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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7040617" data-attributes="member: 97077">Before we can even decide there is an ability check, we have to know what the players hopes to achieve and what the character does to achieve it. "I want to roll to intimidate the goblin..." tells us very little, certainly not enough for you as DM to be able to easily adjudicate and narrate. Once you know what they want to do and what plan they have to do it, the DC should be pretty easy to decide and it's probably either a 10, 15, or 20 for most things.The action cost is another consideration. I would say that a good rule of thumb is that an action that essentially shuts down a monster, such as an intimidation attempt to get them to surrender, parlay, or flee, should cost as much in actions as a regular attack should. Building on the intimidation example, if the PC cannot kill the monster in a single turn of attacks (or perhaps two), then the attempt fails, no roll - the monster's still got too much fight left in it.</blockquote>