Demoralize as a Standard Action

[Water Bob]

The demoralize opponent option of the Intimidate skill was one of the first things that made me smile when I first began to read 3E (really, 3.5E).

I thought to myself, "Man! Cool! They finally put something like a 'mental edge' into the game--brain-f%^king your opponent."

But, as written, it's not a very practical use of the skill, right? Who wants to give up an attack just in order to have a chance at getting your opponent shaken for one round?

I turned to the Pathfinder tweaked version of the manevuer, which makes some welcome adjustments (increased range and your opponent shaken for additional rounds if your roll is high enough).

Still, though, the act of demoralizing an opponent is a standard action. In a lot of cases (under 6th level, for example), this means no attack--being "intimidating" instead of attacking.

That doesn't make sense to me. A lot of opponents are intimidating just by the way they look.

Look at this scary bastard...

If I see that sucker coming out of the woods, gunning for "me", I think there's a chance that I'm intimidated! I might be shaken a round or two!




So, take the guy in the pic. Imagine him charging, running straight for you, screaming his head off.

Shouldn't that call for a Demoralize Other roll?

Mechanically, this is illegal because, if the foe is charging, he can't also use a Standard Action (plus his attack at the end of the charge).

But, shouldn't there be a chance that the object of this guy's charge will start quakeing in his boots, wishing his day had gone a different direction?




My question to you is: Should Demoralize other be a Standard Action?

Does this need to be House Ruled?

Should I allow this particular Standard Action to be combined with other actions, like movement? (Similar to how drawing your weapon can be combined with movement?)

Thoughts?





EDIT: Maybe it should be a Swift Action? Or, how about a Move Action, but like drawing a weapon, can be combined with movement?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I think you're right: Intimidating as part of a charge or other action makes perfect sense. But by changing it, you're opening a can of worms.

The immediate result of this that I see: Intimidate will become basically mandatory for any melee PC. A lot like Concentration and Spellcraft are basically mandatory for casters. Savvy players will look for all kinds of ways to get their intimidate bonus thru the stratosphere. If you don't mind, it's all good.

If you would mind, you've got some work to do.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Are you familiar with the Frightful Presence feat from Draconomicon?

Prereqs are Charisma 15, Intimidate 9 ranks.

It reads, in part, "Whenever you attack or charge, all opponents within a radius of 30' who have fewer levels or HD than you become shaken for a number of rounds equal to 1d6 + your CHA mod."

Will save DC 10 + 1/2 Character level + CHA mod. to negate.

A successful save makes opponent immune for 24 hours.

This feat makes anytime you attack or take a Charge move action, the effect kicks in, it becomes built into your Standard or Move actions.

You could just give this feat for free to characters that you think qualify, or make the prereqs easier.

 

[Samloyal23]

Are you familiar with the Frightful Presence feat from Draconomicon?

Prereqs are Charisma 15, Intimidate 9 ranks.

It reads, in part, "Whenever you attack or charge, all opponents within a radius of 30' who have fewer levels or HD than you become shaken for a number of rounds equal to 1d6 + your CHA mod."

Will save DC 10 + 1/2 Character level + CHA mod. to negate.

A successful save makes opponent immune for 24 hours.

This feat makes anytime you attack or take a Charge move action, the effect kicks in, it becomes built into your Standard or Move actions.

You could just give this feat for free to characters that you think qualify, or make the prereqs easier.

A compromise would be to make the duration shorter, say 1 round, unless you have the feat...

 

[Empirate]

Demoralizing on its own is a mediocre combat option (although it may help debuff a target so the caster gets a spell through or something). But there is a ton of stuff out which makes it better: feats, spells, items, class features, whole prestige classes.

This is basically like many other combat options: grappling, on its own, isn't so impressive, but on a Totemist/Black Blood Cultist with Improved Grapple and a fitting item or two, it becomes devastating.

I think this is good game design: make something available to anyone, but don't make it so powerful it's a must-have. Then, add in specialization options to become very good at that thing - at great opportunity cost. A demoralizer build will not be the greatest damage dealer ever. But he will be able to make people flee by twitching a single muscle. A grappler will suffer if faced with very many, or incorporeal, opponents. But he can shut down the BBEG hard. As it should be, if you ask me.

 

[Samloyal23]

Being able to momentarily demoralise someone without any special feats is like doing a grab manoeuvre, just a basic technique anyone can do. Your skill in Intimidate determines how well you do it. The feat allows you to make the effect last.

 

[Celebrim]

The Pathfinder tweaks are pretty good I agree. If you want to make intimidate a bigger part of combat, there are several options.

1) Allow the player to accept a penalty to the roll (say -10) to perform demoralize foe as a free action. This is a good option for strengthening the value of skills, but it will tend to add an extra die roll to every round of melee combat.
2) Provide feats to the game that allow you to demoralize foe as a free action in response to triggering events - performing a critical hit, dropping a foe, charging a foe, etc. You can manage how attractive this is by managing how strong the related feats are. For example, if you want to make this really attractive make it a single feat that triggers on all three of the above mentioned triggers, and if you want to make it less attractive make each triggering event require a separate feat. Feats that extend the duration of the effect are also probably good. I'd hesitate to add feats better than Skill Focus (assuming you use the common house rule that Skill Focus adds +3 to the skill) in terms of improving your skill in demoralizing a foe for several reasons. First, because a feat that allows you to be only better at the only thing you always do is not really balanced, because the drawback is trivial. And second, because the more stacking bonuses you provide the more likely your are to break things.

One thing you want to watch out for is not letting this build have an easy way to upgrade the target's fear beyond shaken. Shaken is a nice manageable debuff that won't break your game. If the demoralizer can easily upgrade the fear effect to frightened, paniced or cowering, then you'll risk creating an 'I win button' against anything that isn't immune to fear if you aren't careful. I will note that the 'Frightful Presence' feat unwisely goes in this direction because of its less than optimal wording makes 'Frightful Presence' a separate source of fear than the demoralize opponent action. As a result, you can demoralize the targets of 'Frightful Presence' to make them frightened/cowering, and frightened/cowering targets don't fight back. So suddenly this feat lets you do an area of effect 'save or suck' attack almost at will. The better wording if you want to go this route is to make sure that your feats allow you to use 'demoralize' foes as a free/immediate action. Since that only provides one source of fear it means that you are allowing a useable and somewhat effective debuff (a morale penalty) without imposing an absolute 'suck' condition.

 

[Water Bob]

2) Provide feats to the game that allow you to demoralize foe as a free action in response to triggering events - performing a critical hit, dropping a foe, charging a foe, etc.

Now this...this is a superb idea.

Keep the rule as written, but allow special uses of Demoralize during logical occasions.

The reasons I started this thread are two-fold. One, I was reading in a 3.5 adventure scenario where a standard, everyday wolf bared its teeth and growled at the PCs (in the encounter description), and the author of the adventure suggested to use this as a demoralize opponent action on the PCs.

I liked where the author was going, but I knew that there were mechanical problems if I followed the rules.

The second reason was that I didn't like not being able to combine a charge with the Demoralize option. Those two seem to me to go together like carrots and peas (thank you, Forrest).

Likewise, not too many characters would give up catching a foe flat-footed in order to demoralize.





I'm thinking this...

I like the idea of following up a Critical or maybe a nasty attack with a Demoralize as a Free action, a Swift action, or maybe even combining it with some other action (like and Attack or Move).

Meanwhile, the rule keeps its regular rule (it's a standard action) unless the GM deems otherwise.

I think, in the middle of melee, a standard action is good if the player just wants to try to Demoralize. He's using that action to talk trash and what not.

But I also think the "triggered event" is a good idea for special occasions--special use of the rule.

This deserves more thought.



I really like how this can become creative input on the player's part. "Describe how you're attacking." If what he comes up with is worthy, in the GM's eyes, then the bonus is the free Demoralize attempt.

One thing you want to watch out for is not letting this build have an easy way to upgrade the target's fear beyond shaken.

According to the Pathfinder interpretation, further attempts to Demoralize can only add time to the Shaken condition, not turn it into a different condition like Frightened.

 

[Celebrim]

According to the Pathfinder interpretation, further attempts to Demoralize can only add time to the Shaken condition, not turn it into a different condition like Frightened.

I'm not sure how fear works in Pathfinder, but normally in D20 if you generate a Shaken condition in someone that's already Shaken from a different source, then it escalates to Frightened. However, if you again generate the Shaken condition in someone who is already Shaken from the same source - say demoralize opponent - then it just extends the duration.

 

[Empirate]

Fear stacking is almost impossible in Pathfinder. Using the Intimidate skill, it IS impossible by the rules, as Water Bob noted.

That said, there are already plenty feats, class features etc. in existence which help intimidating. There's really no need to come up with new stuff when so much is already there. Here can be found an interesting handbook on the topic (slightly out of date, but still).