D&D 5E (2014) Is Intimidate the worse skill in the game?

[Asisreo]

Nor is there any such thing as a non-magical disease

The DMG has a list of diseases which are nonmagical.

 

[Asisreo]

I think the problem might be that some skills are more situational than others, and might even be more campaign specific. You're probably not gonna get much use out of Animal Handling if your campaign is mostly a dungeon crawl or lacks a lot of transport by animals. For exemple.

Players should play their characters, not let their characters play them.

You put yourself in a position to use your skills rather than wait for the DM to give you the perfect opportunity to use them. If you're in a dungeon, there's plenty of animals. There's rats, roaches, flies, etc. You can intuit what their intentions are, which can be useful. If they appear to be tracking food, that means there's something edible for them in the direction they're moving. Which means there's either supplies or some kind of organic matter (most likely dead since they're scavengers). If they're moving in fear, something threatening to them is beyond that point and you need to be somewhat cautious.

 

[Undrave]

Players should play their characters, not let their characters play them.

You put yourself in a position to use your skills rather than wait for the DM to give you the perfect opportunity to use them. If you're in a dungeon, there's plenty of animals. There's rats, roaches, flies, etc. You can intuit what their intentions are, which can be useful. If they appear to be tracking food, that means there's something edible for them in the direction they're moving. Which means there's either supplies or some kind of organic matter (most likely dead since they're scavengers). If they're moving in fear, something threatening to them is beyond that point and you need to be somewhat cautious.

That feels more like a knowledge (nature) check than animal handling though.

But still, thank you for that idea. I think this thread is filled with good suggestions on how to apply skills in out of the box situation and I'm thankful for that.

 

[Asisreo]

That feels more like a knowledge (nature) check than animal handling though.

But still, thank you for that idea. I think this thread is filled with good suggestions on how to apply skills in out of the box situation and I'm thankful for that.

I'd understand the confusion, but nature is only for recalling Lore about such an animal rather than understanding the specific animal. Now, if you determine that the animal smells edible food, you can use nature to recall what food would tempt such a creature and predict what you'll be seeing.

 

[auburn2]

I find Intimidation to be the worst social skill, because like I believe Redhammer said, sometimes the results of succeeding are just as bad as failing.

Let us say that you are needing to get passed a gate guard, and you decide to stomp up to him and declare that you don't need to pay the toll, right stick man? You successfully scare the wits out of him, and get passed.... Of course people saw you, word spreads, and now you've got the entire Garrison keeping an eye on you because you threatened one of their members and broke the law.

...

The Ancient Dragon. The Warlord on his mountain of skulls. The Lich or Vampire Lord. The High Priest of the Church of Light. The Dragonslayer Paladin. The Old Emperor of the Largest Empire in the World.

Disagree on both these points. Yes if you walk up to stick man and make a scene threatening him with bodliy harm, that it is true. But that is the same if you walk up to stick man and try to bribe him (persuasion) and people see you or it fails and he tells. Yelling at someone and threatening to stomp them into the ground is not the only, nor I would argue generally the best way to "intimidate" someone.

As for the second, absolutely you can intimidate all of those powerful beings and I have a good example from one of the Richard Lee Byer's FR books: A good cleric of some sort get's a dracolich's phalyactery (both and ancient dragon and a lich, two of your examples) and successfully intimidates him into helping them for quite a while ...until the deracolich comes up with a plan and gets it back.

Now if you are saying you can't walk up to those characters and show them your muscles and intimidate them you are right, but that is not the only way to intimidate.

Threaten the vampire lord with consecrating his last remaining coffin by casting hollow on it ...or draw a magic circle, tell him it is a teleportation circle linked to the middle of the ocean or running water and threaten to shove him into it (combination of deception and intimidation). Tell the church of light cleric you will sacrifice 100 captive townspeople to Grumsh and eat their children if he doesn't do what you want. Threaten to assasinate the old emporer's son, his only hier and his legacy. Threaten to bring the order of the guantlet down on the warlord. All of these are examples of intimidation and all could work against those powerful NPCs you mention in the right circumstances.

 

[tommybahama]

If the possibility of failure makes no sense, then why roll?

Because a high roll might mean extraordinary success. Meeting the DC might mean you persuade the bouncer into letting you into the nightclub without waiting in line. Surpassing the DC might means he lets you in without charging the cover. A Nat 20 means he also let's you slip into the VIP lounge.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

It's interesting to read these comments; I play more PF2 than 5E and in that system Intimidate is a fantastic skill. You can use it in combat to inflict -1 and -2 penalties against enemies; with some feats or classes you can cause enemies to run in fear or literally die of fright facing you.

One helpful thing to notice is that the skill intimidate has the main use of "coercing" people -- making them do things they don't want to do. That's a clear distinction from persuasion, which changes what people want to do. Coercion doesn't need to be an obvious threat -- it can simply be the knowledge of power. When a level 15 fighter tells you to get out of the way, they don't need to threaten the regular guy; you know they can kill you without breaking a sweat. I'm sure you can think of many movie scenes where people are terribly polite while they coerce people to do what they want.

It's also used in between-sessions time to manage employees; if you have a bunch of hirelings building a castle for you, intimidate is an excellent skill for judging how well they work.

I don't think that these are PF2-specific rules -- I think they're easy to import into any D&D system!

 

[Asisreo]

I don't think that these are PF2-specific rules -- I think they're easy to import into any D&D system!

The in-combat numerical abilities, maybe not. You could have someone make a skill check DC equal to 10+CR(to the closest integer), but that would be too complicated, probably.

The narrative stuff, absolutely. I never really considered that coercion was a natural intimidation tactic. I'm sure I've done it without realizing it (uh, in-game, not irl)

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I find Intimidation to be the worst social skill, because like I believe Redhammer said, sometimes the results of succeeding are just as bad as failing.

I wonder if that is an issue because GMs are not roleplayingt the consequences of diplomacy?

Sure, you can sweet-talk the guard into letting you pass, but you've now left behind someone who feels maybe betrayed or faithless. Or maybe they get greedy and come at you later, asking for more bribe or they'll turn you in.

As a GM, I feel I should be providing consequences for everything the players have their characters do. Players should be choosing between "two tactics with different consequences"; not between "one tactic with nop consequencea and one tactic with bad consequences."

That way intimidation and persuasion simply become "two tools for overcoming an encounter", not "Intimidation is the wors skill ever."

 

[Chaosmancer]

Disagree on both these points. Yes if you walk up to stick man and make a scene threatening him with bodliy harm, that it is true. But that is the same if you walk up to stick man and try to bribe him (persuasion) and people see you or it fails and he tells. Yelling at someone and threatening to stomp them into the ground is not the only, nor I would argue generally the best way to "intimidate" someone.

Sure, if he pays him off, but what if he simply appeals to the guard's better nature to help some poor travelers who don't have the coin to spare? That is also persuasion and you aren't breaking any laws to do it.

As for the second, absolutely you can intimidate all of those powerful beings and I have a good example from one of the Richard Lee Byer's FR books: A good cleric of some sort get's a dracolich's phalyactery (both and ancient dragon and a lich, two of your examples) and successfully intimidates him into helping them for quite a while ...until the deracolich comes up with a plan and gets it back.

Now if you are saying you can't walk up to those characters and show them your muscles and intimidate them you are right, but that is not the only way to intimidate.

... Would you even have them roll for that? I mean "I am literally holding your soul in my hand and have no problem ending your immortal existence" is less abotu intimidation and more about the fact that you got a Dracoliches Phylactery. I think that is a situation where you can no longer fail, so no roll even happens.

Which kind of misses the point of using the skill.

1) Threaten the vampire lord with consecrating his last remaining coffin by casting hollow on it ...or draw a magic circle, tell him it is a teleportation circle linked to the middle of the ocean or running water and threaten to shove him into it (combination of deception and intimidation). 2) Tell the church of light cleric you will sacrifice 100 captive townspeople to Grumsh and eat their children if he doesn't do what you want. 3) Threaten to assasinate the old emporer's son, his only hier and his legacy. 4) Threaten to bring the order of the guantlet down on the warlord. All of these are examples of intimidation and all could work against those powerful NPCs you mention in the right circumstances.

1) Again, you've already won by the point you have access to the vampire's last coffin, or can seal him in a magical circle. Plus, as you said the cirlce is far more deception than Intimidation anyways. So... yeah, go ahead and use your skill proficiency to convince someone you already defeated and have under your power to do something... that sort defeats the intent of me saying you can't use this skill on someone stronger than you. If you have to have them at your mercy before the skill even applies, then it is a lot weaker than Persuasion or Deception.

2) Congratulations, you are all heretics worshiping dark gods. You may succeed, but you will have paladins and crusaders and maybe even angels hunting you down to remove your evil from the world. Or... you could have just tried to use persuasion to convince him your cause was for the greater good and not gotten an entire inquisition sent after you.

3) Congratulations, you now have an emperor who is seeking your death. If you don't already have his heir at knife point, the entire royal guard of powerful knights and wizards will begin trying to kill you. If you do have him at knife point, you will be visited by whichever assassins an entire Empire's treasury can hire. If he is a really vindictive old man, he might even hire extraplanar assassins to kill you. Also, this assumes the Emperor only has a single heir, and that he is weak enough you can capture and hold him prisoner.

4) No idea who the Order of the Gauntlet is. This guy is probably already on their radar though, so at best this is an empty threat because he is already dealing with them, and at worst... well he just kills you all to prevent you from leaving to go tattle on him. So... no, I don't think that is going to work.

One helpful thing to notice is that the skill intimidate has the main use of "coercing" people -- making them do things they don't want to do. That's a clear distinction from persuasion, which changes what people want to do. Coercion doesn't need to be an obvious threat -- it can simply be the knowledge of power. When a level 15 fighter tells you to get out of the way, they don't need to threaten the regular guy; you know they can kill you without breaking a sweat. I'm sure you can think of many movie scenes where people are terribly polite while they coerce people to do what they want.

It's also used in between-sessions time to manage employees; if you have a bunch of hirelings building a castle for you, intimidate is an excellent skill for judging how well they work.

Two points

1) Does a level 15 fighter even need to roll? Again, I don't really find it compelling to tell me the skill is meant for my level 15 dragonslayer to tell a potato farmer to step aside. I'd like to think I can do that with no problem.

And this gets right back to the issue, if Intimidate is only useful against people far far weaker than me, or whom I have a sokid undeniable advantage over (like literally knife to their throat) then what use is it? Am I really going to have the rogue roll to intimidate the put purse while he is millimeters from stabbing the guy to death? The only thing the guy can do is call the bluff, and then the player either kills him (losing the information) or backs down (losing the information) and if I succeed... well this guy isn't exactly going to sing my praises for threatening to kill him

2) Intimidate your employees? Really? Imagine you have a boss who constantly "coerces" you into working. Do you think you are going to be happy working their? Think you are going to be loyal? I mean, this is straight out of the Dark Lord's Handbook. You don't go around threatening the help, that just incentivizes them to hate your guts.

I wonder if that is an issue because GMs are not roleplayingt the consequences of diplomacy?

Sure, you can sweet-talk the guard into letting you pass, but you've now left behind someone who feels maybe betrayed or faithless. Or maybe they get greedy and come at you later, asking for more bribe or they'll turn you in.

As a GM, I feel I should be providing consequences for everything the players have their characters do. Players should be choosing between "two tactics with different consequences"; not between "one tactic with no consequences and one tactic with bad consequences."

That way intimidation and persuasion simply become "two tools for overcoming an encounter", not "Intimidation is the wors skill ever."

Why does everyone associated Persuasion with Bribery? Most of my PCs never bribe anyone, but we sure do a lot of persuading. And you aren't tricking them, like you are with deception. You are literally convincing them to agree with you, so how is that a betrayal? "that nice man in the coat made many good points and I agreed with all of them. How dare he treat me this way!" that doesn't make any sense.


I wonder if a lot of people run Persuasion way differently in their games, if they think of it as bribes and lies.