Inditidate - What the...?

[Olive]

Ok, so the intimidate check for the average commoner is DC 11... basically my party has never FAILED to inntimidate anyone.

have people changed this? how? when it says "any bonuses a target may have vs fear increase the DC" does that mean will saves?

help here would be good, cos i want to use the skill, but i don't like it as is...

PS sorry if this should be in house rules...

 

[Stalker0]

Hehe, the intimidate post always seems to rear its ugly head every once in a while.

Some people do opposes intimidate checks, some do will saves. But some just see it as hey, we are awesome PCs we should be able to strike a little fear into the common man.

 

[Cougar]

Well, remember it is a skill, not magical compulsion. YOU as the DM roleplay how their Intimidation attempt works out. If your party intimidates every commoner they see and the commoners ALWAYS do as they are told, then there is something wrong.

I would say some commoners pee in their pants when intimidated and some run off screaming for the guards. Perhaps some stammer and admit to every petty crime ever commited like Chunk from The Goonies and say everything but what the PCs really want to know.

You control your NPCs. You can still use intimidate as is and not always give in. You can also punish them (so to speak) for continually intimidating everyone. Have the locals refuse to deal with them because they are scared.

 

[Olive]

they're not abusing it... they intimidated a goblin captive once and things like that, and i did make the goblin betray them as soon as he had a chance (intimidate then charm, then he made his save on the second charm atttempt)...

but it still seems silly to me. i might use opposed rolls, or vill save vs intimidate...

 

[Mistwell]

My biggest problem with this skill is that it is a class skill for Barbarians and Rogues only, yet is charisma-based.

Half-orcs have Barbarian as favored class. Your typical Barbarian character is going to have a very poor charisma.

Rogues can use Charisma for their skills, but again it isn't particularly high on your typical Bard list. Dexterity and Intelligence usually rank higher on the list.

Sorcerors and Bards both have Charisma as #1 on their list, and Clerics and Paladins have it ranked pretty high as well. But it isn't a class skill for any of them.

And that's even if you use the skill as written, rather than using a different ability (like strength, or a size factor) to impact the skill. So the halfling rogue is going to be more intimidating than the Ogre fighter with the axe the size of your body, on average, using the skill as written. Makes no sense to me.

 

[AuraSeer]

And that's even if you use the skill as written, rather than using a different ability (like strength, or a size factor) to impact the skill. So the halfling rogue is going to be more intimidating than the Ogre fighter with the axe the size of your body, on average, using the skill as written. Makes no sense to me.

Intimidation doesn't just mean scaring people; it means scaring people into doing what you want. Being huge and dangerous may cause people to run away, but it won't make them inclined to assist you.

If the party is trying to get information from a captive, it may not help for the half-orc to brandish his axe and yell "Hulk smash!". In some cases, if the captive thinks he's more valuable alive, he may not believe the party would actually harm him. Conversely, if the captive does believe the show of ferocity, he might think the PCs are planning to kill him whether he talks or not. Either way, he has nothing to gain from revealing his information.

The rogue, on the other hand, can make believable threats even if he hasn't the real ability to carry them out. What's more, he can convince the target that cooperating is a way to avoid those threats.

Having obvious advantages over the target, such as towering over him while wielding an axe, should be good for a circumstance bonus to the Intimidate check. Conversely, you get a circumstance penalty if the target thinks has an advantage. (It's damn hard to scare the king when you're surrounded by his army.)

[house rule]
IMC I've increased the base Intimidate difficulty, to 20+HD. I think it should be even higher for adventurer types, but I'm not sure how to do that without making a Com1 unreasonably resistant.

I'm toying with the idea of adding the target's highest ability score bonus to the DC. No matter if that score is Charisma or Strength or whatever; if you're really good at whatever you do, you have more self-confidence and are harder to intimidate. This would make adventurers and monsters much harder to intimidate, while leaving commoners and NPC classes at a lower DC. (However, I haven't playtested or even fully analyzed this rule, so I'm not sure whether it'd be feasible.)
[/house rule]

 

[Mistwell]

Intimidation doesn't just mean scaring people; it means scaring people into doing what you want. Being huge and dangerous may cause people to run away, but it won't make them inclined to assist you.

However the skill used to determine if you scare people into running away IS this skill. So an Ogre attempting to intimidate his way through a crowd has a significantly worse chance of sucess than a halfling rogue who can be barely seen by the crowd.

If the party is trying to get information from a captive, it may not help for the half-orc to brandish his axe and yell "Hulk smash!". In some cases, if the captive thinks he's more valuable alive, he may not believe the party would actually harm him. Conversely, if the captive does believe the show of ferocity, he might think the PCs are planning to kill him whether he talks or not. Either way, he has nothing to gain from revealing his information. The rogue, on the other hand, can make believable threats even if he hasn't the real ability to carry them out. What's more, he can convince the target that cooperating is a way to avoid those threats.

It's true that, when using this skill against a captive audience, I can understand why the halfling might have an advantage. However, it's a pretty narrow, focused use of this skill.

Having obvious advantages over the target, such as towering over him while wielding an axe, should be good for a circumstance bonus to the Intimidate check. Conversely, you get a circumstance penalty if the target thinks has an advantage. (It's damn hard to scare the king when you're surrounded by his army.)

Yes, but how much of a circumstance bonus. An ogre with a 6 Charisma has a huge penalty to the check. Put him next to a halfling rogue with max ranks in this class skill and a decent charisma, and you are going to need to be adding a +15 to +20 circumstance bonus just to make them equal.

However, that is just plain fiction still. If the goal is to intimidate a guard into letting you through an otherwise open gate, the Ogre is going to accomplish that job better than the Halfling, no matter how charismatic the halfling is, or how uncharismatic the Ogre. But the rules as written do not account for this. I believe it was Monte Cook who once suggested that Intimidate should use strength instead of charisma for certain types of intimidations, and I agree with him. Personal sense of power has nothing on ACTUAL APPARENT POWER during most intimidations.

A huge, muscle-bound bully will low self-esteem and a soft voice is still a huge bully able to pummel your face in if you don't do what they say (particularly if they just pounded your friend into the ground for not doing what they say).

 

[AuraSeer]

Hmm. Good points. I guess I think of the concept in a different way than you do. I don't require a skill check just for making someone feel afraid; the question is about what the frightened person does next. Adventurers get scared just like normal people, but they're used to it, so they can ignore their fear and keep doing what needs to be done.

Scaring passersby out of the way is easy, because a commoner's normal reaction to fear is to avoid it. If an ogre or a giant is stomping through the city swinging a spiky club, it doesn't have to scare folks out of its way, because they're already running home to lock themselves inside. When an adventuring party does the same thing-- riding with weapons out and apparently looking for trouble-- people may not flee, but they'll certainly get out of the way for fear of being ridden down.

Another consideration is that Intimidate need not always be physical. For the guard-at-the-gate scenario, I'd picture the halfling telling lies about his friends in the palace, implying that the guard could be fired or imprisoned for interfering with such an important personage. When the barbarian tries physical intimidation, the guard might agree out of fear, or he might instead blow his whistle and summon another dozen guards to aid him.

In fact, it'd make sense if you were to distinguish between the two kinds of intimidation-- implications and lies, depending on Charisma, and physical threats which depend on Strength. You could split it into two different skills, so the rogue is very good at one, while the barbarian is better at the other. I don't think I'd do this IMC, since I've no problem with the skill as written (other than the low DC), but it seems a perfectly reasonable house rule.

 

[Mistwell]

Except that lies are specifically covered by the Bluff skill, not the intimidate skill. Intimidation is verbal threats and body language. Bluff is lying, acting, conning, fast talking, misdirection, prevarication, and misleading body language.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Intimidation doesn't just mean scaring people; it means scaring people into doing what you want. Being huge and dangerous may cause people to run away, but it won't make them inclined to assist you.

Sorry for the snipping but this is the part I wanted to address. I guess this is how I see it. Your ranks in the skill determine your skill at making people do what you want. The attribute it is based on should be the attribute that makes your job easier than any other attribute.

In this case I see str as the attribute that usually helps the most, since it helps to add in the necessarry fear for which the skill bases itself off of. personally I follow the suggestion in one of the splat books for making it either str or chr.

but instead of making the str checks require silly things like bending an iron bar I instead base it off the situation. A quick clearing of the crowd str, scaring a gaurd into letting you past usually str, as a general rule the ntimidates with the least amount of set-up time are based aorund str. Intimidates of captured foes, captive audiences, or places people feel physically safe like an area surrounded by guards chr is the defining attribute. Usually the style of intimidates with more interaction required.