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

[Tales and Chronicles]

One way of doing it would enforce the ''skill with another ability'' as being core & important to the game.
Then you would have a Persuade skill that could be use with Str (for intimidation situations), Int (for bluffing, mindgame-ing) or Cha (when using diplomacy and charm).

You could do the same with nature, for example: Use Nature with int for the lore, use Nature with Cha for animal empathy or Nature with Con or Str when dealing with survival or whatever.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm glad my random thought generated discussion!



So you're saying it's a high-risk high-reward kind of skill?

I disagree that you always get 100% of the benefit, because intimidated people might not offer you the best help, and they'll remember that moment more too. Using Intimidate will damage your relationship with the NPC.

I said you can get 100%.
With Persuasion and Deception, there is a negotiation.

With Intimidation, there always isn't. Give me X or else. Just ultimatums a lot of the time.

 

[Undrave]

I mean, which would you prefer: Actually fight an enemy, expending a bunch of limited resources and risking death, or Intimidate them into backing down and giving you what you want?

Weeeelllll.... Combat's more fun >.>

 

[Davinshe]

I would like to see intimidate named "Impress" and use it for situations where you intend to invoke an emotion or gut reaction. It could still be used for intimidating, but would have more obvious "positive" uses that presently default to persuasion such as flirting, joking and making merry, or projecting an aura of confidence.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

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.

"There are no sucky skills.... only sucky Players and DM's"



Now for the details...

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!

Too many Players/DM's ignore the "reality" of the campaign world. They reduce virtually everything to "how does this dice roll affect the mechanics of the game at hand?", and completely ignore just WHAT those dice rolls are attempting to do; model the 'reality and randomness' of the fantasy milieu.

Intimidating an Innkeeper in the towns only Inn...yeah, probably a bad idea no matter what, for the reasons you stated.

Intimidating an Orc war-band leader into allowing you and your group to leave unmolested? Probably good if you succeed, and bad if you fail.

Intimidating a Dwarven military leader into going with your plan...maybe good no matter what. Sure, he may be annoyed that he got intimidated by a soft human...but he might see that as a sign of strength of character and force of will. Something dwarves tend to look up to. (re: "Yeah, I went with his plan...but dang it all if'n that boy stuck to his guts and showed some real stones! He tries it again, well, that's gonna end differently. But this one time? Gotta respect a man for standing up for what he believes. He got through my pigheadedness...THAT time....").

So, bottom line, not everyone reacts to being Intimidated the same. Just like not everyone reacts to being "conned" (re: Persuaded) the same. People, and races, professions, etc, have different personalities. When the Player/DM treats everyone as if they were "just like themselves", that's when perceived problems arrise...and what can totally kill the suspension of disbelief.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Shiroiken]

Honestly surprised I didn't see anyone mention Medicine. It's primary use, to stabilize a dying character with a DC: 15, is done with a Medicine Kit without any check at all (not to mention magical healing, which is used even more frequently). Determining poisons is listed under Herbalism Kit IIRC, pretty much leaving only identifying disease. I've considered it the most useless skill for a long, long time. Performance comes in as a close second, at least until XGtE.

Intimidation is by far the least used social skill, but I think that's due to a lot of misconceptions. Intimidation isn't about a direct threat, but the implication of one. It's pulling out implements of torture, not using them. A hulking barbarian who leans forward and speaks in a soft growl; a bard who implies he could reveal a secret; a mage who lets people's innate fear of magic unsettle them; these are all forms of intimidation. Note that none of these have any more consequence of failure than Persuasion or Deception.

And why are tool proficiencies sort of but not quite treated like skills, almost.

I consider them to be half skills; they're supposed to be on par mechanically with languages. You can learn with downtime, unlike regular skills, so they're supposed to be not quite a good. In general, most tools have very little use without the addition of XGtE.

 

[Asisreo]

You do not intimidate someone that you can not handle a fight with. You intimidate someone you know you'd win a fight against (or at least your character thinks they could).

Intimidation isn't just a threat. Intimidation is the art of communicating that you're superior to your opponent. It's a mercy, where you could kill them with little effort, you've decided to spare their life.

Intimidation is when a bandit is by himself against your level 5 party and you want to take information or take away the bandit's well-being. If you succeed your intimidation check, the enemy is intimidated by you. They understand any fight they try to make will end up with their heads on the floor, most likely. They don't want that. They like being alive.

You can try to persuade the bandit for info, but if the bandit sees you as a nuisance and not a threat, they'll just not say anything regardless of your roll. Why should they? Since when is someone going to rat out their business because someone kindly sweet-talked them?

Some people cannot be persuaded through proper ettiquette and needs their lives threatened to squeal.

 

[Charlaquin]

I like your approach, but I would add that there is a podcast where Jeremy Crawford states that there are passive scores for all abilities/skills (not just perception/investigation) and these represent the floor for your success on a skill check. The die rolls is to see if you succeed beyond this floor. It avoids the nonsense of a highly skilled character failing at something relatively easy.

Which seems really silly to me, why don’t we just roll d10s and lower all DCs by 10 at that point?

 

[Ristamar]

I do think that the Cha skills seem to be more granular than other skills. Deception, Persuasion, and Intimidation are all different things, but climbing and swimming and jumping are all the same?

Hmmm.

For a mindful DM, it's more likely to enable multiple PCs to contribute to the social pillar in meaningful yet different ways instead of relying on a single face to dominate every social encounter.

The bulk of physical and combat challenges typically aren't thwarted single-handedly or fall prone to one PC consistently dominating the spotlight.

 

[NotAYakk]

Intimidation might be helped if it was "awesomeness", not just "threats".

An intimidation check is what you roll to determine how powerful you appear, when you want to project it.