A quick look at Intimidate: the D&D wunderskill

[LostSoul]

The the DM's doing it wrong if it's all up to him and he's ignoring the skill check. But he is allowed to have situational modifiers so the player's good roll might still not be good enough.

If the DM is doing it wrong, why not put that into the rules? As it stands, "Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate" doesn't mean anything.

"Get lost, dragon, or I will kill you."
"Oh, let's chat for a bit."

 

[buzz]

The the DM's doing it wrong if it's all up to him and he's ignoring the skill check.

But the issue here is that the DM isn't necesasrily ignoring anything. Beyond not attacking you (for now), "chat, advise, offer limited help" is pretty subjective.

Now compare putting ranks into making that effect happen as opposed to something with a concrete effect that has static DCs, like Tumble or Jump. These are worth the ranks, and are unaffected by DM style.

Intimidate--like Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Bluff--is one of those skills you buy based on your DM. Outside of hard-coded effects like Feint or Demoralize, there's no guarantee that your ranks will be worth squat.

 

[PallidPatience]

That's an issue with different DMing strategies, then, not with the skill in question.

DMs have to do one of two things with regard to the social skills: use them as per the PH, or tell the players how they're going to regard/change them in their campaigns. If you're not going to care what someone rolls on his Intimidate check, tell him not to waste the skill-points. Otherwise, if you feel someone should be intentionally difficult to Intimidate, apply a modifier. Don't arbitrarily make it impossible. After all, what's more heroic than successfully scaring a red dragon away from its hoard?

All in all, disregarding Intimidate, Bluff, and Diplomacy makes for one-dimensional characters. There's no point in trying to talk your way through any encounter in a campaign in which the DM doesn't care how good your characters are at doing so. The only things you can do are kill things and run away to avoid being killed.

 

[Crothian]

Intimidate--like Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Bluff--is one of those skills you buy based on your DM. Outside of hard-coded effects like Feint or Demoralize, there's no guarantee that your ranks will be worth squat.

Then play with DM's that are good and make use of the skill. DMing is not easy and not all DMs are equal. A good DM with have easy to understand and consistant ruling with these skills. I really find this to be a bad DM thing and not a bad skills issue.

 

[IcyCool]

After all, what's more heroic disappointing than successfully scaring a red dragon away from its hoard?

Fixed that for you.

 

[buzz]

DMs have to do one of two things with regard to the social skills: use them as per the PH, or tell the players how they're going to regard/change them in their campaigns.

My point is that even using them by-the-book is very subjective.

All in all, disregarding Intimidate, Bluff, and Diplomacy makes for one-dimensional characters. There's no point in trying to talk your way through any encounter in a campaign in which the DM doesn't care how good your characters are at doing so. The only things you can do are kill things and run away to avoid being killed.

No one said that not putting ranks in those skills means that characers never talk to people. The DM in my Saturday game likes to handle this stuff with rules-free negotiation (i.e., "rolepalying" in the actor-ly sense); this seems to be pretty common. Ergo, putting ranks in these skills is 100% wasteful in his game. They will never come up, and thus are better used for skills with concrete results.

 

[buzz]

Then play with DM's that are good and make use of the skill. DMing is not easy and not all DMs are equal. A good DM with have easy to understand and consistant ruling with these skills. I really find this to be a bad DM thing and not a bad skills issue.

IMO, it's a skill issue because the rules are vague and give DMs minimal guidance. I mean, if the rules for shields were solely, "Shields help improve a character's AC; successful shield use should make the character harder to hit," is it really "bad DM'ing" if the actual implementation of this varied from group to group?

The counter-argument I would expect here would be: "But how can you provide specific rules for social interaction stuff like this?" To which I would answer: Take a look at products like Dynasties & Demagogues, Iron Heroes, Spycraft 2.0, or (to go outside d20) Burning Wheel.

Make it work like any other skill, i.e., resolve a specific task. Instead of "succeed and the target will chat with you," how about "succeed and you can compell the target to take a specific action that takes no longer than X rounds" with the level of success affecting the duration of the effect, and the nature of the action modifying the DC. That would be a start.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

As a DM, my problem with Intimidate, Diplomacy and Bluff is that it is so one sided in the character's favor. Now, if I had some players who would allow their characters to be affected by those skills, then I would e far more lenient with allowing them large advantages by using those.

Instead, most all of my player's characters are Bruce Willis cool, so intimidte doesn't work.

Most of them use the diplomacy-immunity rule inthe DMG to play their characters how they want to.

And finally tend to use OOC info to avoid being bluffed, in all but combat situations.

Frankly, using those three skills as written in 3.x is like lettig the players play regular classes and restricting all NPCs to the expert, spellcaster, warrior, aristocrat and commoner. All of them, even the BBEG.

 

[Crothian]

IMO, it's a skill issue because the rules are vague and give DMs minimal guidance. I mean, if the rules for shields were solely, "Shields help improve a character's AC; successful shield use should make the character harder to hit," is it really "bad DM'ing" if the actual implementation of this varied from group to group?

Actually, that not a good analogy. PC's don't put points into shields. I say it's a Bad DM becasue he's ignoiring the die roll, a nat one and nat 20 don't matter when by the rules they do. There are areas of every game that are not always as defined as some poeple would like them to be and this is one of those areas that seperates a doog, bad, and great DM from each other. Not everyone can handle vague and so they fail.

 

[FunkBGR]

Huh, didn't scroll to the end like I thought I did. Whoops. My argument already mentioned. In support of it being powerful.

Fear effects stack. Cause Fear causes shaken on successful save, or better - Fear. Intimidate causes Shaken.

Shaken + Shaken = Frightened, an effect that doesn't leave until you can't see / hear the source.