[Basic] Skill of the week: Intimidation

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I think my chest hair jumped out half an inch just reading that.

Hehe. Whoops?

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by johndallman

And now I realise I missed one significant method for group intimidation: music. Highland bagpipes are especially good for this, and were used in real combat in the twentieth century, although they worked better when ranges were shorter. Fifes and drums work pretty well to express aggression too.

I've made good use of intimidation for battlefield encounters. A Quick contest of intimidation between groups certainly strikes me as what's happening when you're bellowing your war cries, banging your weapons against your shields and trying to generally frighten the enemy. I generally have averaged the intimidation skill of a group, though I have also used the highest skill, +20% of the skill from additional intimidators. The two approaches have their uses.

I like it, and it's worked well for resolving smaller battles or prospective battles and simulating the "fearsome" aspect of notable historic warrior groups.

Particularly, a roman campaign involved a show down between the Roman PCs leading a small, picked detachment of legionairres to raid an Illyrian fort. Two Centuries of roman principes, 50 Germano-Celtic mercenary heavy cavalry and around 200 mercenaries of various ethnicities, largely Gallo-Thaikian, Gallic and Germanic.

At various points, the PCs were able to use their intimidation skills to force larger bands of Illyrians to back down or flee, rather than face their small force. Heck, it's how they managed to get the barbarian auxiliaries in the first place, after the German slave(a PC) of another PC(A Patrician officer) was allowed to challenge the leader of a warband of mercenaries they encountered.

I like to penalize Leadership and Strategy rolls to command troops if they have been intimidated. If using Mass Combat, this gives a great significant action for a PC.

[Railstar]

One use I saw was a stand-off. An Aztec-like eagle warrior whose heart wasn't really in the fight (he was surprisingly unwilling to kill any of the people attempting to murder him…) managed to intimidate a group of hostile sailors into fighting far more cautiously than they should have, since none of them wanted to be the first to advance. They eventually settled on attempting to disarm him from out of reach, but it still wasted a lot of rounds that they could otherwise have spent ganging up on him.

Another combination I like is Intimidation + Diplomacy. Use Intimidation to frighten the other person, and then Diplomacy to give them a face-saving exit so they are not humiliated by being intimidated.

Leadership + Intimidation gives a second line of defence against a mutiny or other disobedience. I think the main advantage of Intimidation is it can be the easiest/fastest Influence skill, as in you can use it on people who are not inclined to listen to you. That way you can put an immediate halt to the building tensions, and buy time for the longer-term persuasion.

I've been assuming the same character has been using Diplomacy or Leadership & Intimidation, but it could be very powerful as a good-cop/bad-cop combination.

For my good-guy characters, Intimidation is actually well-worth investing in. If after killing one foe, our good-guy shouts “This one dies alone and afraid! Throw down your arms or you will be next!” it could discourage the others from continuing to fight (if you can get away with it, taking the time to chop off a fallen foe's head and throw it to the others would probably merit a bonus… this works less well in modern campaigns where police get upset about that sort of thing). Roleplaying stuff like that is also a helpful reminder to the GM/Narrator that most people don't want to die. It is very easy or tempting to think of the NPCs as just foes to be defeated in the fight, so reminding people of this aspect is always helpful. So “Surrender or die!” can remind the Narrator of an option that they had forgotten existed.

In a potential combat situation, Intimidation can at least pause the enemy enough to start other negotiations. Marc MacYoung has written a lot about how people can be incentivised to cooperate by the risk of being shot, while still saying you need to be polite and respectful to them (which links back to the Intimidation/Diplomacy combo). Essentially Intimidation is the skill of starting negotiations by convincing the other party that they had better come to the discussion table: even if they have the advantage it makes backing you into a corner appear very risky, and let's you discuss terms.

Or, intimidate enough of the group so that only some of them will fight you. Maybe we could follow the spirit of Influence Skills on PCs and have "Battlefield Intimidation" cause penalties equal to Margin of Success against Fright Checks for that fight. If you use rules like getting injured causes a Fright Check, suddenly that Intimidation debuff becomes very powerful.

[Balor Patch]

Does having the Intimidate skill improve resistance to Intimidation? I didn't see it in the rules but it seems odd that a highly trained, bloodthirsty, callous, hideous monster of ferocious reputation and an ordinary guy are equally likely to be intimidated.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Does having the Intimidate skill improve resistance to Intimidation? I didn't see it in the rules but it seems odd that a highly trained, bloodthirsty, callous, hideous monster of ferocious reputation and an ordinary guy are equally likely to be intimidated.

That's an excellent question. I could see that being doing on a campaign basis or as a house rule. optionally, a perk could do it. "Skill Adaption (Resist Intimidation rolls with Intimidation" seems feasible to me.

[Eukie]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Does having the Intimidate skill improve resistance to Intimidation? I didn't see it in the rules but it seems odd that a highly trained, bloodthirsty, callous, hideous monster of ferocious reputation and an ordinary guy are equally likely to be intimidated.

I think it makes sense that someone may be very good at making convincing threats, while not necessarily being any more resistance to credible threats. There's no particular reason, for example, to believe that a callous person should be more resistant to Intimidation; they care less about harming others, but care just as much about saving their own skin as an ordinary guy. Hideous doesn't exactly mean you care less about your own welfare either.

Someone who fear less for their own safety than the average person or is trained to resist Intimidation should be represented with Fearlessness. Being highly skilled at combat (or Business, for that matter) might also reduce the Intimidating party's Displays of Strength, Bloodthirstiness, or Supernatural Powers bonus (SE96), since a highly trained person would not see the display as actually featuring strength.

That said, I think that the rules for using the attacker and target's Size Modifiers to modify the Quick Contest could also be extended to the expected combat (or other relevant skill, like Business, or maybe the combat level from that recent Pyramid article) skill level for certain.

[Phil Masters]

Intimidation is Will-based, so other things being equal, most people who are good at it will have high Will, and so also be resistant to it. Someone with high Intimidation but mediocre Will would be a kind of specialised actor, great at projecting a fearsomeness that they themselve know at heart is fake.

[Balor Patch]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Intimidation is Will-based, so other things being equal, most people who are good at it will have high Will, and so also be resistant to it. Someone with high Intimidation but mediocre Will would be a kind of specialised actor, great at projecting a fearsomeness that they themselve know at heart is fake.

That sounds more like Specious Intimidation. Regardless, bonuses for bloodthirsty, callous, hideous, monster, and ferocious reputation all still apply. Why is an ogre more intimidating to an ogre then a human is to a human? Would you have those wash out like SM does?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

That sounds more like Specious Intimidation. Regardless, bonuses for bloodthirsty, callous, hideous, monster, and ferocious reputation all still apply. Why is an ogre more intimidating to an ogre then a human is to a human? Would you have those wash out like SM does?

An ogre is not hideous to an ogre unless they add Universal to their template's Appearance modifier (and possibly not even then, depending on setting switches and ogres' Quirks/Perks/Features), and its Reputation should not normally affect ogres either. Bloodthirstiness/callousness might still apply - after all, ogres know that ogre threats are likely to have a higher chance of being followed up upon in a manner that is nastier than one would expect from a puny human.

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

That sounds more like Specious Intimidation. Regardless, bonuses for bloodthirsty, callous, hideous, monster, and ferocious reputation all still apply. Why is an ogre more intimidating to an ogre then a human is to a human? Would you have those wash out like SM does?

Because ogres are very prone to violence and other ogres know it. When an ogre says "Me eat your eyes!" other ogres know exactly what the ogre intends, whereas a human saying the same thing is a little less immediately believable.

Actually, I expect ogres to be failing their Will rolls to Intimidation checks all the time... it would be how bands of ogres form groups or resolve disagreements without immediately devolving into a bloodbath over something trivial. In a society where everyone is willing to inflict extreme violence with limited provocation, members of that society are not going to ignore that threat if that society is to last very long.

You could, however, do contests of Intimidation where both parties are trying to frighten the other with their monkey dances and threat displays.