief, exactly the same way any other piece of information can be uncovered.  

What's worse, because of the conceit that your totem will only work "correctly" when you're awake because no architect would be able to correctly construct its particular flaws, then if someone *really* wanted to mess you up, all they really would need to do is steal your actual totem in the real world and replace it with a copy which works like a perfect version of that thing... in which case you'd go for your totem to check that you're out of the dream, see it not doing whatever it is supposed to do when you're awake, and conclude that you're still dreaming. At which point, you're likely to lay down on some traintracks or something.

However, people with some severe psychological flaw of some sort actually have a built-in fool-proof totem system, because their subconscious tends to intrude upon whatever dream they happen to be sharing, even if it is not their own or they're not the architect of it. Hence, Mal. 

So a skilled dream-infiltrator can always be assured that they're definitely in a dream when the object of their intense traumatic experience shows up. And, conversely, if the thing that terrorizes their nights and gives them insomnia **doesn't** happen to show up randomly, then they can be certain that they're actually awake.

At least until the full-blown psychotic break hits.