My take:
I think this feat is overly potent and problematic.
1) Any game option that allows a re-roll gives the equivalent of +3.25 to the roll. The average roll of a single D20 is 10.5, the average of best of two D20 is 13.825. So right off the bat this feat is slightly more powerful than Skill Focus Intimidate.
2) This feat also gives a +2 to initiative, so it is solidly more useful than Skill Focus Intimidate.
3) This feat does not give a feat bonus. So, the average +3.25 here (and often a lot more) stacks with Skill Focus Intimidate. It also stacks with powers that give power bonuses and with items that give item bonuses.
4) Intimidate is an iffy skill to begin with. Any bloodied foe can be Intimidated into surrendering with a die roll, it doesn't matter if the bloodied foe is at 200 hits out of 400 or 1 hit out of 400. It's a backhanded way of doing a lot of damage without actually doing a lot of damage and the only range limit is line of sight and hearing.
A once in a blue moon Intimidate success in combat is ok, but any player rolling the dice twice per skill check will be making an awful lot of those rolls in many encounters. I cannot imagine a player taking this feat and not using Intimidate a lot.
Such a PC could easily intimidate 1 or 2 NPCs (or more) per encounter. Intimidate can also be used against multiple foes with a single standard action. Say it's against 3 bloodied foes. The odds with 6 dice rolls of NOT taking out at least 1 of them is really pretty slim, even with the +10 Will for hostile foe. And the out of combat use of the skill (e.g. for Skill Challenges) with non-hostile NPCs will be very large. Intimidate is the equivalent of old school Area Effect Save or Die except that there is a D20 opposed check roll instead of a save. With all of the potential other bonuses in the game system, this is extremely problematic. We're not talking adding a few more points of damage per attack, we're talking doing the potential equivalent of over a hundred hit points of damage with a single standard action. The only time this will probably not work in a multi-foe encounter is if the PC cannot speak the language of the foes.
Intimidate when used in combat is a skill that can directly take out foes, significantly overcome combat challenges, and result in fewer resources per encounter being used. As such, its use and potential abuse should be carefully controlled. I don't think we should disallow the options for it that we already have here, but adding new and better ones shouldn't happen.
I'm not sure why WotC started adding in feats that allow 2 skill rolls instead of 1, but mathematically it's extremely problematic.
Personally, I dislike the character concept of Intimidate cheese and I don't think we should encourage players to do it.
There are also over 1100 heroic level feats, I don't see the need to have a special Eberron house rule to allow a single feat in for a single PC. An intimidating PC can already be created without making him even more potentially uber with this feat.
And, the benefit of this house rule proposal is not really for everyone like most other house rule proposals (although other future or redesigned PCs could use it if it is approved), it's for just a single PC where there are already hundreds and hundreds of other options.
I also happen to think that we shouldn't be adding Forgotten Realms material to Eberron.
Just my 22 cents.
1) Right off the bat, in combat, the PC is at -10, and if they don't speak a language they are at -15... I don't think the feat combo, with Option C (which I like best, just hadn't seen the background already.) is going to break the game.
2) And it is much more exclusive, requiring a specific background, unlike skill focus intimidate, which anyone trained in intimidate can take.
3) Not only does the PC start at -10/-15 for the roll, they get one shot per encounter at the attempt, and the target must be bloodied already. Once again, I think it an exaggeration to call this game breaking.
For the rest...
Intimidate can be used against an enemy once per combat, success or failure, and always with a ridiculous penalty. NPC's can be un-intimidatable, or worse, intimidating them can cause auto-fail skill checks. I doubt having this one skill optimized, and sacrificing others for it, will break skill encounters as well.
The rant wasn't needed, and didn't have anything constructive for the argument, so I don't feel a need to address any points made therein.
I don't think we should change the rules just to allow this one feat entry into LEB.
If one looks at Intimidate in combat, best case at level one is generally +9 (18 Cha PC) Intimidate vs. 21 to 24 for same level or vs. 25 to 28 for n+4 foe.
That's a 10% to 45% chance of success. So that is probably why you don't see it in your games. Most PCs cannot get a decent chance of success if high Cha PCs have a slim chance like this.
But once someone adds two feats, for example this one and Skill Focus Intimidate, then it becomes a +15 equivalent or 40% to 75% per foe. Then suddenly, it's more than viable. It's basically game breaking at that point.
And a skill challenge then becomes 100% for non-hostile NPCs when the NPC has a Will of 14 and the PC has +15 to the skill.
This feat should just flat out not exist and with that in mind, we shouldn't change the Intimidate combat rules, just to allow this feat out of combat.
To reiterate, +10/+15 just covers the penalty of -10/-15, and then the PC still must overcome the Will defense of the enemy.
Yes once adding
two feats, it becomes almost usable... Not game-breaking, that's sensational.
No Skill challenge is ever 100%, as it's DM controlled. What DM would let that fly? Sure the intimidate heavy PC may shine occasionally, or come through on a difficult roll, but the Perception optimized Lanharath could do the same. It wasn't 100% on anything walking with him... He could roll twice... It wasn't game breaking. We had surprise rounds.
Nothing about allowing this option is game-breaking, it just allows core rules mechanics with Eberron fluff instead of FR fluff.
