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

[Minigiant]

Nah. If people cannot explain how skill challenges are supposed to work, it proves they did read the rules, as WotC couldn't explain them either. It took them several attempts until they made even some sense and the explanation was still really bad.

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.

Because
Few read the book.

Many DMs don't want to be told what to do.

DMs: #$&@ YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME! I Know how to DM.

also DMs

DMs: I Have a very common problem that would be solved by reading page XX in the book but I didn't read the book at all to notice that page XX solves my problem.

 

[Maxperson]

In a way, yes. An naughty word GM can always override anything a player can try even with skills that have established functional rules (even with things that aren't skills such that spells). But the more anchored in actionable rules a skill is, the more annoying the GM has to be to overrule it.

I don't see this as a good reason to spell out the skills. What I saw with 3e where they did spell out more what skills could do, was that players stopped being creative and just did those few things on the list. I'd much rather have skills as they are written in 5e, because I know what these things mean and so do the players, so they will just try stuff.

It's one of the foundational issues underlying the absolutely abyssal rift in competence between casters and martials.

If you absolutely must open a locked door, the safest bet is a wizard with knock, because he absolutely cannot fail. Is it noisy? Sure. But it's 100% guaranteed.

All these threads about balance issues in 5E essentially boils down to this difference in capability.

A 1st level rogue with proficiency and a 16 dex automatically unlocks any lock of DC 25 or lower, unless time rushed for some reason. They can continue to retry until they roll a 20. If they have a higher dex and expertise they can open any DC 30 lock by 5th level. DCs don't get any higher than that unless the DM goes literally off the charts.

If the spellcasters are memorizing spells to do what others in the party can do with no spells, they are gimping everyone by doing so. The party is far better off with the spellcasters memorizing utility spells to do things that no one else can. If there is a rogue in the group, knock is a waste of space.

If you play a wizard you know exactly how good you will be at something, because your spells define exactly how competent you are, and it will take an extremely arbitrary GM to keep you away from using your spells. A rogue or any other martial, on the other hand, will rely entirely on GM-fiat to function.

Unless the GM is biased, specifically, in favour of martials only, by being permissive with skills, you will have problems.

Not permissive. Just normal. Unless the DM is going out of his way to foil skills, non-casters will do just fine.

 

[Maxperson]

To be fair. They tried. But the player base does not want to go vegan too...

 

[CreamCloud0]

Of course, the OTHER problem with Intimidation is that it’s a social skill where the GM can decide that other guy in your group who mechanically is nonproficient and has a -1 CHA bonus gets to succeed without making a check because they RP’d good at being threatening.

 

[AnotherGuy]

To be fair. They tried. But the player base does not want to go vegan too...

As far as I know, it was an option in the DMG and they expanded on it some in Xanathar's but it was never made core.

When did the player base expressly vote against it? Was it perhaps in one of the play tests?

 

[Minigiant]

When did the player base expressly vote against it? Was it perhaps in one of the play tests?

4th Edition

D&D Fans would rather have something look like D&D than work as the tropes say D&D works. Then kludge the good looking ill-fitting subsystems into a bad replica and complain about it.

Intimidate is a bad skill only because D&D fans want it to exist but not want to explain nor design how it exists nor what it exists for.

It's like the Medicine skill. You decided you want it in but you don't want it to overshadow magical healing NOR let nonmagical PCs treat wounds with it.
So why does the skill exist?
Because you want it in.
Maybe you enhance it by thinking up new uses for Medicine or higher tier challenges.
Nope. Not reading the book to figure that out. Nor gonna houserule either. Just complain.

 

[Maxperson]

Intimidate is a bad skill only because D&D fans want it to exist but not want to explain nor design how it exists nor what it exists for.

It's obvious what it exists for. It exists so that PCs can intimidate NPCs into doing various things.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

DCs never increased in 3e. That was RAW. There was no scaling. A DC 25 check was the same DC at 1st level as it was at 20th level.

Experts SHOULD be able breeze through a huge number of checks. If I have a 15th level PC who has invested everything he can into opening locks, that payment of points and leveling should pay off. If you just up the DC so that my investment means literally nothing, you are negating the entire point of skill points. Investments into PCs should pay off.

So the DC to perceive if Asmodeus is lying to you is the same as the DC to tell if a village child is lying to you?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's obvious what it exists for. It exists so that PCs can intimidate NPCs into doing various things.

"It's obviously shaped like itself" is both true and useless.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

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

View attachment 389895

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.

Scaling numbers BY ENCOUNTER LEVEL.

Encounter. Level.

Let me repeat that one more time so it can't possibly be missed.

ENCOUNTER. LEVEL.​

Who decides what level an encounter should be?