D&D 5E Is Intimidate the worse skill in the game?

[Maxperson]

Only slight hyperbole.

The skill functions if the GM is willing to have the skill actually do something, but it has no actionable rules.

This means not only that the skill is seriously prone to GM-fiat issues, but also that a player can never know exactly what you can do with it.

Why would any DM not have it do something?

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Why would any DM not have it do something?

Because it is perfectly in-line with the rules for the GM to say that it isn't possible.

The only reliable way to do that is using magic, because magic has rules.

Note that vaguely defined skills are not a problem by itself. Fate and similar systems handle them very well. The problem is when you combine vague skills with extremely specific and potent spells.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sometimes that can be fun!

Especially when running a game for kids who try to make friends with EVERYONE and then walk into town with a small army of monsters.

They haven’t exactly got the palace guards fighting on their side, but they have managed to misdirect them for long enough to slip past them.

If a player has chosen to invest heavily in social skills then it’s the DMs responsibility to give them the chance to use them. Rule of Fun.

 

[Clint_L]

According to our current poll, EnWorld members think Intimidate is tied as 6th worst skill in the game. Medicine, Animal Handling, and Performance are the bottom three, and by a wide margin.

Medicine and Animal Handling should be wrapped into Survival, IMO. And Performance, Intimidate, and Deception should be wrapped together as "Manipulation," or something. Finally, I would combine Religion, History, and Arcana as "Lore."

 

[Maxperson]

So the experts breeze through every check. That's not a solution. That's deciding which horrible thing you're okay with facing. It also means you're literally rewriting 5e, so that the skill DCs never increase, meaning you aren't even using 5e's skill DCs either!

DCs never increased in 3e. That was RAW. There was no scaling. A DC 25 check was the same DC at 1st level as it was at 20th level.

Experts SHOULD be able breeze through a huge number of checks. If I have a 15th level PC who has invested everything he can into opening locks, that payment of points and leveling should pay off. If you just up the DC so that my investment means literally nothing, you are negating the entire point of skill points. Investments into PCs should pay off.

 

[Maxperson]

Because it is perfectly in-line with the rules for the GM to say that it isn't possible.

This applies to every skill in the game, not just intimidation.

Note that vaguely defined skills are not a problem by itself. Fate and similar systems handle them very well. The problem is when you combine vague skills with extremely specific and potent spells.

This has literally never once been an issue in my game. Nobody in my game even noticed this problem you say is there. I don't see where spells and skills really conflict in a problematic way.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ve just had my players talk their way through most of the dungeon!

Makes it easier for the monsters to find at eat them that way.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

According to our current poll, EnWorld members think Intimidate is tied as 6th worst skill in the game. Medicine, Animal Handling, and Performance are the bottom three, and by a wide margin.

Medicine and Animal Handling should be wrapped into Survival, IMO. And Performance, Intimidate, and Deception should be wrapped together as "Manipulation," or something. Finally, I would combine Religion, History, and Arcana as "Lore."

The problem with all these skills is that they have no concrete effects, Animal Handling probably needs more work in the book because it has lots of utility in reality, but needs GM guidance.

Performance is so bad that I don't even count it as a skill, but in my opinion it is bad for a completely different reason than Intimidate is bad. Intimidate sucks because it has no rules, but it is powerful "in theory". In theory a strong barbarian can intimidate an army.

Performance is bad because it's more difficult to imagine a practical use case of any consequence. I think you need to completely abandon any sense of realism here and simply allow performance to do supernatural things. A musician so skilled he can charm a person with his music.

This applies to every skill in the game, not just intimidation.

In a way, yes. An naughty word GM can always override anything a player can try even with skills that have established functional rules (even with things that aren't skills such that spells). But the more anchored in actionable rules a skill is, the more annoying the GM has to be to overrule it.

This has literally never once been an issue in my game. Nobody in my game even noticed this problem you say is there. I don't see where spells and skills really conflict in a problematic way.

It's one of the foundational issues underlying the absolutely abyssal rift in competence between casters and martials.

If you absolutely must open a locked door, the safest bet is a wizard with knock, because he absolutely cannot fail. Is it noisy? Sure. But it's 100% guaranteed.

All these threads about balance issues in 5E essentially boils down to this difference in capability.

If you play a wizard you know exactly how good you will be at something, because your spells define exactly how competent you are, and it will take an extremely arbitrary GM to keep you away from using your spells. A rogue or any other martial, on the other hand, will rely entirely on GM-fiat to function.

Unless the GM is biased, specifically, in favour of martials only, by being permissive with skills, you will have problems.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Thread title. All this talk about alternate ability use on skills brought up the old 'use STR for Intimidate' and it got me thinking about Intimidate and how is SUCKS.

Animal Handling is a pretty close second because more DM and players forget how important it would actually be in a pre-steam society and make it far too situational... but I still think Intimidate is worse.

The reason is that Intimidate will usually make things worse in 75% of the time you try to use it to force someone to do something. If you fail you usually shut down the entire social encounter right then and there, and even if you do succeed, that NPC is probably gonna hate you for quite a while. It's almost always a bad idea unless you're dealing with someone you're ready to fight.

At best it can be used to make enemies surrender and cut down the 'mopping up' phase of combat? But usually the DC isn't gonna be easy, and how can you trust someone who would do or say anything so you don't kill them?

Maybe Intimidate should have been rolled into Persuasion and just be a way to go about it and be left to the DM, like a lot of thing in 5e...

Anyway, discuss!

I like the thread topic, interesting discussion brought forward, even though I may not entirely agree.

I think the biggest problem with Intimidation and most of the social skills is how they are implemented by DMs/tables, all the way from the description of the intimidation scene to the adjudication process.
The DM should decide when a skill check is necessary and ONLY after the player describes how they are attempting to intimidate. Why you may ask is the latter necessary?
Because it helps the DM with adjudication process, building the scene and the natural responses

So if it makes sense in the fiction
(a) The lone surviving goblin is intimidated to reveal information, no roll is necessary, and it whimpers out the details all the while pleading for its miserable life.

(b) If the target is a resolute drow, the verbal intimidation and the bullying/shoving may not work, and when a punch to the face is thrown, perhaps THEN the DM calls for a skill check.

• Critical Failure, the drow spit's out the blood, stands firm while they mock and laugh at their assailant
• Failure, the drow spit's out the blood, and calls on Lolth's strength (an avenue for a Skill Challenge)
• Success, the drow spit's out the blood, and says "killing me, won't get you any closer to your goal" (an avenue for a Skill Challenge with 1 success in the bag already)
• Critical Success, the drow drops prone, spit's out the blood, looking a little more amenable to answering questions as he holds up his hands as if yielding...

No Roll Required, Fail forward, Success at a cost, Degrees of Success/Failure and Skill Challenges and describing the intimidate action are all ways to make the Intimidation skill shine.

As for is it being a necessary skill on the character sheet..???
They should have followed VtM system where you assign which attribute makes sense with which skill for the declared action

Expression + Str (Intimidation)
Expression + Cha (Manipulate)
Expression + Wis (Persuade)

Sadly WotC is very much vegan when it comes to some cows...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sadly WotC is very much vegan when it comes to some cows...

To be fair. They tried. But the player base does not want to go vegan too...