Should the Frightened Condition impact Intimidation checks/all Charisma checks?

[Dr.Samurai]

Just what the title asks.

The Charmed condition prevents someone from attacking the thing that has charmed them, but also grants Advantage on all charisma checks against the target.

The Frightened condition prevents moving toward the person you're afraid of, but does not impact any checks.

For me, it would make sense that if you are afraid of someone to the point of having the Frightened condition, Advantage on Intimidation checks seems appropriate. But even the other checks could work too as you are basically inclined to go along with whatever this person is saying, whether they're being diplomatic, deceptive, or intimidating, because you're afraid of them.

Curious what the Forum thinks.

[Corran]

For me, it would make sense that if you are afraid of someone to the point of having the Frightened condition, Advantage on Intimidation checks seems appropriate.
Since they are frightened in some cases (eg for combat purposes) there wont be a need for an intimidation check anyway, as you have basically already succeeded. For other cases (eg trying to intimidte someone into telling or doing something), it's a matter of degree. Affecting the target's behaviour is not dependant so much on if the target is frightened of you or not, but rather on how much. The way I think of it is that intimidation in the latter case is an attempt to throw someone's good judgement out of the window, and the spell does not specify how much it would do that for you (it may vary in different situations). Advantage or disadvantage (eg target flees before your intimidation bares fruits, or target becoming too unfocused/eratic) applied by the DM as seen fit to, seems like a good place for this case.

[Unoriginal]

Just what the title asks.

The Charmed condition prevents someone from attacking the thing that has charmed them, but also grants Advantage on all charisma checks against the target.

The Frightened condition prevents moving toward the person you're afraid of, but does not impact any checks.

For me, it would make sense that if you are afraid of someone to the point of having the Frightened condition, Advantage on Intimidation checks seems appropriate. But even the other checks could work too as you are basically inclined to go along with whatever this person is saying, whether they're being diplomatic, deceptive, or intimidating, because you're afraid of them.

Curious what the Forum thinks.

I would say advantage on CHA (Intimidation) checks can be appropriate depending on circumstances, but certainly not for being diplomatic or deceptive.

You are not more inclined to believe someone you're scared of, whether they're turthful or not. More often than not, you actually are more careful about dissecting what they're saying, because you're afraid what they may do to you.

If a character goes "it's better to be polite and armed than to only be polite", they're attempting to intimidate the person into getting along with you, regardless of if you'd convince them otherwise.

Or in other words, if the Conquest Paladin tells some Frightened mobsters "I killed Jerrd but we are not enemies and we have no reason to fight because he was trying to usurp your Big Boss's position, so I actually helped you here", the Paladin is doing a CHA check with Intimidation proficiency, even if they're lying about Jerrd or their reason to kill him.

[Psyren]

I think it's better not to try codifying this with a general rule the way the charmed condition does.

First, the DM already has the ability to give you advantage on your Intimidation check (or even have you just succeed outright) if they feel circumstances warrant, so all the instances where you think a fear effect/spell/etc should boost your chances of intimidating someone, effectively already have that ability baked in without such a rule. And if your DM doesn't think the effect should help you, then the general rule likely wouldn't have helped either.

Second, a lot of frighten effects are far more aimed at the combat pillar than the social pillar. For example, unlike charmed, the base frightened condition restricts the target's movement, which can be awkward if the thing you're trying to convince them to do is situated nearer to you than they currently are (e.g. trying to intimidate a guard into undoing your restraints/opening your cell becomes counterintuitively impossible if you use a frighten effect to boost your odds.) In addition, because they're combat-oriented, the vast majority of frighten effects last a very short time (10 rounds at most), which is rarely long enough for a social interaction to fully play out, putting the additional complexity of adjudicating what happens when your magic runs out in the DM's hands.

Third, and corollary to #2, Frighten is a lot more noticeable, which puts even more headache on the DM for determining how both the subject and their allies might react. Charmed effects can be much more subtle - if you're not in combat, nobody really notices that they can't attack you even if they wanted to, because chances are nobody was trying to do that anyway. But with Frighten, since they can't walk closer to you even if they want to, it becomes a lot easier to suss out that something preternatural is happening - especially if only one person in a group is affected, giving the DM even more things to figure out. Moreover, a lot of frighten effects carry riders that hurt social interaction further - forcing the target to flee screaming, or even doing lethal damage (usually psychic).

[Abracadangit]

Welp. Psyren beat me to it.

It makes sense for certain one-off scenarios, but the "Frightened" condition is supposed to be a sort of gut-wrenching, overriding-your-cognitive-faculties terror, hence being induced by creatures like liches or dragons. It could definitely give advantage to Intimidation sometimes -- namely, when you want to repulse another creature -- but as Psyren pointed out, it starts becoming janky with the RAW if you want to Intimidate someone into doing something that requires them moving closer to you.

Do I think there should be more robust mechanics that allow for cool ability interactions like this, instead of one condition that gives everyone across-the-board advantage on all social checks? Yes! But that's probably for another thread.

[Dr.Samurai]

All good points. What made me think of it was the Berserker's Intimidating Presence ability which can be used out of combat and doesn't have some of the other riders mentioned, so those points didn't occur to me but I agree with the responses.

Someone else posted that Frightened also gives Disadvantage on all ability checks as long as they can see the source of their fear, but it seems like they deleted their post. Thank you for pointing that out because I did not remember that when thinking about Advantage on Intimidate. Disadvantage would help with Insight vs Deception I suppose. But yeah, if I'm asking "should" Frightened also do this thing, it's important to remember it imposes Disadvantage on attacks and ability checks.

[Psyren]

All good points. What made me think of it was the Berserker's Intimidating Presence ability which can be used out of combat and doesn't have some of the other riders mentioned, so those points didn't occur to me but I agree with the responses.

In theory it can - but in practice you're spending your action every six seconds to keep it going, which doesn't leave a lot of room for much else.

[Sigreid]

I probably wouldn't give advantage to intimidation against someone with the frightened condition. 2 reasons. First, the spell doesn't say it does. Second, I interpret the frightened condition as the target being too panicked to be listening to your argument. All they want to do is put as much space between you and them as possible.

That said, I'd be willing to listen to my players if they wanted to change my mind and it probably wouldn't be that hard to do.

[Chronos]

Advantage/disadvantage can be assigned ad hoc by the DM to reflect any special circumstances that make something easier or harder than usual, and I'd be inclined to say that trying to intimidate someone who's frightened would usually qualify for that. Heck, I've given advantage for less: Once, one of my players was ordering the enemy to surrender, and I gave him advantage on his check because he was the one who'd done most of the damage to them that combat.