When would you ever use Demoralize Opponent?

[apesamongus]

No, seriously, when is that ever useful? Maybe I'm missing something, but it takes a standard action and it only lasts a round. You have to be in combat AND the guy you're intimidating has to be in your threatened area. So, no softening an opponent up by intimidating him before a fight. Sure, he has a penalty to hit you, but it's only delaying the inevitable as you never get a chance to attack him back. The only time this seems practical is to help hold off a superior foe until help arives - and that seems a really bizarre way to intimidate someone.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

It's useful because two shaken fear effects stack to become frightened, and a shaken and a frightened fear effect stack to become panicked.

So, if I intimidate our shared opponent, he's shaken.
If you then intimidate him (or cast Cause Fear, for example), he's frightened.

Frightened means "they flee from the source of their fear as quickly as they can."

So, attacks of opportunity all 'round.

 

[Victim]

To conserve spell slots?

 

[VirgilCaine]

There's a big article on the WotC boards in Regdar's Repository about this very subject--using the Intimidate skill.

 

[Hypersmurf]

There's a big article on the WotC boards in Regdar's Repository about this very subject--using the Intimidate skill.

Link.

-Hyp.

 

[apesamongus]

So, basically, going by that link, it does really suck, but you can house rule it. That's about what I thought.

And about the shaken->panicked thing, I'd be shocked to see a situation where you've got 2 characters with intimidate high enough to make this a reliable tactic.

 

[shilsen]

And about the shaken->panicked thing, I'd be shocked to see a situation where you've got 2 characters with intimidate high enough to make this a reliable tactic.

I think it's much more likely that you'll have enemies affected by a spell or special effect that renders them shaken then being intimidated into panic.

 

[Corlon]

well, if you have to frontliners, cohorts, or whatever, just pump their intimidate. If you invest enough, intimidate can be hard to resist, so you could potentially just gang up on large bad guys and cause them to panick for easy pickings.