D&D 5E Why are Persuasion and Intimidation separate skills?

[abirdcall]

The same argument applies to Deception.

When it boils down to it the argument applies to just about everything too. Why have 6 ability scores? We could combine them into 2, or even 1.

I find the distinction useful. Some people can't be persuaded but could be intimidated and vice versa. I think more people are susceptible to intimidation but it comes with more consequences.

 

[Blue]

If you highlight the negative consequences of something without personally threatening the target, is that Intimidation or Persuasion?

For example, "The Duke takes a very dim view of those who don't pay their debts." Is that P or I?

Social skills are more then just words. Tone, body language, etc. Is the character saying it in a way to imply that they will tell the duke? Then it's intimidation - trying to get your way through fear. Is it a friendly warning trying to straighten out an allied NPC before he self destructs? That's persuasion.

If in doubt, ask the player. I had a DM recently ask me for a deception roll when I promised a large amount of coin to someone to do something and I told him my character was sincere and willing to pay, so he changed it to a persuasion roll. The mechanics are there to model the fiction - ask your player what they are attempting to if unsure.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

good cop: persuasion
bad cop: intimidation

me talking to wife: persuasion
talking to kids: intimidation

These skills can be very close and then also not.
Let's role-play, then the DM decides.

 

[Shiroiken]

Similar to Acrobatics and Athletics, an argument could be made to combine the skills. Deception could be combined into the two of them as well to create a single charisma based social skill. However, my assumption is that because they are different approaches to do similar things, they were kept as separate skills in order to maintain a level of game balance.

 

[Henry]

I’m fine with them remaining separate - mainly because one can be good at one and suck at the other. I can be quite persuasive, partly just by being polite and disrespectful, but I can’t scare anyone for crap if my life depended on it. I could even see a case for persuasion and deception, but P/I have very different approaches.

Many other skills might have the case made to break them up (athletics into climb and swim, for instance) but the two are FAR more closely linked than persuasion and intimidation (because generally speaking, if you can swim like a fish, you’re probably fit enough to climb a rope).

 

[iserith]

If you think about an action declaration as a statement of goal (what you want to achieve) and approach (how you go about achieving it) then I would say Intimidation and Persuasion have more or less the same goal - getting someone to do something they don't necessarily want to do - but different approaches. To that end, the separate skill proficiencies resolve the different approaches, when the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure.

 

[alienux]

Just because someone is trying to achieve a specific outcome, it doesn't mean that they way they go about it is the same thing.

Persuasion is more of a coaxing, nudging, or influencing action.

Intimidation is more of a threatening, potentially violent action.

These are different types of actions that seek to change an outcome.

 

[Stalker0]

I think a good case can be made for combining.

Peoples argument of “same outcome with different approaches” can be applied to a number of other skills that are not broken out.

Perception and investigation are very close, as is athletics and acrobatics

 

[Kurotowa]

They're separate because that's where the designers pegged the abstraction slider. Push it all the way to one end and you've got a single abstract skill, Social, that's used for everything. Push it the other way and you get a social combat system as complex and detailed as D&D's physical combat system. Put it somewhere to the more abstract side but not all the way to the end and you get four skills: Persuasion, Intimidation, Deception, and Insight. That's where 5e is at.

So from one perspective, yes it's completely arbitrary that the designers pegged 5e at four social sklls, not more and not less. From another perspective, that "arbitrary" point was their best judgment on the optimal number for the game, and is the result of their testing and expertise in game design. Could you nudge it up a little and add a few more specialized skills? Sure, that's exactly what 3e had with things like Sense Motive and Gather Information. Could you nudge it the other way and abstract it down to only two social skills, one for getting other people to do what you want and one for resisting being talked into things? Sure, there's games like that too.

I kind of like the default 5e setup. Persuasion, Intimidation, and Deception are a fairly balanced trio reflecting most things a PC will attempt to do. But if you're the DM and you wanna house rule that sucker, well, you'd hardly be the first.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Persuasion is being nice, and intimidation is being mean. Picking one or the other is a good way of differentiating two social characters from each other.