Intimidate, or "whoops I wasted my skill points"

[mlund]

Intimidate strikes me as the ability you are most likely to use in order to cause other characters to become subordinate to your will.

Diplomacy and Bluff convince people to act of their own volition due in your favor due to deceptions or arguments.

Intimidate convinces people to act because they fear the consequences of not obeying you - be they physical ("Krunk breaks arms"), social ("You'll never work in this town again"), meta-physical ("Odin has no use for cowards in his feasting hall"), or situational ("If you don't do this we're all going to die!"). If your line of motivation can naturally end in "or else" you're probably (but not always) using Intimidate.

Intimidate is especially useful when dealing with folks who are insular, demented, or in denial as they are disinclined to actually listen to / believe anything they don't want to hear that comes across in a Bluff or Diplomacy attempt. This is why politicians do so well with empty or counter-productive promises of what amount to little more than petty bribes - no one wants to hear about the real costs and consequences involved in the deal.

- Marty Lund
Deputy Rules Monkey

 

[Rel]

Whoops I wasted 20 seconds of my life reading this stupid misinformed poll.

IDEA: Next time don't waste any more of it posting a pointless threadcrap!

Everybody wins!

 

[Wolfwood2]

Well, since there are no skill points in 4e, there is no waste. Problem solved.

So instead it is (or potentially is not) a wasted trained skill pick. Come on, don't be deliberately obtuse.

I too often found 3.5 Intimidate to be a weak social skill. I think there were several problems with it.

1. Most situations where it would be a good idea to use Intimidate (that is, you don't care about the long term relationship) tended to begin with "roll for initiative".

2. Using Intimidate in combat was unrewarding.

3. No rules for long-term intimidation. Sometimes you can indeed scare someone so much that they stay scared even after you leave.

I'd like to see 4E fix these problems.

 

[D'karr]

So instead it is (or potentially is not) a wasted trained skill pick. Come on, don't be deliberately obtuse.

But if you find the skill to be a waste, why would you spend your trained skill pick on it?

Most of the situations you have delineated are not a problem with the rules, but a problem with the DM, except for the issue with long term intimidation.

Mobsters have long term intimidation that they often use quite effectively (pay us for protection). The person intimidated usually has no way out of the situation. So I don't see a reason why the DM could not make a ruling the same way, even though the rules stipulate a short term intimidation. The problem with putting that into the rules is that it is completely situational.

 

[thewok]

I'm not sure if people are immune to Intimidate, so much as most uses of it. TO use the Duke as an example:

"The goblins are beating down at our kingdom's doorstep, and if you won't send troops to help, I swear to the gods I will run you through right here and find someone who will!"

Perfectly plausible Intimidate scenario. But, really, the duke didn't get his position by being a moron. All you've accomplished is to threaten the life of a noble in full view of a number of witnesses. He's not scared; he's laughing at how much of an idiot you are.

But try this one:

"We have begged and pleaded. Now we tell you. Send the troops, or my associate here will spill your daughter's blood all over your fine ... rug. Where did you get this, by the way? It's a wonderful piece of craftsmanship."

Another plausible Intimidation attempt. This one might work. If the Duke is a family man, he just might risk everything he holds to save the life of his daughter. However. The use of this tactic as Intimdation is evil, and a hero would never think to do so. A neutral person might employ it as a Bluff, but even a Chaotic Neutral (to use old-school alignment terms) wouldn't actually go about doing it.

That's what the difference is to me.

As far as 4E goes, I can't really say that I like how they are, or that I think they should change in such-and-such a way until I've actually played with the system a bit.

 

[Wolfwood2]

But if you find the skill to be a waste, why would you spend your trained skill pick on it?

Saying, "If it sucks don't take it," is not a valid answer to a criticism.

Most of the situations you have delineated are not a problem with the rules, but a problem with the DM, except for the issue with long term intimidation.

I can't blame a DM for running D&D in the way in which D&D is traditionally run. Saying that intimidation would be okay if D&D games were played in a different manner than they are is again, not a valid answer to criticism.

Can we just agree on the basic premise that Intimidation pretty much sucks in 3.5? Because if you won't even go that far with me, I guess there's nothing we can discuss. Our points of view are too far apart.

 

[SteveC]

This is a real example of how the RAW and GM interpretation may have a lot of room in 4E.

If I were playing in a game where people can be immune to Intimidate, or Intimidate isn't viewed to have a use in a social encounter, there's no way I'd buy it. As a skill you can use in combat only, it just isn't worth it. In cases like that, you basically have one social skill, diplomacy, which is fine.

I really hope that it doesn't turn into a case of "mother may I" where you can use Intimidate on some NPCs in a particular circumstance, but not others. That sort of situation frustrates me tremendously, and is why I really didn't play AD&D past first edition.

The worst possible situation is where you describe what you say to the NPC, and then the GM has you roll the skill he thinks is appropriate, and can thereby make your action automatically fail. Grrr.

The devil's in the details, we'll have to see how it plays out.

--Steve

 

[Cadfan]

Can we just agree on the basic premise that Intimidation pretty much sucks in 3.5? Because if you won't even go that far with me, I guess there's nothing we can discuss. Our points of view are too far apart.

...

I want to agree with you.

But...

Ok, here's the thing about 3e Intimidate.

The 3e rules are allergic to vague crunch. It makes them break out in hives.

So things that would fit perfectly in other RPGs are verboten in 3e.

In another game, Intimidate would work something like this: "The DM sets a DC, and the player rolls an Intimidate check. If the PC is successful, the Intimidated NPC believes that the PCs threats are credible. This skill might be used to convince a small time thug to give the PCs information on a mob boss, or to scare off would be attackers."

And then the exact result of the Intimidation would be decided by the DM, using only that guideline and the DM's judgment of the situation.

This is how things work in lots of other RPGs.

But in 3e, they wanted to make it scientific. So they created a hierarchy of NPC behaviors, from Hostile to Friendly to, whatever, Fanboy or something, I never bothered using it. And they defined Intimidate by how it moved an NPC on that hierarchy. What they came up with was a skill that created an NPC that functioned as if Friendly, but which secretly hates and fears the PCs. They gave it a duration, since obviously a status effect change needs a duration, and called it a day.

So... within the framework of 3e rules design, Intimidate is entirely appropriate as is.

Its just a framework that many, myself included, feel is a bit inadequate for the more fluid world of NPC interaction. Or... maybe not inadequate, per se, but... incomplete.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think that most uses of bluff and intimidate should be all rolled in to diplomacy. They are negociating strategies and roleplayed out.

The use of intimidate would be pre-battle posturing, the ability to make a guy backdown by giving him a dirty look and loosening your sword in its scabbard. Also perhaps as a combat skill where if you drop the kobol chieftan in one blow (because of a critical), make an intimidate check and shake the rest of the warband for the encounter.

 

[Family]

In a trial character I created (a dragonborn warlord) my class skills ended up thusly:
C Athletics (Str) 9
C Diplomacy (Cha) 9
C History (Int) 7
C Intimidate (Cha) 11

So I figure I explain to the gentlemen guarding the ball that I don't have an invintation but that the Duke would welcome my companions and I anyway.

And if that doesn't work... http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/data/media/22/Duel-Balrog-10-portfolio.jpg