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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 9538854" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Earlier in the thread, someone posted a clip from Star Trek, and either in that same post, or in a post later, someone mentioned that the Intimidation action can be used to get people to work together. And that example is buzzing around in my head. See, I know exactly the type of thing they are talking about. The big loud bully who has been ignoring the reasonable requests of the Main Characters finally getting shouted down and humbled by that character. But... notice a problem here? This, EXPLICITLY, is a story beat that happens after persuasion has failed and while a bully who intimidates others is forced to back down to do something reasonable. The Star Trek clip, though I'm not familiar with the episode, was pretty explicit as an example. Data walks in, knocks out all the guards, blows up a station and says "I can ruin this entire place. The enemy coming to kill you all is stronger. Staying is an obvious death sentence." and the leader of the group... is intimidated. But that wasn't the first thing Data tried, was it? It was a last resort to get people to see reason who refused to see reason. And also... where would you have the check be? Would you have him roll intimidation to knock out the guards? To fire his weapon and destroy a pipeline stretching miles up into the mountains? And at the point he has beaten all the warriors and destroyed major infrastructure... what's the point of rolling for the speech? This I think gets to a truer problem with Intimidation than just that it causes people to hate you. It only works on those weaker than you, or those you can convince that they are weaker than you. You cannot intimidate Thanos into handing over the Infinity Gauntlet, because you will never convince him that he is weaker than you. You can't intimidate the Dread Knight into backing down from the fight, because he is not convinced you are so much stronger that he has no hope of victory. And so you have a skill that is only really used to punch down... or to deceive. Because isn't it deception to convince someone of a lie such as Wesley's "to the pain" speech? Intimidation is just so very narrow in when it should be possible to use, that it feels worth so much less.</blockquote>

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