Immune to fear = Immune to intimidate?

[Tatsukun]

Hi all, what do you think about intimidating a paladin? Does the fear immuinity apply?

I sent a question to Custserve, and here is the reply (which, IMHO, doesn't answer anything) ...

We had a question come up in our game today, and we cant find any hard evidence either way. We are hoping you all can help us out. 2nd level Paladins are immune to fear and fear effects, and provide a bonus to those around them against said effects. So, are paladins immune to being intimidated?

Intimidate states that you add and bonus to fear to your roll. But the Paladin is not getting a bonus, just immunity. In fact, the only bonus mentioned is to others. Can it really be true that people standing next to a paladin get plus 4 to resist intimidate, while the paladin gets nothing?

We ruled that the Paladin is immune, but would like to check. We are not sure if this adds more power to an already powerful class.

-Unfortunately intimidate isn't listed as a fear effect, nor is it the result of some kind of magic spell or effect. At the same time, paladins really don't feel fear in the traditional sense, mainly due to this immunity. One possible way to resolve this, is to allow the paladin to be intimidated, however, rather than from a feeling of fear, from a feeling of awe or by sheer impressiveness. Ultimately it is up to the DM to adjudicate however.

So it seems odd to me that people around a paladin get +4 to resise being intimidated, but the paladin herself gets nothing to resist being in awe. Other opinions?

-Tatsu

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

What? Of course a paladin can't be intimidated. What are you? crazy?



AR

 

[kjenks]

Customer Service is clearly wrong on this one. (That happens quite a lot.)

SRD:

A character immune to fear can’t be intimidated, nor can nonintelligent creatures.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

lol that's in the Intimidate skill description.

I think I'll edit my 1st post...

AR

 

[Darkness]

SRD:

Yep. The PHB even uses 3rd-level+ paladins as example.

 

[Hypersmurf]

You just need to remember the proper protocol for making use of CustServ.

Boil your question down to one with a Yes/No answer.
Assume the opposite of what CustServ replies to be true.

It rarely fails

-Hyp.

 

[Darkness]

The sad thing is, people who don't hang out on message boards don't know this. Many of them also have questions that are pretty basic and that we can figure out relatively easily. And they take them to CustServ.

I really wonder how many perfectly good gaming sessions were messed up by people trusting in CustServ replies. ("Why yes, mass cleaving with a bag of snails is a feature, not a bug.")

 

[AuraSeer]

CS is smoking the crack, as usual. The Intimidate skill description specifically says it doesn't work on creatures immune to fear.

That said, as a house rule I've allowed paladins to be Intimidated in a very few special cases. For instance we once had a standoff between an NPC paladin and an evil sorcerer PC. The sorc had a staff of cloudkill and a few hundred innocent hostages, and said something like: "Drop your sword or all the peasants are dead!" I ruled that to be an Intimidate check to which the paladin wasn't immune, because even though he wasn't afraid, he had to consider the consequences of his actions.

 

[TheEvil]

That said, as a house rule I've allowed paladins to be Intimidated in a very few special cases. For instance we once had a standoff between an NPC paladin and an evil sorcerer PC. The sorc had a staff of cloudkill and a few hundred innocent hostages, and said something like: "Drop your sword or all the peasants are dead!" I ruled that to be an Intimidate check to which the paladin wasn't immune, because even though he wasn't afraid, he had to consider the consequences of his actions.

Yeah, but that is roleplaying, not Intimidation.
The appropriate response, by the way, would be to point out that the sorcerer had been killing peasants long before the paladin came along, and will likely continue to do so afterwards if he isn't stopped, and I will hold onto my sword, thank you.

Credit to Walt Freitag

 

[billd91]

This is a case in which I think the rule is wrong. Basing intimidation just on fear doesn't make much sense to me. While I woule rule that a paladin (or anything immune to fear) can't be demoralized by use of the skill, they could certainly be intimidated.
In the example of the paladin with the sorcerer, the sorcerer probably isn't bluffing so bluff isn't appropriate. I suppose you could argue that the Diplomacy skill should prevail here since it doesn't involve direct consequences to the paladin himself and this can't invoke the kind of fear that intimidate is getting at. If Intimidate just relies on fear, then the skill should only be useable to imply consequences directly to the creature you are trying to intimidate and not to hostages. I think the write up on Intimidate does kind of point in this direction, but I'm not sure I agree with keeping its focus that narrow.
But the way I see it, Diplomacy and Intimidation are really different sides of the same coin. Both seek to get someone to be treated as "friendly" on the NPC attitude table but one does it though threats and the other through less negative negotiation. Someone may be swayed by a threat not because of fear but because they find the threat extremely credible and they want to avoid the consequences of the threat being carried out. Intimidate becomes the character's ability to project the resolve necessary to carry out the threat and relative ability to carry it out even if not the consequences won't be directly felt by the creature being intimidated.
I'm also starting to think that maybe Intimidate should just been absorbed into Diplomacy and listed as a couple of specific effects Diplomacy can achieve.