Weird to me that this is the common interpretation. Deception, sure. Intimidation? I always describe the effects as fear. Successfully intimidating a NPC will make them afraid of you; down the road potentially antagonistic if the situation is right (eg, the tables have turned or they have a new friend or ally who is bigger and more intimidating than the PC).
So, if I may, here's more or less the "logic" of this as I understand it, working from what you have said. Because your "if the situation is right" is kind of the whole issue. You have agreed that,
at least in principle, using the Intimidate skill is bad, because it's hurtful and aggressive. You have granted that it is,
to at least some extent, a "big results but you pay a price for them" option. The logic proceeds thusly:
- Persuasion is inherently more risky than Intimidation, because the latter involves coercion, while the former involves actually changing the target's mind.
- Because Intimidate is less risky in that sense, it must be more risky in some other sense.
- Intimidating a target will make them resent the person who intimated them, at least a little bit.
- People you resent are ones that you will help oppose if given the chance.
- The party has intelligent enemies who will exploit any foothold they can find to harm the party or at least inhibit them.
- As DM, it is your job to make sure player actions have consequences.
- Hence, if the players Intimidate, it is your job to give that action a negative consequence, and thus to give the intimidated target(s) a chance to vent their resentment against the party, which the party's enemies will gladly exploit.
Another way to put it: You can use Intimidation at any time, but you cannot use Persuasion on people who are already hostile (=already hate you). Many DMs understand this to mean, "Intimidate
makes people hate you." And to be fair, it's not like 3e didn't plant that seed, because IIRC if you Intimidate people it's
always going to worsen their attitude toward you.
Sometimes Persuasion is simply not an option .
Sure. That doesn't mean Intimidate doesn't make the target hate your guts and want to take you down.
It's mostly a failure of writing. Intimidation is a CHA skill but is commonly understood in the context of a STR skill as though the PC is making direct threats. Strangely enough your ability to actually carry out those threats isn't a relevant factor. I've several times seen characters who are death incarnate, absolutely steeped in the blood of ten thousand victims, fail to get a fellow bar user to back down from a confrontation. 'I guess I'll just have to kill you then'.
It's the "critical hit snake eyes" problem. Personally, I'd make some characters have a "passive Intimidate" score equal to their attack stat (Str for Barbarians and most heavy armor wearers, Dex for Rogues and most other ranged or dagger users), so long as they are actually trained in Intimidate and in a situation where personal power is relevant. That recognizes the impact of physical prowess or past killing, but doesn't guarantee success against particularly beefy or durable targets.
Real intimidation isn't about direct threats it's about what's unsaid. Someone has an aura of power, or authority, or known connections to powerful forces, and so you feel compelled to placate them without the veneer of social niceties ever needing to be broken. You don't hate that person afterwards; you're just grateful they didn't squash you like a bug.
Sure. But, as noted, the logic doesn't approach it that way. It approaches it from the perspective of "intimidate is what
bad people do", more or less.
In any case, people have have used intimidation quite a bit in my game, and even though I combined deception into persuasion, intimidation has not been useless at all.
Main advantages it has over persuasion are:
- You can use it on people who were already super negatively disposed towards you and were not going to listen reason.
- You can get people to do things they could never be persuaded to do.
Well, it's nice to see at least one DM that doesn't see it as always needing painful negative consequences since it can be used in places where Persuasion can't.
I honestly don't know what you are talking about. Intimidate usage is about median in how often a social skill is used. Your listed use case on it assumes that you will never use social skills on someone hostile, like a captured bandit or a corrupt guard.
Oh, heavens no. You can Persuade or Deceive both of those examples in most campaigns. Intimidate just makes them
harden their hostility for you because you coerced them rather than working
with them.
I could see murderhobos who kill everything not getting much use for it, but as part of an interrogation, part of getting a potential encounter to stand down and not turn it into a combat, part of getting a low-level criminal to tell who hired him -- all useful.
Most (non-4e) DMs I've spoken to would handle these as:
1. Interrogated prisoner now hates you forever and will either be broken out of prison and added to your enemy's roster, or will actively spread antagonistic claims (true or false, doesn't matter) about you through the criminal underworld, making your future interactions with it harder. Because you didn't try to
convince the interrogation target, you just "took the easy path".
2. All your intimidation did was put a lid on the boiling pot. It will get worse when the enemy finally
does attack (which they eventually will, it just might take a while), because now they have time to gather reinforcements to match your threat.
3. The low-level criminal will answer now, but will (try to) save their own skin later by telling the boss what happened. Whether the minion survives this conversation is then kind of irrelevant; the
boss now hates you for interfering with her "legitimate business."
Outside of 4e, nearly every D&D DM I've ever had would go out of their way to make sure that every use of Intimidate came at a price. Almost always a price much higher than any rewards you would reap.
(Anyway, Medicine is the worst skill.)
Howso? It can at least be used to identify illnesses. It's certainly not as useful as it should be, but that's got nothing on the "actively makes your life harder" problem Intimidate has.
