Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7713941" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Yes, that is why I responded. If I didn’t read what you wrote, I wouldn’t be responding to you.Now, I might be misunderstanding you, but I clearly read it. To get back to what you wrote about the Bard and Balor, you included the use of illusions, thaumaturgy, and deception checks. That is all great, and most players would immediately go for that sort of plan anyways, but why would that type of set-up be necessary for every intimidation check? When could player simply be intimidating? Only when they are the hawk? Being scary to something that is smaller and weaker than you isn’t hard. In fact, that’s one of the things that annoys me at times. I’m playing a 6’5” half-orc in Plate Mail with a massive bloody sword, finish ripping a guy in half and tell his friend to surrender, roll intimidation and fail the check, so the enemy laughs at me because I’m not scary. It’s happened to me in games before. But, I’ve also had times when I wanted to try something, had a good plan, had a good roll, and the DM said no, because he didn’t expect me to succeed so he won’t allow it. The point being, before I end up ranting too much, your arms race seems to accept the premise that using Intimidation to scare enemies is new. That before the ability to Frighten on a check, you could not use this skill to Frighten Enemies. I disagree with that premise, it wasn’t hard coded into a single ability before now, but it did exist. A mouse may not be able to intimidate a Hawk (unless we’re talking Mouseguard I assume) but can a man intimidate a Dragon? I think they can. While never in the history of the world has a mouse beaten a hawk in 1v1 combat, humans in a fantasy setting have killed things vastly more powerful than them before. If they have the proper bearing, the proper look in the eyes, would the enemy not believe they truly could be destroyed by this individual? That’s intimidation to me, making the enemy believe you are capable of ending them. The ability to do this already exists, so the feat isn’t really allowing something that has never been in the game before, it’s just saying it explicitly here. Because I think in terms of groups. No normal fight in DnD is 1v1, and boss fights that are 6v1 are already jokes. So, You’ve got three orcs wailing on you and you’re a barbarian, giving up one of your attacks to get one to attack at disadvantage, leaving it alive to continue attacking, while still having 2 other orcs attacking you normally… that seems like a bad trade. It is important to remember, Frighten doesn’t make them run, they just can’t move closer to you. So, for a melee character this likely means it translates into disadvantage on attacks against them from that creature. Powerful for 1v1, but when you have multiple enemies, much less so. Make it a ranged character like you’ve been suggesting… Well, they have to be within 30 ft to be effected at all, so you’re going to have to keep that up every turn to keep it from reaching you, and if it has allies who are that close as well… you’ve got two orcs beating in your archer’s face. Sure, could have been 3, but you also could have attacked twice and maybe dropped one, instead of leaving it on the battlefield for later. And if they have a ranged attack themselves, disadvantage, but they can still attack you. So, yes, a 1v1 fight against a humanoid who can’t beat your roll is made easier, but since most people don’t get into 1v1 fights, it really doesn’t seem like a good idea most of the time, IMO. Sorry, poor ordering on my part. I meant, getting past a 10 foot gap with guards on the other side is something a rogue might already be able to do if they are clever or the environment supports it. How often do you have the rogue stealthing and they have to cross a 10 ft gap, brightly lit, 8ft ceilings, with guards watching directly down that path and not distracted in the slightest, and the goal is simply to move past that gap and not into whatever area those guards are guarding. It sounds very rare to me. Almost contrived to be a no-win situation. And if the player could win by acrobatics, or if you were trying to force them into dealing with the guards, make it a 15 ft gap. This is one ability I kind of see to be a molehill, there will be very few places where darting from cover to cover wouldn’t have been allowed anyways, where this ability will break things. Would you?Seems you wouldn’t, so why do that with Intimidation.The conversation has moved into the order of events it looks like. So I want to be clear on my position. I respect the idea that the player declares action, then the DM decides if they should roll. My inquiries have been assuming the roll is allowed to happen. I do see [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] ‘s point in that the feat lists an action you can take, and does not limit it by saying the player may not take that action if the DM feels a roll is unneccesary, and that certain types of players feel that would override the general rule on rolling. However, there is a third element here. If someone has a passive Intimidation of 28, they are terrifying. In fact, I don’t think most monsters have scores that high. Beholders have a passive 13, the Balor we talk about has a passive 16. This is, in part, the fault of the designers for not giving skills to enemies. This creatures should clearly have proficiency in Intimidation, but even then they aren’t going to touch a 28 passive. If my character has a massive intimidation score, because I’ve invested in that, then being told you don’t scare someone like a Hobgoblin King or an honorless knight, it feels crappy. You should be able to scare them, your character is terrifying, that’s what you invested in. It’s within the DM’s purview, but I don’t think they should. Let the character strike fear into the normally fearless upon occasion. Let them be the bad@#$ instead of being scared of the bad@#$If your Rogue wants to give up his attack every single round to prevent one enemy from getting closer so the party can snipe it once the fight is over... Yeah, go for it. I'd love my rogues to not be hitting that big sneak attack damage on the enemies that are in the party's face.Also see Fear spell and Cause Fear spell and any other spell that can reliable remove your standard brute with low mental stats from the fight. May not be able to do it every single fight if you have enough fights, but the situation is similiar enough that the differences seem negligible to me.</blockquote>

Verification