Intimidate, was I wrong?

[Mistwell]

I'd be careful making a skill as powerful as a feat (Intimidating Rage, Masters of the Wild).

A skill is just a feat that can scale with level. Or are you trying to tell me that Tumble cannot be more powerful than a feat?

 

[Petrosian]

A naked 12th level rougue with skillmastery(intimidate), a -2 for beeing naked, a fairly high Charisma and/or Skillfocus(Intimidate) can make a titan fear him without a chance of failing. Yeah! sure!

Where do you get that a naked human vs a titan is a -2?

I would apply an incredibly larger than that penalty for those circumstances.

There is no rule saying that any penalty must be only -2 and no more so speaketh the lords.

Intimidate works just fine if the GM applies reasonable adjustments for circumstances.

it also works fine if the GM reads the skill and sees that it allows you to change the behavior, not control the behanior, not dictate the behavior.

you can intimidate someone into stopping what they were doing, but you do not determine, control, dictate what their new behavior is.

 

[1337 h4xor]

Where do you get that a naked human vs a titan is a -2?

I would apply an incredibly larger than that penalty for those circumstances.

There is no rule saying that any penalty must be only -2 and no more so speaketh the lords.

Intimidate works just fine if the GM applies reasonable adjustments for circumstances.

it also works fine if the GM reads the skill and sees that it allows you to change the behavior, not control the behanior, not dictate the behavior.

you can intimidate someone into stopping what they were doing, but you do not determine, control, dictate what their new behavior is.

yea but there is no list of penalties to my knowledge, as far as i can see only the targets it dice are a factor. So any additional penalties applied would just be a house rul... although a totally logical one to counteract this silly skill.

 

[Dark Eternal]

yea but there is no list of penalties to my knowledge, as far as i can see only the targets it dice are a factor. So any additional penalties applied would just be a house rul... although a totally logical one to counteract this silly skill.

It would be impossible for the books to provide a comprehensive list of every circumstance that might modify every use of every skill. But the DMG does include some pretty good guidelines for assessing circumstantial modifiers. In the event of a naked human trying to intimidate a Titan, I would say that there's a pretty obvious case for some massive circumstantial penalties.

I do agree that the Intimidate skill needs a work over, however. At the very least this is one of the skills that most Dungeon Masters and players would benefit from having a in-depth breakdown regarding the appropriate and balanced use of, even if the rule itself isn't changed.

 

[Al]

I use the House Rule whereby Intimidate works like so:

Intimidate vs. (Will save + HD).

In effect, it's skill check v save, but the 'victim' adds his HD to his save. It makes it much more difficult to scare opponents of higher level, which I believe is right.

For those who still don't believe the standard DCs are awry:
A 7th level bard with max. ranks, +5 charisma (easy, just use Eagle's Splendour), a skill-boosting feat (Skill Focus, Thug, Persuasive etc.) and a synergy bonus from Bluff has +19. This means, on a roll of a *1* he intimidates enemies three levels higher than him. He has a 50/50 chance of scaring a 20th level character, and a 40% chance of intimidating a solar.

As for the action caused, I think that it's fair to say that the goblin ran away. It was *scared*, and did the first thing that came into its head. Was there any reason it should surrender? No. If the character used Bluff and Intimidate to say that there was an invisible rogue right behind him and if he tried to run then he'd charge straight into a drawn blade then perhaps the goblin would have surrendered. Shouting 'Surrender!' and rolling Intimidate shouldn't necessarily work.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

Thanks for all the replies everyone it seems most people agree with the action I chose and that the mechanic itself isn't that great. I think I quite like the Will saving throw but modified by Charisma instead of Wisdom for the roll.

Anyway I'm going to print out the thread and let my players have a read