Masters of the Wild bloopers

[Axiomatic Unicorn]

That is exactly my point though.

There is a big difference between scare and intimidate.

Scare causes fear, Inimidate causes people to do what you want them to do.

Tyson is a great example. He may scare people, but recent event make it clear that he is TERRIBLE at getting people to do what he wants them to do. Nobody has been intimidated by Tyson.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I have seen too many people still play a 3 Cha as "rude", when in actual fact it means "has a low personal strength", probably best taken as low confidence in own abilities (as compared to the average Sorcerer of Paladin who has tremendous confidence in their abilities).

It is interesting that the Monster Manual says this about Charisma:

"Any creature capable of telling the difference between itself and things that are not itself has at least 1 point of Charisma. Anything with no charisma score is an object."

The Half-Orcs charisma penalty could quite reasonably be seen as a lack-of-confidence penalty because they are outsiders to the race of either parent.

BTW, Mike Tyson could easily have a high Charisma in this situation, if he has a very high sense of "self". A High Charisma doesn't have to mean personable and nice (although it could), but rather someone with a driving confidence in themselves...

===

re: the Tempest - looking at its class abilities it hardly seems to be a killer class that needs things left out for balancing purposes. The abilities which it has are mostly feeble. The Singh Rager would be a far more useful class for a two-weapon fighting specialist, simply because it has the "pounce" ability, allowing a full attack at the end of a charge.

Cheers

 

[reapersaurus]

I completely agree.

I completely disagree.

So if Intimidate isn't the skill for when a big hulking half-orc gets in your face and says, "Drop the weapon," while balling his fists, and STR isn't the score used for that, how do you argue that it is the half-orcs CHA that is causing the opponent to drop his weapon.

You may be right - that it is the half-orc scaring the oppnent, and not your idea of "intimidate", but that is obviously within WotC's useage of the word 'intimidate'.

Unless you propose the addition of a new skill, called "Scare".
Then you'll be dancing on the head of a pin at the difference between Bluff, Intimidate, and Scare.
And you STILL would say that Scare is based on CHA, right?
Also that the rogue would probably be able to scare in combat to get a bonus against fighters...

 

[reapersaurus]

Nobody has been intimidated by Tyson.

oh, you are SO forgetting how most of the planet was terrified by him to the point of peeing in their pants whenever he got near for many years....
And my contention is that it is NOT Mike Tyson's sense of personality that frightened millions of people - it was sheer physical prowess, unless you define Mike Tyson's look of menace in his eye as CHA...
And if you do, I think you'd properly need about 25 attributes to properly define the kind of character-definition you are looking for in your game.

 

[Henrix]

I have seen too many people still play a 3 Cha as "rude", when in actual fact it means "has a low personal strength", probably best taken as low confidence in own abilities (as compared to the average Sorcerer of Paladin who has tremendous confidence in their abilities).

I agree fully. Charisma should reflect strength of personality, and not just that somebody is "rude" or "ugly".
But at least part of the problem is that, even in this third edition age, the PHB makes a mess of things and sometimes uses charisma as Self-confidence and sometimes as Comeliness (or whatever).

Or do dwarves get -2 charisma because they're insecure and weak-willed?

 

[Zerovoid]

Intimidation by strength doesn't make much sense, since a character's strength score isn't the main determinant of someone's ability to beat you up in DnD. Certainly a 10th level fighter could kick a 1st level barbarian's butt. Would the barbarian's 18 strength really allow him to cow a fighter with strength 10. I think not, since the fighter could easily avoid the barbarian's blows, and could probably put on a display of prowess with his weapons that would make bending an iron bar seem really unimpressive.

What about a wizard? Meteor Swarm makes the barbarian's strength look pretty pathetic. Should the wizard get a bonus because of that?

Intimadation is the ability to cow someone, and bring them under your sway with force of will alone. This is related to being scared of physical force, but certainly not the same. If someone intimidates you, then you would listen to them even if they can't kill you, because their charisma has overwhelmed your natural ability to rationally assess threats. If you are scared of physical danger, and back down from a situation, that is different because you are still making fully rational decisions based on a threat assessment.

I think maybe a better example of intimadation would be comparing Worf and Captain Picard. Actually not, because Worf is pretty charismatic too, but I think Picard is a great example of someone who is intimidating without being a huge physical specimen. If you had a phaser pointed at Picard, he could probably stare you down, and threaten you, and make you think the best thing you can do is give him that phaser. Worf is a pretty scary guy, but you'd probably just end up trying to shoot him.

 

[Axiomatic Unicorn]

oh, you are SO forgetting how most of the planet was terrified by him to the point of peeing in their pants whenever he got near for many years....
And my contention is that it is NOT Mike Tyson's sense of personality that frightened millions of people - it was sheer physical prowess, unless you define Mike Tyson's look of menace in his eye as CHA...
And if you do, I think you'd properly need about 25 attributes to properly define the kind of character-definition you are looking for in your game.

Nope. I am not at all. I am pointing out that he was not able to influence people's behavior to hsi benefit using that fear. Not in any orchestrated manner.

Again, scare is one thing, intimidate is another completely.

So if Intimidate isn't the skill for when a big hulking half-orc gets in your face and says, "Drop the weapon," while balling his fists, and STR isn't the score used for that, how do you argue that it is the half-orcs CHA that is causing the opponent to drop his weapon.

People may respond to fear different ways. Intimidate is the skill fo making certain that react the way you want them to. What about the wizard who stands there and says "Drop your weapon or I'll burst you into flames where you stand."? Is that not scary?

In either case the target is likely to be scared. But does that mean they drop their weapon? Not at all. They might. They also might freeze in terror. They also might attack in a blind terror rage. They may turn and run with or without the wepapon in hand. They may steel their back and and say "I'll die before I'll let you ...." Unless the orc or wizard has some ranks in intimidate or a high CHA, they have no ability to control which of these responses the target will take when they become afraid.

Scared is easy, controlled is hard. Intimidate is about control.

 

[Crothian]

The whole intimidation skill is iffy to begin with. DC of 10+ level of person your trying to intimidate. That's way to easy. It should be an opposed roll of some type.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

All the proponants of STR based Intimidate, are missing the fact that if a STR 18 CHR 8 Half-orc timidly walk up to you and says "Um, would you, um, drop your sword, if you want..." while crushing an Iron bar would you be intimidated? Not in the least. And that's what a CHR 8 characters going to be like. He won't have the self-confidence to intimidate someone.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Not so much a blooper, but the Intimidation Through Strength varient rule on page 18 irks me.

I know some people already play this way, but, IMO, using STR instead of CHR really misses the point. And now it is in an official WotC product.

Heh and me I thought they screwed up in the 1st place by basing it around chr. I think it should of been a str based skill from the start with maybe a CHR based option. And no I'm not mixing up scare and intiidate, I just view things differently than you that's all.