Charisma and Intimidate

[Maidhc O Casain]

Or, option two: You have a good Charisma (Not making it your dump stat) and you fluff your character ugly but the Charisma proves that he is as intimidating or forceful as any other, even if he is hideously disfigured.

This.

You could also do as suggested before, expand Intimidating Prowess to include whatever stat you choose (instead of just STR). This might cover the "displays of prowess" part of intimidating. (i.e. a fighter displays a prowess of strength, a wizard is renown and feared for his great intelligence, a thief for his feats of dexterity, etc) This would also allow for a bit of hit, if you're so ugly or smelly or bumbling due to low CHA, that you might come off a bit comical and not intimidating.

Not this. For a few reasons.

1. We've purposely minimized the amount we muck about with RAW for a LOT of reasons (harder for newbies to pick up everything and the Law of Unintended Consequences being the two most important for me personally).
2. The first holds true to the intended use of Charisma - force of personality.
3. Finally, if you expand Intimidating Prowess to include whatever stat you wish, you take considerable value from the stat that most folks who aren't playing a class who make primary use of CHA already use as a dump stat, and thus you devalue those CHA dependent classes somewhat. (Wow . . . that's a really confusing sentence on re-read. Sorry about that )

My opinion is, if you want to play an intimidating character put some points in Charisma. Or use an existing feat and put some points in STR. Or both. Either way, invest your skill points in Intimidate. Even without the first two, investing those skill points simulates taking the time and using life experience to learn the skill.

 

[Systole]

A natural talent in Intimidate comes down to force of personality, for reasons that have already been explored in detail in this thread.

Look, it's not hard to completely break any skill if you want to. You have to work at it a bit, and I think that's pretty reasonable. I've got an 11th level Antipaladin who has +33 in Intimidate (11 ranks, 3 from class skill, 7 from 24 Cha, Intimidating Prowess for 5 from 20 Str, 3 Skill focus, 4 Lord of Darkness archetype).

But look, if I decided to make my 8 Cha barbarian an Intimidate powerhouse, at 8th level he'd still be looking at +19, which is still pretty respectable (6 Str + 8 ranks + 3 class skill -1 charisma +3 skill focus). Like I said, work at it.

 

[John Blackport]

Is Intimidate truly worth all this fuss, though? The skill's not that useful.

I didn't just look it up, but if you're talking a -2 negative modifier for being shaken . . . frankly, I think it becomes a sort of "dump skill". And rogues and bards are one thing, but fighters and barbs don't have the skill points to burn, do they?

Is bumping up Acrobatics to avoid the AoO's on the way in to get past the reach of that Huge troll *really* less important than just scaring a guy you've already defeated and taken prisoner? How about Perception, to avoid ambushes? How about Heal, to keep your buddy alive an extra round so the good cleric can get over to him (or the not-so-good cleric can actually torture the prisoner mentioned above, for that matter?)

I'm not saying it's worthless, it has its place in the game . . . it's just way overvalued for what it actually does.

 

[GMMichael]

Because CHA is also related to looks,

Are you saying Steve Buscemi has a low Charisma? What about Barack Obama?

I will be asking my DM if I can do this.

Your DM should have a section in his book called "assigning challenge ratings." If he thinks your character is sufficiently scary, then Intimidating opponents should be a lesser challenge, no?

 

[grumblyarcher]

There are a couple of ways around this if you're willing to invest in them. The Bruising Intellect trait swaps charisma for intelligence (a must have for scary int based characters). Granted, if you're dumping charisma, there is a good chance you're dumping intelligence as well. I typically avoid dump stats in my builds for this very reason. My suggestion is burning a couple of feats on Skill Focus, Intimidating Prowess, maybe grabbing some more miscellaneous bonuses to intimidate via traits and feats. You should rack up a pretty good bonus that way.