jdhedden,
Option 2 has another thing going for it besides verification - consistency. A 'Set' method is equivalent to assignment with the = operator in Perl. Unless you want to document why you are deviating from that consistency and violating the principal of least suprise - it makes sense to go with option 2.

You can use things like wantarray and Want to try and figure out the context of the method call to be smart about the return value allowing more behavior. I prefer the KISS method over smart approaches most of the time.

Whatever you decide - document, document, document!