Any good ways for a Fighter/EWM to resist Intimidates?

[Iron Angel]

I'm playing as a Small character, and I find Escape Artist is a great solution to the Grappling problem. I have a bit more trouble resisting Fear, specifically Intimidates, because everything gets a +4 on their checks against me (since other small creatures with the state of mind to actually try intimidates is very limited). I have EWM: Show Off and Never Outnumbered, as well as a lot of ranks in intimidate, so actually intimidating other enemies is rather simple. So I have a few questions:

1: Performing an Intimidate check requires a standard action. Does it provoke Attacks of Opportunity?
--If yes, why would you ever bother doing it at all?

2: If I Intimidate an enemy (Through Show-Off), can they intimidate me back the next turn? It doesn't make much sense that they could but I can't find a ruling.

3: Is there any way to bolster my resistance to such effects through feats or skills? Cross-classing is pretty much out of the question.

The DM hasn't tried Intimidating me into a Panicked state yet with multiple enemies but I can't help but feel like it might eventually happen, and that will be a sad day indeed.

[lytokk]

I don't think that's how intimidate works, at least in 3.5. Its one of those social skills that really doesn't work against PC's. Resisting fear effects, like the frightful prescence of a dragon, is a will save, so anything to boost your will or wisdom would work.
But I don't think there's anything in any 3.5 book suggesting that intimidate can be used to force penalties on the PCs, at least non-epic uses of intimidate, and there aren't any listed uses of intimidate for epic characters that I can find.

[Iron Angel]

Wait, so NPCs cant use Intimidate on PCs?

Thats interesting. I'm still curious to know if doing it provokes an Attack of Opportunity though.

[Jeff the Green]

I don't think that's how intimidate works, at least in 3.5. Its one of those social skills that really doesn't work against PC's. Resisting fear effects, like the frightful prescence of a dragon, is a will save, so anything to boost your will or wisdom would work.
But I don't think there's anything in any 3.5 book suggesting that intimidate can be used to force penalties on the PCs, at least non-epic uses of intimidate, and there aren't any listed uses of intimidate for epic characters that I can find.

There's no general rule that you can't use social skills on PCs; that's a specific rule of influencing attitude in Diplomacy that Intimidate inherits only in the case of changing a character's attitude.

For immunity to fear, check the Lists of Stuff (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1068066). It's not entirely complete, but it does give a bunch of options.

[Kazudo]

They can, it's just not something that's done very frequently in practice.

If you can get something that says that Intimidate is a fear effect (which it very well could be), then doing anything to gain immunity to fear (there are boatloads of things for that, IIRC) would make you immune to certain uses of Intimidate.

[Iron Angel]

There's no general rule that you can't use social skills on PCs; that's a specific rule of influencing attitude in Diplomacy that Intimidate inherits only in the case of changing a character's attitude.

For immunity to fear, check the Lists of Stuff (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1068066). It's not entirely complete, but it does give a bunch of options.

Dang, all of that seems to be cross-classing stuff. I was hoping for a feat or something. Oh well.

[Darrin]

Dang, all of that seems to be cross-classing stuff. I was hoping for a feat or something. Oh well.

Planar Touchstone linked to the Catalogues of Enlightenment would let you select the Dream domain power, which is immunity to fear. Since demoralize makes you shaken, and shaken is a fear effect, immunity to fear = immunity to intimidate.

There are also a couple regional feats from Forgotten Realms. "Fearless" is exactly what it says on the tin. Blooded makes you immune to being shaken, but you can still be frightened or panicked.