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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 9778550" data-attributes="member: 6988941">Well many times a player would want to spend their action attempting to end a battle with intimidation it's because their side is not doing (or not likely to do) so hot, and that obviously is going to be a very difficult DC for obvious narrative reasons. Other times its because the individual player doesn't want the battle that other people at the table have contrived to make happen or the players don't want a fight that their decisions and dice rolls have made happen. And it might not be narratively logical for intimidation to be hard in these situations, but the DM shouldn't let a single skill check easily negate what the rest of the table wants, or negate choices having consequences.But often the DM just doesn't want you to succeed at that check. While it's even less "fair", the DM is a player too, and a player who had homework. It's bad enough that they have to prep battles that never end up happening at all, sometimes due to a charisma check of some sort. Certainly for my part when I've had to figure out initiative, set up the battle map, and settled into the tactical combat mindset I consider the time for rhetoric to be over, and am irritated by the player who is still trying to do diplomancy rather than help their team figure out the combat tactics which will carry them to victory. Now I'm fair-minded enough to still let a really amazing intimidation check spoil my fun and waste my time if I allowed the roll to happen, but I don't expect all DMs to be. Part of the problem is that charisma checks are one of the most one-sided parts of the game. The DM doesn't get to make a simple skill check to intimidate, persuade, or decieve the PCs into surrendering or fleeing or just not starting a stupid and unexpected fight they did no prep work and will now have to look up and juggle three different stat blocks for on the fly. Their sympathy for players using such checks as endruns around playing the combat game is not going to be infinite.Now if you've already effectively won the battle and want surrenders rather than 1 or 2 more rounds of mop up work that is probably tedious for everyone, then you're likely to find much more achievable DCs.</blockquote>

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