[Basic] Skill of the week: Intimidation

[RogerBW]

I've been skimming through my 3e books, and the first mentions I've found of Intimidation are in Illuminati and Robin Hood (both 1992), though this wasn't a comprehensive check. It's also given in Vampire and War against the Chtorr (both 1993); the text is different in each case but the cost and defaults are the same. (But it's not, note, in Celtic Myth or Vikings or Old West.) It's in GURPS Supers 2nd edition which is much later, but I don't have 1st to check.

In an entirely different game, I played a fighter who had the equivalent of Attribute Substitution: Intimidation based on ST. I could see this working well for the clichéd Big Guy, particularly if he doesn't have a lot of other IQ/Will skills.

Regarding the low IQ business, I think it's worth considering what's been said elsewhere about Influence skills: a success consists of getting the target to behave in the way you want. The canonical example is Sex Appeal, which doesn't necessarily get your target into bed with you; it gets them to cancel a speeding ticket or help you rob a bank because they think it might get them into bed with you. It's possibly an over-nice distinction but I'd probably allow anyone to try to scare an animal (maybe even using Intimidation to see how good a job they did); but if you're getting it to run back to its kennel rather than maybe make a desperate attack, that's what needs Animal Empathy (and/or indeed Animal Handling). This is similar to why Cultural Familiarity matters even though everyone understands the look of someone getting ready to fight.

While the exact rules text for the bonus is "displays of strength, bloodthirstiness, or supernatural powers (GM's judgment)", I would absolutely include the classic "we know where your kids go to school". It isn't all about threatening to beat people up.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Pretty much this. As a former bouncer I can tell you this: it's not what you threaten to do to someone it's how you threaten them. . . Of course, getting shot in my forearm and essentially ignoring it for nearly ten minutes probably helped.

So yeah, it's all about how you say something vs. what you say. The trick is making your target either a) think you will actually hurt them or b) actually be willing to hurt them. . .

It works. I'm intimidated by you & I'm hundreds of miles away.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

It works. I'm intimidated by you & I'm hundreds of miles away.

>__> Well, that's new.

[Kalzazz]

Intimidation I find is something semi frequently called for by the DM as often adventuring parties tend to consider 'Okay, do X or we nuke you' to be a perfectly valid means of expressing their preferences

I've only seen one character ever specialize in it, a huge demon smoke thing who put a bunch into it and had Mosntrous appearance

One of my characters has taken it due to having high Will (26) and much lower IQ (13), so put a point in it as a main social skill

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The commonest threat is of personal violence.

In game you're probably right, but realistically, it's probably of social disgrace of one form or another. To the people talking about the absurdness of obviously physically harmless people with high intimdation, I can totally envision a ST 9 diminutive pacifist who wouldn't hurt a fly but has 18 intimidation and combines it with her press licence and network of contacts to threaten smear campaigns. That said, if she threatened to beat a touch mobster to a pulp with her bare hands, she'd probably get a very large penalty for "not a credible threat". I think intimidation requires them to think you have something you can actually threaten them with (even implicitly) or the GM is definitely well in their rights to level very large penalties.

[simply Nathan]

This is the only social skill I ever consider putting on a character. That might say something about my attitudes towards social situations, my beliefs about how the world works, and they types of adventures I want my characters to have.

I've written up a couple warriors with it at varying levels.

Originally Posted by dripton

In 3E, Intimidation defaulted to ST-5. I've considered house-ruling that back in.

I think the SM and Appearance-based bonuses do a much better job than that ever would. If you limit characters exclusively to humans or nearly-human humanoids in the ST 8-14 range I can kinda see it working out but beyond that it'll just get silly.

[Peter Knutsen]

One use of Intimidation, that is obvious to me, is to convince the other party that no, they don't actually want this fight. Thus it bypasses risk.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

One possible answer to this is that Intimidation isn't just about scaring the target, it's about communicating with them in a scary way that's useful to you. Scaring a non-sentient animal, as you note, is easy to do -- but that's the basic territory of a Reaction Roll. Convincing an animal to "do this or else this will happen to you" is beyond the scope of most realistic scenarios.

I think this is the hardest thing to grasp about all the influence skills. Intimidation is not the skill of scaring people, Sex-Appeal is not the skill of seducing people, and Fast-Talk is not the skill of lying. They are the skill of "getting someone to do something you want and/or have a good reaction to you, based on a particular tactic." So you can use Intimidation, Sex-Appeal, or Fast-Talk to convince someone to sleep with you, for example, or to get good prices, or to talk someone into freeing you from prison.

They are also used for other things. I think using intimidation as the skill of scaring people is reasonable, but you have to understand that its primary purpose, as an influence skill, is influencing people.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Not

It's a little weird that this is a skill and not something else. Has anybody ever tried dumping lots of points into it just to screw with the game? Played an intimidating blind, quadriplegic midget?

Cherry Blossom Rain, my samurai campaign, had people regularly running around with ridiculous Intimidation ratings (we had one NPC stalking around with Intimidation-20). We used the Contest of Wills rules pretty regularly, and in that case you needed either high levels of Mental Strength or Intimidation, and most people opted for Intimidation.

The game also featured an entire clan who had the "Fearsome Stare" (to the point where players of that game, to this day, refer to that perk as "Shimada Eyes"), but was otherwise an elegant and unimposing bunch of samurai. So you'd have this lovely, charming gentleman sipping at a cup of tea who would suddenly level his eyes at you and hit you with an Intimidation-15+. This was primarily used to stop a fight before it even happened, or to clear out a room. Similarly, this clan excelled at the Chiburi (which is a free Intimidation attempt after killing someone), and this was often used to scare people off. Remember, that intimidation in the midst of combat is -5, and to actually scare someone off requires winning by another 5, so having an intimidation of 20 means you can mow throw a mook, and then have a 50/50 chance of scaring off the rest.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

They are also used for other things. I think using intimidation as the skill of scaring people is reasonable, but you have to understand that its primary purpose, as an influence skill, is influencing people.

Exactly. As I explained it to a player in my current game: Diplomacy is getting people to do what you want by negotiating with them, Fast-talk is getting people to do what you want by feeding them a line of bs, Sex Appeal is getting people to do what you want by flirting with them, and Intimidation is getting people to do what you want by threatening them.