Handling Intimidate when Powerful-yet-untrained characters threaten violence?

[awesomeocalypse]

How do you handle it when characters who are untrained in intimidate threaten someone they could clearly destroy into doing what they want?

For example, Johnny the Wizard is 8th level, with 8 charisma and no intimidate training. Statistically, he's a nebbishy geek who isn't even slightly intimidating.

However, being an 8th level wizard, he is fully capable of blowing the average peasant/merchant/whatever into kingdom come.

Johnny is interacting with said average peasant/merchant/whatever, and says, "do what I say, or I'll kill you."

DM rolls intimidate, and Johnny gets like a 7--by the numbers, he's not scaring anyone. Mr. Peasant Merchant says, "hell no, nerd."

Johnny shoots his leg off with a magic missille. Then says, "okay, now do what I say, or I'll kill you."

Now, either Mr. Peasant Merchant, now a broken, sobbing shell of a man, does what Johnny wants, as he "realistically" would. Or, to maintain the integrity/usefulness of intimidate as a skill, he becomes irrationally, suicidally brave, calls Johnny's "bluff" and gets blown the hell up.



Whats the best way to handle a situation like this? Do you just give massive situational modifiers and/or autosuccesses any time the PCs threaten someone they could easily kill with violence? And if so, then really, isn't intimidate almost useless except if you're attempting to intimidate a king or someone extremely powerful? I mean, sure, there are situations where outright threatening violence might not be feasible, but for a mid-to-high level party hanging out in a fairly mundane locale (i.e. characters who have essentially no reason to fear or respect any of the authority figures in said locale), threatening violence can easily become the go-to mode of social interaction (and yes, I'm aware that this is why the DMG suggests moving paragon campaigns to sigil or other super-fantastical locations, but I've never been a fan of that, either as a player or a DM, precisely because I like the idea of pcs who become the most powerful people in a given area).

 

[Barastrondo]

If it were me (and thankfully it is not; I've never been fond of the Knights of the Dinner Table approach to NPC interaction), I would probably say that in such cases, the difficulty for Intimidate might be appropriately low, much as the difficulty of killing a peasant is appropriately low.

In this specific case, I'd probably rule that since Johnny is no good at making people fear him. They fear his magic missiles, yes. But he comes across as a crackhead with a gun, wherein the gun is the dangerous thing and not Johnny. This brings to mind scenarios wherein people are openly "tamed," quite subservient, but plotting all the time for a perfect time to murder Johnny in his bed and hopefully blame it on someone else. Whereas if Johnny were charismatic and trained in Intimidate, their fear might be genuine enough to keep them in line.

 

[fuzzlewump]

Yes. Very yes.

If they don't make intimidate checks and basically throw their weight around all the time they eventually become hated, then they get bounty hunters in the form of assassins, powerful royal guard, that kind of thing. The King goes to Sigil to seek people to kill the group, or whatever. If they attempt a bit of subtlety, then call for intimidate. For instance, scaring a peasant who is surrounded by city guard without alerting them would take skill.

But yeah, death threats don't need intimidate, just play them out organically. Like every other skill, call for skill-checks when the outcome is uncertain.

 

[coyote6]

I try to think of Intimidate not as being just the ability to scare someone, but being the ability to scare someone usefully -- so that you accomplish something. Thus, people with frightening miens, massive muscles and more massive swords, incandescent arcane might, and otherwise clear signs of "I can destroy you" power -- but no real Intimidate bonus -- can scare people. They just don't do it to useful effect some (many) times.

In the shot-off-his-leg situation, I'd have Peasantus Merchantus be terrified of Johnny -- but not usefully terrified. I'd have him be scared out of his wits, more-or-less literally; helpless on the floor, sobbing in fear and pain, begging Johnny to stop, don't kill me, please, oh Zilchus/Pelor/insert-divinity-here. Congratulations, Johnny -- you successfully frightened him -- but not into doing what you want.

In the pre-leg shooting, the failed roll might lead to Peasantus shouting for help, and guards/neighbors/etc showing up.

IIRC, I played it about that way once when the big strong no-ranks warrior used Intimidate to scare someone into talking -- he flexed, smashed something to bits, rolled, and failed. The would-be targets didn't talk, they just ran away. They didn't gain the frightened or panicked condition, or suffer any other kind of mechanical effect; they just decided to leave.

If Mr. Scary had been trying to scare them into leaving, then they might have gotten scared that he was about to kill them, and drawn weapons to defend themselves. Or maybe they'd have talked, and lied.

 

[Kraydak]

Use intimidate to be *scarier than you normally are*.

Most peasants (and townspeople, and eventually, depending on your world, nobility+) would themselves at the very thought of angering a powerful adventurer. This does, of course, mean that most NPCs should be obsequious to the point of driving the players crazy unless the players are very careful to develop a positive reputation. 20 year old idiot NPCs with deathwishes, well, they can get complicated.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

Also, depending on the situation, they might not think the adventurer would do anything terribly violent in public. Just because a character is very strong doesn't mean people think they're the "kill a merchant in the middle of a crowded marketplace" type.

Of course, if they have a reputation for killing merchants in the middle of a crowded marketplace, they should probably get a bonus for this very situation anyway

 

[pawsplay]

Intimidate is a skill used to get a particular result. Simply scaring people is not a skill. If you are a powerful wizard and threaten to kill someone if they don't comply, they will comply very willingly. If a party of low level adventurers met an adult red dragon, you wouldn't have the dragon roll Intimidate to allow the PCs to flee, right?

 

[Tale]

Torture and violence do not work that well. Victims subject to these methods will say anything to get it to stop. The difference between getting anything and getting the truth is key.

If a player fails intimidation and resorts to violence, he gets lies.

 

[Stoat]

If I were going to require an intimidate check, and the wizard muffed it, I'd handle it the same as Coyote6. The wizard glowers, his eye flash red, a curl of smoke rises from his fingers, and the peasant faints dead away. Or drops to the ground babbling incoherently. Or turns pasty white and tries to run.

That said, I won't really call for checks unless the stakes call for it. An 8th level wizard can probably push around some schlub commoner without trying.

If I did call for a check, I'd definitely set the DC pretty low.

 

[AllisterH]

Isn't Intimidate just a roll against the target's WILL defense?

Assuming the farmer is basically
"human rabble" - a reasonable assumption I believe...this means the WILL defense is only +1. Tack on the +10 for being Hostile and the 8th level wizard with the roll of 7 still succeeds.

7+ half level = 11 = Will defense.

If the wizard actually rolled a 6 or under, I would assume that the wizard simply doesn't convey the sense of danger to the farmer.