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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 689197" data-attributes="member: 4937">When a player uses a PC to intimidate a NPC, he has the reasonable expectation that if he succeeds I will modify the behavior of the NPC in some fashion that indicates that he really is intimidated to some degree.  But, a player that intimidates an NPC with the expectation that the player can now dictating to the DM what the NPC does is likely to be disappointed.  Intimidating my NPC properly may make them hestitant to openly challenge the PC, but it will also probably make them resentful, nervous, and passive.  It is much harder to intimidate a NPC into doing something than it is to intimidate them into not doing something, and the average NPC given a chance to consider the consequences of being passive is likely to explode into a fury if the PC's don't give the NPC 'an escape' - some expectation that the consequences of assisting the PC's like getting fired, being arrested, being killed, being called a coward, and so forth won't in fact come to pass.  I make the same demand of my players behavior, no more or less, than they make of me.I feel it is reasonable that if an NPC intimidates a PC, that the PC has some responsibility to act intimidated with the same expectations of behavior that the PC would have if he intimidated an NPC.  This is a natural control on the skill, because a PC that wants to argue with me that an NPC will be 'dominated' by a mere intimidation check has to accept that a mere intimidation check will ammount to losing control of his PC as well.  So, the player role plays.  He understands his character is frightened and he acts frightened.  That doesn't mean necessarily that he can't try something the minute the intimidating threat's attention is elsewhere, and it certainly doesn't mean that further demands can't and won't push a PC past the breaking point.  It just means that for now, you are frightened.  That's a whole heck of a lot less intrusive and temporary of an effect than me passing a note 'You've been charmed.  You now must treat the Imp as one of your best friends.', and really they both are just game mechanics and both rely on player judgement and interpretation whether I call one a spell and another a skill.  This is the reason that Intimidation is based on Chr, not Str, and that half-orcs would make poor intimidaters.  Threat of violence can frighten people, but without understand the pyschology of a social interaction, are just as likely to intimidate someone into hysterical screaming, catatonia, panic, defiance or rage as anything else.   Anyone that has watched an older child try to intimidate a younger child ought to understand that fully.   If NPC's aren't meant to intimidate PC's, why bother giving NPC's an intimidate score at all?  Surely a DM can decide when a NPC would successfully intimidate another NPC, especially if PC's are deciding when NPC's are successfully intimidating them.  Heck, why bother with social skills at all?  Surely a DM can decide when the PC's have intimidated the NPC.</blockquote>

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