D&D 5E Is Intimidate the worse skill in the game?

[Maxperson]

They're just victims of the in-house drive-by.


I smell hyperbole. That being said, intimidate is persuasion, and should be included in that skill.

I don't agree that it should be included in persuasion. While the person being intimidated is being "persuaded," instilling fear to get results is very different from talking someone down from the ledge. People good at one are not automatically good at the other.

 

[Maxperson]

What makes you think they never try?

Because as the DM running the game I know it never happened.

 

[Steampunkette]

What makes you think they never try?

The 30+ sessions where we goofed off and fought monsters and spent almost every waking moment of every day together since we reached adulthood, plus our joint backstory of being the kids of farmers who went to adventuring academy together, before outta nowhere they get +10 to blacksmithing because they're level 20.

But, y'know, maybe they were secretly watching Blacksmithing Tutorials on Youtube for Sending Stones or something, I guess.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I smell hyperbole. That being said, intimidate is persuasion, and should be included in that skill.

Only slight hyperbole.

The skill functions if the GM is willing to have the skill actually do something, but it has no actionable rules.

This means not only that the skill is seriously prone to GM-fiat issues, but also that a player can never know exactly what you can do with it.

 

[MGibster]

Social skills don't work on PCs. The players get to decide whether to believe someone or not. If you look at the social skill section of the DMG it only talks about PC uses on NPCs. Crawford also confirmed that the intent was for them not to work against PCs.

I’ve seen PCs twist themselves into knots believing a friendly NPC has some nefarious intention. Even after making an Insight roll, the player just can’t help but think the DM is going to fool them.

 

[CreamCloud0]

How would you incorporate skill "Powers" into 5e? In 4e, you had to swap a Class power to use a Skill one. Not sure what the equivalent would be here.

i'd probably have it be PB+INT skill powers distributed between your proficient skills, and skills with expertise get 1/2 PB extra powers for that skill specifically.

edit: i'm not sure i like it being feat buy-in as the other poster suggested, skills are pretty clearly basegame it's just they're ineffectively implemented, this is simply catching things up to be closer to the usefulness they're meant to have.

edit 2: actually i think i'd give it to the martial and halfcasters as baseline and let it be a feat for fullcasters.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You can keep saying that all you like. The books explicitly say otherwise. I'm going to believe them over you.


No, it isn't. The page you are referring to is when the DM has to INVENT a new DC for something that didn't already have one. It is not for deciding whether the wooden door in front of the players is a level 30 wooden door or a level 2 wooden door. Because, even in the 4e DMG, doors had specific, defined DCs (4e DMG page 64):

Strength Check to...	DC
Break down wooden door	13
Break down reinforced door	16
Break down barred door	20
Break down iron door	23
Break down adamantine door	27
Break through force portal	30
Force open wooden portcullis	21
Force open iron portcullis	28
Force open adamantine portcullis	35

So you are just, straight-up, wrong.

Ok.
Seems I misremebered it.

What sticked were those skill challenges table. And those were definitely a level by level table.

But does not matter. The whole skill challenge was hot garbage. Maybe if they had presented that differently it would not have been what people are remembering.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So the experts breeze through every check. That's not a solution. That's deciding which horrible thing you're okay with facing.

Let me look up how DCs scale in 3e or 5e...
easy, medium, hard
10, 15, 20.

Then look at 4e table...
scaling numbers...

It also means you're literally rewriting 5e, so that the skill DCs never increase, meaning you aren't even using 5e's skill DCs either! You've reinvented THIS system and called it the same, but apparently reinventing 4e's system was beyond the pale.

I use the system as is. People used ever increasing DCs because they could not cope with nonmagical characters just succeding were the problem. Not 3e or 5e skill DCs that don't scale.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I’ve just had my players talk their way through most of the dungeon!

 

[Steampunkette]

I’ve just had my players talk their way through most of the dungeon!

Sometimes that can be fun!

Especially when running a game for kids who try to make friends with EVERYONE and then walk into town with a small army of monsters.