Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 435105" data-attributes="member: 2525">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.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.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).</blockquote>

Verification