SnowleopardVK
First Post
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.
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.