Intimidate in combat: viable?

[Old Gumphrey]

And give us a break with your wild, purposeful misinterpretations of the rules. It clearly states that a check equal to or greater than Will + 10 forces a target to surrender. That means if you're forcing a surrender, that's the DC. They don't get to pick to "be cowed" and not surrender if you pass the check and force surrender. It's really not that hard. If you think the DM should be able to arbitrarily assign a number that's impossibly high for any character to achieve (just because one character is likely to succeed at the roll), then more power to you, I guess.

So in your groups, where you can only Intimidate things on a 19 or higher and nobody worries about how high their skills are, but milks all the points on attack and damage bonuses, and someone actually DOES roll the required 19, what happens?

 

[Flipguarder]

The DM not only should, but IS able to arbitrarily set anything he wants. And in addition to that, the skill option specifically states that the DM can set the DC.

Not to say its particularly nice or fair of him to set the dc to intimidate a human rabble at 100, but he can do it, its his right in more ways than one.

Your original post boasts that you can intimidate a bloodied foe your level with a 4 or higher. Your most recent post suggests that if someone did not do what you did that they must roll a 19 to successfully intimidate anyone. Is there no reasonable middle ground to these two extremes?

In situations were one is selecting the actions of a monster/npc, the DM is in full control. You can tell the DM that you wish to intimidate the monster/npc, you can roll a twenty and end up with a modified 50 on your intimidate check. The ball then goes to him and he can do with it whatever he wishes.

It never specifically states that you get to choose which result comes from a successful check. Your DM may be nice and say it's your choice, you may decide together that it makes the most sense if it's your choice. But because the rules do not specifically state it, you cannot go to your DM point at that page and say "See it's my choice". It simply isn't denoted in the text.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Also remember the "specific beats general" rule in D&D (PHB, page really early in the book). If the adventure says "This enemy will not back down in a fight, but can be goaded/taunted into taking an action much more risky to itself without regard to this risk," then that beats out the ruling on Intimidate.

Funny how players forget this kind of thing ;-)

That right there is what I think some folks are missing. You don't get to just change the DC to 40 for a group of level 4 adventurers because you learned my character has a really high roll.

"Oh, you have +23? Well uh..the DC's 40, sorry. Oh, you don't like that, eh? Well, then, instead of them surrendering, I'll just choose their action...let's see...how about "doesn't attack you for 1 round, even though he's marked by the fighter"?

 

[eriktheguy]

I definitely see where you are going with this. I would argue that the developers did not originally balance the intimidate system very well, and that the intimidate rules are not well thought out. What you have is a character that can often finish combats before they should be able to, and although it makes sense in some scenarios it is clearly abusable. Many players have dailies that can hit a group of baddies with a condition for a limited time, but here we have a skill check can remove several bloodied foes from combat.

The rules for intimidate use a skill check against a defense, and the result does not work well. A level 4 character with the appropriate feats and items succeeds on a 4+ where a similar character trained in intimidate but not tweaked for the skill needs maybe a 15+ or higher. There is too much difference. If intimidate were a real issue in my campaigns I would rework its combat use as an attack. This would cause it to scale and balance better by level, and make it more accessible and well explained.

I think a target roll of 16+ (25%) to force a bloodied enemy to surrender is fair for a character trained in the skill, and with a decent starting ability score (16). Such a character has about a +5 bonus on this check at level 1, and monsters tend to have defenses around 13 at level 1, if the DMG is to be believed. Thus a fair target DC is the Will defense + 8. If they hit the defense, but not at +8, they still get some effect. They can also have an effect on non-bloodied foes.

Intimidate foes: at-will, standard action, fear
Close Burst 5
Target: each enemy in burst that can perceive you
Attack: Cha or Str vs Will
Hit: The target is demoralized. It gains a -2 morale penalty to attack rolls and skill checks (save ends).
In addition, if you hit the target's will defense +8, and the target is a minion or bloodied, the target surrenders. It will not act as long as you continue to focus on it. If you attempt to bind the target it will allow you to and if you direct it to go somewhere it will obey. If you or your allies attack the target or you continue to fight other foes, the target will flee. If a fleeing target is cornered it will resume fighting.
Miss: You gain a -2 penalty to any further attempts to intimidate the target until the end of the encounter. This penalty stacks.
Special: You gain a +2 bonus to the attack if you are trained in intimidate, and a further +1 for taking skill focus intimidate. If you are wearing a magic item that gives a bonus to intimidate, you gain an enhancement bonus to this attack roll according to the level of the item (+1 for level 1-5, +2 for level 6-10 etc). If more than half your team is bloodied or dead, you get -2 to the attack. If more than half of the opponent's team is bloodied or dead, you gain a +2 bonus to the attack. Elite monsters gain a +2 bonus to their defense for this and solos gain a +4 bonus.

Under this system, a level 4 (+2) character with 20 Cha(+5), trained(+2), skill focus(+1), and a Circlet of Authority (level 7 = +2) would get +12 to this attack. A level 4 enemy with a Will defense of 12+level = 16 would be intimidated on a roll of 4 or higher or would surrender on 12 or higher. A level 4 (+2) character with 18 Cha (+4), trained (+2) would have +8 to hit, intimidating on a roll of 8 or higher, and forcing surrender on 16 or higher. To me, this seems more balanced. Min/maxing will increase your ability to intimidate, but not to ridiculous levels. Not min/maxing will not make it impossible for you to intimidate.

Under this system, racial/background bonuses do not affect the attack. I did this because racial bonuses never give a character an outright bonus to an attack roll, and because any race that gains a bonus to intimidate already has an attribute bonus for Str or Cha anyways.



To help flesh out and balance using intimidate as an attack, I suggest letting diplomacy be used to cure demoralization/surrendering like a heal check.

Inspire allies
Action: minor
DC: 15
Success: Each ally within 5 squares can make a saving throw against being demoralized by an intimidate attack or surrendering because of an intimidate attack at a +2 bonus. On a success they are no longer demoralized or surrendering.
Failure:You cannot try again until next turn.

This way, if your players get intimidated by the monsters, they have an option not to be TPK'ed.


Anyways, have fun with your character!

 

[Lucas Blackstone]

"Your Intimidate checks are made against a target’s Will defense or a DC set by the DM."

Old Gumphrey, that's the plain and simple rule behind it. You may not like it, but it's the rules, just like your character's intimidate is completely legitimate. So if your DM decides that a mindless ooze is a DC 60 to intimidate because it just doesn't care about what you do or how tough you are, that's it.

It could work in your favor sometimes too don't forget. If your group was fighting a band of goblins, and with a wave of your hand in the previous round, you made 7 of the goblin chief's allies die, the DC might be lower to intimidate him because he just saw you effortlessly kill 7 of the goblins. Yes, out of character, noone is impressed by an aoe attack that kills some minions, but in character, from the enemy point of view, it would be a fearsome act.

I'm not against the Combat Intimidate build. It amuses me actually, and always has since I first saw the option. But it really is within the DM's right to set the DC by the rules of the skill itself. Sometimes their Will defense is not the relevant factor to deciding if they will be cowed/surrender.

 

[77IM]

Although in my game I would let a player say something like:


"Tell us where the girl is or I will rip your eat your organs one by one!"

I would give them a higher dc than if they simply wanted to generally intimidate them with something like the Xena screech:


"Ai-Ai-Ai-Ai-Ai-Ai-Ai-Ai-AIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

In my games, an Intimidate attempt with a specific outcome in mind ("Surrender!" "Tell us who your master is!!!" etc.) is a standard action as normal, while a generic "I just want them scared of me" is a minor action. My players aren't super-optimized for Intimidate, and they tend to shout things at the enemy during their turns in the vague hopes of getting a reaction, and I don't want to put the damper on that fun by saying, "sorry, you need to stop attacking to frighten people."

-- 77IM

 

[Flipguarder]

I absolutely love that idea! Thanks Seven hundred-seventy one M!

 

[77IM]

The more I think about this, the more I realize that the problem isn't with Intimidate specificially, but with the widely divergent skill bonuses between characters. Consider, at the Heroic tier, most weapon-wielders will have an attack bonus within 6 points of one another (ability +3 proficiency +2, vs. ability +5 proficiency +3 class weapon talent +1 feat +1 magic item higher than the other guy +1). So enemy defenses tend to cluster within that range as well; a first level foe with AC 19, for example, will be hit by the lousy guy 35% of the time and by the awesome guy 65% of the time. So as long as the guy hitting half as often is also doing more damage (or having some other effect) it should work out over time.

But with Intimidate, and other skills, the gap at 1st level can be as high as 19 (ability -1, vs.ability +5 trained +5 racial +2 feat +3 background +2 item +1). It's even worse for skills with armor check penalty. This makes it very difficult to set a reasonable DC for the skill: at DC 19, the lousy character only succeeds on a 20 and the awesome character can't fail; at DC 20, the lousy character can't succeed and the awesome character only fails on a 1. So if the awesome guy has any chance for failure at all, the lousy guy can't possibly succeed. If you consider a reasonably average guy (ability +3 trained +5; or ability +4 racial +2; or something, let's just call it 7), he's still 11 points behind the awesome guy. So a DC 23, the average guy succeeds only 25% of the time, and the awesome guy succeeds 80% of the time. For something as powerful as taking an enemy out of the fight instantly (which is the strictest reading of Intimidate), that's a huge probability gap. It's like the old 3e bard who could Diplomacy a dragon into surrendering.

I don't know how to fix this problem without house rules. It's worse because it only appears when you have a certain type of min-maxer (for example, there is a guy at my table whose Perception and Stealth are through the roof -- fortunately he is an eladrin wizard so that curbs some of the excess). I've already house ruled that the +2 background bonus can't apply to trained skills (the last thing I want is people selecting the background that allows them to increase a maxxed skill), and it looks like I might do something similar to familiars (or maybe make it a feat bonus).

-- 77IM

 

[Flipguarder]

771 you just keep saying stuff I agree with.

Circle gets the square!

I like the idea that familiar could be considered a feat bonus, as well as the idea that backgrounds don't count if someone is trained.

The next fix after that is you need to find another way to increase skills as they progress in level due to the fact that you are generally lowering the max skill someone can have.

I suggest something like "trained gives you +2 at lvl 1, +4 at lvl 11, and +6 at 21st level." Or maybe skill focus gives you +3 at 1st level +4 at 11th level and +5 at 21st level

 

[keterys]

It does surprise me that the rules are more defined for making someone surrender entirely while fighting than they are for, say, making someone take a step back or fleeing.

I do think a minor action Intimidate to push an enemy would be interesting. Having the generic standard Intimidate action be that the enemy can't attack until it saves, and bargains, flees, or surrenders as makes the most sense... that would also work for me.