Curse that charisma!

[Lord Pendragon]

As you are the DM, I urge you to leave the skill as charisma. Unless you're also going to allow the sorcerer to use charisma for his Jump check, if he psyches himself up before the jump with a rousing internal monologue.

Intimidating is about more than just making your target afraid. I have no doubt that the barbarian/battle rager can make the target more afraid than the sorcerer. But intimidating is about more than that, it's about combining threat with coersion effectively. It's about making the target believe not only that you can hurt him, but that he can avoid it by cooperating. It's about making sure not to push the fear into abject terror, and thus not get anything out of the target at all. All of this speaks towards charisma, and I think that charisma is already short-changed enough for barbarian/battle ragers, without letting them switch it out for skills as well. Otherwise they might as well be rolling stats six times, drop the lowest.

Okay, that's all I have to say. I'm not trying to hijack your thread, but hoping that you might at least consider it from another angle before making your decision.

Edit: whoa, seven, seven posts popped up in the time it took me to compose mine! Oi. In any case, I could probably be pursuaded as a DM to allow it with a feat. That's payment for benefit, much like Weapon Finesse.

 

[mhd]

As you are the DM, I urge you to leave the skill as charisma. Unless you're also going to allow the sorcerer to use charisma for his Jump check, if he psyches himself up before the jump with a rousing internal monologue.

Worked for Kirk

But I generally agree. My prime example for intimidating is and always will be Clint Eastwood. Just staring someone down. That said, I _do_ allow some of the powerhouses to be threatening in their own way. But not as easily.

First, sometimes they "intimidate" people without ever throwing a single die. If they're wreaking havoc all over the place, careful opponents might just opt for the retreat. Just common sense, but if you do it once in a while, they players feel "badass" enough without crying about the Sorc who's better at intimidating than they are...

Second, in certain circumstances I let them substitute Str for Cha. Like the DMG suggested, they'd have to perform some powerful feat to do that. Bending bars or breaking bricks isn't good enough. As Bruce Lee commented "bricks don't hit back"... Kobolds are intimidated by that, but you don't need to add your Str for those creeps. It's best to combine it with some major success in combat. A huge critical. Cleaving through opponents like a flametongue through butter. After that they might as well add their Str. Or just get a big situation bonus. Should work out the same...

And finally, those Str-based intimidation attempts are a little bit more limited. You scare the bejeesus out of someone a few feet away, but with the normal Cha-based attempt the whole battlefield might be fleeing.

So, to cut a long story short, I wouldn't rule out exchanging attributes for skills once in a while. As long as no one wants to calculate angles and velocities to add their Int to a jump check... But neglecting Cha has to be punished, or too many players will do it. The increased spot/listen/willpower that wisdom gives and additional skill points from Int might look too tempting, but without a decent Cha you're just bound to remain on the lower rungs of society.
(Generally I tend to reward the more swashbuckling actions, so the dump stats with my players -- if they have one -- is more often Wisdom. Helps them playing the usual foolhardy, over-confident heroes)

 

[Particle_Man]

Personaly I would probably treat it like this:

Guy wants to be good at intimidate but has a bad cha.

He has lots of ranks in it, he tries to use it often.

I would create a feat that had some prereq's (things like must have succeded at intimidating someone in situation x or whatever, and lots of ranks in intimidate, and require a cha of 9 or less). It would grant a +2 to intimidate checks, keep the negative cha modifier, and add on the str modifier as well to the check if it is obvious that the character will use it or has used it recently (that is why big bad guys have lackeys! to chop them up first and then say that the big guy is next.. or chop up a lackey buddy and tell the other he is next ).

That way he has paid the price, gets a very good benefit, and still keeps the game balance pretty well on track

Or the barbarian could just take Skill Focus: Intimidate, as well as the other feat that gives +2 to Intimidate and +2 to some other skill. Both feats are in the PHB. Anyhow, as the barbarian and sorceror go up levels, eventually the class skill vs. cross-class skill will tell, and the advantage will swing to the barbarian.

 

[Tatsukun]

For my two yen, I’d say it’s up to circumstance modifiers. If the barby shreds all the mooks then comes into the BBEG’s room and intimidates him, major bonus.

But as has been said, the Sorcy can get the result from a few rounds of artillery.

The way I see it is that Hannibal Lecter was weak, and frail, and old, and gave me nightmares for months, so Cha is probably a good stat for intimidate.

If someone kills all my guards, then I hear a huge angry voice yelling ‘I’m gonna kill you!” it’s scary, but if I hear a absolutely calm H.A.L. voice say “Hello Tatsu, I’ve come to visit you” that’s double-creepy!

-Tatsu

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Charisma is the best stat to base on Intimidate - you can see this in various Drizzt books (Artemis is great at this, despite being short and not being equipped with bulging muscles) and those two guys at the beginning of Nurse Betty. (Same thing with Mississippi Burning for that matter. McDonald's cup ... ha!)

I would give a bonus to the barbarian while raging. A sorcerer, who can do terrible things to someone who angers them with a word and a hand-wave, should look pretty confident when they threaten someone.

 

[Christian]

The movie scene I always think of when this issue crops up (roughly bimonthly, I think) is from the original Star Wars ...

Chewbacca: "GROWRRROW!!!"
C3P0: "He made a fair move-there's no point complaining about it."
Solo: "Let it go. It's not wise to upset a Wookie."
C3P0: "But sir-nobody worries about upsetting a droid."
Solo: "That's because droids don't pull people's arms off when they lose."
C3P0: "Oh ... R2, I suggest a new strategy ..."

I propose that, while the fear was of Chewbacca, the Intimidate roll in that scene was made by Han Solo. When it was just Chewie grunting and growling, it just wasn't getting across the effect he hoped for ...

That dwarf and the sorcerer make a great team, just like Chewie and Solo. Chewie provides a credible threat, and Solo's Charisma applies that threat in a way that gets people to do what they want them to do. Mr. Short & Ugly is incredibly effective at intimidation for someone who's virtually inarticulate & doesn't understand people; but he'll be even more effective rolling that +9 Intimidate check against DC 10 to Aid Another, while the sorcerer plays the 'good cop'. (Please don't aggravate the dwarf. The cleaning bill to get the blood and brains off the walls last time was horrendous. )

 

[Liquidsabre]

Not to mention that an act of strength can provide a circumstance bonus naturally. I see no problems with the Intim (cha) as a skill.

 

[argo]

I basically agree with most of the other posts on this thread. The dwarf needs to suck up his Cha penalty and deal with it, maybe he gets a few circumstance bonuses now and then but thats it.

However, consider this. The reason the dwarf is upset and feels that this situatuion is "unfair" is probably because his character concept is mean, tough, scarry guy. I mean look at him: dwarf battle-rager, spiked armor, heck I bet he describes his character as not bathing and happily wearing the blood of his enemies etc. And when he fails to make someone crap their pants he feels like his character concept is being undermined. So my suggestion is to give him what he wants without actually giving him what he WANTS.

Here is what I mean. Intimidate, the skill, has absouetly nothing to do with how much a character intimidates someone. That is left up to the DM, hopefull working in cooperation with the player, to decide. Intimidate, the skill, is a game mechanic used to determine how successful the character is at forcing a NPC to do what he wants. The key is the Charisma, which is meant to represent his "force of personality" whatever that means. And this guy has a six, a SIX! One way to play this would be to say that he just fades into the background and nobody pays him any attention. But that is not how he wants to play his character, dwarven battle-ragers do not fade into the background thank you very much! It is hard to ignore a five foot dwarf with a sharktooth staff don't you know. Which means the other way to play this is that the Univers just doesn't like him very much, in a cosmic sense.

So here is what I would do. The next time he attempts to Intimidate someone and fails (if he succedes he succedes) don't say something like "he eyeballs you wairily but is unafraid". Instead think about what it is that he wants to get from this exchange and then try to think of some way that you can have the NPC react with fear, fear of the psycho in the spiked armor, but that the cosmic tricksters of the universe can make sure that he gets nothing good out of it.
Example: he tries to Intimidate the stable boy into selling him a horse when no horse is for sale but fails his roll. So the stable boy is so afraid he grabs the first horse on his right, which happens to belong to the Duke, and now our dwarf has the law after him.
Example: he tries to Intimidate a prisoner into giving him information but fails his roll. So the prisoner is so afraid that he faints dead away (or has a heart attack!). Not gonna get any information out of him now are you?

The point is to get him to the point where he says something like "not again, the gods must truly conspire against me. Sigh, I hate city folk so very much, more than anything. Crap like this is why I went to live in the wild in the first place." If you do that then he will truly be acting "in character".

 

[Hypersmurf]

Example: he tries to Intimidate a prisoner into giving him information but fails his roll. So the prisoner is so afraid that he faints dead away (or has a heart attack!). Not gonna get any information out of him now are you?

"Fezzik, jog his memory."
THUD.
"Uh'm surry, In'go. I duhn' mean to jo'im so 'ahhd..."

-Hyp.

 

[Thanee]

Charisma is probably the most misunderstood stat in the whole game.

I still wonder, tho, why Will saves are not charisma-dependant.

Bye
Thanee