Intimidate your Friends

[Stealthscout]

I've been trying to think of weird optimization paths and started thinking about the friends cantrip. On the surface, it is pretty weak since your interaction must be very short and by RAW they go hostile basically as soon as the conversation ends.

The last part is the real kicker - any diplomacy you do ends quickly if you had to use magic to do it, and deception even more so. Maybe it's the name (rename it 'The Voice' or something) but what about using it with intimidate?

In this scenario, they are likely to hate you afterwards anyhow but does it really matter? They are still intimidated by you, even if it might be lessened because you 'used a spell on them to do it'. I would be just as affected if someone hit me repeatedly magical fear affects.

Has anyone else played around with this? I could see an arcane trickster or valor bard have a good time with this trick (expertise + advantage at will).

[caden_varn]

If you have some time to prepare it works well with Disguise Self (esp. for warlocks who can get it for free as an invocation IIRC) - go in disguised, spend your minute interrogating, then leave/run off (depending on how hostile they become), and dismiss the disguise once you are out of sight. Then you don't really care if they are hostile.

[MaxWilson]

I've been trying to think of weird optimization paths and started thinking about the friends cantrip. On the surface, it is pretty weak since your interaction must be very short and by RAW they go hostile basically as soon as the conversation ends.

The last part is the real kicker - any diplomacy you do ends quickly if you had to use magic to do it, and deception even more so. Maybe it's the name (rename it 'The Voice' or something) but what about using it with intimidate?

In this scenario, they are likely to hate you afterwards anyhow but does it really matter? They are still intimidated by you, even if it might be lessened because you 'used a spell on them to do it'. I would be just as affected if someone hit me repeatedly magical fear affects.

Has anyone else played around with this? I could see an arcane trickster or valor bard have a good time with this trick (expertise + advantage at will).

Intimidate is infamous for being the only really good use of Friends, since "that scary guy was only scary because he warped my mind with magic!" is approximately as scary as "that guy is really scary!" But it still only works on one target at a time.

(I used to think that Friends was also good for enchanters with Alter Memories... and then I realized that Friends doesn't even charm the target, so it doesn't work with Alter Memories. So lame.)

That being said, cantrips cannot be retrained, and Enhance Ability (Charisma) has all the upsides of Friends and none of the downsides. I would just learn Enhance Ability instead. Plus Enhance Ability helps with counterspells and spell research.

P.S. I think the Friends cantrip can be fixed with a house rule though: when the spell ends, the creature goes hostile unless the spell ended because you were re-casting Friends on it. It makes the spell much easier for the DM to deal with since he can just assume you keep Friends up for the duration of the conversation, and the creature realizes what you've done to it and goes hostile a minute after you're done speaking. Under those conditions I would actually bother learning the cantrip with some characters.

[Slipperychicken]

If you really need advantage on charisma checks, just cast Enhance Ability. That'll do you for a whole hour. It also lets you give advantage on pretty much any skill check.