Surrender != death (Forked Thread: Intimidate in combat)

[fuindordm]

I've followed the Intimidate thread with interest, but it's getting too cluttered.

I think the point people have been missing in that thread is that an opponent who surrenders can change their mind later on.

Consider a combat where each PC is dueling one or more opponents. The fighter bloodies his foe, then cows him into submission. The enemy gives up his weapon; then what happens?

Some monsters might just run away, never to be seen again. Others might move to the outskirts to watch the fight, joining in again if the tide turns. The fighter could tie up or guard their defeated foe, at the cost of not participating in the fight for several rounds, but this hardly seems productive. The conflict has not been resolved, only deferred.

The point is that the DM still controls the creature's actions. It is not out of the fight--it has just agreed to stop fighting for the moment.

Here's my own success story:

Saul the fighter and his companions found themselves in an intersection with opponents on all sides. While his companions were fighting a trio of wights in adjoining rooms, a giant lizard was moving up the corridor. Saul placed himself between the lizard and the intersection, and started duking it out.

4 or 5 rounds later, the lizard (a big bag of HP, no doubt) was finally bloodied and had been weakened by another party member's power. Saul, after briefly dipping into bloodied territory himself, was fresh at the moment with nearly full HP.

Rather than spend another 4 or 5 rounds finishing off the bag of HP, Saul tried to intimidate the lizard with a ferocious display of animal rage. The roll was good, exceeding the lizard's Will defense +5 by several points. The DM had the lizard back off, retreating down the corridor. Saul was free to help his companions fight the wights. Fortunately, the wights were already nearly defeated. A couple of rounds later, all three were destroyed. With the leaders dead, their kobold servants deserted the site, presumably taking the lizard with them.

But was the lizard gone? Hardly! In all likelihood, had the fight with the wights dragged on, the kobolds would have goaded it into attacking the party again. Maybe their animal handler would have calmed it, or it would have approached from another direction. Maybe they would have given it an enraging drug. Who knows? But I suspect it would have returned one way or another.

In this situation Intimidate helped a lot, that's for sure!

Ben

 

[ExploderWizard]

The type of situation you described is a great result of an intimidation check. Surrender as a cessation of hostile action is completely the right definition to use for this.

A dumb animal such as a lizard will most certainly try and flee if it fears for its life. Intelligent opponents might flee if they think they can get away, stop fighting and watch if the battle looks close, or submit as a captive if escape looks impossible and the battle appears lost.

Consider that even mind control in 4E only allows the controller to chose a limited proscribed course of action for the victim. Allowing a player to dictate the exact result of an intimidate check would mean giving the skill greater power than mind control magic.

 

[Saeviomagy]

In the game I'm in, successful intimidates have:

1. Caused foes to attempt to flee
2. Caused foes to surrender... until they realised there was still a pitched battle going on with their unbloodied and unintimidated buddies
3. Gotten information out of targets during questioning

Situations 1 and 2 effectively robbed those foes of actions (which in itself is very powerful).

Situation 1 lead us close to chaining fights together.

Situation 2 would have resulted in a total capitulation if we'd actually bloodied every foe before trying it.

All in all: intimidate as we've used it is worthwhile yet sensible, and most of all it makes the game more interesting, rather than less.

 

[LittleFuzzy]

We can all come up with niche situations and specific examples where it can and should work out differently, but in general if you a player tries and succeeds at intimidating an enemy with the intent of making it surrender, and the DM keeps bringing the enemy back in, it's going to be at the worst possible moment for the PCs because that promotes the dramatic tension which makes the game fun. Then players are going to A) get pissed of, and B) stop using intimidate because it's not particularly helpful and can, in fact, be harmful. It would be unwise, for instance, to try and intimidate lurkers because they LIKE backing out of the fight for a little while and coming back in. Most players are trying to control the battlefield and make it function in more predictable ways, to limit the enemy's options and increase their own. Intimidate used as outlined in this thread increases the enemy's options and limits the players.

Intimidating a monster into surrendering should generally be functionally equivalent to death, because if it's not fairly predictable then players simply aren't going to do it. It will also make those situations where something different happens more exciting, fun, and memorable.

 

[IanB]

Even if you turn it into the equivalent of "stops fighting (save ends)" or whatever, it is still far too powerful a combat effect to grant to everyone as an at-will IMO. 4e is otherwise very careful about parceling out combat attacks for balance reasons, and I think it is a gross misinterpretation to use the Intimidate skill as such.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It IS limited by DM fiat...
the best way to handle it. Really.

The system is robust with proposed DC´s and it should be usable at will, but you shouldn´t expect it work all the time.

And as a power, even a daily, intimidate is too powerful.

So you have one power which you should use wisely. Decide when its the right time to try intimidating a foe to surrender or flee...

 

[Nail]

Intimidating a monster into surrendering should generally be functionally equivalent to death....

Let's investigate that word you use: "should".

Should a skill use be able to cause "functionally equivalent death"? As you think about your answer, consider how easy it is to pimp out a skill check.

Additionally, consider the power of other At-Wills available at 1st level. Which of them can cause a bloodied target to "functionally die"?

"Should" is the wrong word to use here. "Shouldn't" is better.

 

[IanB]

No, I think I understand what he's saying. It is "should" from a mechanical perspective without taking balance into account. If the results are completely unpredictable players won't do it at all, and generally you give people abilities because you want them to use them; if you *are* going to allow intimidate to surrender to work, it needs to be applied in a way that players can predict.

 

[fuindordm]

Well, some interesting responses.

To those who think that using a social skill to force surrender, however temporary, is too powerful--isn't it also too powerful for characters with Diplomacy to transform potential enemies into friends, or characters with high Stealth and perception to bypass encounters altogether? While 4E may look like it's all about combat, skills are there to provide the characters with an alternative means of handling encounters. If they can't serve this role, they have no place in the game. I don't think using Intimidate halfway through a combat is any worse than using Diplomacy or Bluff before a combat starts. And this is why the skill description invokes DM fiat! As with Diplomacy and other social skills, only the DM knows all the factors that the NPC will consider when reacting to the skill.

A DM who assumes that their prepared combats are inevitable may be justified in complaining that Intimidate ends them early. A DM who prepares encounters that may or may not lead to combat, depending on how the party handles them, is more likely to consider 'combat avoidance' through social skills a viable strategy.

Now, having said that, one could certainly make the case that the DC for
forcing surrender is too easy. There was some interesting analysis in the other thread on this subject. Broadly speaking, it is a Cha vs. Will test with heavy bonuses on the PC side (skill training and skill focus can give +8,
while the monster has no access to feats that boost their Will save by
a similar amount). Whether those DCs should be modified is a separate issue, but one that can be easily resolved if the DM asks him- or herself how often the tactic should work.

Personally, I think it should work quite often (~70%) against intelligent, self-interested opponents. In a one-on-one duel, any sensible person will take the opportunity to surrender once it becomes clear the combat is going against them. But this is for an ideal case: the PC is healthy, while the NPC is bloodied and has no backup. If both parties are bloodied, or the tide of a larger battle has not yet turned, or the NPC is a coward/fanatic, the odds should change accordingly; certainly in some of these cases they should be low enough that only a highly trained PC should have a shot at forcing surrender. By establishing a handful of benchmark cases for your campaign, it is easy to figure out whether the PC should be targeting Will, Will+5, or some other number.

Ben

 

[IanB]

Well, some interesting responses.

To those who think that using a social skill to force surrender, however temporary, is too powerful--isn't it also too powerful for characters with Diplomacy to transform potential enemies into friends, or characters with high Stealth and perception to bypass encounters altogether?

Not at all. Those checks will be occuring in the context of a skill challenge (or at least an impromptu skill challenge), which is the design space they're intended to operate in. Likewise, I would have no issue with Intimidate being used in that sort of scenario. The problem comes in when the balance of the combat 'space' is impacted by using something that wasn't designed to fit with it.

Combat-usable Intimidate should really be handled the way any other 'bonus' power from taking a feat is handled; it needs to use more resources to be balanced for combat use, like the warforged Improved Immutability feat, or the Channel Divinity ones, and it needs to have a power block that states exactly what it does, keywords, etc.