Intimidate

[SnowleopardVK]

I've been remembering my first game of Pathfinder lately. There was a situation that I'm now thinking my GM may have done wrong.

We ran into some halfling bandits on the road who were threatening a traveller. I decided to try and use the intimidate skill to threaten them into leaving him alone. Now, I was a 1st level Half-Orc Barbarian, and I believe my Cha modifier was +1, so I would've gotten a +11 (1 rank in it, +3 for it being a class skill, +2 because I was a half-orc, +4 because I was larger than the halflings, and +1 for my Charisma modifier) to intimidate the halflings. My roll was half-decent too if I remember correctly. In other words I almost certainly succeeded by a fair bit.

But my GM just stuck the shaken condition on them and had them kill the traveller anyways. He said that the Intimidate skill can't do anything else in that situation because the halflings and traveller were essentially already in combat with each other even though the party hadn't officially joined in yet.

If that's the case Intimidate seems like a rather limited skill. I know it's GM's call (as with all things) but I think he was taking the rules too literally. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume if the big scary half-orc tells them to stop attacking the traveller, and does so well enough to scare them, then it wouldn't make sense that they would simply continue doing what the scary barbarian told them to stop doing despite now being scared.

 

[DumbPaladin]

I'm correcting you. But gently. I believe you're confusing -- understandably so -- the two DIFFERENT uses of Intimidate into one, and unfortunately the two can't be married.

Intimidate does one of two things, which you choose at the time of using: demoralizes opponents, and Influences the Attitude of opponents/people into behaving towards you as if they were friendly.

Demoralizing imposes the shaken condition, but since this condition does not, in any way, stop any character from taking an action (including PCs), the bad guys would correctly have been able to continue to attempt to kill their target.

Influencing Attitudes takes 1 full minute of conversation. By the time you were done, the victim would have been dead anyway, most likely. Pathfinder has no rules for making a "rushed" Diplomacy OR Intimidate check, so there appears to be no way to speed this up.

It would have been nice if your GM had told you that the only option you had was to demoralize your opponents in the one standard action you had available before the target died, but he/she may have simply assumed you understood how the skill worked.

Intimidate has very specific and limited uses -- and is overall less useful than Diplomacy -- but it can still work for what it's supposed to. It just won't help in the situation you describe.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

Huh.

Okay, I guess that makes sense. I suppose it's a waste to take it as a skill then unless there's a huge need to make my opponents shaken and I can't possibly do it with any other method.

Weird though. If that's how it works then why would anyone ever take it? Intimidate seems useless now, especially compared to diplomacy.

 

[DumbPaladin]

Just to point out: there is no skill that you could have used to stop this event from happening. Skills are not all-powerful like spells are, and don't bring finality to a situation like weapons do.

Diplomacy would not have made any difference, either. In fact, using Diplomacy to attempt to stop bad people from doing something bad is ... really silly. Intimidate IS the proper skill for this, but not when you arrive 6 seconds before a murder is about to happen.

Now, once they'd killed the victim, you could have asked the GM if you could use Intimidate to try and convince them to surrender and be taken into custody versus suffering days and days of torment and agony at your hands. (If you wouldn't ever harm anyone, then this is Bluff, too: if you wouldn't mind seriously harming a murderous villain, then you're telling the truth.)

But primarily, Diplomacy/Intimidate are flavor differences. Both can influence attitudes, but it is worth noting that a successful Intimidate check *automatically* increases the target's attitude to Friendly for X minutes.

Using RAW, in Pathfinder it is impossible to use Diplomacy to get someone from Hostile to Friendly, because the rules say you may only increase a person's attitude 2 steps maximum (though the DM can undo this rule). Even that would require a DC of 30 + the target's Charisma modifier.

Using Intimidate, you can take someone from Hostile all the way to Friendly for 1d6 x 10 minutes for a DC of 10 + target's HD + target's Wisdom modifier. Since some beings have a negative Wisdom score, some are easier to Intimidate than others: a negative modifier is applied in those cases. In any event, there's no way a 1-3 HD creature would ever trigger a DC 30 Intimidate check.

Another note: I notice Demoralizing opponents does not specifically state that it requires conversation. It's likely possible to demoralize without a shared language, in addition to the fact that it only takes a standard action.

 

[Volaran]

Well, for roleplaying purposes, there are situations where it makes more sense to be Intimidating instead of Diplomatic to get what you want. Indeed, there are many reasons for a character to be skilled in one, but not the other.

One skill also doesn't prevent a character from using the other, so sometimes if being nice doesn't work, getting aggressive or angry will.

There are also a number of feats that play on the demoralizing option.

That said, if you were extremely successful in your check, and the halflings were intimidated enough to act friendly towards your barbarian, he probably could have convinced them to let the traveler go. There is a time requirement on this, but most GMs I know (myself included) will hand-wave it as long as actual role-playing is going on.

As you said, it is GM's interpretation, but your description of the situation doesn't seem to match his. It sounds like the halflings were threatening the traveler, but not engaged in actual combat, and using Intimidate to try and talk the halflings down seems like a valid use of the skill.

It sounds like your GM may have been unclear on the rules as well, as the base intimidate skill only allows you to make one foe shaken per check (there are feats like Intimidating Prowess which enhance this) and he applied it to all of them. Then again, he may have been fudging this because he wanted the combat to occur, but thought your use of Intimidate was valid in the situation, and warranted more than minimal benefit.